Christmas came and went without any major events happening.  I can say this was the worst Christmas I have had in all my 55 years of life because of money issues.   There just wasn’t enough of it this year.  I know, I know…it was like that for a lot of people this year.  I understand that, but, it still made it no easier to take for me.  I did fix a lot of candy, cookies,  and treats for people this year but I still have a lot left to fix and here it is January 18th.   

I have been trying a lot of new recipes out and haven’t really found any that I would make again but a few.  My daughter loved the gumbo that I made, and, if and when I make it again, I will share the recipe with you and take a photo of it.   I made “The Neely’s” Sausage and Pepper Subs last night and those may be one that I will fix again.  They were pretty good and everyone seemed to like them but my friend, Daisy, and she thought they were to spicy. 

I made some hard cinnamon candy that everyone wants me to make more of, but now I can’t find the flavoring.  I made about 8 rolls of sugar cookies and froze them.  I still have 3 rolls left in the freezer that I fix once a week. 

I am still learning how to use and like garlic.  I just ate arugula in a salad I fixed the other night.  I have come to love Romaine Lettuce instead of Iceberg Lettuce.  I use a lot of fresh and frozen veggies now which has helped tremendously with my cholesterol.  I have always had low bad cholesterol but my good cholesterol was low.  Now it is where it should be.  My blood sugar has dropped as if I don’t have Type 2 Sugar Diabetes anymore.  My blood pressure was way low.  I had lost 10 pounds (which I probably gained back at Christmas) and all of my other tests came back great. 

The one good thing that has come from living in the “Boonies” is that there are no fast food places anywhere near me so I do cook almost everyone of our meals now.  I so love veggies and thank goodness my family does too or they would be up a creek.   Broccoli, Cabbage, Salads, Spinach…we love it all.  We are a meat loving family though and I have been trying to fix leaner cuts of meat.  Two of the spices that I now absolutely love are ground black pepper and smoked paprika.  I am using more cayenne pepper too, which makes things spicy and my taste buds have changed so that I love things spicy now. 

I have tried to keep my shelves stocked with all of the essential foods that I need to fix pretty much any recipe I see.  Both my fridge and the 2 freezers I have are stocked with all of the meats and frozen veggies I need.   I have cream cheese, sour cream, the best Parmesan Cheese, heavy whipping cream, buttermilk, everything I need food wise.  I still am trying to fix one new dish a day but nothing has really made me sing its praises but my Broccoli Salad.  

I will try to get back in the habit of taking photos of the dishes I make and sharing them with you again.

Hope to see you back here soon!

Someday soon I hope I will get it back and not be so depressed.  Then I will be back!!

It was a cold Saturday afternoon and I wanted to fix some comfort foods with a twist and I definitely did accomplish that. 

I wanted a nice juicy hamburger and for some reason I wanted it seasoned.  Now you have to understand that I am not a seasoning person but with all of this cooking that I have been doing, I wanted to just try my hand at fixing a hamburger seasoned.  First though, I decided to fix some Potato Skins like TGI Friday’s.  I knew I could do it and I did.  I started out with a bunch, about 6 Russet potatoes.  I washed them really good with a brush that I bought at Walmart for corn and potatoes.  I think it is a tire brush but I have never used it for anything but veggies so now it is my veggie brush. 

I cut them in half so it would be 12 potato skins because my daughter, her boyfriend, and my daughter’s best friend were going to be here.  I wrapped my cookie sheet with aluminum foil because I have become an aluminum foil woman.  I use more of it than anyone I know.  Then I cut the potatoes length wise and put them cut side up on the pan.  Then I sprinkled some Crisco on the potatoes along with lots of salt and ground pepper.  I mixed them all around in the pan and put them in the oven at 400 for about 50 minutes.  While they were cooking I got out all the toppings I was going to put on them.  First I cut up and fried about 8 slices of bacon in my new 12 inch cast iron pan.  One of the cooks on TV said that if you didn’t buy anything else that you had to have a good cast iron pan.  I had an 8 inch one that I always fixed homemade corn bread in but it isn’t big enough to fry anything in so I got the big 12 inch one.  It is heavy.  I can barely lift it, but you have to have one. 

So after the bacon was all fried up, I put it on a paper plate with paper towels on it to get all of the grease off the bacon that I could.  Then I got out 2 bowls, one for the cheese and one for the other toppings.  I grated half of a block of sharp cheddar cheese into one bowl and then in the next I got out probably 2 cups of sour cream, cut up a bunch of parsley into little bitty pieces.  I then added the parsley to the sour cream, cut up 2 spring onions very thin and added those and added lots of sea salt and ground black pepper and put that in the fridge to stay cool.  Once the potatoes were cooked, I got them out of the oven and let them cool off a bit before I took a spoon and spooned out at much of the potato as I could and mixed all of that up with the sour cream mixture.  I tasted it and it was perfect.  Then I put some of that in the potatoes, then the crunched up bacon and then the shredded cheddar cheese and put them back in the oven to cook for another 30 minutes and dropped the temp to 300 degrees. 

