Mom's Homemade Onion Rings

Another personal favorite.

1 large vidalia onion, sliced about 1/4" thick (and it's important that it's a vidalia)
1 c flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 c milk (I used buttermilk yesterday b/c I had some I needed to use up)
1/2 c vegetable oil for batter, plus extra for the pan

Slice onions and separate into rings. Pat rings dry in between two dish towels. Coat well with flour. Dredge the rings into the batter. Let excess drip off (use tongs if you don't want to get your hands all gooey). Fry a few at the time (don't crowd the pan) in a cast iron skillet in about 1" of oil until golden brown. I put my cooked rings on my Pampered Chef cooling rack over a cookie sheet (so the excess oil can drip down and away from the rings so they don't get soggy), and then put the rack in a 250 degree oven to keep them warm and crisp why you finish frying the others.

I *love* these, especially with steak and potatoes.

Mom's Steak Marinade

This is one of my favorite marinades for steak. Mom has been using it for as long as I can remember.

1/2 c soy sauce
1/2 c water
2 T lemon juice
1 T brown sugar
2 T Italian Dressing
1 1/4 t pepper sauce
1 crushed clove of garlic
1/4 t pepper (I always add a little more pepper)

This makes 1 1/4 c of marinade...enough for about four good-size steaks. Flip half-way through marinating.

Beaba babycook - easy homemade babyfood.

Okay, y'all. I'm about to introduce you to one of THE COOLEST baby-related inventions ever. I spied this thing while perusing the Williams Sonoma website well before I became pregnant with Elyse. I decided then that I had to have this little contraption after I had our next baby. Then I saw the price and decided that maybe I didn't. Then I watched the little video again on the Williams Sonoma website about it and decided I did. I was able to buy one used on Ebay that I think was hardly used (or else they just hold up really, really well) along with the Williams Sonoma homemade baby food cookbook (and y'all know how I feel about a cookbook!) for significantly less than what I would have paid for them new. It was a splurge. I used a giftcard I found that my sister-in-law gave me at Christmas to buy curtains for my house. It got shoved into a deep, dark place in my wallet until I discovered it recently, about the time I was getting ready to buy this wonderful little babyfood maker. It was an omen, I just know it.

So what is so great about this? Why do I think everyone who wants to make homemade babyfood for their babies should have one? Why, I'm glad you asked. Here's my list of reasons:

1. It is small. And compact. And takes up very little counterspace. And everthing is done in one tiny pot. Which means I'm not having to pull out my pressure cooker or my big stockpot, my blender, my steamer inserts for said big pot and pressure cooker, and then wash all that stuff and put it away. I can steam, puree, and reheat, all in one tiny little pot, and only that tiny little pot and steamer basket has to be cleaned. The size of the pot is decieving though. One pot produces one ice cube tray full of food.

2. Somehow (and I think it is magic), you put your food in the steamer basket, pour the appropriate amount of water into the steamer chamber, then you turn the little knob to the left to let it know to start steaming. A light comes on the knob. When your food, whatever is in the basket, is perfectly steamed, the light goes off. How that light knows when to go off, I do not know, but it knows. So you don't have to guess if it's perfectly steamed or not, or stick a fork in it, or whatever. It just is, every time.

3. I love that you can defrost the frozen food in the pot, and not have to nuke it in the microwave.

4. I love that by making homemade baby food that the little machine will pay for itself very quickly (especially if you make organic baby food instead of buying jarred organic babyfood, and especially if you get it used on Ebay).

So far I have made carrots, sweet peas, butternut squash and sweet potatoes and put them into ice cube trays. Then I put them into freezer bags. .
They'll keep in the freezer for up to three months. I have enough food to last for dozens and dozens of meals for Elyse, and it cost me a little (and I do mean a little) time and less than $5. Some of the vegetables I bought frozen in bags (the peas and carrots) and that REALLY cuts down on the time invovled, and then other vegetables, I bought and peeled and cubed. Still worth it, even if you do it that way. I still have some more butternut squash to finish, and I also bought apples and pears to do as well. And this will grow with your baby. It comes with recipe ideas for combining meats and vegetables as the child grows.

