one pot meals

I have a few new recipes we've tried lately that we were impressed with and I need to get caught up and get them written down here.
I'm always looking these days for recipes to help me use up random odds and ends from my produce co-op, and have found a few to be especially yummy (and easy!). I linked to them previously, but have learned from past experience that links sometimes go away... I think I can always go back to that recipe, wherever I found it, but one day -poof- I find it's gone! So I'm transposing them here for future reference and safe(r)-keeping.

Here are just a couple:

Garlic Potatoes and Ham

• 8 small red potatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 (16 ounce) package frozen chopped broccoli, partially thawed
• 1 cup cubed fully cooked ham
• 1 (1 ounce) package herb and garlic soup mix*

In a large skillet, cook potatoes in oil over medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Stir in broccoli, ham and dry soup mix. Reduce heat; cover and cook for 25 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

*Lipton has a great mix called Recipe Secrets Savory Herb with Garlic soup mix, which is what this recipe was written for. I simply used what I had on hand- regular Onion Soup mix- and it was still yummy. I am going to keep my eye out for the herb and garlic one though...

The kids ate this one, veggies and all!

Teriyaki Pork and Sweet Potatoes

2 md Sweet potatoes, peeled, cut
- in 3/4-inch cubes (3 cups) 1 T Oil
1 lb Boneless pork loin, cut in
- 3/4-inch cubes (3 cups) 2 c Green beans or peas
1/2 c Bottled Teriyaki glaze
1 t Grated orange peel

1. In large skillet, combine sweet potatoes and 1/2 c water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and cook 8 to 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Drain and remove
potatoes from skillet; cover to keep warm.
2. Wipe skillet with paper towels. Heat oil in same skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add pork; cook and stir until browned.
3. Add green beans or peas and teriyaki glaze; mix well. Reduce heat to medium; cover and cook 8 to 10 minutes or until pork is no longer pink, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir in potatoes and orange peel; cook an additional 1 to 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated.



Beef Stroganoff

• 6 Tbsp butter
• 1 pound of top sirloin or tenderloin, cut thin into 1-inch wide by 2 1/2-inch long strips
• 1/3 cup chopped shallots (can substitute onions)
• 1/2 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of dry tarragon or 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh tarragon
• 1 cup of sour cream at room temperature

1 Melt 3 Tbsp of butter in a large skillet on medium heat. Increase the heat to high/med-high and add the strips of beef. You want to cook the beef quickly, browning on each side, so the temp needs to be high enough to brown the beef, but not so high as to burn the butter. You may need to work in batches. While cooking the beef, sprinkle with some salt and pepper. When both sides are browned, remove the beef to a bowl and set aside.

2 In the same pan, reduce the heat to medium and add the shallots. Cook the shallots for a minute or two, allowing them to soak up any meat drippings. Remove the shallots to the same bowl as the meat and set aside.

3 In the same pan, melt another 3 Tbsp of butter. Increase heat to medium high and add the mushrooms. Cook, stirring occasionally for about 4 minutes. While cooking, sprinkle the nutmeg and the tarragon on the mushrooms.

4 Reduce the heat to low and add the sour cream to the mushrooms. You may want to add a tablespoon or two of water to thin the sauce (or not). Mix in the sour cream thoroughly. Do not let it come to a simmer or boil or the sour cream will curdle. Stir in the beef and shallots. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately over egg noodles, fettucine, potatoes, or rice. (Potatoes, rice, and wheat-free pasta are wheat-free options.)

Serves 4.

This one was reeeeally good. I love a good stroganoff and this is a great one. The kids didn't go for it, but Ryan and I fought over the leftovers...

Mmmm... fried food

I made an awesome impromptu dinner last night, if I do say so myself. We were off on our "menu plan" and I had nothing prepared or in mind. We did however, have an old(er) single piece of steak in the freezer and a ton of giant onions sitting in the pantry. Onions that are just begging to be made into onion rings. So I searched the internet for some good ideas and a great onion ring recipe. Boy did I luck out and find a great one!

First I thawed the steak, cubed it up and coated them to make steak "bites".
Here's how:
I mixed up 1 egg and a quarter cup of milk in a small bowl and let the steak bites soak for a mintue while I combined 1 cup of flour, 1 tsp of steak seasoning, some extra garlic powder and a little bit of cayenne in a gallon ziplock bag. I took the steak from the egg dip and put the pieces in the bag, sealed it up and shook to coat them all. Ryan fried them in the deep fryer. You can of course, just fry these in oil on the stove. The FryDaddy is sooo easy though! I think they fried for about 5 minutes in two batches.

