Baking and Cooking Archives - Page 5 of 12

Beef & Veggie Stew

January 17, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

So our Arkansas winter went from 60'+ to snowing overnight. I'm constantly amazed my family isn't sick more often! When the weather turned frigged and there was not stank'n way I was heading out in it for groceries I was forced to hunt in the pantry, fridge, and deep freeze for what kind of heartiness I was going to feed my family. I know, 1st world problems, right!?

All of a sudden I had a hankering for some stew! I'd never made stew before and always thought you had to have fancy {expensive} stew meet to make it...then I realized that was crazy talk. That had never stopped me before. I then Googled {like every pro does} in search of a beef stew recipe I could tweek. I looked at several and realized I had the building blocks for a good stew already. SCORE! Here's what I came up with.

Beef and Vegetable Stew

I love recipes 😉

I started by browning my lean ground beef in my pampered chef steamer {best way EVER to brown meat!}.
I peeled, diced, and boiled my potatoes for about 30 minutes. I just waited until they were soft(er) not necessarily mashable.
In a big pot I mixed the browned meat, tomato sauce, {already dissolved bouillon cute} beef broth, onion powder, pepper, and salt all together.
I went in search of what other veggies I had and came up with a steamable bag of corn and a can of mixed peas and carrots. Yep, chunked all those veggies into the pot.
After bringing it to a bowl and stirring consistently, I removed it from the heat and ate it up! 😉

I'm thinking you could easily make this in a crockpot recipe. Put it all in to sit all day and simmer even more. That way you wouldn't have to hover over your potatoes either.

Yay for yet another made up recipe. If I can do it and have my family eat it, You can!

Filed Under: Baking and Cooking, Homemaker, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home, Thoughtful Thursdays

Snow Ice Cream: Recipe {Thoughtful Thursday}

December 27, 2012 by Jules 2 Comments

Welcome to Thoughtful Thursdays! Every Thursday I {try to} post something thoughtful. Not much. Just a recipe. New gadget I've found. Cool store I think you'll like. Helpful hints I've learned. Welcome! Please share your thoughtfulness in the comment section below! If you happen to have a blog, leave a short description and link to the post.

It rarely snows anywhere in AR except for the North West corner. That's were I grew up. Winters were odd when I moved off to college and then when I got married to move yet again. I expected snow. A white Christmas wasn't a fluke. It happened often. One of the things I remember about white winters was SNOW ICE CREAM! Yum. Well, it's probably not to die for but the fun of making your own ice cream makes it taste that much more yummy. Now that I have 3 littles of my own, I've been passing down the simple goodness. My 2 girls thought it was just cool to bring snow Inside!

Snow Ice Cream

1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of vanilla
1 cup of sugar
1 gallon of snow {1 heaping LARGE bowl of snow}

I like to mix the milk, vanilla, and sugar all together in a large measuring cup so all the ingredients are spread evenly around the snow. I know most people suggest collecting the snow in a big bowl as it's snowing but most of the time I'm not that optimistic. Most of the time, when I see it actually snowed enough to make the ice cream, I take a flat 'flipping' spatula and take the top clean layer off of something like the railing on my deck. Then I quickly take this inside where I add my milk mixture and blend it all together with a big spoon. If you want your ice cream consistency a little thinner you can just add more milk. Add your favorite toppings just like you would to regular vanilla ice cream. If you can't possibly eat all of this batch at once, just simply put it in a freezer safe container for later!

Flavored Snow Ice Cream

For flavored ice cream, use a little less milk, omit the vanilla extract, and add your favorite extract {coconut, lemon, mint! They even have root beer, eggnog, and pineapple now} or flavored syrup {chocolate, strawberry, caramel}.

UPDATE: This recipe sound Yummy! May have to try it.

Have fun making memories during your snow day!

Filed Under: Baking and Cooking, Homemaker, The Ones about Jules Life {Randomness}, The Ones about Link-Ups, The ones about the Rothacher Home, Thoughtful Thursdays

Magic Meatballs {Thoughtful Thursday}

November 29, 2012 by Jules 1 Comment

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs {slightly beaten}
1 tbs salt
2 tbs onion pwd
1 tbs garlic pwd
1/2 tsp oregano
2 sleeves Ritz crackers {crushed}
2 lbs lean ground beef

Mix Worcestershire sauce, milk, eggs, salt, both powders, and oregano with a fork. Then blend in crackers. Kneed in ground beef with hands until completely blended. Then roll ~2 inch balls and place on a lipped baking sheet. Bake @ 350' for 30 minutes. Then either freeze some for later or add them all to your favorite sauce & noodle meal.

