At Home My Way

I really look forward to St. Patrick's Day because of one reason, pretty much.  I LOVE cabbage!  I grew up eating lots of cabbage.  It was a staple at our house.  My husband, however, does not like cabbage.  He can't even stand to smell it cooking!  Grrr... But he overlooks this aversion on St. Patrick's Day, being that he loves me so much. LOL. This St. Patrick's Day I was all set to go to my parents' house for dinner.  My mom was making corned beef and cabbage.  I was so looking forward to it!  Well... wouldn't you know that I would get sick on St. Patrick's Day?  I could have went ahead and gone to my parents' for dinner but, I didn't want them to catch my cold.  It was miserable being so sick! My sweet husband drove me around our small town trying to find a restaurant serving corned beef and cabbage, but we had no luck!  We ended up at our local A&W restaurant, ... which was good, ... but it wasn't corned...

I wanted to share a couple of the food/book combinations that we used at my niece's baby shower.  I bought the baby a new bookshelf and we used books as the theme.  We all had a great time and the new mom welcomed a great assortment of children's books to add to her bookshelf.  My niece is super smart and I credit some of that to the fact that her mom started reading to her as an tiny infant.  I remember Jill perched in her mom's cross-legged lap, staring intently at the pages of the books my sister-in-law read to her.  I think before she could even hold her own bottle, she tried turning the pages of the books.  My sister-in-law set a great example for me.  My girls were born after Jill and I knew immediately I wanted to start off reading lots of books.  My niece, herself, suggested that instead of cards at the shower, we all give her children's books (since they are about the same price these days!) but we also decided to decorate ...

Seems like these days (in my area anyway), some of the greatest treats at showers and weddings are being forgotten.  What happened to the MINTS AND NUTS? I would say 100% of the recent weddings and showers I've been to lately don't serve mints, nuts, OR punch?  What's up with that?  I get the peanut allergies are causing a problem for mixed nuts, but what about the MINTS?  And bring back the PUNCH! When I got married (I know... way back in the dark ages), we didn't serve everyone a full meal.  We got married and at the reception, everyone enjoyed and looked forward to lusciously huge slices of delicious, beautifully decorated wedding cake as well as pastel butter mints, and frothy punch.  These days, these simple pleasures seem to be amiss at weddings and showers. So being the complete traditionalist that I am, when I hosted the baby shower for my niece last week I knew for sure that I was serving mints and punch.  My neph...

We hosted a baby shower at our house last weekend to welcome the birth of a new great-nephew.  I'll post later on about the wonderful theme we used (books) as well as all of the wonderful food that we served to match the book titles.  It was a blast! One of the things I served was BBQ meatballs.  When I saw the price of a bag of frozen meatballs, I knew I would be making them homemade.  What I didn't know was how easy and inexpensive they were to make!  I turned to a favorite blog ( Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ) for a meatball recipe that I could depend on to be delicious and easy.  The link to Lynn's recipe is HERE .  Lynn's recipe for the meatballs is perfect!  Most recipes I've seen for homemade meatballs use lots of ingredients and spices.  Lynn's recipe is very simple - ground beef, egg, and oats.  It can't get much easier than that!  Lynn uses bottled barbecue sauce on her BBQ meatballs.  Since I've made BBQ...

Pizza boats are one of the easiest and most frugal meals you will ever put on the table.  They are also great to make with ingredients you can keep on hand, either in your freezer or in your pantry.  Pizza boats are made with only four basic ingredients:  bread, sauce, cheese & toppings.  You can keep bread rounds, hamburger or hot dog buns, sections of French bread, or an assortment of any of these in your freezer.  I usually keep either pizza sauce or those small, 8 ounce, cans of tomato sauce in my pantry.  I also usually keep either grated or blocks of mozzarella in my freezer since there are so many things I can do with it.  Pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, olives, all are optional.  Great if you have some but not required. Last night I made pizza boats and garlic cheese rounds for supper along with a salad.  It was great, cheap, and better yet, fast! This recipe is really not a recipe.  It's just using some stuff you ma...

RECIPES AT THE TOP - CHIT CHAT AT THE BOTTOM! Here's how we make Buttermilk Biscuits AT HOME MY WAY: Buttermilk Biscuits (just like Cracker Barrel) (Makes about 8 biscuits.) PRINTABLE RECIPE HERE Ingredients: 2 cups SELF RISING flour  (self rising flour gives the perfect taste to homemade biscuits) 1/3 cup shortening  (cold real butter also works here) 1 1/4 cup buttermilk*  *NOTE:  (If using regular milk combined with lemon juice vinegar referenced below, you only need 1 cup of milk because thinner regular milk uses less by volume than the thick real buttermilk.) Directions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. (Make sure your flour is "fluffed" not straight from the bag;  Dump it in a larger container and stir using up and down motion to fluff it up a little bit-THEN measure out 2 cups).  Measure 2 cups SELF RISING flour into a mixing bowl.  Add shortening and cut it until small and crumbly. A fork works fine for this purpose ...

I'm trying to get a game plan for the week and thought I would post a menu to keep me on track. Here's my plan: Monday: Breakfast :  Yogurt ( homemade-small batch  recipe) with fruit and homemade Perfect Granola (pecan & almond) Lunch :  Salad with homemade ranch dressing using this Mix and the homemade yogurt) Supper :  Crockpot-steak w/ mushroom gravy & noodles, leftover toasted homemade biscuits , and a vegetable Tuesday: Breakfast :  Lemon Poppyseed Muffins - trying this recipe HERE . Lunch :  Peanut Butter Sandwich Supper :  Sloppy Joes/Juicy Burgers with oven fries Wednesday: Breakfast :  leftover muffins Lunch :  tortilla with leftover Sloppy Joes Supper :  Make potpie with leftover beef/gravy using this recipe ( Potpie with Batter Crust ) but using the leftover beef. Thursday: Breakfast :  Oatmeal Lunch :  Leftover potpie Supper :  Hawaiian  Chicken Friday: Breakfa...