At Home My Way

We celebrate birthdays with a potluck luncheon once a month at my office.  I never know what to make.  As much as I love to cook, I have a hard time deciding what to bring.  We usually have tons of desserts (which I LOVE) so I try to bring something other than sweets.  We also eat the leftovers at work until every last morsel is gone so we like something that is good the next day. I decided to bring Easy Cole Slaw for today's meal.  Since I get home from work at nearly 6PM every night and have to leave the house by 7AM, I find very little prep time for making a potluck dish so this Easy Cole Slaw was perfectly easy, simple, and frugal.  I mixed the dressing last night in mere seconds and this morning dumped my cole slaw mix in a bowl, chopped some onion, and stirred it together. I think this will be a perfect recipe to have handy these last days during Lent.  Our town is predominantly Catholic and there are lots of fish fries this time of ...

Crusty Homemade Bread     I would say that the single recipe that most revolutionized my cooking style and changed what I put out for my family to eat was this recipe.  When I'm squeaking out the last days of meals until payday, I can count on this dough to get me through.  It uses simple and few ingredients - flour, salt, yeast, and water.  That's it!  And yet with that simple batch of dough, stirred up with a wooden spoon in a large bowl in a matter of seconds (I estimate about 30 seconds), my options for breakfasts, lunches, and suppers, increases many times.  I first found the instructions and recipe for this dough at the website for Mother Earth News HERE .  This recipe comes from a terrific book called  ARTISAN BREAD IN 5 MINUTES A DAY by Jeff Hertsberg and Zoe Francois .  (They also have a terrific blog where they answer questions, post recipes, etc. HERE. )     Breakfasts:  ...

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...