Ethan was a jarred baby food kid. I was working for David's uncle when he started eating baby food, and didn't really have the time or want to take the time with trying to do homemade. Sara Katherine quite literally skipped the rice cereal/baby food stage altogether, and was eating mashed up table food by seven months. She wanted nothing to do with rice cereal or baby food. I hated that. She ate some things probably before her palate was ready for them, and of my two kids that eat food, she's the one that gravitates towards sweets the most. I try to blame myself that it's because she was eating that stuff long before she should have been. So Elyse will have the best of my three.

Also a great tip I got from a girl I go to church with: When she's on the go, she uses 1/4 pint canning jelly jars and bought the white plastic screw on lids. Perfect size for 2-3 cubes of babyfood, and it's glass, not plastic if you need to heat in the microwave. Not to mention it's economical storage. I paid less than $10 for this stuff and it is probably all I'll need.

I highly recommend this little machine. I really do have so much fun making her food, and feel good that I'll be giving her wholesome food without preservatives for her first taste of real food.

How to dress-up a boxed cake mix.

I love a cake mix. I make homemade red velvet cake batter, homemade pound cake batter, and maybe another kind of homemade batter if I'm following a certain recipe, but I love the convenience and even the taste of boxed cake mixes. Every year my mom makes me a funfetti cake with rainbow chip icing, and I love it. (And mom loves the easiness of it!)

One of the various cooking blogs I frequent had this great idea of how to doctor up a boxed cake mix to give it more of a "homemade" taste. It thickens up the batter. She lifted it off someone else's blog, who had lifted it off someone else's, so I really don't know who to give the credit too. But here it is anyway:

1 box cake mix
3 large eggs
1/2 c melted butter (1 stick)
1 c water

Mix ingredients on low for 1 minute, then on high for one minute. Bake according to package directions.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Throw out all your other pound cake recipes; you will never need another one. My friend, Rachel Grice, made this for me when I visited her once. It is in NO WAY good for you, but really, what pound cakes are? I didn't get a picture of this, mainly because it was GONE by the time I started thinking about getting one. I served it with strawberries and Cool Whip (convenience won out today. I love to make real whipped cream* when I have time). David's office is having a potluck breakfast on Friday and they asked me to make another one of these to send. For breakfast. Yeah, it's awesome. And easy. And I did it in my stoneware bundt pan which I had never used before, and it turned out fabulously. Slid right out of the pan with a perfect, golden crust. Love it.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

2 sticks softened butter (I do not cook with margarine and I recommend you don't either. It's more expensive, but some things are worth the money. Real butter is one of those things.)
1 8 oz pkg softened cream cheese
1/2 c shortening
3 c sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp butter extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 1/2 c self-rising flour

Beat the first three ingredients with an electric mixer until creamy. Beat in the sugar, one cup at a time. Beat in six (yep, I said six) eggs, one at a time. Beat in 1 t. vanilla, 1 t. butter extract, and 1 t. almond extract. Combine the two flours and gradually add to the beaten mixture. It will be a thick, stiff batter.

Grease and flour a tube pan or bundt pan. Pour the batter in and bake at 330 degrees (NOT 350 - bake at 330...it will keep the top from getting too brown) for about 1 hour and 20-30 minutes. Cool in pan for about ten minutes before moving to a cooling rack.

*My mom is the one who turned me on to real whipped cream. She pretty much never uses cool whip and taught me all the good tricks (like putting your metal bowl in the freezer for about fifteen minutes prior to beating the cream). It really does taste so much better than cool whip, and doesn't have all the hydrogenated junk that cool whip has, so when you can, make your own whip cream. But when you do have to use cool whip, a tip I learned from Sandra Lee on the Food Network is to add 1 tsp of vanilla to an 8 oz carton of cool whip to give it a homeade taste.

Chicken/Spinach/Alfredo/Feta Pizza

Before the oven.

I hardly ever cook anything without a recipe. This is for a few different reasons: 1. I'm really not all that imaginative when it comes to food, and 2. If I make something that is a bust, I can just blame it on the recipe!

