My Contributions to Thanksgiving Dinner and a Couple Confessions

18 November, 20134 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 13 Comments

I have a confession to make……I don’t like turkey. There,… I said it. Let me be clear though, I don’t HATE turkey, I just don’t favor it. I can eat it, especially in a casserole or on a sandwich. But when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, I want a big fat plate full of stuffing, a couple servings of salad, and then some more stuffing. Of course this is all after I have grazed on the veggie trays, fruit trays, deviled eggs, olives, and array of other “appetizers” that will be laying out on the counter before the turkey gets done. Needless to say by the time dinner is over I will be miserable and useless…..but I don’t think I’m alone here.

So, here are my non turkey contributions to Thanksgiving dinner this year. 🙂

Last week I shared a recipe for homemade thousand island dressing and promised to share my grandma’s special green salad to serve with it.

Just add some baby shrimp, a little crab meat, and some sliced olives to your greens.

Serve it with the homemade thousand island and…who needs turkey!?

At most family functions I bring the deviled eggs. Not because mine are exceptional or better than others, it’s simply because I HAVE TOO MANY EGGS! (Well,… and mine are fresh!) So that’s my second addition to Thanksgiving dinner.

Note: If you also have nice fresh eggs and have a difficult time peeling them, click here to read my little “trick” on how to cook and easily peel farm fresh eggs. 🙂

My next contribution is an easy appetizer…maybe my favorite appetizer. I call them asparagus wraps.

They are simply softened cream cheese spread on a thin slice of ham wrapped around pickled asparagus….and they are DELICIOUS!

Last Thanksgiving I ran out of time and instead of making these ahead of time I took the supplies and made them after I got to my parents. They disappeared just as fast as I could make them.

Now for my next confession…..I’ve never made pumpkin pie. Actually I’ve only ever made one pie in my entire life and that was an apple pie. It was about ten years ago and it turned out kinda weird?? So this Thanksgiving I have decided to try my first ever pumpkin pie! I’ll be sure to take pictures and let you know how it turns out.

I am sooooo thankful that my parents now have a large, conveniently located house that is perfect for large family gatherings. This has not always been the case, and Thanksgiving dinners took place at our house. I think squished and crazy would be the best words to describe those gatherings. As I shared, turkey is not my favorite meal and therefore cooking one is not my idea of fun. The last Thanksgiving we hosted, I spent my morning rushing around cleaning, opening doors and windows to fan the smoke out from the ran over turkey drippings. Oh, and meanwhile Digger was in the bathroom with a small blow torch trying to melt the spilled wax out of the sink (but that’s a story for another post). I am much happier to make my additions to dinner at home, pack them in a cooler, and leave my messy house. Then I can enjoy a wonderful meal with our awesome (and large) family at my parents house….and I’m sure my moms home grown turkey will be wonderful…under tons of stuffing and gravy!

What are your contributions to Thanksgiving dinner? Do you have the privilege of hosting and cooking the turkey? If so, my prayers are with you. 😉

“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.” Psalms 107:1

Easy Homemade Thousand Island Dressing

11 November, 20134 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 10 Comments

It’s November (just in case you weren’t aware), and when I start thinking about Thanksgiving dinner, I start thinking about this salad dressing. It’s a recipe I got from my grandma many moons ago. It’s so simple, DELICIOUS, and paired with my grandma’s special green salad, I wouldn’t want to have a Thanksgiving dinner without it!

All you need is mayo, chili sauce or ketchup, sweet relish, and one hard boiled egg.

I used organic ketchup and I found a sweet relish that didn’t have corn syrup. Stir everything together and that’s it!

Now you’re wondering what my grandma’s special green salad is….that will be coming next week! 🙂 Have you started thinking about Thanksgiving dinner yet?

5.0 from 3 reviews

Easy Homemade Thousand Island Dressing

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide

Ingredients

½ cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons chili sauce or ketchup
½ cup sweet relish
1 hard-boiled egg, diced

Instructions

Stir together all the ingredients and use on your favorite green salad or for a veggie dip.

Easy Slow Cooker Applesauce With a Twist!

20 October, 20134 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 12 Comments

My mom picked up two boxes of apples for me the other day and now it’s Saturday and I have time to deal with them!!

5.0 from 2 reviews

Easy Slow Cooker Applesauce With a Twist!

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide

Ingredients

apples
pumpkin pie spice

Instructions

Peel and slice enough apples to fill your slow cooker. Sprinkle 1 to 2 tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice on the apples and cook them for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low. Let it cool off a bit and blend smooth with an immersion blender. My 6 quart crock pot made 8 cups of applesauce.

I made slow cooker applesauce last month and ABSOLUTELY loved it! So I knew that was where most of these apples would end up. The rest are being dried, eaten in lunches, and maybe I’ll make some apple cake.

I said this was easy and I do mean EASY. I peeled and sliced enough apples to fill my 6 quart slow cooker to almost over flowing.