Meanwhile, I went to work on the onion rings. I used this recipe and here's my low fuss process...
Put the 1 1/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt into a ziplock bag. I made nice big thick slices from our giant onion and threw them in the bag to coat. Then you fished them out and put them aside on a plate while you add 1 egg and 1 cup of milk to the ziplock bag. Seal it up and mash it all around good, mixing the milk/egg and flour mixture till it's a smooth batter. Then put the onions back in and work around with your hands to coat. Remove the onion rings and place on a rack over the sink or a baking pan and let the excess batter drip off of the rings. Put about a cup of breadcrumbs (I only had italian seasoned breadcrumbs handy) in a shallow dish and when the onion rings have stopped dripping, place them one at a time in the bread crumbs to coat. Then fry 'em up, just about a minute and a half on each side.

These are sooo good. Very simple flavor, but they are really so good! I might play around with it a bit next time because I have a Garlic Parmesan seasoning I thought may be really good with these, but honestly they are perfectly good on their own. I'm excited for this summer, because I'm predicting these will be a huge hit at our barbeques this summer.
I'm thinking I can make up a good batch somewhat ahead of time, have them battered and coated and ready to just have Ryan man the fryer when we're ready to eat!

Anyway, we enjoyed these steak bites, fabulous onion rings and a great big salad last night for dinner. Sawyer scarfed down the onion rings; I think he probably had close to a dozen rings! He loved 'em! I did too. I had to make myself stop. Luckily I only made one onion. Mind you, it was a HUGE onion, but at least the pile didn't go on and on like it could have, had I sliced up another. Try them!

Chili in the Crock

I was brainstorming for menu ideas this cool and dreary past Sunday and my husband chimed in that a big pot of chili for Monday night football would be perfect...
So chili it was!

I've never really made chili before. I know. One of the easiest dishes around and I've never even attempted it. I buy the Banquet Homestyle Bakes chili and cornbread in the box. I know, we're sad. But I just don't like chili. Actually, I've realized over the years, I do like chili, I just hate the beans. And I hate the hassle of picking them out of a good bowl of chili. So I decided to buckle down and find a good no-bean chili recipe to try out this week.

In my searching I made some discoveries...
Did you know that original, classic, true chili doesn't involve beans at all? A popular saying among self-proclaimed chili purists is "If you know beans about Chili, you know Chili ain't got no beans!". The thought that beans do not belong in chili may be further proven in the fact that most official chili cook-offs do not allow beans. In many cases the chili would be disqualified if it contained such ingredients considered "filler".
Chili is a Texas creation, a Texas invention, and a Texas tradition. It was created as a cheap food for cowboys, one that could easily be made while riding the hard trails, and that would also travel well. In other words, it was quick and easy to make, but could be made to serve lots of people over a long period of time. Following the herds across country, a group of cowboys could start a pot of chili, and continually add meat scraps and fat to the pot over the weeks as they traveled--and it only got better as the trail went on. Including beans in chili just wouldn't have happened as dry beans were heavy to travel with and involved a long soaking and cooking time.

So anyway, here was my first attempt at my own homemade "beanless" chili. I picked a simple yet interesting recipe off of Recipezaar and tweaked it just a little according to my pantry and our taste. The original recipe:

1 lb ground beef
1 pkg dry onion soup mix
2 tsp cocoa powder
2-3 tbsp chili powder
1 can tomato paste
1 can diet coke

cook on low at least 6 hours

I chose this recipe because a) it made a decently small amout... enough for 4-6 adults. I knew it would just be me and Ryan eating this and I didn't want to make a huge pot of chili for us to be eating on forever... especially if I didn't know it was a great recipe!
and b) the diet coke and the cocoa really caught my attention and intrigued me.
I love that these are ingredients I would pretty much always have on hand.

Alterations by me:
I didn't realize I didn't have any tomato paste on hand... I used tomato sauce instead
I added a can of diced basil garlic and oregano tomatoes
I added about a clove of chopped garlic and a sprinkle of onion powder

Verdict:
I thought it was really really yummy! Just the right amout of sweet and spicy. I was hesitant on the chili powder and only did about 2 tablespoons and I might go a little more on that next time. Also maybe add some real finely chopped onions. But the consistency was right on and I loved the flavor! Ryan really liked it too. I asked him if I should keep trying other chili recipes to find our favorite and he voted on keeping this one as the norm!
Of course the kids would have nothing to do with it... they pretty much only ate the accompianing corn bread!

French Dip Sandwiches... YUM!