But tonight, I did create this out of my head. Not that it was all that hard, mind you, but no recipe was used. My mother-in-law never cooks with recipes...she said cooking for a family of five on a limited budget that she just had to use what she had. I admire her for that. I stress myself out sometimes and make extra trips to he store for an ingredient for something specific I want to make, not to mention the way I cook is likely more expensive than the way she did for her family. Maybe by the time I reach five kids, I'll be cooking with no recipes either!

Anyway, here is my creation for tonight's dinner. I didn't measure anything, so I'll be guessing on amounts:

Chicken/Spinach/Alfredo/Feta Pizza
1 pizza crust*
1/2 jar prepared alfredo sauce, or get really industrious and make your own
about 1/2 bag of bagged fresh spinach
1-2 cups of cooked, chopped chicken
3 pressed fresh cloves of garlic
a handful or two of feta cheese
a few drizzels of olive oil over the whole thing

Spread pizza crust out on your baking stone. To keep crust from sticking to the stone, sprinkle a little cornmeal on the stone prior to putting the crust down. Spread the alfredo on top of the unbaked pizza crust. Spread spinach leaves over the top of the alfredo. Sprinkle the chopped chicken on top of the spinach, then using a garlic press, press about three fresh garlic cloves over the chicken. Then throw a couple handfuls of feta over the whole thing and drizzle with olive oil (or EVOO as Rachael Ray calls it, and I can't stand it when she does!)

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes or until your crust turns light brown.

Next time I'm adding artichokes to this, just didn't have any tonight. It was gooo-ooood. Ethan told me he wanted me to make it again tomorrow night!

*You can use lots of different kinds of pizza crusts. The Boboli prepared ones, the Jiffy Mix Pizza Crust mix, the Pilsbury ones in the tube, or use my friend Sara's pizza dough recipe. It's my favorite. For this crust tonight, I had a box of Pampered Chef pizza crust/roll mix. The dry ingredients come premeasured, you just add in the yeast packet that comes with it in the box and some olive oil and hot water, knead a few times and then spread out over your pan. So easy and so yummy. I'm looking for a good whole wheat pizza crust recipe, so if you have one, send it my way.

Sara's Pizza Dough Recipe (I use this for pizza and calzones).
1 pkg yeast
1 1/4 c warm water
2 T veg oil
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups plain flour

Mix ingredients, stirring to form a ball of dough. Knead 8-10 times using extra flour as necessary to create a good consistency. Let rest five minutes before rolling out for the crust. Poke a few holes in the crust with a fork so it doesn't bubble up on you when baking. After the oven.

Pasta Fagioli

This is one of my favorite soups in the CrockPot. I know it from the Olive Garden, but got the recipe off of one of my favorite cooking blogs, www.crockpot365.blogspot.com . It makes a ton. Freezes great; great for leftovers so I usually don't ever half the recipe. It also has tons of vegetables in it, so it's mostly good for you!

Pasta Fagioli

1 pound lean ground beef, browned and drained
1/2 large red onion, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, sliced
2 cans (14.5oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups beef broth (I do half beef broth/half water to cut down on sodium)
1 jar (16.5 oz) of your favorite pasta sauce
2 tsp oregano (I've used Italian seasoning when out of oregano)
1 T Tabasco, or less if you don't like spicy
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 c dry pasta (I use whatever I have open, and this past time it was small shells, which I really liked)

Use a 6 qt or larger crockpot. Brown meat on stovetop, drain well. Chop up carrots, onion, and celery. Add to empty crockpot. Drain and rinse the beans, and add them. Add the whole cans of tomatoes, and the pasta sauce. Add the beef broth. Add the salt, pepper, oregano, and Tabasco sauce. Stir in meat. Cover and cook on low for 8 hrs or high for 4. When vegetables are tender, stir in the 1/2 c. dry pasta.

Cover and cook on low for another hour on low or until the pasta is tender. Serve with parmesan and garlic bread! We ate with a ceasar salad too, and it was yummy!