It’s simple and delicious. Your kids love them and you know you do too!
3 tbsp. butter
10 oz. package (or 4 cups) of marshmallows
6 cups Crisped Rice (yes, use the generic!)
Melt butter and marshmallows in large pot, once it begins to bubble stir in crisped rice. Poor into 9×13″ greased pan. You may want to grease your hands up a little bit to pat down and even out the treats in the pan. Let harden a little bit and cover. To ensure freshness, you may want to cut them up and place them in a sealed tupperware container.
These are great for lunches. A pan this size will make around 9-12 good sized squares.
With the boys back in school I’m reminded of the groove I need to get myself back into. I find that little things can really help out when you have two kids and time is of the essence. I have to have Caleb at school by the first bell which is 749a, and I don’t take them to school around us, it’s about 20-25 minutes away depending on traffic. So we can’t leave any later than 730a and usually try to make it out by 715a … oh and I’m not a person who really likes to wake up early. So the things I can prepare ahead of time helps prevents rushing around like mad men in the morning.
This week I will go through recipes and tips that are great for children and parents. It’s also about healthy (okay, maybe healthier) eating too. I really want people to realize that food prepared at home with fresh ingredients is not only healthier for your family but cheaper too. Yes, cheaper, much cheaper. So stayed tuned to the blog this week, each and every day and learn how to make foods at home that much easier.
Tip #1:
We send our boys to school with their lunches four out of the five days, they are allowed to buy once a week. Everyday their lunch consists of: Sandwich, some type of chip/pretzel, fruit, drink and sometimes small treat. This tip is for the chips!
Spend 10 minutes one night pre-packaging chips and pretzels for your kids lunches. I find this is great to do when the chip bags are almost gone and helps clean out the pantry of half empty bags. Either use fold sandwich bags, or what I find the best to be is the Ziploc (or generic form of) snack bags. Do up a mixture of bags, zip up and then put them all in a plastic grocery bag. Then when you are making lunches you can just go grab the chip bag and no fuss. It sounds like something so small but you would really be amazed and how much it helps.
This is all done based on how many servings you need. This pasta salad stores very well in the fridge, so having extra isn’t a bad thing. If you need it for a group of people, I would suggest using an entire box of noodles, if it’s just for your family I’d use a couple of cups.
When I get the meats and cheese for this salad, I go to the deli and just ask for an inch thick slab. This allows you to cut it up into cubes rather than slices.
Ingredients:
Macaroni – I use bowtie
Salami
Pepperoni
Mozzarella cheese
Carrots
Green bell pepper
Onion
Italian dressing
Cook the noodles and run cold water over them. You want to be sure your noodles are cool enough for when you add the cheese and such you don’t want it to melt. Once noodles are cool, add the rest of the ingredients and slowly add the Italian dressing. I suggest adding it slowly because if you add too much it can ruin it, so add some, stir, add more, stir, and so on. It’s so simple…
Viola!
Put in desired eggs into pan and add cold water to be 1 inch above eggs. Bring water to boil and once to a boil remove from heat. Cover and let sit for exactly 17 minutes. Once time is up, transfer eggs into bowl of ice water. Keep in there for two minutes, while the eggs are chilling bring water back to a boil. After two minutes, transfer back to boiling water for 10 seconds. Transfer back to ice water and let sit for 15-20 minutes.
Chilled eggs are much easier to peel, so make sure they are completely cooled.
The perfect hard boiled egg has a tender white, and a yolk properly set. there is not the faintest darkening of yolk where the white encircles it (a chemical reaction caused by too much heat in the cooking process). Eggs cooked this way can also be peeled neatly.
This is why we AREN’T chefs! I’m not even sure of the recipe, but needless to say it didn’t work out. Enjoy the pics below. : )
They didn’t turn out great, edible though.
Pizza Crust
Pizza Sauce I or II
Mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
Onion, diced
Green bell pepper, diced
Mushrooms, sliced
Jalapenos, sliced
Minced garlic
Chopped olives
1 Italian sausage link
Pepperoni
First you want to prep the pizza dough. I tend to have several pizza doughs stored in my freezer for that just in case time. Prep whichever pizza sauce you want to use as well. I find that making one batch of the pizza sauce makes about three pizzas worth. So don’t hesitate to store it in the fridge and use at a later time.
While making the sauce, do that multi-tasking thing people talk about, and take the sausage and poke fork holes in it. Place it in water on the stove, heat can be medium-high. This will just help cook the sausage and drain the grease out of it. You can put the raw sausage directly on the pizza and it will cook, however it creates a grease that runs off and can make the crust soggy, so I suggest pre-cooking it. The sausage does not need to be all the way cooked through, once you remove it from heat, remove the casing and using your hands break up the sausage into pieces.
Turn your over on to 425 degrees and have the pizza stone in the oven while it’s warming up. Roll your pizza dough out, once you are done pull out the pizza stone and rub some oil on it. Place the crust on the stone and spread out pizza sauce. Add minced garlic and then the cheese. Put the rest on in this order: Pepperoni, Mushroom, Italian Sausage, Onion and Green pepper, Jalapenos and then the Olives. Sprinkle some Italian Seasoning and slide into the oven for about 15 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.
These are super yummy …
4 slices of cooked bacon cut into small pieces
1 large can of Bush’s Baked Beans
1 regular size can of black beans
1/2 green bell pepper chopped
1/2 onion chopped
1/3 c packed brown sugar
3 garlic cloves minced
Hot peppers of your choice (I do a mixture of cayenne, jalapeno, and red hot cherry peppers)
Ketchup
Spicy mustard
Salt & Pepper
1/2 cup BBQ Sauce
Mix together in iron skillet and place on grill on INDIRECT heat for about an hour. After thickened and bubbly, remove and let sit 10-15 minutes. Mix together and yummy! This is perfectly fine to store for leftovers … tastes just as good reheated.
