Archive for the “Food” Category

Popcorn isn’t bad for you!

Buttery Popcorn
Creative Commons License photo credit: PicturePurrfect685

In moderation of course. My favorite is movie theater popcorn or my Uncle’s popcorn. Or caramel. Or cheese. Okay, I just like popcorn! You can image that the 100 calorie packs are my friend! I just found a free sample of cheese popcorn – you can grab your own sample of Orville Redenbacher’s® Cheddar Cheese Popcorn to taste test before purchasing. I’ll let you know what I think. :)

Comments Comments Off

We bought a bunch of ribs for Superbowl Sunday and ended up not cooking about half of them. I thought Chris put them in the freezer so when I realized they were in the fridge, I knew I had to cook them soon – and I’m not the one who uses the grill in this house!

A quick search and I found a super easy baked ribs recipe:

  • beef ribs – I used one slab that Chris bought, I’m not sure how many pounds they were
  • seasoning rub
  • bbq sauce
  • water

I cut the slab in half so it would fit in the pan I used – you can use a cookie sheet if you are careful to not spill the water but I used a cake pan because that made me feel better. I shook seasoning rub over both sides of the ribs but I’m not sure what good that did because I think I tasted more bbq sauce then the seasoning. Maybe I just can’t taste the differences! Pour about a half a cup of water in the cake pan.

Cook at 200 degrees for an hour, turn ribs over, cook another hour. After the two hours drain water and put the bbq sauce on them. I poured a little and spread it with a fork because I couldn’t find our bbq brush. Bake another thirty minutes at 400 degrees.

Wow.

No pictures because after soccer practice we were all very hungry and ate them all up! I was shocked the kids ate that much but then again ribs don’t have that much meat on them.

Very good recipe and I love that it was just a few ingredients. We have another slab to cook and I am going to use this same recipe on them. Try the recipe and let me know what you think!

Comments Comments Off

On Sunday evening a friend came over to teach me how to make turkey pot pie. I knew it wasn’t hard after her telling me the ingredients but didn’t realize just how truly simple it is!

Ingredients:

  • leftover turkey, chopped into pieces
  • 2 cans of cheddar cheese soup (I bought the campbell’s brand, but there is probably another available if you look around)
  • 1 can cream of mushroom soup
  • cup of milk
  • few stalks of celery
  • two small onions
  • leftover corn
  • leftover green beans
  • phyllo dough or puff pastry or pie crust
  • salt and pepper

Basically it is a montage of your Thanksgiving leftovers!

First we put the chopped up onion and celery in a pot so they could cook just a bit. Then we added the two cans of cheddar cheese and can of cream of mushroom soup. We also added the milk to thin it up, but it was still fairly thick. Let it warm up a bit then added the turkey and corn (there were no green beans leftover to add!).

We had a lot so poured it into two casserole dishes – one square (I think 8×8 or maybe 9×9) and one round (same size). The filling came about halfway up the sides which is why we used two dishes, we figured using just one would cause a mess in the oven!

We used ready made pie crust and topped the turkey mixture with the crust, poking holes in the top. Then bake at 350 degrees for around 30 minutes – really it is until the top has browned.

Simple! It was so good. What we had made enough for eight adults and three or four kids – which is just us and our friends and seconds and lunch the next day. It was just enough that we loved it and didn’t get tired of it since we had been eating leftovers all weekend anyway. This is a great way to use up everything before it goes bad too. We had a 22 pound turkey on Thanksgiving and still had a lot on Sunday when this was made.

Sorry there are no pictures, but I will make this again (if not at Christmas then with a chicken one of these days) and even if there were pictures, it would be the empty dishes, hahaha. Enjoy!

Comments 1 Comment »

Okay I have quit following South Beach. I do think it’s a good plan – it’s basically eat less carbs? Alright what do I know, I don’t care about carbs or fats or startches or anything like that. I eat well, I only eat one portion, I drink lots of water every day, and I am going to have real butter! I’m just not going to eat the entire stick of real butter.

Friday I felt like hhmm, an orange would taste good – so I had one. Diets all seem to say different things – with LA Weight Loss I read that eating citrus was encouraged by one center because citrus helped you burn fat faster. But with South Beach they say no fruit for the first two weeks so you can stop having cravings.

I’m going to stick with eating good. I did stumble Sunday night and had Doritos and french onion dip (sure it sounds odd but it tastes good – I blame my brother for that just like I blame my friend Julie for introducing me to ranch dressing and pizza). Considering how much I am working out I know I will still lose weight.

I did lose four pounds (yay!) and of course I can’t tell if that is from working out or from South Beach. I don’t have any cravings, but I don’t like being restricted. I know what to eat or not to eat so I think I can do okay on my own. Plus I am working out five days a week and that is doing something.

Of course I will have to stop making banana bread every other week! It is just so good it is hard to stay away from. Yesterday we were gone all afternoon but rather then eating out (which was very tempting) we came home and had soup. My treat was a small slice of the banana bread, but I don’t want to do that every day.

Comments 1 Comment »

I spent all of Sunday morning cooking and making desserts. I wanted to make a carrot cake, a cherry cheesecake and Dad requested a strawberry pie. First up is the carrot cake – I used the one most recently featured on the Pioneer Woman Cooks blog (love her writing and pictures!). Here are my ingredients – I did use wheat flour and organic sugar, as well as olive oil, and none of those seemed to alter the taste or cooking time.  Don’t mind the phone and computer – I had to look up the recipe and call my Grandma.

carrot-cake.JPG

It was very easy to make and the only hold up was Dad having to run out and buy a cake pan. Yep, he had no cake pan! The mix ended up sitting in the bowl for a little while because of that. I didn’t mind that I had to wait to cook it because I forgot to get the butter out for the frosting. I haven’t made homemade frosting in a long time and wow, the frosting tasted delicious.

leftover-frosting.JPG
I had all of that left after frosting the cake. I used a regular cake pan and maybe I was supposed to use a bigger size?

Few people ate though we had ton of food and I ended up sending a large chunk of the cake home with one of my brothers and then had a piece. It was awesome. I love carrot cake!

my-piece.JPG

We still have a lot left over and I’m not sure what we are doing with it. I may send it to work with my brothers, but other then that no ideas.

carrot-cake-done.JPG

Comments Comments Off