At Home My Way

One of the sides I can always depend on having on hand and always count on my family gobbling up is Seasoned Green Beans.  There is nothing hard about this dish.  It's easy, contains ingredients I normally keep in my pantry, and even makes a great, frugal covered dish to share at potlucks.  My girls always request these beans for holiday dinners.  We serve them for winter holidays, summer picnics, and just everyday supper.  I can make a bunch or just a few.  Yesterday I brought some with lots of broth in a canning jar for lunch.  With a leftover hot roll, they were a super satisfying and great meal. I had always "opened a can of green beans" for my family but they were nothing over the top.  Then, I started working at our local elementary school.  There I tasted super delicious and cramming your mouth full green beans.  These things are that good.  I asked the cook how she did it and she shared her little secret.  ...

Our weather is ridiculously cold!  We had snow falling, snow blowing, wind howling, Little House on the Prairie cold last night.  Our wood stove was cranking but still having trouble due to some sort of extraordinary Arctic blast.  This morning, on the way to work it was -9 on my car temperature gauge.  The radio said that our wind chills are -36.  Brrrr is right! I haven't always been a huge hot chocolate drinker.  I tend to drink coffee for the most part.  But, last night, after a delicious supper of pot roast and potatoes, seasoned green beans, little dumplings in roast gravy, and School House Rolls , I wanted a little something sweet.  Yes, I had already had honey on a School House Roll, but that wasn't cutting it.  I decided to make myself a cup of hot chocolate.  I may be barking up the wrong tree but every weekend another person I know gets diagnosed with the Big C and I just couldn't bring myself to open a packet of hot...

I got a new French-Bread pan for Christmas and used it Sunday to make two loaves of beautiful French Bread.  I also made a big pot of homemade Spaghetti Sauce.  What a feast!  (Like we need to be feasting AT ALL with all of the Christmas goodies we've been stuffing ourselves with lately LOL?) I made this  dough the old fashioned way.  I usually make dough in my bread machine but decided to stick to the basics and kneaded it myself.  It was a little sticky to knead but I made it work and the bread itself was divine! My new bread pan worked out great!  I have tried using foil logs, spraying them with cooking spray and baking loaves of French bread on a cookie sheet wedged between the foil logs, but that never worked out just perfectly.  This will work much better! I also love the little holes in the pan which crisps the bottom of the loaves. We loved the thick slices, still slightly warm from the oven, bu...

For just about as long as we have been married, we have spent Christmas Eve with my husband's mom.  Sometimes she has lots of Christmas Eve guests and sometimes she has just a few.  This year she had a bumper crop.  The living room was full of laughing cousins, lots of stories, and even more good food. My mother-in-law always makes wonderful little BBQ hotdogs on Christmas Eve.  My sister-in-law and I LOVE them!  I haven't posted that recipe but they are just a jar of grape jelly plus a jar of mustard and regular hotdogs cut into fourths.  She cooks them slowly in a little crock for hours until they are thick and yummy. We are big on hot dogs apparently because the other favorite dish are regular old pigs in a blanket cut small and made with canned biscuits and hot dogs.  Those are always the first things to go. This year, my daughter, Rachel, made a Dried Beef Cheese Ball.  We love all kinds of cheese balls but this is a parti...

I have made this recipe for Sweet Potato Bake for many years.  I originally found this recipe in a Taste of Home magazine.  I didn't grow up eating sweet potato casserole so this was new for me.  (When I was little in the south, we normally ate sweet potatoes that were baked and served split in half with butter - with the potato cut in hatch marks so that the butter would soak in).  When  Taste of Home  first came out, I LIVED by every issue.  I loved pouring over the magazines and finding new recipes for comfort food to serve to my family.  This is one of the recipes that has survived many family dinners!  Believe it or not, every time I make Sweet Potato Bake, I drag out ALL of my magazines to find the recipe (I write my favorite recipes on the covers in permanent marker).  It's a huge process because I have so many magazines!   Thinking ahead, I am blo...

This recipe for Quicky (Chunky) Spaghetti Sauce is my very favorite spaghetti sauce.  My mom always called it "Quicky Sauce."  That's because it doesn't have to simmer for hours like some homemade spaghetti sauce recipes.  Is it as quick as jarred sauce?  Well... if you are browning hamburger anyway, its only a matter of dumping in some cans and a few spices, so it's pretty close!  The taste will win you over!  It's delicious! This sauce is deliciously heady with garlic, tomatoes and mushrooms, with a little bit of basil and sugar.  It comes out chunky but the sauce itself is thin.  With a big pot of buttery pasta, it doesn't get much better than this. Here's how I make Quicky (Chunky) Spaghetti Sauce AT HOME MY WAY:   Quicky (Chunky) Spaghetti Sauce   1/2 to 1 pound of hamburger, cooked and drained 1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce   1 regular can diced tomatoes (do not drain)  (fresh tomatoes work great ...

I have been on a serious Chinese buffet "roll" lately!  My favorite hometown restaurant is called "Happy China" and the staff at Happy China and I are now on a first name basis LOL.  The food is consistently delicious and I can get a buffet one-trip to go, which makes me one happy girl!  However, this isn't such a good thing on the old budget.  I find that my Happy China buffets are adding up and I need to find something just as good that I can eat at home and leave eating Happy China as an occasional treat. I decided this weekend to make my hubby one of his favorite meals ever, Hawaiian Chicken .  Hawaiian Chicken is one of those things that I like to eat, but I never think to make it.  I decided this was pretty close to the chicken I get at my favorite Happy China restaurant.  I decided to make Homemade Egg Rolls to go with our meal.  I figured the crispy egg roll wrapper would fill my need for dipping yumminess (I love to dip in...