Soup and a Great Investment

Hearty Homemade Beef and Vegetable Soup 

1 lb ground beef

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 large onion

1 clove garlic (minced)

1 can kidney beans or pinto beans

2 cans (14 oz each) chicken broth - about 4 cups

1 can chopped italian tomatoes

1 can tomato paste

1 cup frozen corn

1 cup frozen peas

1/2 dried italian seasoning

Heat oil in a 4 1/2 quart Dutch oven or soup pot over Medium Heat.  Peel and coarsely chop the onion, adding it to the pot.  Add raw beef and brown.  Drain any fat.  

Add garlic.  Drain beans and add them with the broth, tomatoes (with the juice), tomato paste and 2 cups of water.  Raise the heat to HIGH and stir.  

Add corn, peas and seasoning.  Cover and cook until boiling.  Reduce heat, simmer 5 to7 minutes.  

Serve with warm cornbread or grilled cheese sandwiches!

Lu's take on this soup?  Its yummy!  I got this recipe out of my favorite cook book Cheap.  Fast.  Good!  By Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross..  This has got to be the best cookbook that I have ever seen!  So many good and cheap recipes!  Go here for another recipe from this book!

This soup is good, quick, easy and cheap!  All of my favorite words!  I do not use a garlic clove- just because I didn't have any the days I made this.  I never use a whole onion- I'm THAT cheap-and it was fine.  I also just use a bag of frozen mixed veggies instead of the individual bags of each type of veggie.  I love the fact that this recipe includes kidney beans!  Such a wonderful addition to this soup!  It adds more to the soup than just the typical veggies!  

Enjoy!  And go buy this book!!!!  :)  

Friends, Corn and Black Bean Salsa

The other day, my friend Ashley and I invaded Sharon's house for a photo shoot!  Sharon takes wonderful photos and she asked us to come over so that she could get some shots of our baby's hands and feet.  The morning turned into more of a photo shoot of cute baby bums and cloth diapers, but we had fun!

Sharon is such a wonderful host and had some wonderful assortment of healthy snacks!  I was so impressed!  She had a wonderful salsa out to eat with healthy chips (as she called them).  It looked so yummy!  By the time I went and looked at the snacks, it was close to lunch so I just grabbed a few carrots and a cracker, but I went home and told Hubbie about the salsa and decided to make it soon!

Well, I am such a foodie, I couldn't think of anything else that week, food wise, and had Hubbie get the ingredients for me that very night!  I finally made the salsa yesterday and man! it doesn't disappoint!

CORN AND BLACK BEAN SALSA

• 1 can white corn (drained)
• 1 can Rotel tomatoes (do not drain)
• 1 can diced tomatoes (drained)
• 1 can black beans (drained)
• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro…finely chopped
• Mix everything together in a bowl and let chill for a couple hours.  This salsa will keep in refrigerator for a few days.
  

I made cheese quesadillas and served them with sour cream, guacaomole and this salsa.  What yummy and cheap lunch!  

And since Sharon suggested marinating chicken breasts in this, that is exactly what I did for Sunday's lunch.  While I was getting the boy's breakfast, I got out the crockpot, sprayed it with PAM and then put a small amount of the salsa in the bottom of the pot.  Then I placed 4 small chicken breasts on top on the salsa.  I then poured a little bit more on top of the chicken breasts with the remainder of the liquid from the storage container.  I set on HIGH so that it would be ready in 4 hrs.  

Once we got home, I shredded the chicken breasts.  I took tortillas and we made burritos with some of the shredded chicken/salsa mixture, sour cream and cheese.  I wished that I had had some green peppers and onions.  It would have been so yummy in the burritos!  We ate these burritos with the other half of our yummy Wholly Guacamole and the remainder of the corn/black bean salsa!  

Thanks Sharon!  

Cheap Meals

I am all about being cheap.  My husband and I discovered recently that I do, in fact, squeak when I walk.  Nice to finally know at the "ripe" old age of 27 yrs old.

I wrote about my "snob meal" ways over at my main blog- Hyperactive Lu.  Take a gander!

Holiday Baking...

