CHRISTEPHI

Do you ever discover a wrinkled old apple in the bottom of your produce drawer?  It's not moldy or rotten, just soft and wrinkly and old.  What do you do with it?  No one is going to eat it like that! Do you throw it away?  Or does the truism of our ancestors come to mind: Waste not, want not. Rescue that apple!  Don't throw it away, but transform it into something scrumptious and satisfying.  Once you rescue the apple and turn it into these delicious muffins, the muffins in turn might rescue you on a busy day as a quick grab-and-go breakfast or snack.   Now doesn't that sound like a winner? Apple Rescue Muffins Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix thoroughly: 1 egg 3/4 c. milk 1/2 c. applesauce In a separate bowl, sift together: 2 c. flour 1/3 c. sugar 3 t. baking powder 1/2 t. salt 1 t. cinnamon 1/2 c. peeled, finely chopped apples  1/2 c. chopped nuts (optional, I never do) Combine dr...

Over the long weekend, my friend Melly and I got together to do some bulk cooking!  We had a lot of fun, but boy-howdy, it was a lot of work! We pared and chopped 10 pounds of sweet potatoes, 10 pounds of red potatoes, 10 pounds of carrots, and so on. Then we assembled four one-gallon bags (two for each of us) time nine recipes for a grand total of 36 meals!  Each gallon bag is a single crockpot-worth of food, which for my family will actually be at least two meals and a lunch. I found recipes via Pinterest, made a mega shopping list, and this is what we made: Lazy Day Stew (that I re-named Busy Day Stew) from  Ring Around the Rosies . Chicken Curry from  Mama and Baby Love . Cilantro Lime Chicken with black beans and corn also from  Ring Around the Rosies . Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken from  Mama and Baby Love . Savory Chicken from  Ring Around the Rosies  again. Savory Vegetable Beef Soup from The Test Kitchen of Melissa Fallis . Stephanie's Goulash also from Mama and ...

My kids are extremely picky eaters!  Well, Miss M is anyway.  Little Guy isn’t nearly as picky as she is, though he thinks it’s “cool” to be like her and say he doesn’t like things that he’ll typically eat. I rarely buy chicken nuggets to eat at home.  I’m too cheap.  But I rarely take the time to make something elaborate for lunch either. Today, however, the kids were antsy and I thought an engaging activity was in order!  What better than an activity that also provides lunch? What you need: 3-4 chicken tenders, thawed and cut into small pieces about 1/2 cup flour seasonings of choice 1 egg, beaten about 1/2 cup Ritz cracker crumbs Miss M decided on our seasonings: salt, pepper, and garlic powder; I used about 1 t. each.  I would have used a combo of cracker crumbs and crushed corn flakes if I’d had any!  Next time I might add some corn meal in with the crackers, yum!  (Incidentally, store brand “Ritz” crackers are *...

A simple, satisfying soup for chilly weather! 1 lb. ground beef 1 medium onion, chopped 3 medium potatoes, cubed 4-6 cups water or beef broth 1 can of green beans salt and pepper to taste sour cream for garnish, optional Add ground beef and onion to a stockpot and brown together, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.  (If in doubt, use less than you think you'll need. You can always add more later!)  Add potatoes and saute with meat until slightly soft.  Add water and green beans.  Allow to simmer half an hour or more.  Adjust seasonings.  Garnish with sour cream. Serve with Easy Peasy Breadsticks for the perfect comfort food!

This week I built my menu around the fresh produce in my kitchen (mostly from our CSA shares) that needs to be used before it goes bad! Monday : Eggplant parmesan Tuesday : Burritos featuring crockpot refried beans and fresh garden salsa Wednesday : Pasta salad Thursday : Grilled chicken and patty pan squash Friday : Beef stroganoff Saturday : leftovers Sunday : Chicken fried rice with carrots The eggplant parmesan will be an "experiment" meal since I've never made (or even eaten!) it before.  Most of my experiments are passable, not all are enjoyable. What are you eating this week?