Beef up your Spaghetti Sauce

I love taking cheap traditional meatless spaghetti sauce and adding some parsley flakes, garlic pwd. I let that simmer while I add the meatballs. Keep it low enough you don't have to constantly stir and it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan. Pour on top of your noodles. YUM!

Actual Size! {~2.5inches 'round}

Filed Under: Baking and Cooking, Homemaker, The Ones about Link-Ups, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home, Thoughtful Thursdays

Chicken & Stuffing {recipe}

November 23, 2012 by Jules Leave a Comment

I think you may have seen this cook book on my sidebar a while back or on the Support the Rothacher's page if you've poked around there at all. I just wanted to share with you why I support this cook book.

Mystie is a genius! Yep. She's done all the hard work for us and simplified our cooking therefore it simplifying our grocery shopping all via the pantry list! As a baby and toddler, her oldest child was mildly allergic to corn, and thus began the Great Simplification. Her eCookbook Simplified Dinners is packed full of meals you can create by stoking her basic pantry list. She also has a Simplified Dinners GLUTEN FREE version of the eCookbook! Below is a video where Mystie explains how she came up with this concept.

Buy her book(s) HERE!

There are many nights I look up at the clock with maybe 20 minutes to spare before our routine dinner time. I get to share my simple {kid-friendly}, low-calorie {just like the hubs likes it}, FAST {the way Mamma likes it} recipe with Mystie's Simple Pantry Cooking crowd today!! Come grab the recipe and find so many more GREAT ones.

Filed Under: Baking and Cooking, Homemaker, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Thanksgiving Neighbor Love’n {Thoughtful Thursday}

November 15, 2012 by Jules 3 Comments

So, many of you know we Rothacher's love a good excuse to love on our neighbors! I wrote about several recipes {HERE, HERE, & HERE} as well as upcycled gift wrapping we often using during last years Advent series.

This past week we decided to make us some chex-mix to snack on. When we get out the stuff to make a snack like this, we go ahead and make a crazy big amount of it and share!!! It's fun to do these simple gestures and I've found my kids asking to make things for our neighbors, mail-carrier, and trash-men if we haven't done anything in a couple weeks. They get so desperate at my laziness that they scribble pictures to stick in the mail box. Yeah, sorry about that cute lil Santa-look-a-like mailman, you have my permission to through them away...just not in my trash can. It prolly already has the trash-man's pictures in it. ;o)

Snack Mix {Thanksgiving Style}

1/4 cup butter
4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic pwd
1/2 tsp onion pwd
2 tsp season salt
7 cups of cereal {variety of Chex}
2 cups Reeses pieces
2 cups Cheerios {caramel flavored}
1 bag candy corn
1 bag of bugles {chocolate/peanut butter flavored}
Lots of Love'n!

How to make the mix

PreHeat {bwahahaha} oven to 250'
Melt butter & blend with Worcestershire sauce. Mix all seasonings together then combine into liquid mixture. Stir Well. Mix all cereal {Just CHEX} in a giant bowl, pour liquid/seasoning mixture over cereal and stir {forever} to coat all the cereal evenly.
Dump coated cereal onto 1-2 edged cookie sheets & back for 1 hour. Stir At LEAST once in the middle {after 30 minutes}.
Cut open a paper bag {I used 2 small lunch bag} and lay out flat on a counter. Pour backed cereal across the paper bag {only 1 layer thick} and let dry for ~1 hour.

Once dried, dump it all back in a giant bowl. For this I used a big foil turkey basting pan. Add all your other yummies to the mixture and stir until its mixed well.
Now it's time to make some kind of cute package to deliver your treat to you neighbors. We made Turkey Hand-print Bags {while the snack mix was baking} for each house we planned to deliver some fall love'n.
DELIVER your Thanksgiving Neighbor Love'n door to door or place in mailboxes.
Left overs can be stored in an air tight container for fresh snack'n!