Beef Stew

Along with pot roast, beef stew is a dish I have never failed to ruin. After my recent success with pot roast (thanks to Pioneer Woman's recipe), I thought I would give beef stew another chance. There are bajillions of recipes out there so I decided to go the super easy route of buying a Beef Stew Seasoning packet at the grocery store and following the recipe on the back. Here we go:
The Ingredients

2 pounds stew meat (I used a chuck roast that I cut up into pieces)
1/4 cup flour (I took the picture with plain flour but ended up using my Kentucky Kernel Seasoned Flour)
3 cup water
1 pkg Beef Stew Seasoning
5 cup vegetables

After I cut up my roast:

Pour the flour over the beef and make sure all sides are coated.

Brown beef in a large pot or dutch oven. If there is a lot of fat when they are done, you may want to drain it off. I cut all the fat off the meat so I did not need to do that.

Add the water and seasoning packet. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours until beef is tender.

Prepare your veggies. I skipped the celery I had in the picture above and since my favorite part is the onion, I went heavy on them. You do what you like!

Add the vegetables to the pot and simmer, covered, another 45 minutes.

In actuality I simmered mine for a little over an hour. The potatoes weren't quite done at the 45 minute mark. I think the heat was too low. I turned it up to about medium for the last 15 minutes.
I had intended to make a loaf of bread to serve with this but I didn't have enough honey on hand so I just grabbed some biscuits from the fridge.

I was really happy with this! It was hearty and filling and felt great on Raley's sore throat this evening. A nice meal to cook and eat on a rainy, cold day.

Menu 12/3 - 12/9--2011

Here is our menu for the coming week. We had a couple meals last week that were skipped so they are being recycled here.
Saturday-- kids and I are having Corn Dogs. I just needed them, you know?!
Sunday-- Raley Gravy
Monday-- Shredded Pork Wraps
Tuesday-- Chicken Chili
Wednesday-- Salmon and pasta
Thursday-- Beef Stew
Friday-- I bought some maple sausage that is just screaming out for Pumpkin Pancakes!
Have a great week!!

Creamy Baked Ziti

Here's another recipe from Kraft Food & family magazine. I have been wanting to make it for a while but I thought it would be extra good with some homemade marinara. so today I made both! Here is the step by step for the Ziti...
The Ingredients:

4 cups ziti pasta, uncooked
1 jar (26 oz) marinara sauce (or equivalent)
1 can diced tomatoes
6 oz cream cheese**
3/4 cup sour cream
8 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
**I happened to have some Philly Cooking Cream so I used it in place of the cream cheese

You may  have noticed there is no marinara sauce in the picture. Well, it was still cooking. Here you go:

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Cook ziti according to package instructions.

Drain pasta.

In the pot you cooked the pasta in, combine the marinara, tomatoes and cream cheese.

Stir and cook over medium heat until cream cheese is melted. Add in the pasta.

Layer half the pasta in a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Top with the sour cream and 1 cup of the shredded mozzarella.

Add the remaining pasta and top with the rest of the shredded cheese and the Parmesan.

Cover and bake for 20 minutes or until heated through.

I was very pleased with the flavor here. The recipe also said you could assemble the dish and refrigerate for up to 8 hours. If so, then increase cooking time to 35 minutes or heated through.

Menu 11/12 - 11/18 2011

Remember when I used to post my menu for the week? Back when I paid better attention to my poor sweet little blogs? Well, I am going to try that again. Wish me luck!
In the meantime, here is what we'll be eating this week:
Saturday-- Pizza
Sunday-- Raley Gravy
Monday-- Steak Fingers
Tuesday-- Chicken Chili
Wednesday-- Tuna Patties and Mac & Cheese
Thursday-- Kobayashi Maru
Friday-- Tacos

What's on your menu??