Last year we went to Applefest in Weston, MO where I waited a half hour to purchase a pint off fresh, hot apple butter.  Oh, how disappointed I was when I got home and tasted it.  The nutmeg was overpowering!  I'm not a big fan of nutmeg.  I prefer cinnamon with my apples.  I vowed that I would make my own next time.  Well, Applefest is just around the corner and I won't have to buy any nutmeg-laden apple butter, because...I made my own!  (Though mine has very little nutmeg!) Half the fun was picking the apples ourselves at our favorite local orchard .  Apple picking is a yearly family tradition. Only the Galas were open for picking that day.  They were kind of ugly since most had split open, but they made great applesauce and apple butter, so who cares what they looked like before? I used a recipe my friend found online (with only half the nutmeg called for) that used up the apple peels from making appl...

Yesterday Miss M had a lesson on The Gingerbread Man.  We've read the story before, so she retold it to me and we made our own gingerbread man. Before I let her eat him, I asked her to tell me the story one more time.  She forgot a few parts in her haste to finish, but it's mighty cute nonetheless! I used the same recipe as I did when I made dog bone shaped cookies , except again I used real butter, doubled the cinnamon, and halved the cloves.

Yesterday hubby came home from work saying he needed to bring "something" to work for Food Day (today!) and the theme is Italian.  My first thought was that everybody'll bring pasta (turns out nobody did, go figure), so then my thoughts turned to these  Easy Peasy Bread Sticks .  I also remembered a biscotti recipe I used once that was quite easy and turned out well. Usually when your 3-year-old "helps" in the kitchen, it's more of a hindrance than an actual help, right?  Well, to my utter delight, I actually found myself being helped by Miss M! She did much better rolling out the breadsticks than I had anticipated and ended up doing almost all of them herself! I did the messy work...dipping in butter and Parmesan. Don't you just love seeing little chubby hands hard at work?  She was so pleased with herself.  My in-laws came over this evening and she proudly proclaimed, "I made them!  Mama and I made them.  I did a great job!"  (She...

My grandma is the ultimate pie maker in our family.  The most memorable of her pies was the year Grandpa first grew blueberries.  He went out and picked a batch that wasn't really quite ripe yet.  As he put it, they were "almost blue."  Despite their being slightly green, he fully expected Grandma to use them, and so was born the "almost-blue berry pie."  It was insanely delicious! For Valentine's Day, I thought I'd make use of some of the rhubarb in my freezer (yes, Grandpa grew it last year) to make a pie...after all, rhubarb is naturally pink. Of course, I used Grandma's recipe. Grandma's Rhubarb Custard Pie Beat slightly 2 large eggs Add 2 tablespoons milk Mix together and stir in... 1 1/2 cup sugar 3 tablespoons flour 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg Mix in 3 cups pink rhubarb. Fill pastry-lined pie pan with rhubarb custard filling.  Dot filling in pan with 3/4 teaspoon butter .  Cover with lattice top.  Bake until ...

Since the only thing I did today was cook supper and watch Farscape , I figured I'd share one of my favorite recipes.  It's the Best Beef Dip Ever recipe from allrecipes.com.  I throw it all in the crock pot for a few hours, et voila!  Tonight I served it on ciabatta rolls with swiss cheese, a touch of prepared horseradish and mayo (hubby's preference), red onion, and shredded lettuce. No picture, unfortunately...not only is there not much left, but the in-laws crashed supper and made the final prep time a bit hectic.  Anyway, try it!  It's worth it!

When you're three, there's only one reason to help in the kitchen. Hubby needed more snacks for work and chocolate chip cookies always go over well with him.  But rather than spend the time to make individual cookies, I'm baking them as bars.  I haven't tried this particular recipe before, so we'll see how it turns out (they're still in the oven as I type). Oh, incidentally, one of those nasty medical bills (for upwards of $2,000) was in error and I only ended up owing $300-some-odd for that one!  Whew!

