Cauliflower Soup

I am obsessed with this soup!  It is so easy to put together, and it is delicious!  I have made it twice this last month.  I think (correct me if I’m wrong) it would be easy to make it GF if you have a flour substitution you trust with which to make a nice roux. 
recipe and image courtesy The Girl Who Ate Everything

If your kids don’t like cauliflower, you could puree it all for a creamy soup that they might like without knowing there’s cauliflower in it.  We love it chunky (in fact, I usually at least double up on the veggies) and we especially love it served with several dashes of chipotle-flavored Tabasco sauce on top!

Pumpkin Lust Pie

This stuff is so good, sometimes we have it in the middle of the summer.  The pumpkin spice pudding mix can be hard to find, so be sure and stock up during the fall holidays when you see it.  My dad, who has eaten a lot of my cooking, proclaimed this dessert “the best thing you’ve ever made”.  It has pretty much replaced pumpkin pie in our house!
recipe and image courtesy: Boys Ahoy

Slow Cooker BBQ Pork

I got this recipe when I was in a freezer meal cooking club. Oh how I LOVE meals that are easy, can be prepped days, weeks or months before. It is even better when it is a crowd pleaser.

When pork is on sale I buy extra and through everything a gallon freezer bag, label and freeze.  On the day that I’m going to cook it I just cut open the bag and dump everything into the crock pot. If I put it in there completely frozen I usually add about an hour to the cooking time.

Peach Habanero Jam

In the process of making freezer jam this year, I decided that I wanted to put up some jam that didn’t need to be frozen, and I had seen a recipe for peach habanero jam on Pinterest, so I decided to try that out.  I was curious about the combination of sweet and hot, and I have always loved (and hoarded) my jalapeno pepper jelly, so I had a feeling this was going to be a match made in heaven. 

I was right!recipe courtesy Singing For My Supper ; image courtesy Savoring Time in the Kitchen

I made two separate batches, one with the amount of habanero called for in the recipe, and one with a couple extra habaneros thrown in.  While The Messy Mister didn’t…um, appreciate…the heat of the hotter batch (he’s kind of wimpy in the heat department), I LOVED how the heat just built and built up to the point where I almost started to get concerned, then held out for a moment before starting to dissipate.  I found that when I tried the regular version on a bagel with cream cheese, the heat got a little lost (even though I could still taste the flavor of the habanero with the peach, I wanted more heat to balance the sweet), whereas the hotter version packed just the right amount of punch.  In the future, I’ll definitely be making the same two batches, and I will label them accordingly.  “Peach Habanero Jam, Too Hot For The Saucy Mister” and “Peach Habanero Jam, SUUUUUUUPER Hot, Just Like Saucy Mama” should suffice, I think.

Peach Freezer Jam

I try to make peach freezer jam every year.  I love freezer jam because I feel like the flavor of the fruit doesn’t get taken completely over by the flavor of the sugar the way it does in traditional jams (although, yes, there is an alarming amount of sugar in either!).  There is nothing like that amazing flavor of fresh peaches to keep you going through the dreary winter months.  We especially love it on top of sourdough waffles!  Last year, I didn’t get around to making any, and we were coming perilously close to running out in the freezer this spring, so I made sure I restocked our freezer FULL of peach freezer jam this year. 

 

(There’s nothing particularly amazing about this recipe; it’s simply the peach freezer jam recipe out of the Sure Jell pectin insert.  I just wanted it in a recipe card so I could quickly reference it in the future.)

    image courtesy Any Menu; recipe courtesy Sure Jell pectin package insert

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

This soup is a family favorite year-round.  Sometimes, we even eat it cold out of the fridge during the summer!
image courtesy Season With Spice

Refrigerator Oatmeal

 

Am I the only mom that has a hard time getting out of bed to make breakfast?

This is one of my go to breakfast or snack ideas. It can be made the night before or a couple days in advance.

It’s supper yummy and easy to make!

Monica over at The yummy life has a TON of different refrigerator oatmeal recipes!

Here are a couple of our favorites!!

  

French Carrots

I love the simplicity of this recipe.  It takes a little while to cook the recipe, but uses only ingredients I almost always have on hand.  My husband got the recipe from a coworker a few years ago. 

image courtesy Kayotic Kitchen

Flourless Banana Bread Muffins

 

I recently stumbled upon this recipe from Running with Spoons!

Yeah! A treat I can make for my hubby! (He is on this crazy elimination diet trying to figure out his allergies)

The kiddos love to help make these. Their favorite thing to add to them is chocolate chips Raspberries or blueberries.

Meatballs / Meatloaf Mixture

Last week a picked up my order of hamburger from Zaycon foods!

I wish I could get fresh (not frozen) beef from my father-in-law but that’s not how they do it where we get the cows processed.  I love Zaycon foods, their meat is just as good as my father-in-laws!

You might think I’m crazy for getting 40lbs of hamburger, that doesn’t come packaged. At times I think I am! I love having easy meals ready to go in my freezer. Sometimes I just don’t want to take the time to thaw, make meatballs then bake them.

