Tasty Tip Tuesday

Did you know you can freeze just about anything? I did not. This is a new revolution to me and now I want a new freezer so I can have more room to freeze things. Below is a list of things that I did not know you could freeze.

Food Items you can freeze:

- Cooked, crumbled bacon
- Limes and lemons
- Butter
- Cheese
- home-made flour tortillas
- herbs (make sure you wash and dry them and then chop them)
- cupcakes
- strawberries, rhubarb and blueberries, cut to size before freezing
- most seasonal vegetables, cut to size before freezing

Wow, I'm so excited about the possibilities. I've also heard that you can freeze milk, but that it gets a bit
watery when it thaws. When freezing items be sure to wrap all food items securely and in good freezer bags or storage containers.

Please feel free to share your favorite things to freeze. Now, I'm off to buy me a new freezer...

Tasty Tip Tuesday

Today's tasty tip is all about garlic. We are a garlic loving family. I put it in a lot of dishes even those where the original recipe did not call for it. The smell, the taste, and the flavor garlic brings to a dish is unbelievable. Below are some great tips if you are a garlic lover like me.

Garlic Tips:

1. Garlic is available year-round, but it's peak months are June and July
2. Your garlic has seen better days when the cloves start to shrivel and soften, and dark spots appear.
3. To get the best garlic look for bulbs with fat cloves.
4. Ideal storage is in an open container in a cool place, not the fridge, this encourages sprouting.

Speaking of Sprouting...

Did you know you can still eat cloves that have sprouting on them? To do so make sure
the clove itself is firm and crisp, and you will want to be sure and remove all the sprouting and discard.

Baking Failure

I have this dream of making beautiful, tasty homemade rolls like my grandmother did. Looks like that dream is going to take me a bit longer than I hoped.

This past weekend I decided to try my hand at making rolls (this is my second try). I thought things were going so well, I was following the recipe adding the perfect amounts. My yeast even activated, the first time I tried rolls the yeast didn't activate apparently I killed it with too hot of water.  I was feeling so good about things until I got a bit stuck. After you've incorporated all the ingredients it said to add flour by the cup until it forms a soft dough and is sticky to the touch, so that's what I did or so I thought. I added 8 cups of flour and thought that was good, put it in a bowl to rise and came back an hour later. The dough had risen, but was so sticky and gooey that it wouldn't do anything. Needless to say I had to throw it all out and will try again a later time.

I didn't have the heart to take a picture to show you. It was quite the mess. I've got a good feeling that the third time will be the charm. Wish me luck!!

Let me know what successes you have had with making homemade rolls.

Breakfast Burrito

I am not much of a breakfast eater, but I do need to have something in the morning to keep me fueled during my busy mornings at work. I discovered that breafast burrito's are a perfect "stick to your bones" kind of dish. It takes me less than 10 minutes to put this together and is easy to wrap in foil and take with me to work.

For my basic breakfast burrito I use 5 ingredients -  flour tortillas, eggs, cheddar cheese, salt and pepper. You could add other ingredients like - onions, green peppers, different cheeses, ham, sausage, etc.

Here are my steps for making these breakfast burritos:

1. Heat the pan over medium to medium-heat
2. Warm up tortilla in the microwave (about 20 to 30 seconds)
3. Scramble your eggs and add some salt and pepper to it. This would be a good time to add
any extra ingredients you would like.
4. Put eggs inside tortilla shell, add some cheese and wrap in foil

Simple and quick. Enjoy!

Happy Pi Day

In honor of Pi (3/14) day I thought I would post my favorite pie recipe. This recipe was given to me by one of my most favorite people, Jillea. I love this recipe and make it quite often (Ok, maybe too often).

Basic Cream Pie

2 C. milk
1/2 cube margarine (I use regular butter)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 C. sugar
4 well-rounded tbsp. cornstarch

Put milk in a double boiler, add margarine and bring to just about boiling. Beat eggs, vanilla, sugar
and cornstarch in a seperate bowl. Then stir into the hot mixture and stir till thickened(I turn off the heat to do this.) Pour into a pre-baked pie crust or a graham cracker crust and put in refrigerator.

Variations:
Coconut pie- fold in 1 to 1 1/2 C. coconut and put toasted coconut on top
Chocolate pie - fold in approx. 3/4 C. chocolate chips to hot pudding
Banana pie - fold in chunks of banana


Here are some other pie ideas:


http://www.cookiemadness.net/2007/09/grasshopper-pie/



http://www.sunset.com/food-wine/20-chocolate-desserts-00400000038605/page2.html


Enjoy!!

Stuffed Pork Chops

While grocery shopping on Monday night, Mike and I decided to stop by the meat counter and see what they had. We found some delicious apple stuffed pork chops. They were so good and were perfect with a salad.

Here are a few stuffed pork chop recipes I found on the Internet:

http://www.whatwereeating.com/



http://www.hpj.com/



http://www.foodnetwork.com/

I have not cooked a lot of pork chops, but after this week and looking at these pictures I need to experiment with them more. How do you like your pork chops?

Beef Stew

I got this recipe from my mom many years ago when I got married and it is one of our very favorites. It has a lot of red wine vinegar in it. In fact I think I put in more than the recipe calls for. If you aren't a fan of red wine vinegar then you will want to cut the amount down.

This recipe couldn't be easier to put together, requires a crock - pot and a few ingredients and you have a great dinner put together.

Start with the crock- pot, either line it with a slow-cooker liner (my favorite thing) or spray with a cooking spray.

Gather the following ingredients and add to the crock-pot in order.

2 lbs. stew meat
1 package of onion soup mix
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of mushrooms (undrained)
1/2 red wine vinegar

Mix and set to cook on low for eight hours.

Near the end of the cooking time be sure to cook up your favorite noodles. We like the egg wide
noodles the best. Could be served over mashed potatoes.

Serve with bread and a salad and you have dinner.


*computer is not playing fair so I will have to post the picture later.