In my momys (mothers of many young siblings) cookbook I stumbled across a great, easy recipe for making "omelets" (sort of). You can do many at once for a household and it's easy with very little mess!
Here's what you do:
Have everyone write their name on a quart-size ziploc freezer bag with permanent marker. Crack 2 eggs (large or extra-large) into the bag and shake to combine. Put out a variety of ingredients and have each person add the ingredients of choice to their bag and shake. Make sure to get the air out of the bag and zip it up. Place the bags into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. After they are cooked, open the bags and the omelet will slide out easily. It has a slightly different texture but is great and easy!
Possible extra ingredients include: cheese, onion, green pepper, tomato, hash browns, sausage, pepperoni, salsa, chives, black olives, chopped ham, bacon, or mushrooms (or add your own favorite)...
Yesterday I went to do play dough with my kids and found that most of our dough was bad. I usually like making a recipe that uses cream of tartar. It's a great recipe but I don't always have it on hand. I decided to check my MOMYS cookbook that was put together by a bunch of moms of many young kids. I found a recipe that works just fine with basic ingredients without any cooking or cream of tartar! Here's the recipe.
Mix together 3 cups flour, 1/2 cup salt and 3 T oil. Add water slowly while mixing to get it the right consistency. When I did this, it seemed to be getting too sticky as I was getting more water in so instead of continuing to add lots more water in it I added more oil so it wouldn't stick so much so I can't give you the exact amount of oil versus water that I used. Basically you just keep mixing all that together and add food coloring to make your colors and eventually I got it to the right consistency and it worked great. It did seem to get better the longer it was kneaded and worked. Definitely keep adding more oil or water or both until it's soft enough. Hope that makes sense and works!
I'm so excited to have found out how to may homemade hash browns that turn out wonderful! I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com and it's so easy and so good. In the past my homemade hash browns always have turned out discolored and sticky and just not very good. Here's how to do it so they're crispy on the outside and soft and yummy on the inside!
The night before, take 8 potatoes and put them in a pan and cover them with water. Boil them for 20 minutes then put the pan in the refrigerator overnight. I drained the water and it was fine - the recipe may have had you not draining the water.
In the morning grate the potatoes while you melt 4T of butter over medium high heat in a large skillet. Some people added a little oil as well to make sure the butter doesn't burn but this probably isn't necessary. Put the potatoes in and pat them down. Season them to taste (salt, pepper ...) and let them cook for 20 minutes without touching them.
To flip them over, I used a large cookie sheet and oven mits and put the cookie sheet on top of the skillet, flipped the skillet over, then slid the hash browns back off the cookie sheet and into the skillet. It worked perfectly. I then cooked them for probably another 10-15 minutes or so. I then flipped them again onto the cookie sheet and cut them with a pizza cutter and served them from the cookie sheet.
The kids all loved them and they haven't always been big fans of hash browns! Enjoy!
This recipe comes from my sister-in-law. I tried it out on Sat. and it turned out great! I did a much larger batch and didn't bother with straining out any of the peels from the tomatoes - just blended all of the cooked tomatoes in the blender and it came out great! I couldn't even tell there was peel in it. The proportions of spices are approximates so you can play around with that. I also did wait to put the seasonings in until after blending the tomatoes in the blender and returning them to the pan which worked great. Here's the recipe. Enjoy!
I made spaghetti sauce today and here is what I did:
Lightly oil the bottom of your kettle with a little
oil on a paper towel. Then add the rest of the
ingredients...obviously this can be doubled, tripled,
etc. if you have more tomatoes ready at once.
Rough chopped tomatoes (probably about 2 pounds) with
cores removed
1-2 T. olive oil
1 t. salt
bunch of fresh basil, chopped
2 t. chopped garlic (I'd use more if I could)
1/4 t. black pepper
1 t. oregano
I boiled that gently until the tomatoes separated from
the skins. Then I put it through my Foley mill, but
not enough of the tomato solids went through the mill,
just the liquid...so I put it all in my blender and
then back through the mill. This time only the seeds
and the thinnest of skins remained in the mill. Then I
put the sauce back in the kettle, adjusted the
seasonings to taste, and simmered it on very low until
it reduced to the thickness I wanted. (This takes a
long time) I think you could wait to add the
seasonings until after the tomatoes have been boiled,
pureed, and put through the mill, but I haven't tried
it that way.