Bacon Burger Patties
Sauted onions and Jalapenos
Onion rings
BBQ sauce
Pepper jack cheese
**Start heating up oil for onion rings**
Grill bacon burgers on grill. If you don’t precook the ground bacon at all, the burgers cannot be medium rare because the bacon needs to cook all the way through.
Cut up onions and peppers and place into a piece of tinfoil. Sprinkle some virgin olive oil over the top, close up and place onto grill next to burgers. The grill will slowly cook the veggies and they are so good.
Put in the onion rings to the fryer, they take about three minutes. Melt cheese on burgers and I also prefer a toasted bun. Place burger on bun once cheese is melted, add sauted onions and jalapenos, onion rings, and top with BBQ sauce. That’s it, no ketchup, mustard or relish. It’s wonderful.
Serve with baked beans for a complimentary side dish.
Happy Fourth of July!
This is a quick, simple way to spice up burgers and make something a little different.
1 lb. ground beef
6 slices of bacon ground up (See Meat Grinder post)
Mix together, I use my hands to make sure the ground bacon is thoroughly in the meat without any large clumps. Make patties and then grill! If you do not wish to grill them, then cut them into individual squares and put in ZIploc Bag. You can either refrigerate them if you plan to use them in the next day or so, otherwise store them in the freezer. It’s a quick thaw and when separated with wax paper, the burgers come right off.
You can use different toppings on these burgers to make them extra tasty! Add pineapple – goes great with Hawaiian themed parties, or you can my favorite Western Bacon Burgers – which I’ll post that recipe next week!
Today I’d like to talk about the meat grinder attachment that one can use on their Kitchen Aid mixer. It’s a little bit more expensive than I would have thought (and wanted) and I still bought it because I was determined to make Real Bacon Burgers (recipe to be posted next week). I bought it and came home and put it on, pretty easy. This is what it looks like when attached correctly to the mixer:
You do not place the bowl where it normally goes, it will have to bet set on your counter underneath the grinder exit to ensure that it catches all the ground up meat. Slowly turn on the mixer (where the beater normally goes will still rotate even though it has no use with the grinder) and place the meat you wish to grind up in the top of the grinder. Use the provided utensil to push the meat through.
It’s great, in this picture is ground up bacon.
No, not NYC, the Buffalo area. I’m dropping my kids off at my parents house for six weeks. They will get to have such a nice summer surrounded in green, whereas in Tucson it’s 100+.
My postings during this time will be few and far between as I’ll be enjoying the kid-free time with my husband (and I don’t really like cooking when it’s so hot!)
Enjoy the summer!
~Kristin
1 12 oz. can tomato paste
1 1/2 c. water
1 tsp. ground oregano
1/2 tsp. basil
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. onion powder
2 garlic cloves, minced
Mix dry ingredients and set aside.
Mix together paste with water over heat, when it bubbles add dry mix.
Simmer uncovered, 35-40 minutes.
This recipes makes A LOT of salsa, I mean a lot. So use this as a base and cut it down for what you need, or heck double it and jar up the salsa.
14 large jalapenos
8 tomatoes
3 large garlic cloves
1 bunch of cilantro
1 large onion
Salt & Pepper
Crushed red pepper
Bring water to boil and put first five ingredients in pot and boil for 40 minutes. Drain, put all ingredients into a blender. Add salt, pepper and red pepper to taste.
3 c. semi sweet chocolate chips
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
Dash of salt
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 c. chopped nuts (optional)
In saucepan over low heat melt chips, milk and salt. Remove from heat and stir in nuts and vanilla. Spread evenly throughout pan.
Chill for two hours.
1 package cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 tbsp. dry bbq rub
3 garlic cloves, minced
Mix cream cheese and spices well until cheese is smooth.
Cut jalapeno tops off and gut out middles. Rinse any extra seeds out.
Fill jalapeno with cream cheese mixture.
Fold a half piece of bacon over the top and put a toothpick through it to hold in place.
Put on tinfoil and let grill 10 minutes on each side or until bacon is done.
5.5 oz can coconut milk
1 tbsp. curry paste
1 boneless chicken breast
1 tbsp. fish oil
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1/4 c. bamboo shoot
1/4 c. peas
1/4 c. chicken stock
Curry sauce or red pepper sauce for spice
Cook coconut milk and curry paste over medium heat for five minutes. Add chicken, fish oil, brown sugar, bamboo shoots, peas and stock. Stir well and then add in desired spice. Simmer for ten minutes.
Soy sauce
Brown sugar
Molasses
Garlic
Olive oil
Ginger
Combine ingredients and mix well with whisk.
1 cup flat beer
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
Put ingredients starting with dry and then wet, putting yeast in last. Make a little hole in the flour to hold the yeast.
Put bread machine on pizza dough.
Once done, let cool and roll in flour. Place in Ziploc bag and put in fridge until needed.
2 packages of yeast
2 c. warm milk
4 eggs separated
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 c. sifted flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 c. melted butter
Sprinkle yeast over warm milk and stir until dissolved. Bet in egg yolks and add to mixture with vanilla. Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Add to liquid ingredients. Stir in butter and combine thoroughly. Beat egg whites until stiff, carefully fold into a batter. Let mixture stand in a warm place for 45 minutes or double in size.
Use 1/2 c. mix per waffle, makes 8-9 waffles.
Simple and delicious!
1 package of cream cheese
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
1/3 c. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla
Let cream cheese reach room temperature and soften.
Add all ingredients and beat until smooth.
Pour into crust (pre-made works as does homemade) and refrigerate for three hours. Top with various fruit topping.
