Rigatoni Hotdish

Last night I made an easy rigatoni hot dish - and it was so good, that I decided to share the recipe.

 

1/2 - 1 lb. Italian sausage (depending on how much meat you want in the hot dish)

1/2 box rigatoni noodles

1/2 green pepper, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 jar Ragu Spaghetti Sauce (I used Chunky Ragu with tomato, garlic & onion)

2 cups shredded cheese - I used a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella

Cook rigatoni noodles according the the directions on the box. Meanwhile, brown Italian sausage, onions, green pepper and garlic. Add jar of spaghetti sauce and simmer until the noodles are done.

Rinse noodles and add to meat mixture.

Preheat oven to 350.
Lightly grease 9x13 pan.
Pour meat, noodles and sauce mixture into pan. Spread shredded cheese on top. Bake for 50 minutes or until cheese is lightly golden brown.
Enjoy!

Saturday Supper

We had a special supper tonight - just to celebrate Saturday. This afternoon I found a recipe on Pinterest for Peach Cobbler. I got the ingredients out, followed the recipe to put everything in the pan, and put it in the oven. Next, I started the garlic green beans, using I recipe I had found online. We've had them once before- and they were so good, that I couldn't wait to make them again. Craig grilled some steaks, and I put together salads for us both. I also sauteed some  mushrooms and onions for Craig's steak.
 When everything was ready we sat down to eat a delicious meal while watching the end of the MN Twins game - and they won 9-3.
Here are some pictures of our special supper.

I started with a tsp of butter and a tbsp of olive oil in the pan. I added a can of portabella mushrooms, drained, and slices of onion. I sauteed them for a couple of minutes. Then I added 1/2 cup of beef broth and salt and pepper (to taste) covered the pan and let it all simmer for about 5 minutes. Then I removed the top and let the liquid cook down.

Click on the picture to get the recipe.  I added onions and bits of bacon.

Here's one of the salads. Doesn't that look yummy?

Here's Craig plate. A wonderful Saturday supper!

Peach cobbler.... I know it's not the best picture - but if you click on the picture you can get the recipe and see better pictures. We each had a piece while it was warm, and we had some vanilla ice cream on top.

Did you have a special supper recently? You don't need to have a special occasion to have a special supper.

4th of July Recipes

I always like to try new recipes when we're going to have company. I worry a little that it may not turn out to be good, but there's always more food around just in case - and then Craig and I don't have to eat it all week long.
Here are two recipes I tried this weekend. They are both from taste of Home's Fast Fixes with Mixes (2012 ed.) Click on the picture for the recipe.
The first is a great 4th of July red,white and blue dessert- Hot Berries 'n' Brownie Ice Cream Cake.

I used a different sauce than the recipe called for - because I didn't have all the ingredients. I just went to the Internet and looked for a hot fruit sauce recipe. (click here).  Everyone loved it!

The second recipe is for a wild rice salad. I just made it today - and it's chilling in the refrigerator for tonight's supper, so I don't really know if it's good or not... but it sure looks good!

As usual, I was in a hurry when we were at the grocery store, and even though I had the recipe with me, I didn't read it very carefully. So I got mushrooms and artichoke hearts - but I was supposed to get marinated mushrooms and marinated artichoke hearts. So we'll see if the salad tastes like it's missing something.

How about you - did you try anything new this week?

When the weather outside is frightful... make cookies!

Yesterday, just after lunch, the wind began to blow. The night before it snowed - about 3-4 inches of the light fluffy snow. So when the wind came up, it whipped up that snow, and we couldn't see across the lake. On top of that, the temperature began to fall.
So  Craig and I decided to "hunker in" and enjoy being home. Craig made a fire in the wood stove - and I made cookies.

Craig wanted Oatmeal Cookies. So I went to my favorite source - Pinterest - and I found a recipe for Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Craig asked me to use steel cut oats so I put 1 1/2 cups of steel cut oats and 1 1/2 cups of instant oats.  I only put 1/2 tsp cinnamon into the dough.  

Don't you just love my old mixer? We got it from Craig's Grandma - and it still works! I used it to mix all the ingredients into the dough. Then I dropped the dough onto a greased cookie sheet - about 1 tablespoon per cookie. The recipe said to flatten the cookies - but I left them alone because I wanted soft chewy cookies. I baked them for 10 minutes and that was perfect! 