Sometimes the sauce needs a little sugar to counteract
the bite of the tomato. If you read the labels, a lot
of commerical sauces contain sugar. Your homegrown
tomatoes that are vine ripened will probably be sweet
enough. But if the sauce just tastes like something is
missing, try adding a tsp. of sugar at a time and see
if you like it better.
Soup season has definitely hit us here in Northern WI! Today's high was in the 50's and it was really windy. I do enjoy these days of being inside and getting more school done. I really enjoy the seasons! Yesterday and today I made 2 great soups for supper that i thougth I would share.
The first soup is great for using up tons of zucchini when you have an overflow of them (like we do)! It would be easy to make the base part of the soup and freeze it for the wintertime. This recipe makes 2 meals-worth for our family. We froze the 2nd portion.
Zucchini Soup
10 zucchinis sliced
10 cups (I thought this was a little too much - next time I may use a little less) water
14 chicken bouillon cubes
16 oz. cream cheese
Boil the zucchini in the water with the bouillon cubes for 20 min. Puree it in a blender with the cream cheese in batches. This makes a great base. You can recook it a bit to thicken it and add salt and pepper or dill weed to taste or add other things to it. We had some leftover brown rice and stir fry vegetables so I decided to throw that in to thicken it and make it more filling and I added garlic salt, pepper and dill weed to it and thought it was VERY good!
The 2nd recipe I made up today to throw something together before heading off to an afternoon Bible Study, I didn't want to have to worry about what time I got home for cooking supper. Here's what I did.
Crock Pot Tomato Ground Beef Soup
1 26 oz can of tomatoes with juice (cut up the tomatoes into pieces)
1 26 oz can water
1 small can of tomato paste
4 chicken bouillon cubes
1 T sugar
1 can corn with water drained
1 lb ground beef browned and drained
Seasonings to taste include:
italian seasoning
salt
pepper
garlic powder
Add all into crock pot and heat on low for 4 hours +. We served this with cheddar cheese sprinkled on top and normall would add saltines but were out of them.
Recently we got a whole bunch of lemons so my kids used our juicer to get the juices out of them. Unfortunately at the time I didn't know about the tip of microwaving the lemons a short time and rubbing them around before doing this in order to get more juice out of them!
Today I decided to make some lemonade out of them. Here's the recipe I used.
INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups white sugar (I'm sure other sweeteners would work as well)
8 cups water
1 1/2 cups lemon juice
DIRECTIONS
In a small saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled.
Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice and remaining 7 cups water.
We're having pretty good luck with our garden this year. We've been enjoying eating off of it lately. We have planted some zucchini and yellow squash which we are getting tons of right now. Of course this can tend to go a little wild and we eat it every day. Normally I just steam it and spread it out on a platter and rub a stick of butter on it to butter it. Then I sprinkle on some garlic salt and parmesan cheese. The kids love it that way thankfully.
Today I found a good recipe that I used to eat some up without feeling like we're eating the same thing. It's a stuffed squash recipe that uses sausage to spice it up and make it feel like you're not eating squash again! Here's the recipe and some pics.
INGREDIENTS:
6 medium yellow squash (or zucchini can be used as well)
1 pound sausage
1 medium onion, chopped (or some minced onion)
2 slices fresh bread, crumbled
garlic salt, to taste
parmesan cheese
PREPARATION:
Boil squash whole until just tender (I think I boiled it for around 20 min. though I wasn't timing it and I had a couple pretty big squash); remove and carefully split lengthwise. Using a spoon, scoop out pulp, taking care not to break shells. Set pulp aside. Place squash shells in a baking dish.
In skillet over medium-high heat, cook sausage with onion. Remove from heat. Add squash pulp, bread crumbs, garlic salt and parmesan cheese to taste. Add a little water if the mixture is too dry (mine was fine without water).
Stuff squash shells with the sausage mixture; bake at 375° until browned (I think I only baked it for around 15-20 min although it wasn't really browned much yet).
Serves 6 to 8.