I've been craving a good French Dip sandwich lately. I used to always order them in restaurants, but then I ran into a few too many blah ones and got tired of it. There's nothing like a really good perfectly tender juicy french dip sandwich though....
So when I found an easy yummy sounding recipe for it, I decided to try it. (First I found the recipe I wanted to try here, but ended up over here as in our house it's much more likely to find beer than a good red wine. hehe.)
So here's what we ended up with:

In the crock pot goes
1 can beef broth
1 can condensed french onion soup
dash of both garlic salt and onion powder
and 1 bottle (12 oz) of beer (I used an IPA because that's all we had in the house (well, that's not true-- we had plenty of light beers, but really I didn't need to be adding water to the broth!) but comments on the Allrecipe recipe mentioned the darker the beer the better)

Then I salt and peppered a 2+ lb sirloin tip roast and plunked that into the broth, turned the crock pot on low for 7 hours and that's it.
I had Ryan slice it up and put it back in the pot about 30 minutes before we ate to let the beef soak up more of the juices.
We piled the slices up in little french rolls, doled out the juice in individual ramekins, and French Dipped away!
It was really good. It may be just that I haven't had one of these sandwiches in so long, but I was quite impressed. I love easy recipes, I especially love easy crock pot recipes, and I loved this one! I will definitely be making this again!

Meatballs

I decided to try something different today with the meatballs than I normally do. I usually just make a quick brown gravy and we eat the meatballs with mashed potatoes.
Last minute-try something new kind of recipe. Simple:

30 frozen meatballs
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
1/3 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp onion powder

I simmered it all together in a pan over med heat for about 20 minutes. Then served over egg noodles.
We also had some honey sweet peas and crescent rolls.
Sawyer: ate only a roll
Savannah: ate everything but the noodles (she's not a pasta fan)... and had seconds on the meatballs!
Ryan: didn't really say one way or the other, but ate lots.
Heather: meh. I really liked the flavor on the meatballs, but the sauce by itself on the noodles I thought was kind of bland.

mmm, mmm good

It was such a soup kind of day!
It was trying hard to snow much of the day today... just the tiniest little flurries flying around in the gray sky... cold, cold wind, the kind that stings your skin...
It was great to stay in all afternoon and smell homemade soup simmering away.

We had Swistle's Soup for dinner. It's a super simple throw together soup that you don't have to cook all day... I just liked the feeling/smell of it simmering on the stove all day so we left it there.
Here's the recipe.
I had grabbed a fresh loaf of Sweet Wheat bread from the bakery on the corner too, and it was a great meal.
The kids both ate everything on their plates (cheese cubes, peaches and the bread) and while Sawyer (of course) totally gonged the soup, Savannah actually ate a good bit of hers.
I love this soup!

Fajitas

Ryan makes this meal and I love it! He slices up some red and green peppers, some onion, and sautees them in some oil. Then he adds some sliced beef and browns that up. When the meat is done, he adds a packet of fajita seasoning mix, simmers for a minute and we're ready for fajitas!! Just dish it up in a tortilla with cheese, tomato, salsa, guacamole... whatever you like. I usually serve this with some spanish rice.

For the kids (my kids hate things combined like tacos and fajitas), I put it all in separate little piles on their plates. With corn chips and guacamole for Sawyer (he won't eat tortillas) instead of tortillas and cheese, a couple pieces of the seasoned beef cut into bites, a pile of raw sliced peppers, and some sliced peaches, and they were good to go. They actually both ate well... Sawyer ate everything but the peppers and Savannah finished off her whole plate!

Happy National Nacho Day!

We love to make our own Nacho dinner around here. I love that it's so easy and it's great to make for a gathering as you simply throw on more chips and cheese for the more people you have!!

All I do is brown some ground beef up and then simmer with a packet of Taco seasoning (I usually use about half a packet for under 1 lb of beef, a whole packet for over a pound). Heat the oven to 350* and spread tortilla chips on your baking sheet. Then sprinkle the beef over the chips, lots and lots of cheese over the beef and chips (I just buy the bags of the mexican blend shredded cheese for this) and then whatever other toppings you like. Then just bake untill the cheese is melty and bubbly.
I like mine sprinkled with fresh chopped tomatoes and maybe a little shredded lettuce, but Ryan like his with just meat and cheese and then of course dips and scoops with plenty of salsa and/or guacamole.

you should try these

a couple of catch-up recipes from last week:

Wednesday we had
Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin with Apple Glaze

Ingredients
-		1 HORMEL® ALWAYS TENDER® Teriyaki Flavored Pork Tenderloin (17 oz.)
-		2 tablespoons butter
-		1 cup apple juice

Directions
Preheat oven to 425ºF. Remove tenderloin from package. Place butter in an ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. When butter foams, add the tenderloin and brown it well on all sides (about 3 minutes per side). Remove tenderloin from the skillet and whisk in apple juice, stirring up browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Return tenderloin to skillet and baste with juices. Place skillet in oven and roast meat, turning every 5 minutes and until internal temperature reaches 155ºF (about 20 minutes). Remove skillet from oven and allow tenderloin to rest for 5 minutes. Slice tenderloin into ½-inch medallions and place on a serving platter. Before serving, drizzle medallions with remaining glaze.

