Menu Monday

I cannot get over the weather we are having.  Yesterday, the temperature did not reach 60 degrees.  Today, in the 70's.  Tomorrow?  Back in the 40's.  And the wind...absolutely wild!  Bad hair days everyday.  I have become quite accustomed to wearing a pony tail.

This week, we are pulling out all the tried and true recipes.  I will be using the crock pot a lot to save time.

Menu Monday

Monday

Crock Pot Ribs

Baked beans

Salad

Tuesday

Crock Pot Cheeseburgers

Chips

Wednesday

Pork Chop Dinner

Salad

Thursday

Crock Pot Enchiladas

Spanish Rice

Beans

Friday

TBD, bet it will be spent out. It's shopping day.

I hope everyone has a great week!  

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Mexican Bean Soup

It's been a wild two weeks.  Work is booming.  Too many patients and not enough nurses.  I hate to admit it, but we have been having a lot of frozen pizzas, hot dogs and eating out.

I was in the check-out line at the grocery store and saw a Taste of Home hamburger meat cook book.  I had to buy it.  There are many great recipes in it.  The weather has been a bit cool the past couple of days, so I thought I would try some soup.

This was a super-easy meal!  I had all the ingredients in my cupboard.

Mexican Bean Soup

adapted from Taste of Home

Ingredients

2 pounds ground meat

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cups water

2 cans tomato sauce

1 can Rotel tomatoes

2 cans whole kernel corn, drained

1 can Ranch-Style beans

1 can pinto beans, drained

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2-4 teaspoons taco seasoning

1 envelope original dry ranch dressing mix

Directions

Brown meat in a large stock pot until no longer pink, rinse and drain. Return to pot, add next 9 ingredients and bring to a boil.  Cover and simmer about 30 minutes.  Serve with garnishes of choice.

It is very close to my goulash recipe; without the noodles.

Oh yeah, and, it makes a lot of soup.  I'm going to freeze some for later and take some for work this week.

Sharing: Mealtime Monday,  Marvelous Monday, Make the Scene Monday, Scrumptious Sunday, It's Party Time, Wonderful Food Wednesday, All My Bloggy Friends

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Italian Baked Chicken

I saw this recipe on Pinterest and knew I would have to make it one day.  I only wish I would have remembered to re-Pin it so I could give proper credit, but I didn't.  So, if you know where this one originated, shoot me an email. 

This is a one dish dinner.  How awesome is that?  Easy. Simple. Tasty.  Couldn't ask for any more. 

Like I said, I didn't re-Pin the original recipe, so I just winged it:

Italian Baked Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes

Ingredient:

6 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts

5 Red potatoes, quartered

1 can green beans

1 package dry Italian dressing

Salt and pepper

Butter

Directions:

Spray a 9X13 baking dish with cooking spray.  Salt and pepper the chicken breasts and line the center of the pan with them.  Add the quartered potatoes to one side and the green beans to the other.  Cover everything with pats of butter, and sprinkle with the dry dressing.  Bake at 350˚ for 1 hour. 

Wonderful.

 Now, on a side-note; I cannot be the only one who is getting bombarded with Spam comments.  They are driving me crazy!  I love comments, don't get me wrong, but I don't want my site littered up with 'bad loans', 'casino' and 'legit ways to make money'.  So, I have recently made all comments moderated.  I'll check my email several times throughout the day, so if you're a real person you will be published quickly.  If you are not a person truly interested in my blog, you will be reported as spam.  

Thank you to all who have stuck by during my 'radio silence' days.  

Hope your week is going great!

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Chicken with Honey Beer Sauce

I'm on the constant lookout for good recipes that aren't loaded with fat and calories.  Started my weight-loss journey. Again.

There are many great sites with wonderful, low-cal, recipes.  And they taste great, so please don't tell Maintenance Man that he, too, is on a diet. Shh!!  Mum's the Word.

First, of hopefully many, post is Chicken with honey beer sauce that I found on Cooking Light.  It had good flavor, and it will be wonderful in a salad.  I plugged the nutritional facts into the Weight Watcher calculator, and it is worth 6 Points+! 

Chicken with Honey Beer Sauce

Ingredients:

2 Tsp Canola oil

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1/8 tsp salt

pepper

1/2 cup beer

2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon whole grain Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon honey

Directions:

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper.  Add chicken to pan and saute for around 6 minutes, or until done.  Remove chicken from pan but keep warm. Combine beer and next three ingredients and whisk together.  Add to pan and bring to a boil.  Continue to cook for about 3 minutes or until it has reduced down to half.  Return chicken to pan, turn to coat with sauce.  Serve.  

Yum. 

 Hope you try it!

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I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

I just wasn't expecting to have to drive in it. :)

We spent the weekend in Branson, Missouri.  The boys had a blast at Silver Dollar City.  In fact, they had so much fun, we blew off our reservations for dinner and a show on Sunday evening.  I think it was worth it, though.