For me it is easier to just take one day and mix everything together (bake if needed) and package it for when I need an easy/fast meal!

This is what i made this time

• 24 lbs of meatballs
• 8 lbs of meatloaf
• 8 lbs of hamburger patties

This recipe is so easy and delicious! I often find my kiddos sneaking into the meatballs that are cooling! 

I love having easy dinners in the freezer.

When I make these I use Gluten Free Old Fashion oats and put them in a food processor to break the oats into smaller pieces. If you don’t want to use oats, sub 3 cups bread crumbs. 

What do you use meatballs in? Here are a few of my go to meatball dinner ideas.

• Slow Cooker BBQ Cranberry Meatballs –can be used as a appetizer
• Spaghetti and Meatballs
• Meatballs and Mashed potatoes

 

If you are interested in Zaycon Foods feel free to use my referral Zayconfresh.com/refer/zf14716

Kentucky Hot Brown Sliders

We celebrated Mother’s Day early with my Mother In Law last weekend, and Sweet Mama and I volunteered to cook so she didn’t have to worry about that.  We had decided to make funeral sandwiches since they are so delicious, crowd-pleasing, and easy to make ahead.  I had seen a recipe on Pinterest for these Kentucky hot brown sliders, and they looked a lot like our funeral sandwiches, so I decided to make my half from this recipe instead of our usual one.  They turned out really good.  Sweet Mama and I got compliments all day long about how good the sliders were!  Image courtesy and recipe adapted from The Seasoned Mom

Tater Tot Nachos (“Totchos”)

If I forget or don’t have time to put something in the crock pot on Sundays, we usually end up eating cereal for dinner.  I recently found this recipe on Pinterest and thought it would be a good one for the kids to help make, and it was looking dismally like a “cereal or starve” Sunday last night, so we decided to throw together a pan of “totchos” for dinner. 
image and recipe courtesy The Good Stuff

They were super easy to make, and they tasted pretty darned good, too.  Fun for the kids; I think they could probably practically do this one all by themselves!

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (or Bars)

The kids were asking for another pan of chocolate chip bar cookies, but usually when I make chocolate chip cookies I also make oatmeal raisin cookies, so I decided to make a half batch of each of them and try out my oatmeal raisin cookie recipe as bars, too.  They turned out so chewy and delicious!  We loved them cooked this way!
image courtesy From House to Home

Chocolate Chip Cookies (or Bars)

Nothing breakthrough here today. I’m sharing my chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is actually really Nestle Tollhouse’s chocolate chip cookie recipe, but over they years I have made some modifications to suit our family. 
image courtesy American Heritage Cooking

Last night, the kids felt like cookies but I didn’t feel like standing around scooping out and baking four pans full of perfectly portioned cookies.  Instead of making them the “normal” way, I decided to just press the dough into a cookie sheet and bake them as bars.  They turned out so delicious and moist, if a little bit thin, which reminded me that I used to do them this way back when and when I did I would double the dough for the same size pan.  I will try them this way next time for a bit thicker bar. 

Garlic Parmesan Mashed Potatoes

 

I don’t usually make mashed potatoes. :/

Honestly when I have made mashed potatoes I’ve used the Idahoan (dehydrated) mashed potatoes.  Always roasted garlic, four cheese or butter and herb because I don’t really know how to make gravy. 

I’m not so sure why I’ve been so hesitant to make them. They really aren’t that hard. I’ve watched my mother-in-law make the most delicious mashed potatoes and gravy several times now. She always uses a hand mixer and they turn out so smooth with little effort! So I decided to give it this recipe a try! Super yummy and SO easy!

One day I’ll give gravy a try. ;)

Slow Cooker Beef & Broccoli

This recipe is so easy, and my whole family loves this one!

  I love slow cooker dinners, and this one is a real winner because it literally takes probably 15 minutes to throw everything in and you’ve got dinner in the bag!  Use gluten free soy and oyster sauces (or all soy if the oyster sauce scares you) for an easy gluten free conversion!recipe and image courtesy The Recipe Critic

Thai Basil Fried Rice

Recently, I was looking for a simple side dish I could make to go along with my Thai Chicken Enchiladas.  I saw this one and it looked simple enough, so I decided to try it.  recipe and image courtesy Wine and Glue

This recipe, as it turns out, while simple to make, has a beautiful and very authentic complex Thai flavor profile.  I know this is one I will make again and again.  We liked it so much I might consider adding some extra chicken and making it a meal in itself next time.  I would also like to try subbing rice noodles for the rice and shrimp for the chicken sometime.  Yum!