While they were cooking I got out my ground beef and poured worcestershire sauce, dijon mustard, some seasoned salt, smoked paprika, onion salt, garlic powder, salt and pepper into the ground beef and mixed it all up with my hands.  I let the cast iron skillet get hot using a little of the bacon grease that I cooked the bacon with into the pan.  They seared when they hit the pan.  Love that sound.    I let them cook on the one side for about 6 minutes and then turned them over and let them finish cooking on the other side until they were totally done.  Once they were done I fixed me one and for some reason I didn’t want anything on it but a little mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard.  Nothing else…no lettuce, no tomato, no onions, nothing.  I figured the seasoning was enough and I was right.  By that time the potato skins were done and I got them out.  The cheddar cheese had melted all the way and they were really good.  Both the hamburger and the potato skins were awesome.  Then my oldest daughter came by and ate 4 of them…well she ate 1 and took 3 with her.  Then the kids came in and not knowing I had slaved over the stove and oven they had gone to Burger King.  YEAH!!!  So nothing else got eaten until today.  This morning it was gobbled up by all of them. 

I kind of liked all of that seasoning though.  I guess I am getting used to the seasoning.  About time, huh?  All these years I have never used all of this stuff and now I am experiencing things I have never had before. 

I woke up this morning and my TV was on QVC.  Well, big big mistake for me.  LOL  The first thing I saw was the KitchenAid Mixer that they use on TV 24/7 on those cooking channels and it was $100 off just for today.  I had already told my kids that I wanted one for Christmas but $100 off?  Are you kidding me?  I got one on Easy Pay and will have it by next week.  SO EXCITED!!!  I am going to be making all kinds of stuff for Thanksgiving and Christmas using my new KitchenAid Mixer.  Then dummy me, saw a set of bowls on there that I have been wanting and got them.  I am such a shopaholic.  I had to turn the channel and it is killing me too because all day today is Kitchen Day on QVC and there is still so much I want.  Who knows, maybe I will start making things and selling them since my daughter told me that my Banana Nut Bread was the best she had ever tasted. 

Here is a pic of one of my hamburger’s with a couple of the Potato Skins…Enjoy and I will be back tomorrow with more. 

Yummy...don't they look good? They were!

Leftover’s are starting to pile up in my fridge…I just can’t cook and eat the food too.   If I wasn’t back in the “Boonies” I would have a block party. 

My ”Country Style Ribs” cooked in the crockpot were a hit.  There is barely any of those left, but everything else is packed in the fridge.  After the ribs were cooked I did have one heck of a time getting them out of the crockpot because they literally fell apart.  If you want soft and tender ribs, the only way to do them is in the crockpot. 

The next night I fixed Sirloin Tip Roast with Red Potatoes, Carrots, and Onions.  I just didn’t do it any old way though.  I marinated the roast for about 3 hours before searing it and then cooking it in the oven for about 2 hours on 300 degrees.  It was awesome and my daughter’s best friend is eating the rest of them as I type this.  She really likes them. 

I did have a lot of leftover’s when I first started this post a couple days ago but since then, there have been people here that have been eating it up and all I have now is some banana nut bread left and a little bit of what I made for dinner last night that is the next post. 

I have been having such a hard time with my computer and I have started this particular post 4 different times and my computer comes unplugged and I lose the post.  I would not recommend a Dell Computer to anyone.  I have had this computer 9 months.  It has not been out of my house, it has not been moved but once out of the place I keep it and everything has gone wrong with it.  The whole harddrive went bad in it, the battery no longer charges at all, and the plug where you plug it into the computer for electricity is broken and I have to have duct tape on it for it to stay plugged in.  Less than a year old.  I could see if I took it all over the place or drug it all over but it stays on my kitchen table all the time now.  It is still under warranty and I am going to write them.  It has been a huge disappointment. 

OK, after writing about my computer, I did contact Dell and they are going to fix it for me.  They are sending a box for me to send it back to them and I won’t have it for a while.   Oh well, I will just have to go back to my desktop.  I haven’t used it very much since it was fixed and updated anyway.  Dell is good about fixing their computers, though.  I can say that. 

I am going to get off of here and write my next post about my hamburgers and the potato skins that I made last night that were exactly like TGI Friday’s.  They were so good. 

As for my ribs and leftover’s they are now all gone.  No block party for the Boonies. 

Well, let me rephrase that.  I don’t have to make anything else but my mind is running amok with ideas to fix for dinner tonight.  

Last night I fixed a big bowl of Macaroni Salad.  My kids love it.  Here is a pic of a bowl of it and then I will tell you how I make it.  I have been making Macaroni Salad for years.

We love macaroni salad and about 9pm last night I decided to make some...

