Santa Fe Taco Mac

While reading my friend's blog, A Nut in a Nutshell, I came across this recipe for Santa Fe Taco Mac.

We don't usually have Mexican dishes with pasta, so I thought this sounded different, yet yummy!

I decided to make it for dinner tonight, as well as share it with you.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef 1 can pinto beans 2 cups cheese (either mexican or cheddar) 1 container Santa Fe Blend Philadelphia Cooking Creme 1 16 oz pkg elbow macaroni 1 packet taco seasoning mix

Optional ingredients: Tortilla chips, jalapenos, salsa, sour cream, lettuce, tomato

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Brown ground beef and add taco seasoning mix. Set aside.

Boil macaroni as directed on package; drain. In a bowl, mix pasta, cooking creme, 1 cup shredded cheese, ground beef, and 1 cup rinsed and drained pinto beans.

Put mixture into large casserole dish and top with remaining cup of shredded cheese.

(If making a vegetarian version, you may want to add some chili powder for additional flavor.)

Bake covered for 20 to 30 minutes.

It was a hit! It will definitely be added to our regular menu.

*Southern Loving note: I added onions to my ground beef, and I used black beans instead of pinto, just because we like them better! As for the optional additions, we had sour cream, chips & salsa, and we had corn on the side.*

St Patty's Day

What are you cooking for St Patrick's Day?

We're not Irish, but I always like to make food from different cultures, and the holidays are the best time to do that.

So tonight, we're having corned beef & cabbage. I have a corned beef brisket in the crock pot, and when I get home I'll throw in cabbage, onions, and potatoes.

How about you? Are you Irish?

What are you making for St Patty's Day dinner?

WFD? Meatless Monday

*blowing away the dust*

I am totally neglecting this place lately!

I just have so much going on.
I thought I'd have so much more free time since I wasn't working....yeah, I was wrong!

Yesterday was Meatless Monday. Here's our menu:

In case you can't read it due to the glare, it says:

*Meatless Monday*
cheese tortellinis

green beans

garlic bread

-or-

yeast rolls

(also, the corner says "i love y'all", written by one of my teenager's BFFs)

I don't usually make two different types of bread, but Shelbie does not like garlic bread. How do you not like garlic bread?! I have to have garlic bread with Italian food, it just BEGS for it.

I just boiled the tortellinis and tossed them with olive oil & seasonings. Then I put a bowl of tomato sauce out for those who wanted it.

It was delish!

Do you ever participate in Meatless Monday?

Little Girl's Tea Party

This weekend, we celebrated my youngest daughter's 10th birthday with a Tea Party. It was so much fun! You can really do a lot on that theme, but we kept ours pretty simple.

I bought the tea cups & saucers at Goodwill. .59 cent for each cup, .29 cent for each saucer, and .59 cent for the creamer. You can't beat that! I also got a tea kettle there for 2.99. Love that place.

I originally planned to get PG Tips tea, which is imported from England, but they only had large boxes at our grocery store and they were $19.99. We settled for Bigelow for $3.69! We had sugar cubes for our tea, which the girls loved.

The menu was: cucumber sandwiches, egg salad on croissants, blueberry scones, sugar wafers, and an all-pink cake (strawberry cake with strawberry icing). I bought the scones at the supermarket bakery, they are delicious! For the cucumber sandwiches, I spread whipped cream cheese on the bread, sliced up the cucumbers very thin and laid them on, then cut off the crusts and cut the sandwiches into fours. The girls actually liked them!

{the cake is in a clear pan, not on the table....lol}

On the invitations, we requested that the girls dress "fancy". They all came in dresses. The girls all put makeup on each other before we had tea. The party was from 2pm-5pm, around the traditional English tea time.

I found lots of ideas online for this party, but lacked the funding to do a really elaborate spread. One idea I thought was cute was to get gloves and fake pearls for all of the girls and let them keep them as a souvenir. It would also be fun to get a bunch of fancy dresses, heels, hats, scarves, etc. from a thrift store and let them dress up after arrival. Musical chairs would be a fun game to play.

It was a GREAT theme party, we had so much fun, and I highly recommend it!