We serve this over our favorite brown rice.
I love this dish.
Savannah even finished hers without complaining.... so you know it's okay!

Later in the week, I was going to make Beef Stroganoff, but Ryan was complaining he wasn't in the mood for more pasta. I came across this recipe I had floating around in my recipe book so I decided to give it a spin:

Beef Stoganoff Pot Pie
1 pkg Pillsbury Pie Crusts, softened as directed on package
1 lb extra-lean ground beef (I used the beef I had for the noodley stroganoff... cubed sirloin, probably just over a pound)
1 cup chopped onions
1 garlic clove minced
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1 cup chopped parsley
1/2 tsp pepper
2 eggs
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
4.5 oz sliced mushrooms
1 egg white, slightly beaten

1. prepare pie crust as directed on package for two-crust pie using 9" glass pie pan.
2. Heat oven to 375*. In large skillet, cook ground beef (or beef cubes!), onion and garlic over med-high heat until beef is browned and cooked through. Drain. Stir in all remaining ingredients except egg white; mix well. Pour into crust-lined pan.
3. Unfold second crust. Cut out shapes or vents in several places. Place crust over filling; flute edge. Brush with beaten egg white.
4. Bake at 375* for 45 to 55 minutes or until crust is deep golden brown If necessary, cover edge of pie crust with strips of foil after 15-20 minutes of baking to prevent excessive browning. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

It's definitely not low-cal, but it was really yummy! Savannah helped me bake it all, but she wasn't too interested in eating the "meat pie". It's a nice warm, homey, meal for grey days!

Spaghetti

We make a simple spaghetti around here.
Brown some ground beef, add some chopped tomatoes, some jarred spaghetti sauce and whatever seasonings I feel like.
Serve over whole wheat thin spaghetti or angel hair pasta.
Top with parmesan.

We cooked up some quick garlic breadsticks with our meal or spaghetti and salad tonight too.
Kids would have none of it.

*But they both ate a big bowl of leftover spaghetti for lunch three days later!!! Go figure. AARGH!!!*

Beef Kebobs

Super excited about this meal!! It was so quick and easy and it was delicious. Also, something different for us. I mean, we do plenty of grilling around here, but can't say that I've ever done kebobs and this was so simple and so good!
Recipe is from familyfun.com

	1/2 pound lean round or stew beef, cut into 1-inch cubes
	Salt to taste
	Cherry tomatoes (20 or so)
	1/4 cup soy sauce
	1/4 cup honey

1. Combine the beef cubes, cherry tomatoes, soy sauce, and honey and toss to coat. (I put it all in a tupperware bowl and it was Savannah's job to shake it up!)
2. Skewer the beef cubes and tomatoes, alternating. If you're using wooden skewers, soak them in water for 20 minutes or so beforehand. (Ryan had the kids help him do this. Savannah is very into making patterns right now!)
3. Place the kebobs on a small baking sheet and keep them covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator until you're ready to cook them. The kebobs can be broiled for 10 to 14 minutes (turn once) or grilled. Serves two adults and two kids, with leftovers.
We served the kebobs with herb buttered angel hair pasta and steamed (and buttered) green beans. This was definitely my favorite meal of the week. Savannah loved the cherry tomatoes and the noodles... she did try some of the meat for us. Sawyer, of course ate nothing.

Steak, Steak and More Steak

I am so full.
Ryan grilled some steaks tonight, along with some asparagus and we had some nice fresh french bread and I am STUFFED! There's nothing better than a great steak.
Except maybe if kids actually eat it! Which one of mine did tonight!!! Savannah asked for seconds even, which is amazing. She ate all of (two helpings) her steak, all her asparagus, all of her apple slices and two pieces of bread. She even got chocolate pudding for dessert since she managed to finish a whole plate today!
Sawyer had a beef frank and some of his veggie sticks.

Yesterday I never got around to the lasagna rolls. It was definitely a lazy day. I whipped up a skillet instead, with eggs and ham and cheese along with some hashbrowns and toast. Savannah ate pretty well, but Sawyer wanted nothing to do with it.