At Home My Way

Happy PI Day!  Ha!  Whatever that is.. Loving the sitcom, Big Bang Theory like I do, it is only appropriate that I celebrate PI Day here!  Happy Pi Day! My favorite way to celebrate Pi Day would of course be to make and eat some pie! Here are a couple of my favorite ways to make and eat pie AT HOME MY WAY: Lemon Meringue Pie     Pumpkin Pie  with homemade Whipped Cream     Another of my favorite pies is this little Oatmeal Pie recipe found:   HERE     It's like pecan pie but without pecans (lots more frugal and just as delicious!)       What about savory pies?  I would consider these hand pies - Empanadas - a terrific way to celebrate Pi Day!        "Kinda" Empanadas     And... last, but not least, probably the most popular pie in our Country - Pizza Pie!           Homemade ...

Some Fridays my husband and I go out for dinner.  This past Friday we stayed in and I made supper ( Hamburgers, Potatoes & Onions in Foil ) and a delicious pumpkin pie.  We both love pumpkin pie and that is the one pie that I can make than never goes to waste.  We eat every last crumb!  My pumpkin pie recipe is here.  I can never have pumpkin pie without wanting whipped topping.  Normally I would buy a bowl of that frozen non dairy topping in the grocery store, but true to form... I didn't want to GO TO THE STORE!  (What else is new?)  I also remembered that I had a carton of whipping cream left from making my Ditch the Box Cheesecake .  I haven't made homemade whipped cream a whole lot but I didn't remember there being very much to it. I didn't really use a recipe.  I whipped some cream, added a couple of small spoons of sugar, enough vanilla to fill the lid from the vanilla bottle, and called her good!...

One of the meals I most remember growing up is this one.  We called it, "Hamburgers, Potatoes & Onions in Foil" but I believe some people call these, "Hobo Packets."  No matter what you choose to call it, this is a delicious, simple meal that pretty much everyone likes at my house.  You can tweek by adding other vegetables (squash, carrots, peppers, mushrooms) or just use potatoes w/ onion powder.  Lots of options!   My husband is a flat-out meat and potatoes man, so for his packet I just use the hamburger patty, sliced potatoes, salt, pepper & some onion POWDER (because he doesn't like real onions).  The potatoes cook perfectly soft.  We like to bake ours a full hour and a half to crisp the bottom of the burger.  You eat this like a hamburger steak - without a bun. Make sure to use a fairly lean cut of ground beef.  That does make a huge difference in the finished product.  (A higher fat content gives you a pretty s...

We have a fixer-upper house that we have been working on.  The bannister railing and some of the other trim and cabinets look HORRIBLE.  I wasn't sure what to do with them other than replace or try to paint them and neither of those sounded very easy or affordable. Enter:  Pinterest and all of the helpful hints, ideas, and inspiration we all get there! When I saw this pinned on Pinterest, my thought was, "Surely not!  It couldn't be that easy,cheap and seriously work that well!"  I am here to tell you that this solution is all of those things.  I mixed up my oil (canola) and vinegar (apple cider) and wa-la!  Beautiful!  Now... having said that the scratches are physically still there but when you see the railing and the trim pieces I applied this treatment too, the color is right on!  As with any treatment for wood, I would try this in a small, not so visible area just as a tester but this works.  I will forever use this on m...

My husband always questions why I have lots of little bags of stale bread and buns in my freezer.  I try to convey to him that there are actually things I MAKE out of that stale bread, like homemade croutons, stuffing, french toast, and this delicious Applesauce Bread Pudding, but I'm not sure he believes me.  Sometimes I think he questions whether or not I am a food hoarder, LOL, but he's wrong (of course).  He IS right that I don't want to waste food or throw anything away that I can turn into something delicious.  Probably the hoarders of the world and I do have that in common.  Last night I decided to use up some of those stale buns and make one of my favorite desserts ever.  It's been my experience that you either LIKE bread pudding or you DON'T.  I LOVE IT!  My sister-in-law first started making this for my father-in-law.  She most often made Pumpkin Bread Pudding, but her original recipe was for Applesauce Bread Pudding with...

My family loves those cheesecakes that are no-bake and come as a boxed mix.  We make them normally in the summer when I don't want to heat up the house.  A few weeks ago, back before Rocky, Blizzard #2, 2013 , we had some terrific weather,  weather that was perfect for BBQ hamburgers and no-bake cheesecake.  Mmm... I can just remember now how wonderful it was to sit out on our porch in the swing, smelling that delicious aroma of BBQ as the sun set and enjoying a 75 degree evening.  Missouri is crazy like that.  One week we get 76 degrees in February and the next we can have 26 inches of snow on the ground.  No kidding! I am always on the hunt for something I can make AT HOME MY WAY that will satisfy a family favorite that we typically get from the store or in a box.  One of my favorite resources for homemade everything is Finding Joy in My Kitchen .  Sno-White offers recipes on her blog that are easy to make and dependably scrump...

We woke up to another amazing amount of snow this morning.  We knew it was coming, but... wow!  Twice in six days we got snows totaling 10+ inches each.  Thursday it was Storm "Q" and this morning (Tuesday), "Rocky" came to visit!  This snow is so beautiful because there is so MUCH out there!  It's not even very cold so you can really walk around and just breathe it all in!   Everything in our area is pretty much closed, thankfully, so we are home today enjoying a much appreciated day off from work. While Doug went out to shovel, I put on a pot of coffee and started some breakfast.  This morning I made bacon and our favorite homemade biscuits .  My favorite way to make bacon is to bake it on a broiler pan.  There is no mess, no smoke, no burned spots on the bacon, and no burned ME from popping grease.  It turns out perfect every single time.  You also can pretty much cram it all on ...