Pioneer Woman at Heart

  Weather has been in the 20's here, with lots of snow, some rain, icy roads, and just your typical winter weather. The latest crocheted granny square for my book blanket.  Book was about a 3/4 out of 10, if you ask me.  Just too much family drama for me. In the midst of the Thanksgiving holiday, we made up a batch of homemade meatballs and got them into the freezer for winter meals. Update on the crock pot macaroni and cheese...  It reheated great!  Just do it slowly, and it reheats very creamy as it was when it's cooked.  My husband took some to work and heated his in the work room microwave, but heated it too long and the oil separated.  So, just heat it slowly, and not high microwave heat, and it's great the next day. Here is how I made it. In a crock pot pour in dry noodles.  I used a 14.5 oz. box, and that was non-gmo (can't remember the brand), but it was enough noodles. My Mom never made stove top mac'n cheese with whole milk, but she did...

  Tree was made from a cinnamon stick, fake evergreen cut, and buttons.  The candy apple ornament was a mini muffin wrapper, a small apple ornament dipped in glue and bird seed. Drum was made from half a toilet paper tube, craft foam for the top and bottom, felt and ribbon, and the drum sticks were painted tooth picks with tiny pom poms glued on.  Yes, they took forever to make, and back then, I didn't blink an eye on how much time they took to make. A small bit of all of my duplicate handmade Christmas ornaments.  I could not believe how many duplicates worked their way to the Christmas storage totes (Three more totes to go through yet).  Good grief.  Anyway, the story behind them all. . . When the kids were in elementary school, I would race to the school and sign up for room parent for their Christmas party first.  My second choice was always Valentine's Day when the lists were full.   Anyway, for some crazy reason, I fell in love with mak...

  What is was supposed to be?  A new recipe - flank steak tacos (recipe is in the first cookbook below).  what it ended up as?  Round steak fajitas.  First, I've only cooked a flank steak once in my lifetime (no kidding there), and two, we couldn't find flank steak, so we used a round steak.   The seasonings were exactly as the recipe called for however, and it shredded up very nicely.  Although, I would cut back on the seasoning, it was very good, and mostly very, very easy to prepare for the crockpot. We got 4 servings (2 meals for 2 people), plus we had more leftover after that. Super easy, many possibilities, and a good bang for the buck. The above cookbook was probably my favorite of all the cookbooks I have borrowed this month.  You don't have to be diabetic to enjoy any of these either.  They are very healthy recipes.  I have many more to try yet. I found this one to have a lot of recipes with very little ingredients, but mos...

  The chicken vegetable soup is from Clean Food Crush online.  It is literally a completely self-sufficient recipe.  You can grow every single thing in the soup (and the herbs for the homemade Italian seasoning), make the broth, and raise meat birds.  My husband is not on board with raising meat birds again just yet.  Anyway, I utilized our frozen garden green beans, and diced bell peppers for this soup.  I also had previously cooked the chicken, shredded it, and had it in the freezer as well (worked great for the soup).  I used home canned tomato sauce (I used an entire pint). There are no potatoes or corn in this soup recipe.  I mean, you could, but I followed the recipe, other than I am not a fan of cooking my raw chicken in the soup ingredients.  We loved it! Definitely a slight variation of a vegetable soup, but also with chicken vs. beef or simply vegetable. Perfect leftovers for a cold brisk day.  Woke up to 7°F windchill, icy roa...

Four Beans and Sausage to the rescue yesterday.  You still need to dice an onion (and I use bell pepper frozen from the summer garden, and home canned ketchup), but it's a one crock pot dish meal.  It was perfect for my Monday Madness in getting back into the groove of homesteading/adulting life again.   While the crock pot did it's work for dinner, I took some time to make a sausage and potato breakfast casserole (real potatoes), bell pepper from the freezer, and added onion, garlic, jalapenos and dandelion greens (jalapenos from the freezer as well as the dandelion greens).  I only used 6 eggs and 1/3 cup milk for this 9 x 13 breakfast.  It is a bit spicy with the jalapenos, but we like it. Thankful for leftovers today, so I can continue to catch up with bill paying, laundry, and my weekly to-do list. I'm hearing that black kitchen utensils can leach poison into our foods when heated (or hot?).  Any truth to this?  If so, what are you replacing all ...