where life happens
Last week, I shared a recipe on the blog of a friend for Cranberry-Peach Relish. It was something we came up with a while back but was able to use the recipe to help her out in the weeks after the new addition to their family. Please head over to Thou Shalt Not Whine for this yummy, easy recipe that is refreshing all year round.
At Home.
So I don’t really know what you would call this but we experimented this evening and liked
our results. You might call this fried cheese but we chose to call them cheese fritters. Don’t ask why because I don’t know! It just popped out.
Miss J loved these and is the chef of the hour again.
Truly, all we did was put some grated mozzarella on the griddle which was heated to about 300 and let it brown. When the edges were a dark brown but not burnt we turned them over. If it started folding up and smooshing together, we figured out it was too early to turn them. We let the brown on the other side and then took them off. Once they were a bit cooled, they were perfect for eating.
So, if you are a cheese fan or have one in the house, these are probably the most simple things we have made in a long time. And, as a bonus, they were yummy!
At Home.
Miss J enjoys learning about doing anything in the kitchen. Recently, we have watched a kids’ baking show on Netflix. This really upped her interested. So, this morning when she asked for donuts for breakfast, guess who made them?
We used the recipe that is the favorite of our family. (Here’s the post with the link to the Family Fun recipe.) But she did the recipe reading, the measuring, the cooking, and the decorating. I acted as the assistant and got out, put away, and cleaned up after the baker. It was fun and she really enjoyed her breakfast. She did, however, need a shower afterwards since decorating can be such all-involving work and leave streaks of icing across your face and in your hair. 🙂
At Home.
Miss E is quite the cook when she chooses to be. One of her favorite things to make is Honey’s chocolate pie. Named after her great-grandmother, this is a family favorite. She has also begun making it for potluck dinners at church. She made one yesterday for church and it was gone before I got to the dessert table.
Want to make it yourself, now that you have drooled over the computer keyboard?
Here’s the recipe –
Instructions:
In a pot, combine the flour, sugar, and cocoa powder. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt and milk. After stirring the eggs and milk together well, add it to the dry ingredients in the pot. Cook it on the stove top over medium or medium high heat. Stir constantly until it thickens. Put in the vanilla and butter. Stir. Let it cool. Pour into the prepared pie crust. Refrigerate until serving. Add whipped cream (Cool Whip) and chocolate curl garnishes if desired prior to serving.
Enjoy this yummy, super-simple treat.
At Home.
I have been wanting to try this for a while. We have always used a runny-ish batter and fried the corndogs in oil. It is so messy and greasy. So, I looked it up on the internet and there are a million recipes out there for baked corndog dough. I went with one from Gold Medal Flour. It turned out so good!
Here is the recipe.
And, best of all, they were easy. Maybe 40 minutes from start to end of baking time. Not much clean up and no greasy splatters all over the place! That is the best!
Of course, I only tasted a tiny bity piece of the dough since there is just about nothing in this recipe that I should be eating due to allergies. But it was good. And the girls’ thoughts?
They certainly ate them up. This recipe covered 10 regular sized turkey hot dogs fully. And, I chose to not bother with sticks.
Definitely on the menu again.
At Home.
I don’t know about you but the holidays aren’t the holidays without some yummy cranberry sauce. Now, let’s be clear about one thing. If it comes in a can and stays in that shape, it is NOT cranberry sauce!
Cranberry sauce starts with cranberries. The real things!
Add some orange juice and a little bit of white sugar. Simmer and voila! Cranberry sauce! Seriously – it is that easy.
Miss L is the one who enjoys cranberry sauce as much as I do and it is now her job to make the cranberry sauce for meals. She is pretty good at it. And I sure do enjoy eating it.
In fact, since it is so hard to find cranberries during the year except in November and December here in Texas, I buy several bags and put them in the freezer. That way we can make lots of cranberry things, including yummy cranberry sauce, throughout the year.
I won’t leave you without the simple recipe, though.
For a printable copy of the recipe, click below.
Enjoy making fresh, yummy cranberry sauce.
At Home.
Two things you should know.
Now with those out of the way, we had a yummy dinner tonight. Approved by every single one of the girls. Two of them loved it. The other said it was really good but not her favorite dish ever. I don’t know about you but I’ll take that! Especially when it was a complete guess at how to proceed. Since this was an experiment, I didn’t take any pictures until every had been eating for a bit.
I did look up a couple of recipes for using up leftover ham and one of them was a hashbrown casserole. Well, the problem with that is I don’t buy hashbrowns. Or canned soup. Or have a desire to use up almost a dozen eggs in a single recipe! So, off to make up my own.
