Mac & Cheese

I happened upon this mac & cheese recipe awhile back, and decided to try it today.  I have to admit, I didn't quite get past the "stringy" stage before I got impatient, but the girls both liked the cheesiness, so it worked for us:

In a nutshell the recipe (in case the other site goes down) is this:

You will need:
Equal parts dry pasta & shredded cheese (sharp cheddar &/or parmesan)
a small amount of milk, yogurt, buttermilk or milk

Cook pasta, drain & return to the pot. Add shredded cheese & milk (or whatever) and cook on low heat, stirring constantly until cheese melts. Wait till it goes past the stringy globby stage and gets creamy (though we ate it once it was past hte globby stage but still stringy, it was good that way too).

Easy, and cheesy enough to please my chees-a-holic family. Though one reason I wanted to use this over the recipe I usually use was to avoid the constant stirring, and the cheese took so long to melt and get un-globby, that I don't think I accomplished that, still, it WAS good. . . .

Lentils & Rice

Rodney wasn't going to be here for supper tonight so I went searching for recipes I wanted to try that were things Rodney wouldn't like LOL. I actually was planning to make zucchini "crab" cakes, but thought that wouldn't be enough all on it's own, so noticed this crock pot recipe and thought, hey, I can put this in this morning and we can eat it for supper with the zucchini. But then I got lazy and when supper time rolled around I skipped the zucchini and we just ate this. But the girls LOVED it! We ate ALL of it! It's easy, cheap & healthy, what more could you want!!! (but I don't know what makes them "tacos" they're not all all mexican-like)

3 cups chicken broth (or water and chicken seasoning)
3/4 c uncooked lentils
1/2 c uncooked brown rice
3/4 c chopped onion (I didn't measure, just used 1 onion)
1/2 tsp sweet basil (I used fresh, and didn't measure)
1/4 tsp oregano (I used fresh, and didn't measure)
1/4 tsp thyme (I used fresh, and didn't measure)
1/4 tsp garlic powder (I used a spoon full of minced garlic)

Stir together in crockpot and cook on low for 6 hours. Can be baked at 300F for 1 1/2 hours.

Serve as is, or with tortillas, sour cream, shredded cheese, etc.  YUM!!!

It also occurs to me that if you used dried herbs, this could be premixed and you could just dump it in the crockpot with 3 cups of water and some chopped onions from the freezer. How easy would THAT be?!?!?

Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers

Another yummy recipe from Heavenly Homemakers.

1/2 c butter, softened
3/4 c sucanat
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c ww flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sucanat. Bean in egg and vanilla. Stir in dry ingredients. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (I didn't do this since I was using a baking stone, I should have). Place very small spoonfuls on paper. Bake at 325 for 5-15 min (I baked 15 min). Turn off oven and leave in oven to crisp for about 1/2 hr.

YUMMY!

Perpetual Pancakes

This is my adaptation of this recipe. I love that I can mix it up the night before & just fry however many we want in the morning!

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup plain yogurt

1 cup milk

2 Tbsp oil

2 eggs

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

Combine all ingredients, refrigerate overnight. May be stored in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks. Can also be used for waffles. 

Minted Sweet Pea Soup

Daddy wasn't home for supper tonight, so the girls & I went hunting for a recipe to try that WE would like and HE wouldn't. The girls decided they wanted soup (because, you know, 90+ degree weather in September is perfect soup weather LOL, but we have A/C so whatever . . .) so we started browsing the myriad of recipes I bookmark and never get around to trying. And we found this one.  I was SURE we had a huge bag of frozen peas in the freezer, so said yes, we could definitely make it. Only to realize, as we started to cook, that we apparently finished the huge bag and ate half of a smaller bag, so all I had was 1/2 lb of peas.  However, I DID have several bags of baby lima beans in the freezer (they're one of the few veggies hubby likes, so we eat them often), so we decided to use half peas & half lima beans. It was still a yummy soup, but we all felt that it would be BETTER with straight peas, so we'll be re-making this soon with all peas.  Here's the recipe, with my modifications:

1/3 c butter
1 lb peas
1/2 c water
some chopped onions (I didn't measure)
2 1/2 c milk or half-and-half (we use raw milk, I was opening a new gallon anyway & it's hard to mix teh cream in w/o pouring some off the top to give it more room, so I poured some cream into the measuring cup & then shook the rest in & finished measuring with the whole milk, so slightly creamier than whole milk not quite half & half, would be my guess)
1-2 tsp fresh mint, snipped (didn't measure, but I'd guess we used at least 3-4 tsp and could have used more)
salt to taste
chives for garnish

In a med saucepan melt the butter on low heat, then add peas, water & onions .  Cook 15-20 min for fresh peas, 5-10 minutes for frozen peas. Don't over-cook, you want the peas tender, not mushy.

Remove from burner, let cool slightly. Add milk, mint and salt. Puree with immersion blender. Return to burner and heat till heated through, do not boil.  Garnish with snipped chives &/or snipped mint.

For the 3 of us (plus sharing numerous bites with Little Bit), one recipe wasn't enough for a main dish, we'll be doubling this recipe in the future.

Hummus Platter

I recently noticed this post, for a quick simple meal idea. So we tried it for supper tonight.  I made hummus using this recipe (a couple notes on it, I couldn't tell if it was supposed to have 1 clove of garlic or 2 (it lists "1 clove garlic" twice in the ingredients list, so I used one, the girls aren't huge fans of garlic anyway, it needed abit more garlic. It also was WAY too salty, though to be fair, the girls were helping me & one of them measured the salt & I didn't check it before they dumped it in, so it might have been abit more than it should have been).  And then served it along with raw feta cheese, sliced cherry tomatoes, black olives, and baby carrots (not to put on the bread, but to dip in the hummus if anyone wanted). I didn't have pita bread, so served it with tortillas. Pita bread or flat bread would be better. I also think, next time I'll also include lettuce leaves, I wanted more "fresh & crunchy" than I had. Anyway, it was a quick, easy, healthy meal, gotta love that!

Fried Oatmeal

This morning I'd promised the girls a cooked breakfast, then realized we are out of baking powder (no pancakes or muffins) and honey (no breakfast cookies). And only had 4 eggs (no eggs & fake bacon or sausage) . . . so I started hunting through recipes I'd saved, and found this one for oatmeal pancakes.  The girls agreed to try it. We didn't have leftover oatmeal, so I cooked oatmeal first, then let it cool long enough to not "cook" the eggs when I stirred them in, that makes for a LONG "prep" time, but oh well . . . I don't know if I'm just incompetent or if I had too low an egg to oatmeal ratio or what, but they didn't stick together into "pancakes" or patties for me.

This "recipe" is still a work in progress for us, BUT both girls (& I) preferred it to regular oatmeal (I have texture issues with regular oatmeal, the girls will eat it, but it's not their favorite), so we'll keep playing with it.

4-5 cups cold oatmeal
4-5 eggs
a couple pinches of salt
a little melted coconut oil (even with plenty of oil in the pan, these seemed to want to stick, once I stirred some oil into the batter, it seemed to work better)

Stir all the above together. Melt coconut oil in pan, drop small spoonfuls of batter into pan and fry.  Serve with maple syrup.