The cookies are delicious! For the last dozen cookies I added walnuts, and Craig thinks they're the best. Next time I make this recipe, I will make some with golden raisins.

The weather may have been bad outside, but inside it was warm and wonderful!

Another New Recipe - home made chow mein

Friday night Craig cooked supper... from a recipe I found online for pork chow mein.
 (Recipe here: chow mein)

He used our electric wok, but you could use a fry pan. The pork was left over from a pork roast we had earlier in the week - and was the perfect way to use up leftovers, However, I think other meat could be substituted for the pork (chicken, for example.) This recipe does take some time to make, but it was worth the wait.
The next time we make this chow mein we will add a little more soy sauce and fewer vegetables so that there's more sauce ... but we will make it again. I was so proud of Craig for following the recipe and making us a delicious meal.

Breakfast For Supper

Tonight we had breakfast for supper. It was a delicious meal of fried ham and a German puffed pancake with sauteed apples. Craig found the recipe for the pancake in an old Star Tribune newspaper when he was looking for paper to start a fire in the wood stove. I'm so glad that he saved this section of the paper. The pancake was really easy to make - and it was absolutely the best. I had mine just with sauteed apples on it, but Craig added whipped cream and syrup.

Click here for the recipe:  pancake

 We will definitely be having this meal again - and it would be a perfect breakfast to serve guests too!

Fall Break

Last weekend was Fall Break... I didn't have to work on Friday. I couldn't wait for the three day weekend to begin and I wasn't disappointed. It was a wonderful fall weekend!  Craig and I spent Friday driving around the area going to garage sales, enjoying the beautiful fall scenery and each other's company, and being blessed by several "gifts."

We got the first gift about 10 miles from home when we saw a timber wolf standing just off the road. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring our camera, but I will cherish the memory... not only of that wolf, but also the second wolf we saw just a mile farther on!

Our first garage sale was in Hill City.  We spent 5 dollars and got several treasures.  We enjoyed visiting with the man who was having the sale. He was having the sale because he was cleaning out his parents' house so that it could be sold. He told us about their life there and what good memories he had of that place. Then he asked us where we were from, and when we told him, he told us about coming through our town several times a year on the way to a Christian camp nearby. Since I grew up going to that camp, we shared our memories of camp too. Meeting that man was a gift.

Later in the morning we stopped at Northland Monument, a company that sells granite and stone products. We had a great time talking to the salesman there about different options for our fireplace mantel. We spent some time looking through the inventory on the lot. Craig will be heading back there sometime soon to make some final selections and bring the rock home.

At the next garage sale Craig found 6 really nice long sleeved shirts for just 50 cents each. He is still excited about that "gift"! I found a couple of books, and we got a free basketball.  Judging from the items for sale here, we decided that the sellers were Christians, just like the first man we met.

After that sale we browsed through a secondhand store (I will be going back there - it was a nice shop) and an antique store in Longville before heading to Hackensack to have a good lunch of wild rice soup, California burgers and fries - a gift of good food.

Our next destination was Pine River, where we found the Lotsa Stuff Store. Craig talked to the owner and got a tour of the shop while I browsed. It turns out that the owner used to have her store in Emily! Craig told her how he still uses some things he bought there years ago. She told him the secret to her health (she's a very, very young looking 80 year old!) which is granulated bee pollen. So later in the afternoon we stopped at a health food store in Pequot Lakes to pick some up. (A gift of good health?)

Before we got to Pequot Lakes, however, we stopped at several shops in Jenkins. Annie's Attic was my favorite. We bought a glass sauce pan made by Visions Cookware that is cranberry colored. I had seen some of these when we were in Georgia last year and fell in love with them, but didn't buy any because I couldn't get them home safely. So now when I see this glass saucepan gift on my stove I will remember both the trip to Georgia and this fall weekend.

On the way home we saw another garage sale sign, so we stopped. It was late in the day and the owners had already started boxing stuff up. Craig found two records and some cute little glass shelves. The owners gave us a great deal on them.

It really was a great day. We had time to talk about life, and God, and our family, and each other. We saw the beauty in nature. We met interesting people. It felt like we were on vacation, but we were only about 20 miles from home. We had received many gifts.  Friday was the first day of a super weekend.