I started out boiling 6 eggs.  While they were boiling I started the water for the pound of macaroni that had to be cooked.  I always put about a tablespoon of oil and lots of salt in the water before it starts boiling.  The oil keeps the macaroni from sticking together when you add it in and of course you have to have salt in macaroni.  As soon as the eggs were done I ran cold water over them and cracked them and then put them in a bowl in the fridge to cool off some.  With the macaroni, as soon as it was done, I strained it in the colander and then run cold water all over the pot I had cooked it in and then poured the strained macaroni back in the pot and put it in the freezer to get cold.  While the eggs and macaroni were cooling off, I cut up all of my veggies for it.  Man oh man, these knives I have are so sharp too.  I have cut my fingers so many times recently that I can barely type here.  I cut my middle finger so bad last night that I thought I was gonna have to have stitches but it was ok.  I just wrapped a paper towel around it and kept on chopping up everything.  I cut small pieces of one huge tomato that I had gotten from Foster’s Market in Rocky Mount, VA last week and put that in the bowl.  Then I peeled and cut up, in small pieces, 2 cucumbers.  We like cucumbers so I always put more of those in my macaroni salad.  I cut up 1/2 a green pepper and then sliced up 4 spring onions or green onions…the green tops and the white part of the onion both.   I call them Spring Onions but I use them all the time.  I love them in everything.  They are always in my fridge.  By then, the eggs had cooled off so I took my potato masher and mashed them up in a bowl and then added them to the salad bowl.  I got out the macaroni and poured all of it in the salad bowl and softly mixed everything up.  I then added about a cup of Mayonnaise.  We only use Krafts Mayonnaise too.  I am picky about my mayonnaise.  After that I put about a tablespoon of Balsamic Vinegar and then added salt and loads of my ground black pepper and mixed everything together and put it in the fridge for about an hour and then tasted it.  It was good but it is never as good that first day as it is the next day, which is today.  So we are having that for dinner tonight with my Country Style Ribs which I will get to later on.

This morning after getting the ribs in the crock pot I tasted the macaroni salad and by then it had absorbed the flavors of all of the veggies in there and it was so good.  I know I don’t add a lot of spices to it because we just like it plain.  Some people add garlic and celery seeds and all that but not us.  Not to Macaroni Salad.  It just isn’t good with all of that stuff in it.  

I had some very ripe banana’s in the fridge so I decided to make Banana Nut Bread.  I have never made it before but my daughter loves it.  So here I go looking up a recipe for it and this is what I came up with…Photo first, then recipe.

My first time making it all by myself.

I found an easy, no mixer, recipe and used it.  It is good but I didn’t use enough banana’s.  I only used 3 1/2 and it called for 5.  Next time I will use more.

You use 2 cups sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 1/4 cup flour, 3/4 vegetable oil, 3 large eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla, 1 1/3 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 cup buttermilk, 4-5 banana’s and 1 cup chopped walnuts. 

You preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray 2 loaf pans with Pam.  In a large bowl mash the banana’s, and then add all of the other ingredients including your cup of walnuts and mix it with your hands or with a spoon until it is mixed up well.  Then the recipe says to cook it for 1 hour.  I didn’t have 2 loaf pans, just one, so after pouring the mixture into one loaf pan I poured the rest into a small square pan and put them both in the oven.  The square pan did not take but about 30 minutes but the loaf took about an hour and 10 minutes until it was done.  It really is very good.  I just will use more banana’s next time. 

Of course I had to cut me a piece of the square pan one as soon as I got it out of the oven because I love hot or warm Banana Nut Bread.  I covered all of the rest of it with Saran Wrap and it is waiting for my daughter to get home to taste it.  I have it hid so she won’t see it as soon as she gets home. 

Now to my Country Style Ribs…They are still in the crock pot.  I don’t know what they will taste like but they should be good.  It is 4 huge ribs.  I put some butter in my large cast iron pan and seared them to give them a great look before I put them in the crockpot.  The first thing I added to the crock pot was 2 jars of turkey gravy.  The recipe said Pork Gravy but I didn’t have any of that nor have I ever seen it.  Guess I will look next time I go to the store.  With the 2 jars of gravy I added one of the packs of Onion Soup mix.  Then I cut up…yes, with my finger so sore I could barely cut, 4 carrots, 16 ounces of fresh mushrooms, 4 small stalks of celery, and 1 bay leaf.  Once the ribs were seared good…I took them off the heat and let them cool off for about 5 minutes.  Then I covered them with salt, ground black pepper, and Smoked Paprika.  I absolutely love the taste of that now.  Then I added all 4 of them to the crockpot with a little of the drippings from the pan they were seared in and they have been cooking on low heat all day. 

I am thinking that I may take the ribs out soon and add some rice in the crock pot and let that soak up all the juices from the ingredients in there.  It may be good, but I am not sure I can get the ribs out without them breaking up into a million pieces because they are so soft.  Crockpots make any cut of meat so tender. 

I will be back tomorrow to show you pictures of it and let you know how it was, along with what I am gonna make tomorrow.   

Have a good night!!!