Bourbon Mustard

A few years ago, I was looking for something I could send out as Christmas gifts that would be nice but not too pricey. One of the things I found was this recipe from Emeril's portion of the Food Network website. It was so delicious I have kept some in my fridge ever since! Easy too:
The Ingredients

**I have tripled the original recipe because then it uses the entire jar of mustard, the whole little bottle of bourbon and fills my container to the top. Serendipity!!
12 oz container (or 1 1/2 cups) Dijon mustard
3/4 cup honey
1 tiny bottle (or 3 Tbsp) of Bourbon

Empty the mustard bottle into a mixing bowl. To help you get the last of the mustard out, pour the bourbon in the bottle and shake it up.

If you look closely you can see the bourbony mustard at the bottom.

Add the honey.

Whisk it all up. And pour it into a container.

Label your container and enjoy on everything! I'm having some on my pita for lunch.

Hamburger Noodle Bake

This recipe is out of my Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2011 cookbook. It was listed in the chapter "cooking for One or Two" but I doubled the recipe and it worked out very well for us. The original recipe only called for 1/2 pound of meat so doubling wasn't very hard!
The Ingredients:

4 cups uncooked egg noodles
1 pound ground beef, turkey, venison or whatever else you like to use
4 Tbsp finely chopped onion
2 cans (8 oz) tomato sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic salt
Pepper to taste
1/2 cup small curd cottage cheese
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp thinly sliced green onion (I skipped this)
2 Tbsp chopped green pepper
2 Tbsp sour cream
4 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

WHEW! That sounds like a lot and might make you think this is going to be hard or take a long time but it isn't and it doesn't!! First step, cook the noodles according to package directions. While they cook, brown the meat and onion in a large skillet until meat is no longer pink; drain. Remove from heat; stir in the tomato sauce, sugar, salt, garlic salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, mix together the cottage cheese, cream cheese, green onion, green pepper and sour cream. When the noodles are done, drain them and place half the cooked noodles in the bottom of a 2 quart baking dish (well greased please).

Spoon half the meat mixture over the noodle base.

Add the cheese mixture next. Use it all.

Follow with the remaining noodles. Spoon the rest of the meat sauce on top and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes or until heated through.

Enjoy! This was very good. Kind of like lasagna but not as hard to make and it had a great flavor. We will make this again and again for sure.

4 Cheese Lasagna

I have never tried to make lasagna before even though it is one of my all time favorite things to eat. When I was a kid my mom would by the Stouffer's frozen lasagna and it was like heaven for me. On nights when the rest of the family was having pot pies, I would get the single serve size just for me. Heaven.
I have tried a few that were named "easy" or "quick" or "skillet" but there wasn't enough cheese or the noodles were dry and hard or some other problem. When I got my issue of "Kraft Food & Family" this month and saw the lasagna recipe I thought I would give it a whirl. I am very happy I did!
The Ingredients:

1 pound lean ground beef or turkey
1 onion, chopped
1 (8 oz) pkg Neufchatel cheese, softened
1 cup cottage cheese
8 oz shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1 egg, beaten
1 (24 oz) jar spaghetti sauce
1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried oregano
12 lasagna noodles, cooked

Perhaps the most important ingredient for almost any meal though is:

Moving on! Brown the meat and onion in a large skillet.

While that cooks, mix together the Neufchatel, cottage cheese, 1 1/2 cups mozzarella, 1/4 cup Parmesan and the egg until well blended.

When the meat is browned, drain any fat and stir in the sauce, tomatoes and oregano. Confession time: I was out of oregano so I used basil. Simmer for 5 minutes and remove from heat.

Spoon 1 cup of the meat sauce into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish.

Lay 3 noodles on top of sauce.

Spread 1 cup of the cheese mixture on top of the noodles.

Spread 1 cup of the meat sauce on top of the cheese layer.

Repeat layers twice more and end with a layer of noodles topped with the last of the sauce, remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

Spray the underside of a large piece of foil with cooking spray and place it on top of the lasagna.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, then remove foil and bake for 10 more minutes. I used my counter-top oven which I had set up on my washing machine in the laundry room. It was a very hot day and the thought of my oven on for over an hour was not a happy one. This way, my house stayed as cool as possible.

Let it sit for about 10 minutes before cutting and serving. We dug in before I snapped a picture but you can get the idea here.

It was cheesy and delicious!

More wine?