Bourbon-Pecan Bread

This recipe came in a booklet that I received along with a 4-chambered mini loaf pan from Southern Living magazine. I immediately hit on the name of this recipe and decided I would have to try it out in our Christmas baskets this year.
The Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter, cut into pieces
1 tsp grated orange peel (I didn't have any!)
1 cup chopped pecans, divided
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup Bourbon
1 large egg

Combine the first four ingredients and blend together. Cut butter into the dry mix until crumbly.

Add orange peel and 3/4 cup pecans.

Whisk together milk, bourbon and egg in a bowl.

Add to dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened.

Spoon batter into 4 greased and floured mini loaf pans.

Sprinkle tops with 1/4 cup pecans. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes the turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.

The recipe included a glaze for the top that due to mailing I couldn't use. You combine 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 2 to 4 tsp Bourbon until creamy and able to drizzle. Drizzle on top of loaves. Maybe this would have added a little more sweetness to the bread. It tastes great and you can really smell the bourbon. It just wasn't sweet enough for me. I hope the people we sent it to enjoyed it and I will for sure try out a new recipe before using it for gifts next time!

French Dip Roast with Round Steak

We recently bought half of a 2 year old bull that my parents had butchered. It has made my freezer look like this:

Fully half of the meat is hamburger and then there are several varieties of steaks including a whole mess of round steak. Round steak lends itself pretty well to low and slow cooking so I started looking for slow cooker recipes for it and came across this extremely easy one.

The Ingredients:

1 pound round steak
1 envelope Onion soup mix
1 can beef broth (or equivalent)
**I doubled this recipe**

First I trimmed the fat from the steaks and cut them into smaller pieces, about a serving size each. Sorry but I guess I didn't take a picture of them! Then you mix the rest of the ingredients in the slow cooker.

Place the meat into the broth mixture.

Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 but I recommend the low method. We served the meat with rice and the au jus is delicious so I made some French bread to soak it up with!

The Plans

I am quite certain that merely typing this out will cause some form of catastrophe to befall my house assuring that NONE of it will get done and I will be shamefully bereft of gifts to give our friends, neighbors and family members. But in order to make some attempt at accountability, I have to put it down somewhere. We'll just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best!
SO! The idea this year is to make an assortment of little loaves to give instead of a variety of cookies like in previous years. I got this cute little pan that makes 4 mini loaves at a time and I am going to break it in! I am planning to make two tried and true recipes and two brand new ones:
Cranberry Orange loaves
Pumpkin Quick Bread with pecan topping
Double Chocolate Loaf from Cookin' Canuck
Bourbon Pecan Bread from the cookbook that came with the little loaf pan.
After those are done, If I am still standing, I want to make the Peanut Butter Dog Treats from last year and some dipped pretzel rods. I'll probably mix up a big batch of Mocha Cappuccino Mix too. Last but not least I want to FINALLY get around to trying the Coffee Toffee Chex Mix recipe I have been sitting on since last Christmas. I have all the ingredients for it so let's hope it gets made!
I made a list of how much of every ingredients I would need to make three batches of each bread and bought all I could find of what I needed today. Now to clean the kitchen and organize it and set it up for a day of baking all I can tomorrow. Hopefully I will have everything done by Thursday so I can mail it out to those who live afar and it will be fresh when they get it.
If I need to bake more I will have the 26th to do it. I will for sure be baking some Amish friendship bread that day since my starter will be ready. I have a couple extra starters too so maybe I'll have enough to make a few loaves to take with us to Houston.
Typing all this out hasn't killed me so I think I can get it all done. Oh, man, did I just jinx myself?? *sigh*

Menu 12/17 - 12/22/2011

Well, the only thing from last week's menu that we actually had was the pizza! So this week there is just a repeat and a slight shuffle. I'm already off to a bad start though because we didn't have what I planned to have last night. I will make it for lunch today though because I felt horrible as I watched Jayme make himself a bologna sandwich to take to work for dinner. BAD WIFE!!
Sunday-- Hoppin' John
Monday-- French Dip Roast ( I will post recipe after taking pics)
Tuesday-- Chicken with Spaghetti
Wednesday-- Cheesy Potato Soup and Grilled Cheese
Thursday-- Breakfast, I am hoping my hubby will make his killer waffles!
I am planning to shop on Friday for our Christmas Eve and day menu so Thursday is as far as I planned this time. Lots of baking to do this week, wish me luck! and Health!!

Menu 12/10 - 12/16/2011

Menu time again! There was one thing last week we didn't have, Pumpkin Pancakes. I was too low on syrup. Luckily we had some leftovers and were able to cope. We have also had a sickly 11 year old with not much appetite :(  Hopefully this week will go more smoothly!

Saturday-- Leftovers
Sunday-- Tacos (my parents will be here!!)
Monday-- French Dip Roast (new one, not this one)
Tuesday-- Chicken with Spaghetti
Wednesday-- Cheesy Potato Soup and Grilled Cheese
Thursday-- Hoppin John
Friday-- Clay has a Christmas party to go to so I really think we'll order pizza! I'm kind of craving it. It's also the last day of school before Christmas break so we'll have to celebrate!!

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!!