Laura Peitz's Taco Cups

One day a few months ago while I was waiting in the doctor's office I saw a recipe in a magazine.  I memorized it and about a month ago, we tested it out.  The whole family loved it.  We used Pillsbury Whole Wheat biscuits and added black beans and it was yummy!


Laura Peitz's Taco Cups 

Ingredients

1/2 pound ground beef

2 tablespoons taco seasoning

1 can refrigerated flaky butter biscuits (Pillsbury® 12-ounces)

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded Sargento

Salsa

Sour Cream

Cooking Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large skillet, cook beef over medium-high heat until browned and crumbly; drain. Add taco seasoning to browned meat; stirring well to combine.

Place one biscuit into each of 10 cups of prepared muffin pan, patting biscuit dough gently up side of cup.

Spoon meat mixture on top of biscuit dough. Top with cheese. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with salsa and sour cream.

Auntie C's- Holiday Cookies

Growing up, my Aunt Cathy made these yummy and SUCH delicious cookies!  They didn't have a name, so we started calling them "auntie c's".  They are so good and so easy!  We make QUITE a few batches every year!  These cookies are the reason I gain weight at Christmas time!  I only want THOSE STUPID COOKIES!



Auntie C's 

1 box Ritz crackers
1 sm. jar peanut butter
1 pkg. milk chocolate bark 

Put generous amount of peanut butter between 2 Ritz crackers. Melt chocolate over low heat (add a little paraffin to help it set up).

Using fork, dip crackers in melted chocolate, covering both sides. Place on wax paper until chocolate sets up and can be removed from paper easily.

Mummy Dogs

I decided to get into the whole Halloween spirit this year and make these fun and creative "Mummy Dogs" for dinner one night.  They are SUPER easy!  I got the ingredients SUPER cheap by using coupons and searching for a sale on hot dogs and crescent rolls.  We probably fed a family of 4 on less than 3 dollars!

I also made "spider" cupcakes but I couldn't find legs for the spiders and the boys devoured the cupcakes before I got a picture!

Laura McCown's Deep Dish Apple Pie

Clara asked if I had a good apple pie recipe and she is in luck!  I do! I found this recipe in the Huntsville Heritage Cookbook that my grandmother gave me years ago.  I have found the best pie and biscuit recipes in this book.  This apple pie recipe is the quickest, easiest and yummiest pie I have ever had.  You will not be disappointed!

Slice 4-5 apples into a deep pie pan.  Sprinkle with 2/3 cup of brown sugar; dot with butter.  Sprinkle with nutmeg (I don't own any so I do cinnamon); add 4 tblspoons of water.  Make patties of 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup flour.  Cover top of pie with patties.  Bake 35 mins at 375 degrees.

I have noticed that if you use "fresh picked" apples, you don't always need as much water.  I have never NOT used the 4 tblspoons of water, but it has been a little too "watery" at times.... so maybe it just depends on the apple type.  We tend to pick a lot of fuji apples and I cook with them.

Enjoy!

Yummy! Yummy! Awesome Apple Bread!

If you don't already know, Hubbie and I met at Chick-fil-A while we were both in high school.  Hubbie was infatuated with me.  I was....well..... I did not like him at ALL.  He surprised me on Valentine's Day with a card and flowers.  I was so embarrassed.  I did not know how to let "this guy" down easily.  If you asked him, he'd say I lead him on and I did talk to him for a few months on the phone, but once I realized that he wasn't a "good guy", I decided to let him know that whatever "it" was, was over!  Thankfully for me, he went away to school, became a Christian and came back a different dude!  I was smitten when I saw the "new" dude.  During this time, I was still working at the chicken place and I chatted and became friends with a gal named Cristin.  She is one of the sweetest people I have ever met.  I actually told her once that I was considering dumping Hubbie and thankfully for him, my feeling changed and we got "serious" i.e. began to talk marriage, future, etc.  Its kinda fun to have a whole sleuth of people that had seen our relationship from the beginning- Hubbie liking me, me disliking Hubbie immensely and then me falling for Hubbie and Hubbie getting the girl.  We still have contact with quite a few of the people that saw the whole relationship and Cristin is one of them.

Through the wonderful world of Facebook, Cristin and I have gotten back in touch.  We both just had a baby and we both have 3 kiddos, so I feel like we are in the same boat- her new baby boy is only 2 weeks older than Baby Bean.  I wish she and I lived closer, but we plan to get our brood together one of these days since we don't live THAT far away!

Cristin published this recipe below on Facebook last weekend.  I saw it just in the nick of time.  My youngest brother made a quick trip to our favorite apple picking orchard and was kind enough to bring us back a 1/2 bushel!  Last Monday I made two batches of the Apple Bread and LET ME TELL YOU, it is awesome!  I have no clue where she found this recipe, but its a keeper!  I made two batches- 3 loaves and 12 muffins and I gave only one loaf away!  I had made a loaf for our next door neighbor in thanking them for the baby gift for Baby Bean, but Hubbie hadn't taken it over there yet, so I stole it!  I plan to make another double batch again on Monday and take 2 loaves to MOPS on Tuesday!  So, you MOPS gals, be prepared for awesome!