Thai Chicken Enchiladas

Thai is by far my favorite of the various Asian cuisines.  There’s something about the combination of flavors that just sings to my palate.  Delicate, creamy coconut combined with the powerful heat of jalapenos or chilis.  Fresh, earthy cilantro or strong, licorice-y Thai basil.  The closes thing to flavor Heaven is certainly for me found in an authentic Thai restaurant.  image courtesy and recipe adapted from How Sweet Eats

I thought these Thai Chicken Enchiladas sounded kind of weird the first time I saw them, but at the time I was in the process of trying to learn more about replicating those restaurant Thai flavors in my own kitchen, and the ingredients list wasn’t full of things I didn’t have, so I decided to give them a try.  Boy, am I glad I did!  The Saucy Mister and I loved them but discovered that they got soggy too quickly for our liking.  I decided I wanted to try them again and try to prevent the sogginess we had trouble with last time.  I had made a note to either try them “eggroll-style” (by baking the tortilla-wrapped enchiladas without the sauce) then heating the sauce and serving it on the side for dipping, or to fry them like chimichangas and just spoon the sauce over the top just before serving.  This time when I made them I tried them both ways, and both ways turned out better (in my opinion) than the way the original recipe calls for them to be made.  Frying them in oil gives them a nice crisp, but I still like the lighter flavor of the baked ones better.  I just really prefer to bake them without the sauce on top and spoon it on there right before serving. 

Brown Butter Salted Snickerdoodles

I read that this recipe had been named “The Recipe of the Year” a couple years ago (by whom I can’t remember) and knew I had to try them.  I have made them several times exactly how the original recipe requests, using quartered caramel squares.  This, frankly, is a giant pain in the butt. 

 

While out grocery shopping during the holidays, I saw the Kraft caramel bits with new eyes, wondering if they would work in this recipe in place of the quartered caramel squares, and I’m glad I tried them.  They were so much nicer than unwrapping, cutting, and carefully placing all those squares.  Forget that!  Toss the bag of caramel bits in the mixer and consider them done.  That's what I did for the cookie tins for The Messy Mister's coworkers, and these were another much-loved favorite.

 

I’ve never really much liked the super sticky chewiness of the caramel in these cookies once they’ve cooled (the caramel is nice when they’re warm).  I decided to try a batch without any caramel whatsoever, and I discovered that I actually much prefer them without it.  Go figure!  So, bag the squares and use the bits instead, or forego the caramel altogether and enjoy them without it.  They’re good any way you make them!
recipe and image courtesy Two Peas and Their Pod

Dark Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Cookies

I have a thing for chocolate and mint, and I love the flavor of peppermint during the holidays.  I knew I had to try these dark chocolate peppermint crunch cookies, and once I tasted them, I knew they would be the perfect addition to the cookie tins we made for The Messy Mister’s coworkers. 

I once watched Giada De Laurentiis on the food network claim you should never make anything chocolate without adding some coffee to flavor it.  Now I know why.  The coffee granules in these cookies add a depth and richness to the chocolate.  I wasn’t sure about adding peppermint on top of all that, but it really is very nice.

image courtesy A Kitchen Addiction; recipe courtesy back of the Andes Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips bag

Chewy Ginger Cookies

These ginger cookies are a year-round family favorite, though the flavors lend themselves particularly well during the Christmas season.  The recipe is an old family favorite that came from a neighbor of my grandmother’s.  Sharon is the sweetest friend of my grandma’s, and she used to run the best daycare/babysitting service in town.  She would cook up gigantic batches of these cookies and keep them in old ice cream containers right by her front door, so that when your parents came to pick you up she could send you out the door with one of these.  I don’t know how we got our hands on the recipe, but I’m sure glad we did!  Everybody who tries them just loves them!image courtesy Life Made Simple

The half batch is like a regular batch of cookies, and will make around 48 cookies.  The gigantic original batch will feed an army.  Try freezing them, though.  Perfect to toss in school lunches; they will be thawed out and perfectly chewy just in time for lunch!

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie Bars

For Christmas, we put together a cookie sampler in cute little Christmas tins for coworkers at The Messy Mister’s work.  We have had several requests for some of the recipes, so I thought I would post them all here.  The general consensus was that these cream cheese sugar cookie bars were everybody’s favorite.  A few people claimed they were “the best sugar cookies I’ve ever had!” 

As far as sugar cookies go, I love these over a regular sugar cookie because you frost the entire pan at once and you’re done!  No chilling, no cutting, no individual frosting.  It simplifies the process so much, and that cream cheese makes them just melt-in-your-mouth delicious!

I’m not surprised everybody loved them; they truly are delicious.  But I almost didn’t make them because 1.  I worried how well they would package with the frosting and 2.  I didn’t think they seemed very “Christmas-y”.  But The Messy Mister insisted, and a little waxed paper between layers kept them from being a huge mess in presentation.  Cute Christmas sprinkles didn’t hurt, either.    recipe courtesy Real Mom Kitchen; I can’t remember where I got the image (if it’s yours, let me know and I will give credit where credit is due!)

The original recipe is for a full jelly roll pan size, but I’ve listed both the full batch and a half batch recipe here.  Sometimes, my kids want these cookies and I don’t want an entire pan lying around (I usually end up being responsible for WAAY more than my share), so I often times will make just a half batch. 

The original recipe also called for almond flavoring, of which I’m not always a huge fan, so I have modified it to use butter flavoring instead.  Yum!