Monday, August 31, 2009

Kitchen Tip!


Everyone hates the smell that onions can leave behind in your fridge. An easy way to keep the odor from permeating everything is to take a glass jar (Mayonnaise jar, canning jar), put your onion half, sliced onion or chopped onion into the jar and then cover with cold water. The jar must be glass and it has to have a tight fitting lid. This keeps the odor from getting into everything and the water keeps the onion fresh longer!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Quick and easy ground beef stroganoff with potatoes



OK, this is a quick and easy way to make stroganoff when you've had a long day but want to have a real meal.

You're going to need:

2-3 lbs of ground beef
1 bunch of green onions
1 pkg of bacon (12-16 ounces)
1 24ounce container of sour cream
Mashed potatoes, either homemade or out of the box, whichever you like!

Ok, the bacon is in the package in like a block of bacon. First make cuts about every 1/2 inch so that the result is all the slices are now chopped. Fry the bacon until golden brown and slightly crispy.


While the bacon is frying go ahead and finely chop your green onions. When the bacon is done cooking, remove it to a plate with a couple paper towels so the grease drains but dont dump out your bacon grease.

Put your hamburger into the bacon grease and cook until done. Then strain your grease out of the meat and let it brown some.


Once its brown, put the onions, bacon and sour cream into the ground beef and mix well.




Serve on top of your mashed potatoes and enjoy!

Monday, August 17, 2009

Veggie Tip!


You can save yourself some nickles and dimes if you buy bell peppers when they are on sale. You can slice or dice them and store them in the freezer for later cooking. Freezing doesn't hurt the flavor or the way they cook, however they are only good for cooking as they loose their stiffness once thawed.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Smothered Squash

Smothered squash is super simple and easy to make. All you need is onion, yellow squash, butter, salt, pepper and a little vegetable oil. You can also add a light sprinkle of cinnamon if you want to give it a different taste.

I used 6 squash about 7 inches in length, 2 medium sized onions, half a stick of butter and a couple tablespoons of oil.


First slice up your squash and slice your onion into half rings. I use a cast iron skillet to smother my squash in only because my mother always used one, but any skillet will do. Put a couple tablespoons of oil in the skillet and swish it around so the bottom is covered, you don't want anything sticking. Turn the heat up to medium high, put the squash and onions into the skillet. Then stick your butter on top, I normally cut it up in pieces and spread it around but didn't this time.


You can cover it for a few minutes just until they start to break down a little bit, but then I remove the lid and continue cooking, making sure to stir/flip it often so it doesn't burn, but gets that dark appearance. You can tell when squash is done cooking just by looking at it. It will have a limp, more clear appearance and the centers of the squash will be falling out.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Corned Beef Casserole


This is a meal I always loved growing up and still love today. Its very basic and simple yet it tastes DELICIOUS! My mother was always a great cook and still is. She has a talent for cooking I hoped for but I think the talent didn't fully find me :) So my very first recipe will be one of my moms. I don't know if she created this recipe or if she found it somewhere but it is one of my all time favorites and I hope you enjoy it as well.

First off you will need a few things.

Bisquick or any biscuit recipe you wish to use. (I like Bisquick because its easy and tastes good.)
1 Large onion
1 Large Bell Pepper (Can be any color, I used 1/2 red, 1/2 green)
1 Can Corned Beef (Any brand will work)
1 Family Size Can Cream of Mushroom Soup (Any brand, I used Wal-Mart's Great Value)

First you'll need to dice your onion. I found a little trick in dicing and slicing onions Ill share with you. First cut the end off your onion. I cut the onion in half before I peel it, then remove the dried peel. I also remove the small hard center in the onion, but you don't have to. I make slices throughout the onion. I turn it to make the cross cut but I only make 2 cuts.

I then turn the onion half around and continue make my dice cuts. Cutting it this way makes it easier to complete the entire half without the onion sliding around on the sloped thin edge. It also makes a lesser chance you'll be cutting your fingers!

Then you dice your bell peppers. Remember I only used red and green because I like the colors. You can use all green, all red, or throw in some yellow peppers if you like.

Put the corned beef, the onion and the bell pepper into a hot skillet with a little bit of oil and saute just until the onion starts to cook clear. Then set it aside and let cool while you make your biscuit dough. I use Bisquick because its easy for me and I normally have it on hand but you can use any recipe you like for this. Once you get it mixed, you're going to roll it out into a large rectangle. By the time you get it rolled out, the corned beef mixture should be cooled enough for you to spread it out as shown here.

Now you're going to roll up the entire thing up length wise as if you were going to make cinnamon rolls. Once you have it all rolled up, it should look like this if you look at one of the cut ends.

So now you should have a long rolled tube. Use a sharp knife and make 1 inch thick slices and lay them into a 9 x 13 glass Pyrex dish. If you don't have a glass dish its alright, you just will need to adjust the oven temp and/or cooking time. Lay the slices flat in the bottom of the dish. Its ok to leave some room between them, they don't have to be packed in.


Then you take the cream of mushroom soup and spread it across the entire top. Sometimes I use just a tiny bit of milk to make spreading easier but most of the time I just give it a stir right in the can then pour it evenly over the top and make sure to spread it over so all of it has soup.

All you have to do now is bake it at the biscuit recipe instructions. For Bisquick, oven temp is 450 and baking time is 8-10 minutes or until top is golden brown. I cook mine about 15 minutes.

That's all there is to it I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Monday, August 10, 2009

Yum!

Keep checking back here, I'm going to be posting delicious recipe's soon!