Finally

Well, I finally finished typing out all of Grandma's recipes!

Next step: cook through all or most of them and take pictures of the final products. 

My mom and sister really think the cookbook needs pictures in it. I agree. I would rather have a cookbook with pictures in it than one without. 

Sweet Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

I LOVE PUMPKIN SEEDS!!!

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and thought I would try it out.

Sweet Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients

• 1 cup raw cleaned whole pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon white sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C).
2. Place the pumpkin seeds on a cookie sheet, and spread them out into a single layer. Roast until brown and crisp, about 45 minutes. Set the seeds aside in a large bowl.
3. Place the cinnamon, chili powder, and 1 teaspoon of sugar in a bowl, and set aside.
4. Place olive oil and 1 tablespoon of sugar in a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat, and heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar turns a light golden brown color. Watch it carefully to avoid burning.
5. Pour the caramelized sugar mixture over the roasted pumpkin seeds, and stir to coat. Pour the cinnamon-chili powder mixture over the seeds, and toss to coat the seeds with the spices.

I think I would add a little more chili powder and also some salt for a little extra flavor.

Grandma's Meatballs

I made this for my family on Christmas Eve. I need to figure out how to make the sauce a little thicker. But all in all they turned out pretty well.

Tomato Zucchini and Meatballs

¼ c. dried breadcrumbs, ½ lb beef or turkey, 1 eggs, ½ tsp pepper, 4 T Parmesan cheese. Form into meatballs. Fry 15 min. remove from pan. Fry 1 onion, 1 garlic clove chopped, cook 5 min. stir in 2 small zucchini sliced and 1 yellow squash sliced, 1 c. tomatoes, 1 c. tomatoes with juice, 1 tsp sugar, 2 T Parmesan cheese. Add meatballs. Coat till boiling, stir in basil, oregano, and garlic powder. Cook 20 min.

All-Day Apple Butter

I tried this recipe at school for our Apple day. It was very yummy.

5 1/2 lb. apples - peeled, cored and finely chopped

4 c. sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp salt

Place apples in a slow cooker. Combine sugar, cinnamon, cloves and salt; pour over apples and mix well. Cover and cook on high for 1 hour. Reduce heat to low; cover and cook for 9-11 hours or until thickened and dark brown, stirring occasionally (stir more frequently as it thickens to prevent sticking). Uncover and cook on low 1 hour longer. If desired, stir with a wire whisk until smooth. Spoon into freezer containers, leaving 1/2 in. headspace. Cover and refrigerate or freeze.

(found on allrecipes.com)

New Idea

So the Rachael Ray plan didn't work out for me. It was much too costly. So instead I'm going to try making recipes from my Grandma Bice. The last time I was in Wisconsin for a visit I worked at typing out her favorite recipes. They are all pretty short and sound really good. I'm still working at finishing typing it all. There are a lot of recipes! I think with these recipes I can afford to make them more often than the recipes by Rachael Ray.

So here it goes. Hope I get one up soon. And I hope that I can actually commit to this! :o) We'll see how it goes.

Food processor

I was so excited the other day to make a new Rachael Ray recipe. Bought all of the ingredients and went home to make it. Came to find out that I needed a food processor to make it.... Problem! I didn't have one. Grr. I was so frustrated! So instead of the whole mushroom burger thing I just made the pasta salad that I was supposed to make with it. The salad turned out really well. I loved it and had a ton of left-overs. :o) Yay for left-overs! Here is my "attempt to be artsy" picture.

Since then my parents gave me a Magic Bullet for my birthday. I love my Magic Bullet! It is my new favorite appliance. Mostly I make smoothies in the morning. They are so easy and yummy! I'll make another post about my favorite smoothies soon. Have a great weekend! (Yes, it is almost here!)

major fail!

Ok here is the big oops I made in cooking last week. I was making some spaghetti and Alfredo sauce (out of a jar) last week. Kinda boring to begin with so I thought I'd cook a chicken breast to make it a little more interesting. I pulled my bag of chicken breasts out of the freezer and checked the bag to see how I should cook it. That is when I discovered I could microwave it. Sweet!! Easy and fast! I followed the directions to a T and didn't really pay much attention to it. There was my big mistake! Here is the end result. :o)

yup...a very dry, very shrunken, very hard piece of chicken.

Sad times!! Wont' be doing that again. I have no idea how it went bad, but it went very bad. I think I'll stick with using the oven from now on when making chicken.