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My kids love peanut butter sandwiches; I hate buying jelly. This was my conundrum. During the last fight over who was going to pick out the jelly I was in a particularly bad mood. This caused me to state, rather emphatically, "That's IT! I will not buy another jar of jelly until you all learn how to like the same thing!"
Ironically, my statement made little difference to my children at the time, but we did not buy jelly. The next day, I ws rethinking myself when my daughter was begging for peanut butter and jelly. However, as with many of my ideas, genius was born from my child's anger.
Out of sheer desperation to get my daughter to stop whining and crying, I pulled out the peanut butter and bread and asked her what she expected me to put on her sandwich instead of jelly. Children, unlike adults, have no realization that peanut butter is meant to go with jelly, so my 3 year old says "apples".
Yes, I pulled out an apple, peeled and sliced it and put it on a sandwich with peanut butter. By the time it was done, my husband and I had each had one, too, and we are not fans of peanut butter sandwiches. However, the result was fantastic.
The apple slices were cold and crisp, much like lettuce on a ham sandwich and the juice broke up the stickiness of the peanut butter. It was sweet, crisp and cold with a very clean, healthy feel to it. Since then, we have used apples, bananas, strawberries, grapes, oranges and blueberries.
My family has informed me that it is okay if I don't want to buy jelly anymore, as long as I keep buying fruit!!!
Tonight's meal is fast on it's way to becoming a family favorite! It started out as a quick solution to use up breakfast leftovers and everyone loved it so much that I now make it even when I don't have the leftovers to use! The catch is that if you want it to be a 1 skillet meal, you need a pretty big skillet!
Fry up about 4 sliced or diced potatoes with your favorite southwestern or cajun seasoning. When the potatoes are about 2/3 of the way done, add 1 package of sliced or cubed smoked sausage and a bag of santa fe veggies (brocollli, corn, peppers and black beans). Add about 1/4 cup of water and cover the pan. Stir about every 10 minutes until the potatoes are tender.
This meal is great served with dinner rolls and butter and can serve upwards of 8 people (depending on their apetites). We usually have plenty of leftovers and we all eat more of it than we really need to feel full.
Okay, for those of you that follow this blog, I'll start with an apology for my lack of posts over the past month or so. My husband had back surgery recently and I have been caught up taking care of him. However, there have been many wonderful meals in that time. Hopefully, I'll be able to get caught up on here and make it up to you!
As for tonight's dinner, it was incredible. I bought a picnic ham last week with the theory that there would be enough leftovers to make a few more meals. Needless to say, I was wrong. I will be lucky to get one meal from the meat and a pot of split pea or bean soup from the bone!
Picnic hams are so easy to cook! The secret to the perfect picnic ham is to set an open rack (I used a wire trivet) inside your roasting pan and fill the bottom of the pan to just a fraction of an inch below the rack with water. Then, add a few drops of liquid smoked hickory flavoring (I use Liquid Smoke) to the water, set the ham on the rack and put the lid on the pan. Roast the ham at 350 degrees until the internal temperature of your ham is just 160 degrees. Keep the pan covered as much as possible, no matter how tempted you are to peek.
A good place to start when estimating how long a ham will need to cook is to look at how much fat is on the ham. A fattier ham (keep in mind that fat provides flavor and will be cut away before serving) should take about 20 minutes per pound and a leaner ham will be closer to 30 minutes per pound.
Once your ham is cooked, serve it up with some rice and brown sugar, peas and carrots and you'll leave everyone full, but wanting more! My kids sat at the table for an extra 20 minutes tonight snacking on ham!
Breaded chicken was on the menu the menu tonight. I refuse to buy pre-breaded chicken because I find it bland. Therefore, I make my own breading and use boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
The breading is a thrown together mix of cornstarch, flour, bread crumbs, bisquick and seasonings. It is all dumped into a ziplock back and shaken to mix. Each piece of chicken is run through the breading, coated in egg and coated in the breading again
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Seasoned rice side dishes can make a meal. However, I am firmly against buying boxed mixes that lock me into specific flavors and spices. Luckily, I have devised a method that allows me to recreate these mixes while seasoning them to my liking!
The first step is to decide what rices and ingredients you like. Personally, I mix vermicelli, risotto and white and brown rice. However, some people like long grain rice, some people like couscous,everybody's tastes are a little different
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Okay, everybody has leftovers occassionally. However, thanks to my habit of cooking for an army, we usually have LOTS of leftovers. The good news is, leftovers can be used to make entirely new meals that hardly resemble the original dishes!
Tonight, I decided to cloean out some leftovers. I was hungry for Mexican-inspired food, but the only thing in the fridge that fit the bill was some spanish rice and a few tortillas. Lucky for me, we also had some leftover beef roast, peppers and onions and a can of refried beans! To me, this sounded like FAJITAS (with my own twist, of course
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Okay, I can only deal with traditional hamburger helper every so often. However, those handy boxed meal mixes come in handy when you need a quick meal. With a few minor changes and additions, a bland boxed meal becomes an amazing casserole.
Tonight, we got home late, and the kids were hungry and cranky. A box of Whole Wheat Beef Stroganoff, a bag of frozen peas, a package of beef stew meat and some garlic and pepper seasoning made for a quick and easy meal that made everyone happy! It takes a little extra water and some corn starch, but it is well worth it
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Okay, this morning's latest episode of stupidity comes to us in the form of laziness. Here, like many communities with a number of elementary schools, parents are expected to provide transportation for their children because no one lives more than a mile from the school. Most of the kids are allowed to walk or ride thier bike to and from school. Of course, this means a lot of foot and bike traffic to maneuver around for the parents that choose to drive their children to the school.
Now, I realize that, for parents that work, being expected to find a way for their children to get to school may be a bit of a challenge. However, there are so many older children in the neighborhood that could walk younger children to school and children whose mothers do not work that no one should have a problem finding someone willing to help them out. I know of several families that car pool thier children to school and even more that arrange for all of their children to walk or ride bikes to school in large groups
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Talk about delicious and super easy! Dinner tonight was amazing! It seems to be a curse of being me that I simply cannot follow a recipe. In my mind, a recipe is merely a suggestion and made to be altered to suit my tastes. That would be why I never post recipes in my blog. I want you to take my ideas and run with them, alter them as you see fit, and cook meals that YOU will love!
Tonight's dinner was amazing. I layered a round casserole dish with corn, red beans, diced onion, taco meat and shredded cheese. I mixed 1/2 cup of Bisquick, 1/2 cup of milk, 1/2 cup of chinky salsa and 2 large eggs in a measuring cup until all of the Bisquick was disolved. I then poured the mixture over the layered ingredients and topped it with more cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes until the edges brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean
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Okay, so today's stupid people come in the form of, I kid you not, a geriatric love triangle. While walking through Walmart with my husband and children in the middle of a Friday afternoon, we witness an elderly couple arguing in the Dairy Department. While this is definitely strange, everybody argues, and on occassion, arguments can be unavoidable in public places.
The stupidity of the situation comes, not from the argument itself, but from the wife once the argument was over. This woman felt the need to share that her dirtbag husband had cheated on her numerous times over the past 55 YEARS, and she had just discovered that he was cheating on her again
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