My grandma, my father's mother, has a tradition.  Whenever she shares a recipe, she intentionally leaves out an ingredient.  This is a tradition passed down from her mother and  her mother's mother.  Still, sharing her runza recipe with her preteen granddaughter must fall under a slightly different category, because I'm quite certain I got it in its entirety when I copied it down years ago. Runza's are very simply meat and cabbage wrapped up in bread dough and baked, but to many who have lived in Nebraska they are the stuff of legend.  The ultimate comfort food.  I hear the practice has been discontinued, but when I was a kid growing up, the local Runza restaurants had a deal going in the winter that whatever the temperature was at 6 am, that's how much runzas were that day.  (Of course, you had to buy a drink to get the deal).  So if it was 20 degrees out, runzas sold for $0.20.  If it was zero or below, runzas were free! With...

The new year has welcomed us, not only with subzero temperatures, but with a few more inches of snow (on top of the foot or so we received at Christmas).  As it's hubby's last day home before going back to work tomorrow, I decided to make snow ice cream.  My mom used to make it when I was a kid.  We always followed two rules...it had to be gathered the second day of a storm (the belief being that the first day, the snow gathered dust and smog out of the air and would be dirtier coming down) and it had to be gathered by setting out a bowl to catch it as it fell, no scooping up already fallen snow. Today I set out a metal bowl and collected a sufficient amount of snow (7-8 cups).  In a separate bowl, I mixed together a half cup of sugar and a cup of milk with a dash of vanilla.  Miss M helped by pouring it over the snow.  Mix well, serve and enjoy!  I was just like I remembered it.

I'm happy to announce that the nilaga turned out quite well...sufficiently like my mother-in-law's to pass the critical "Hubby Test." It makes enough to feed an entire clan, so we'll be having it again a few more times this week. I based mine off of this recipe .  I added one seeded jalapeño from the garden 'cause I know my mother-in-law does.  It only stayed in while the meat cooked (which took way longer than the 1 hour the recipe says!); I took it out before adding the other vegetables.  Miss M only ate rice and broth, no veggies or meat; hubby ate a plate of rice with veggies and meat, but no broth; and what you see above is my bowl before I added rice. When I woke up this morning, the weather forecast said 90% chance of rain and while it didn't rain very hard, we did get a bit of a shower. Since there wasn't any thunder, I let Miss M play outside with her "bra-lella." She's wearing her "Wendy" dress.  Wh...

Today's the first day of our no-spend week. I did what I could this weekend to plan and prepare, so we'll see how it all goes! But first...  We went to a parade Saturday!  Miss M has been begging to see a parade (and, in fact, "seeing" them in the most unlikely places), so when I heard there was to be a parade at the Parkville Days celebration, we decided we just had to go. There were two marching bands, clowns, a carnival, pony rides, and one very happy toddler!  You couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day. We got hungry, but opted to buy a small snack rather than spend an arm and a leg for carnival food that most likely would have been less than satisfactory portion-wise.  That saw us through the rest of our errands and we ate at home. I made my meal menu that night. I doubt anyone plans meals quite like I do, but who knows, maybe my way could be helpful to someone else at some point.  Instead of planning specifically what I'll cook on ...

Yesterday afternoon Miss M was asking for sweets  (nothing new there!), since I was in the mood to bake something, I pulled out a cookbook and handed it to her. "Find some cookies and I'll see if we have the ingredients to make them." She picked Frosted Fudge Brownies from the Taste of Home's Contest Winning Annual Recipes 2005 . (By the way, it's a pretty good cookbook, if you're in the market for one). I'm not a huge brownie fan or even much of a chocoholic, but I had (almost) all the ingredients and was willing to give it a try. I was short an egg, but it didn't seem to matter too much. I was also out of powdered sugar, but since we were doing our fortnightly grocery shopping last night, I figured I'd just pick up some then and frost the brownies afterwards. Miss M loves running the electric hand mixer and she did well this time -- meaning she didn't fling batter all over the walls. She was very excited to announce that "we're...