Because we have a dairy allergy, I did a couple of different things. I used almond milk but regular cow’s milk would probably not take as long to bake. Also, I did half of the dish with mozzarella and half of it with pecorino romano (grated sheep cheese that is similar to parmesan). My favorite was the pecorino romano end. It was more savory than the mozzarella portion. All of it was good though. So good, that 6 year old J wants a picture and the recipe for when she grows up. (Let me tell you, that melted my heart!)
Prepare a 9×13 casserole dish. If you are using a stoneware pan, it won’t need greasing; if you are using a metal or glass dish, it will need to be greased so it doesn’t stick too badly.
Mix the sweet potatoes, onion, and ham together. Spread it in your casserole dish.
Mix the egg and milk. Stir and pour over the mixture in the casserole dish. Salt and pepper. I just eyeballed it.
Sprinkle the grated cheese over the mixture, covered it with aluminum foil, and baked it at 375 degrees. I baked it covered for about 45 minutes and the uncovered it and let it bake about 15 minutes more or until the cheese was browned a bit. I did check to make sure it was set, as well.
This served our family of five with no other dishes with a serving of leftovers.
Download a copy of the recipe to print by clicking this link: Not Your Norm Sweet Potato Casserole PDF
If you enjoy this, please feel free to share it. Enjoy!
At Home.
Something unexpected always happens when we visit family. This last time was no exception in several ways. I’ll share the first one with you now. Another later in the week. But for today – peaches!!
We stopped by my sister’s house on the way to my parents. Her peach trees did really well this year so she wanted to send more peaches to my mom. The girls helped her pick some from the tree and the rest had fallen on the ground. They found out just how much good is left on a peach after a bird decided to peck at it. Some washing and cutting and there was a lot of good left.
E did most of the cooking help at my parents this time. She just really enjoyed it! Working together my mom and E cleaned, cut, and pureed the peaches. Then, E learned how a dehydrator works and how to prepare it to make fruit leather. She watched all day long, rotating the trays every hour and a half until the fruit leather was finished.
It came out really good. Pretty addicting, somewhat like candy! But it was just peaches and a tiny bit of sugar. They put a scant half cup of sugar in the food processor and filled it up with peaches. Then pureed. That’s it!
Once they had all the trays filled for the fruit leather, there was about a cup and a half of the puree left. So, they made ice cream! Fresh peach ice cream is my absolute favorite, I think! It was so good. E got a wonderful experience cooking with her grandma and learning about a couple of kitchen machines that we don’t have (dehydrator and electric ice cream maker).
parchment paper circles cut the size of your dehydrator trays – if you don’t have trays designed for this
Place the sugar and peaches together and puree. Put a parchment paper circle on the dehydrator tray. Carefully spread 1 to 1 1/2 cups fruit puree on the paper and spread thinly. You don’t want it too thick or it won’t dry and if it isn’t an even thinness, it won’t dry evenly. Plug in the dehydrator and let it work. Rotate the trays every 1 1/2 hours, checking the fruit leather after about 6 hours. If it is a humid day, it may take 8-10 hours to dry.
Mix this up and then turn it into ice cream with your preferred method. My mom used an electric ice cream maker. We have a cylinder that stays in the freezer that we pour it into and then stir it often with the paddle until it is frozen. We have also put it into a freezer safe container and just frozen it, taking it out every 15 minutes or so to stir until it is ice cream consistency.
I hope you enjoy making these with some fresh fruit that you have. Peach is my preference but I think we might try some other kind of fruit in ice cream soon. Anyway you make it, homemade is best!
At Home.
Today’s challenge word is “recipe.” I have a favorite recipe that I have been trying to find a perfect time to share with you. I think today is the day.
Do you like avocados? Do you like tomatoes? Do you like olive oil? That is all you need. Dice your avocado. Dice your tomato or cut grape tomatoes in half. Drizzle with olive oil. Serve and enjoy.
My favorite olive oil is Heart of Texas Olive Oil Company. They make several variations but I adore their lime infused olive oil. That is what I use for this recipe. I am the only one who likes this in our family so when I make it, I get to eat it all. Unless we have company. My mother-in-law is the one who introduced me to this dish and this olive oil and I am so thankful! This is a great main dish for lunch. Enjoy!
At Home.
Linking up at A Glimpse of Our Life and This Day Has Great Potential for the July Blogging Challenge.
Do you love summertime foods? If you remember a couple of weeks ago, the middle gigglygirl, L, guest posted over at Farm Fresh Adventures with her lemonade recipe. This is part of a series that Lisa is doing on her blog, titled Fresh From the Kitchen. I am looking forward to all the posts that she will be sharing this summer. Last week, I shared one of my favorite summertime foods – Green-chili Corn. Well, really, I enjoy it all year long but summertime fresh corn adds a yummy-ness to it that frozen corn just doesn’t have. So head over to Farm Fresh Adventures and get the recipe. Then, make the simple dish and sit back and enjoy!
At Home.
At Home 