Now for the twist….. I’ve been looking for more ways to use my homemade pumpkin pie spice mix so I added somewhere between 1 and 2 tablespoons to the crock pot and turned it on high for 4 hours (on low for 8 to 9 hours works too). Oh how I wish you could have smelled the aroma coming from my crock pot! After 4 hours I stirred up the apples and let them cool for a bit. If you like your applesauce a little lumpy you can leave it as is or you can blend it for a smooth consistency. It took about 30 seconds with an immersion blender. That’s it….I ended up with about 8 cups of wonderful, fall flavored applesauce, no sugar needed!

We eat most of this as fast as I can make it, but if you want you could freeze or can your applesauce for later. 🙂

Pumpkin Chip Bread or Muffins

13 October, 20134 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 12 Comments

Here is the first recipe I’m sharing that uses my homemade pumpkin pie spice mix. This is so perfect for a cool fall day, and as a bonus it will make your house smell like fall too!

5.0 from 1 reviews

Pumpkin Chip Bread or Muffins

Author: Queen Of The Red Doublewide

Recipe type: Quick Bread

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin puree
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
¼ cup plain Greek yogurt
¾ cup butter - melted
1 cup all purpose flour
⅔ cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix
1 cup chocolate chips plus ¼ cup for sprinkling on top

Instructions

In a mixer or large bowl combine the pumpkin, vanilla, eggs, butter and yogurt. In a separate bowl stir together flours, sugar, salt, baking powder & soda, and Pumpkin Pie Spice mix. Pour dry ingredients into the mixer and blend well. Fold in the 1 cup of chocolate chips. Grease a loaf pan, pour batter in and sprinkle remaining chocolate chips on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 to 75 minutes.

Note: If you don’t have plain yogurt you could substitute sour cream and you could also substitute apple sauce for the butter. I used organic sugar but sucanat would also work. I also used a little less sugar and chocolate chips and it was still yummy, yummy!

Instead of bread you can make muffins. These are the jumbo muffins and they took about 30 minutes to get done. The smaller regular size muffins take about 20 minutes. Be sure to grease your muffin tins and fill them about 2/3 full…..yummm!

This recipes was adapted from: Java Cupcake

Homemade Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix

2 October, 20133 January, 2018 ~ Grace ~ 24 Comments

This recipe has been moved to our new blog! SufficientAcres.com

Click here or on the picture below to take you to the recipe.

Baked Whole Wheat Pancakes

25 September, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 13 Comments

One of my sisters sent me a baked pancake recipe the other day via Pinterest. What a brilliant idea!! As I mentioned before in my German Puff Pancake post I really dislike standing at the oven flipping pancakes FOREVER….while half of the family eats and the other half waits for a pancake. There are times though that you just need a good ol’ fluffy pancake and we’ve been loving my Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancake recipe. As I slowly bounced this idea of baked pancakes around in my brain…I thought, why can’t I bake my own pancake recipe? That would be the best of both worlds, a pancake that I already know we like and no flipping or waiting involved. 🙂

So I mixed up a batch of Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancakes.

Poured the batter into a greased 13X9 inch pan.

Baked it at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

This got a thumbs up from everyone around here, including Uncle Tom. 😀

Homemade Spiced Pear Butter

18 September, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 11 Comments

I’m a big fan of apple butter, so when I had a box of pears that needed to be used up quickly, pear butter kept coming to mind. I looked up some recipes and then mixed, matched, and tweaked until I had a recipe I was happy with. I have never made apple OR pear butter before and I was a bit skeptical at first. But when I smelled that pot of yummyness bubbling on my stove I knew I had a winner!!

First peel and cut up 8 pounds of pears. This was about 16 medium sized pears.

Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan to keep them from sticking. About 1/2 a cup. Cook on medium heat until they are soft, about 30 minutes.

Let the soft pears cool off a bit and then blend until you have a smooth consistency. You could use a stick blender or a regular blender.

When you have a nice smooth “pear sauce” add the sugar, orange zest, nutmeg, orange juice, and almond extract. Cook on medium heat until it reaches your desired thickness, stir often so it doesn’t stick to the pan. It will take about an hour. I let it cool then ladled it into clean pint size mason jars and put them in the freezer.

To can it: Ladle hot pear butter into sterile jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal with lids and rings. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes to seal. This made a little over 4 pints. The recipe could easily be doubled or cut in half.

NOTE: This recipe uses about half the amount of sugar that all the other recipes for pear butter call for. It was PLENTY sweet for us but you could add more if you like. The only thing I will do differently next time is cook it for longer, I would prefer it to be a bit thicker.

Pear Smoothies – A Healthy Fall Treat!

8 September, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 33 Comments

Fall is in the air!

On our way home from a shopping trip my mom and I stopped at a fruit stand. Everything looked soooo good (I love this time of year)! After some debating I settled on a box of pears and a box of apples. The pears were really ripe and by the next morning I thought the fruit flies were going to pick up my kitchen and fly away. I quickly started a big batch of pear butter (I’ll share that recipe later) and then I froze a bunch to use in future smoothies. What was left, nicely fit in the fridge and we are still enjoying fresh pears and fall smoothies. After putting up a couple fly strips, my kitchen is now (mostly) fly free again!