We started our drive back to Texas on Christmas Day.  At 7AM.  We pulled in to our drive at 6:45PM. Almost 12 hours to drive back home.

This is why:

Snow.  It did not start snowing on us until we crossed the Red River.  Yes, that means we had smooth driving through the mountains of Arkansas, and the funky flat lands of Oklahoma. Not until we arrived back in our beloved home state, did we run through the white stuff.

I had to snap all of our shots from the car since the wind was blowing.  HARD.  We would have gone through white-out conditions had the snow been any harder.

That picture was taken when it all started.

For the first time in my life, I saw a snow-plow in Texas.  I didn't even know TxDot was equipped with such things. :)

And just a random shot.  I think I was trying for the horses in the background but wasn't quick enough. I guess if you're in the market for some land in Texas, this is the shot for you.

And, of course, we saw our share of drivers in the ditch.  Luckily, it didn't look like any of them had any damage to their cars or to themselves.

Just wanted to share some of our travel pics with you.  I hope you had a great Christmas and have a Happy, safe New Years!

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Homemade Chili

It was a cold weekend here in Texas.  I spent the most of it in bed...sick.

Oh, btw, maybe I should introduce myself.  I'm Dana, the owner/author of this little blog.  We may have already met, but I have been missing for awhile.  I've been failing trying to get back in the hang of being a working Mom and a great wife, and a great cook. It's hard work, folks!

As I was saying, it was cold here last weekend.  Freeze warning for Sunday night.  We are not used to being this cold this early, but we managed.

I had my crock-pot brewing up this little recipe; waiting for us for when we got home Monday afternoon. {which, btw, warmed up to the middle 60's}  You know what they say about Texas: If you don't like the weather, just wait a couple of minutes, it'll change.

Homemade Chili

Ingredients:

2 lbs ground meat

1 large onion, chopped

2 tsp garlic powder

1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce

2 tablespoons chili

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cans pinto beans, rinsed and drained

Directions:

Brown meat in a skillet over medium heat and drain.  Mix beef and remaining ingredients, except beans, in the slow cooker.  Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours.  Stir in beans and cook for an additional 15-30 minutes. 

I served with grated cheese, crackers and ketchup. Yes, I said ketchup.  Maintenance Man is sure I have lost my mind when I squeeze the ketchup all over my chili, but I love it!  

What do you eat on your chili?  

Prayer and positive thought to all those effected by Sandy. 

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Classic Lasagna

Wow.  I really didn't know how hard it was going to be to work AND keep up a blog.

Well, I guess the actual keeping up the blog would be easier if I weren't so darn tired all the time.  We have been having a lot of hot dogs, sandwiches...and.......fast food.

I did manage to make another recipe from my Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. I don't know if they still have Souther Living parties, but that is where I got mine....oh and my wonderful stone bundt cake pan. :)

But, I have made this recipe twice now, and it is so good, but we didn't think it had enough of the meat sauce in it.  So, this time, I doubled the meat sauce. YUM!

Classic Lasagna

Ingredients

2 medium onions, chopped 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided 

• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 pounds lean ground beef 
• 1 (14.5-oz.) can basil, garlic, and oregano diced tomatoes 
• 2 (6-oz.) cans tomato paste
• 1 (8-oz.) can basil, garlic, and oregano tomato sauce 
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt, divided
• 3/4 teaspoon pepper, divided
• 12 lasagna noodles, uncooked; I used ready-to-bake 
• 1 (16-oz.) container low-curd cottage cheese
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 (6-oz.) packages part-skim mozzarella cheese slices 
• Garnish: chopped fresh parsley

Directions:

Sauté onion in 1 Tbsp. hot oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat 5 minutes or until tender. Add garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Add beef, and cook, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes or until beef crumbles and is no longer pink. Drain beef mixture, and return to skillet. Stir in diced tomatoes, next 4 ingredients, 1 tsp. salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, 30 minutes. Remove and discard bay leaf; set meat sauce aside.Stir together ricotta cheese, eggs, Parmesan cheese, remaining 1/4 tsp. salt, and remaining 1/4 tsp. pepper until blended.Spoon half of the meat sauce mixture in a lightly greased 13- x 9-inch baking dish. Shake excess water from noodles, and arrange 6 noodles over meat sauce; top with half of ricotta mixture and 1 package mozzarella cheese slices. Repeat layers once.Bake, covered, at 350° for 55 minutes. Uncover and bake 10 to 15 more minutes or until bubbly. Let lasagna stand 10 minutes before serving. Garnish, if desired.Note: The sauce is time-consuming but worth the extra effort. Make it on a weekend, and freeze it to enjoy later with lasagna or your favorite pasta. 

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