Apple Bread 
1 (3-pound) bag small apples
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans

Peel and finely chop enough apples to equal 3 cups. Set aside.

Stir together sugar and next 3 ingredients in a large bowl.

Stir together flour and next 3 ingredients; add to sugar mixture, stirring just until blended.
(Batter will be stiff.) Fold in finely chopped apples and 1 cup pecans.

Divide batter evenly between 2 greased and floured loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from pans, and cool on wire racks.

Can also be baked in muffin pans or 8-inch round cake pans.

We Love Pizza!

My family LOVES pizza! I think this is probably an understatement! We all could eat it at least twice a week, that is how much we love it. Here in our Georgia town, we have lots of good "local" pizza places, but, like everything, getting pizza out adds up.

Ever since we moved to Georgia, my mother has made homemade pizza. It was always a special night when mom made homemade pizza! Yum! It is so delicious! For years, after Hubbie and I got married, I made the same recipe. Once Peanut came along, I found it very difficult to make the same recipe. It takes a little thinking ahead and once Peanut came, my "thinking ahead" to dinner wasn't always there, so the search was on. I needed to find a quicker way of making pizza. I found this recipe and posted it here. That recipe was good and quicker than the family favorite, but still required a little thinking ahead! I don't know how many times we would plan to have pizza for dinner and I wouldn't get the dough made in time for its "rising period" and then we'd be wondering what to do for dinner. Most of the time, since we were set on pizza, we would order pizza. It is so much cheaper to make pizza. I'm not even sure how much it costs to make pizza at home, but unless you're going to Little Ceasars (which is $5 plus tax a pizza), you're not gonna get anywhere close to what we make it at home for.

So, I began searching again for a "no-rise" option of pizza crusts. I was really wary about trying a "no rise" or very little rise crust, but have been pleasantly surprised by this recipe-

1 tbsp yeast
1 1/4 cup of warm water
2 tbsp oil (we use olive oil)
3 1/2- 4 cups of flour
1 tsp salt

Disolve yeast in water. Add oil and salt. Stir in flour slowly. Rise 20 mins. Punch down dough. Separate. Will make two medium pizzas. Enjoy!

This recipe has been wonderful for our budget! If I've had a crazy day or all of the sudden decide that tonight needs to be a pizza night, I can make this dough and have the pizzas made in about a hour. I've been using this recipe since the beginning of the year and have not had one problem. There have been some days that at 4 o'clock I'll decide to make the dough and I just punch it down a few times until I'm ready to make the pizzas, but like I said, if I forget about dinner until 6, I make it then, let it rise 20 mins on my dryer and we have dinner!

We can usually make this recipe last our family two meals. We'll eat pizza with fruit one night and then for the leftover pizza we'll add these yummy breadsticks.

Note: I found this recipe somewhere online, my apologizes for not linking to it, but I have no clue where I got it from!

In the recipe above, I have never gotten 4 cups of flour in the dough. I usually use 1 cup of whole wheat flour and almost 2 cups of regular white flour. If you can get that much flour in it, great! If not, don't worry, it'll still turn out the same!

A New Recipe

A few weeks ago Mandy mentioned this book! I am all for saving money at the grocery store and spending less to feed my family good and healthy dinners! I quickly looked the book up on Amazon and decided their price was a little too steep for a book I hadn't ever looked at. I then went to Ebay and found the book for about $4.00! A steal! I bought it and got it within a week which was perfect timing because I was putting together my first ever once-a-month-grocery shopping list! You can read about it here.

So, I went through the book and dog-eared a couple of recipes that said their were cheap and yummy! This recipe below is one of the ones that I thought looked good. My favorite part about this recipe is that it includes things I already have on hand. I didn't have to buy "extra" ingredients in order to make this one-dish-meal! AWESOME, huh?!

The Texas Cowboy Pie was a hit! The family loved it! It was quick and easy and a good change from the typical "shepherd's pie"! Below is the recipe that I used, but it is pretty similar to that of the book...

Enjoy!

3 cups of already cooked, shredded beef (I used 1lb of browned, ground beef)
1 cup of frozen corn
1 cup of mild salsa
1/2 cup of sour cream

Mix all this together in a microwavable dish and cook on high for 4 mins. Then top with leftover mashed potatoes or instant potatoes. Since I had to cook the ground beef, I did all the above on the stove and let it simmer for a few minutes. Turn the broiler on, top the casserole with cheese and pop into the broiler to let the cheese get good and gooey! Eat and be happy!