Here are two wonderful, healthy fall smoothies!

Cinnamon Pear Smoothie

All you need is: 2 pears (cored and quartered) – 1 frozen banana (cut into pieces) – 1 cup of milk (any kind) – 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt – 1/2 cup oatmeal – 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon – a pinch of nutmeg.

Put everything in a blender and puree until nice and smooth. This makes enough for 3 of us to have a nice size smoothie.

Apple and Pear Smoothie

You will need: 1 ripe pear (cored and quartered) – 2 apples (cored, peeled and cut into pieces) – 1 frozen banana (peeled & cut into pieces) – 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt – 1/2 cup of apple juice – 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Throw it all in the blender and puree until smooth.

These make a healthy breakfast or snack….it’s like fall in a cup!

The Queen Of The Red Double Wide adapted these recipes from: AllRecipes.com and Good Food Channel

Easy Fresh Green Bean Recipes

21 August, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 21 Comments

Green beans, green beans, green beans every where. I have planted green beans many, many times, but never have they tasted so good or been so abundant! (it must have been those heirloom seeds?) We pick them about every three days trying to keep up with them.

All these green beans have let me get acquainted with my brand new pressure cooker!

So far I have canned 20 pints and 14 quarts. I’m thinking that will get us through an entire year, especially since Digger isn’t fond of canned green beans. I have given some away to friends and family and the rest we have been enjoying with dinner.

Here are 2 super tasty ways to EASILY add fresh green beans to your dinner.

First find a REALLY cute niece to help you snap the beans. 🙂

Bean snappen — She took her bean snappin job VERY seriously!

If you don’t have one of these (my sympathies) it CAN be done alone, BUT it is very boring.

After the beans are snapped and you have picked up all the beans off the floor and cut all the little teeth marks off of them, give them a good washing! (I told you, not boring with a cute helper)

Grease a cookie sheet and place as many snapped and washed beans as your family will eat for dinner on the cookie sheet. Drizzle with some olive oil and sprinkle sea salt and freshly ground pepper on the top. Place in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. This is soooo easy and so yummy!

The next recipe is my favorite because it involves BACON!

You will need fresh snapped and washed green beans, bacon, and a small onion.

Chop up the bacon (I used 6 slices) and fry it until crispy. Place the bacon on a paper towel to drain, leave the bacon fat in the pan and add the onion and green beans (about 4 cups). I used half of a LARGE onion I bought from our neighbors at the farmers market….wow! Let them saute in the bacon grease for a few minutes, stirring often. When they are done to your liking, drain excess liquid then add the bacon back in and stir. Add Salt and pepper to taste.

That’s it; deeeelicious! I ate this for lunch yesterday…well not ALL of it, I shared a little with the girls. 🙂 Digger who won’t touch a green bean out of a can will happily eat either of these easy fresh green bean recipes!

Happy snappin everyone!

Award Winning Chocolate Chunk Brownies

14 August, 20132 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 31 Comments

In the past I have tried to share only recipes that are on the healthier side…this is not one of those! I feel compelled to share it with you though, because they REALLY are award winning brownies (not to mention easy and delicious).

In 2009 when Little Chef was 6 years old I asked her if she wanted to make some cookies and enter them into the fair. She said “no, I want to make brownies”. So we found a brownie recipe that looked easy enough for a six year old and she went to work (with a little help from mom). That year she brought home the huge purple “Top Of Show” ribbon. Over the past four years that recipe has become our “go to” dessert. If I need a dessert quickly this is the recipe I grab. I usually grab my daughter too and have her make them! (lots of grabbing going on, sorry) She never says no to making “her” brownies. 😉 So when her 4-H leader told us about “Food Activity Day” the natural recipe of choice was………..you guessed it, Chocolate Chunk Brownies. On food activity day the kids pick a recipe and bring everything they need to prepare that recipe (or meal). They set to work while the judge watches. When they are done and the kitchen is clean they get to share their food with the judge and answer any questions they have. My daughter was so excited about this day, and she had soooo much fun! She was asking if she could do it again next year before they even handed out the awards. 😀 She received reserve champion in the Junior class for her brownies and brought home another purple ribbon and a blue ribbon!

They are soooo soft, gooey, and chocolaty rich, and they just melt in your mouth!

5.0 from 2 reviews

Award Winning Chocolate Chunk Brownies

Author: Little Chef adapted this recipe from the Pillsbury Best Cookies Cookbook

Recipe type: Dessert

Ingredients

1 cup butter - melted
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs - slightly beaten
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup simi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

In a large bowl add the sugar, vanilla, and eggs to the warm melted butter and blend well. Add flour, cocoa and salt; mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour into a greased 13X9-inch pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes or until set. Let cool for at least 1 hour or until completely cooled before cutting into bars.

As you can see this is not a healthy recipe but definitely worth sharing. 🙂 Well….maybe I just wanted to brag about my Little Chef, that’s not so little any more.