This year our motto was SIMPLE.  Sure does make Christmas less complicated to keep things simple and focused on the most important things.  So, since we were trying to keep things very simple and easy this year, we decided to cut down on the amount of baking that we did.  We made a favorite of ours that we LOVE and then a few new ones.

We really enjoyed trying a few new things and not making as much.....

This is what we made-

Rice Krispy bites.... for the life of me I cannot find the recipe to these... all I remember is melting a package of chocolate bark in the microwave, adding about 9 cups of rice krispies and then stiring until they were mixed together.  Then I spooned about a tlbspoon sized cookie onto waxed paper and let dry.  My handsome and sometimes-snobbish-about-my-baking-husband ate more of these than anyone else!  I think I ate one and the boys/husband finished off the rest!  So lets just say this was a big hit!

Oreo Truffles... OH MY GOODNESS!  Those things are divine!  Next year we are making two batches so we can give more out!  Everyone MUST have some of this goodness!

Auntie C's.... Our family favorite!  We cannot NOT make these... they are THAT good!

Chocolate Crinkles.... very good, but best warm and fresh!

PMS mix....  I know!  I know!  The name doesn't make any men folk want to try it, but it is really good!  It has all my favorites- pretzels, chocolate and butterscotch!

Puppy Chow aka Muddy Buddies.... this is, by far, my favorite snacky food.  I ate this A LOT while I was pregnant with Baby Bean.  Its all I craved for a while!!!  So good!

Our Christmas morning tradition is for Hubbie to make homemade cinnamons.  This is a treat, because they are so good and take some effort to make!  Here is the recipe for those.  This Christmas we had the pleasure of hosting my youngest brother, his wife and my parents for Christmas breakfast!  It was a lot of fun!  Mom made two breakfast casseroles.  Those were scrumptious!  And my sweet sister in law brought a large fruit salad!  It was so good to have a fruit salad!

Side note- if you haven't taken a look yet, I love this blog!  It has the best recipes!  We've made quite a few and everything is so good!  Check out The Sister's Cafe!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Ham Leftovers? Try This!

My handsome hubbie knows that I do not like to waste food at all, so when he saw the recipe (below) for a ham soup, he showed it to me!  I purchased a ham this year for our Christmas dinner and I try to get at least 3 or 4 meals out of a large piece of meat.  We ate ham with all the sides once and will have leftovers of that meal and then with all the leftover ham I made this soup.  Hubbie found it in the latest addition of Runner's World magazine- January 2010.

This Hearty Ham and White Bean Soup is very VERY tasty.  Don't let the name turn you off to trying this.  It does have cabbage in it and I will admit, that kinda scared me!  I decided to give it a try since the rest of the recipe sounded yummy.  It was super easy to make.  The thing that took the longest was chopping and washing the veggies.  Even my Peanut and Bubbie gobbled it up!

I paired the soup with some yummy 30 min rolls and man! what a yummy lunch on a cold winters day!

Enjoy!

1 tblspoon olive oil
1 sweet onion, diced into medium pieces
1 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
2 large carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and sliced thin
1/2 cabbage, cored, cut into bite sized pieces
12 oz lean ham steak, diced into small pieces
1 qt chicken stock
14.5 oz can of petite diced tomatoes
2 cans white beans, undrained
2 tblspoon fresh parsley, chopped

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a soup pot.  Add the onion, saute until soft and golden, about 5 mins.  Add the italian seasoning and saute until fragrant, about 1 minute.  Add the remaining ingredients, then bring to a full simmer, skimming any foam that rises to the surface.  Reduce heat to low, simmer gently until the vegetables are just cooked and flavors blended, about 15 mins.  Stir in parsley; cover and let stand 5 minutes.  Serves 6.

Calories per serving: 270  Carbs:  32 G  Protein:  22 G  Fat: 6 G  

A few notes- I did add a tiny bit of italian seasoning to the onions, but since I had a can of tomatoes seasoned with italian seasonings, I used that for the majority of my seasoning.  It was VERY tasty with that can of tomatoes.  Also, I don't normally buy carrot bunches.  I buy the large bags of baby carrots, so I just cut enough to make the soup colorful!  Probably 20-30 baby carrots!

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 1/2 pks. 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.