Saturday was spent doing some chores - I cleaned some inside while Craig raked and put away hoses, etc. outside. The weatherman was forecasting snow (Yuck!) so Craig wanted to get everything put away outside. I went to Crosby for groceries, and came home and made an apple pie using this recipe:  http://southernfood.about.com/od/applepies/r/bl51027f.htm

I should have taken a picture of it yesterday, but we couldn't wait to eat it! It was delicious!!!

Sunday it was snowing when we got up - the weatherman was right! We went to church, came home, watched football, and just relaxed. Tonight I made pumpkin tarts to use up the pumpkin I had leftover from making pumpkin pancakes a few days ago. I got the recipe from my new November Taste of Home magazine. We haven't tried them yet, but they sure smell good.

Apple pie and pumpkin tarts - perfect foods for fall. Tomorrow I go back to work, but I will take with me a taste of fall break in my lunch, and the gifts of wonderful memories to keep me going when I don't want to be at work.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention (or, How to Bake Without an Oven)

We are in the middle of a kitchen remodel, which means that we don't have an oven right now. The old one was moved out, and we can't install the new wall oven until after the counter tops go in.

But we don't have any cookies in the house! Oh no!

When Craig went to the store yesterday to buy milk he looked at the cookies - but they cost over $4.00 for just a dozen. So he came home without any.

Necessity is the mother of invention - and the Internet is my reference library. So I logged onto my computer, clicked on Google and Pinterest and looked for a recipe that caught my eye.
I love, love, love homemade chocolate chip cookies. So when I found this recipe for microwave chocolate chip cookies I knew I had to try it.

The recipe was easy to follow and I had all the ingredients, so 5 minutes later we were enjoying delicious cookies with our vanilla ice cream. Check out the recipe at No. 2 Pencil.  I would take pictures of our cookies, but my camera battery just died and I can't find the charger. It must have gotten packed in a box when we were taking apart the old kitchen. I am not sure I can "invent" anything to charge the battery, so I'll just have to keep searching for the charger!!

A Baking Weekend

 Every Sunday after the morning worship service, our church has a fellowship time called "Snack Attack."
5-6 people bring treats to share, and this week it was my turn. So on Saturday I decided to do some baking. I needed to bring about 3 dozen treats, so first I picked out a new recipe that I saw in the August Better Homes and Gardens magazine called Strawberry Shortcake Icebox Bars. Then I picked out a recipe for Pumpkin Pie Squares that I'd already made once with my daughter, Carrie. Finally, I picked out a recipe I've been wanting to make for a couple of months: Doughnut Hole Pops.

I shopped for the ingredients for these recipes, and after supper I began... I made the pumpkin pie squares. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of those but you can click on the name above and see the recipe.
Then I began making the strawberry bars.  They turned out to be rather time consuming. I had to bake four 8 inch square "shortbread cookies." Using parchment paper made taking them out of the pan really easy. While they were baking I made the strawberry filling, which needed to chill for and hour and a half.

Finally it was time to assemble the bars. I had left the 4th cookie in the pan. I spread some of the strawberry filling on it and added another cookie.

The next layer was whipping cream and fresh strawberries.  I used Cool Whip.

Then another cookie on top of that, topped with more strawberry filling.

I put the last cookie on the very top, and put it in the refrigerator to chill overnight.
The next morning, before leaving for church, I tried cutting the bars into squares. That was when I really ran into trouble. The cookie layers were so dense that they were hard to cut. Plus, they would slide around on the strawberry filling. I finally got them cut and decorated each square with a dollop of cream and some more fresh strawberries.

These bars would be wonderful for a special dessert after a dinner party, or for afternoon "tea" - when you could serve them on individual plates, but they were not perfect for transporting to church. They did taste good - but next time I'd use less sugar in the filling.

After putting the strawberry bars in the refrigerator I turned to making the doughnut hole pops - and they were a flop!
I started with store-bought holes, which ended up being stale. I couldn't find the lollipop sticks that the recipe called for, so I tried using straws. The straws worked okay but were not super sturdy. I followed the directions and dipped the straw into melted almond bark before pushing it into the doughnut hole.
Then the pan went in the freezer for a half hour.  They didn't look too bad at this point.

So I melted some more almond bark and tried dipping one. Only problem was, where to put it until the coating hardened? If I set it down, it got flat on one side and no longer looked like a lollipop.  The coating got too thick, and the straw wouldn't support it anymore. We didn't have any Styrofoam or I would have tried sticking the straw into it. At this point I got frustrated, and just threw them all away. 

What new recipe have you tried lately? Have you ever thrown anything away?