Mediterranean Dinner

If you don't have Publix stores where you live, you are really missing out.
They have these little Apron meal stations where they cook delicious dishes and then give out samples. The other day when we were there, the dish was Mediterranean Ribeye Steaks with Pierogies a la Vodka. The kids and I tried it and we loved it.

So tonight, I made it for dinner. It was super easy, and super yummy!

Here are the recipes.

Mediterranean Ribeye Steaks

Ingredients
3 cups fresh spinach leaves, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 lb boneless beef ribeye steaks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup pre-diced red onions
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 tablespoons sun-dried tomato pesto


Prep

• Chop spinach; place in microwave-safe bowl.

Steps

1. Cover spinach; microwave on HIGH 2–3 minutes or until tender. Drain thoroughly.
2. Preheat large sauté pan on medium 2–3 minutes. Cut steaks into 4 portions; sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper (wash hands). Place butter in pan, then add steaks and onions; cook steaks 5–6 minutes on each side or until 145°F (for medium-rare). Stir feta cheese, bread crumbs, and tomato pesto into spinach.
3. Spread 1/4 cup spinach mixture over top of steaks during last two minutes of steak cook time. Carefully turn steaks and spinach mixture over to heat topping; cook 1–2 more minutes or until golden and slightly crusty. Gently turn steaks over and serve.
   NOTE: This topping may also be browned, using an oven broiler.

Pierogies à la Vodka

Ingredients
1 (16-oz) package frozen potato/Cheddar pierogies
1 cup water
1 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 cups vodka pasta sauce
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 tablespoon shredded Parmesan cheese


Steps

1. Combine pierogies, water, and butter; cover and bring to boil on medium-high. Boil and stir 2–3 minutes.
2. Remove lid; boil and stir 1–2 more minutes or until most of liquid is absorbed.
3. Gently stir in pasta sauce; reduce heat to medium. Cook and stir 3–4 minutes or until hot and sauce begins to thicken. Stir in pine nuts and sprinkle with cheese; serve.

We had garlic toast with ours.

Note: I'm not being compensated in any way for this post; just sharing a good dish from my family to yours! =)

Scotch Eggs

My in-laws are British, and for holidays they always make Scotch eggs. I'd never had them before the first holiday I spent with them, and I was missing out! They are delicious and simple. I never tried to make them at home though, because I assumed they had to be deep-fried. (I very rarely fry anything, and I don't even own a deep fryer.)
But I decided to check it out, and many of the recipes call for them to be baked. I also learned that there are many variations of this recipe, but I chose a simple one and they turned out great. John and I had them for brunch on Sunday and then snacked on them throughout the day. They're great for breakfast, brunch, or a dish for a party. There are also many different sauce recipes to go with them, but we don't use any sauce on ours.

• 1 pound bulk pork sausage
• 6 hard cooked eggs
• 1 cup fine dry bread crumbs, purchased or home made, plain or seasoned
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 teaspoon prepared mustard

DIRECTIONS

On a sheet of waxed paper, divide sausage into 6 equal portions; wrap 1 portion around each egg. Roll each wrapped egg in bread crumbs. Beat egg with mustard and water; dip sausage-wrapped eggs in beaten egg mixture.

Roll in bread crumbs again;place on a rack in a shallow baking dish. Bake at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes or until browned, turning once during baking. Cut into halves lengthwise; serve hot with Dijon sauce or sauce of your choice. (or, no sauce at all!)

Asian Night!

It's time for another episode of
"Shoving Culture Down My Kids' Throats - Literally!"

Last night was Asian Night in the Dysfunctional household.
No recipes provided, because I made it from a bag from the frozen section! PF Chang's and Wanchai Ferry - both very good. We had orange chicken and General Chang's chicken & broccoli, and I also made Lo Mein noodles.

{dinner}

But the best part was, I made everyone eat with chopsticks!
They were skeptical at first, but they were good sports and got the hang of it almost immediately.

{Tim}

{Shelbie}

{Elayna}

{You'll notice we're very formal at the dinner table around here. The kids had just gotten out of the pool. Elayna's in her bathing suit, Tim didn't bother with a shirt, and Shelbie's got a towel on her head. Classy!}

We topped it all off with fortune cookies!

{Tim}

{Shelbie}

{Elayna}

{Apparently, it's "Take a totally unflattering picture of your mom stuffing her face" month. I must have missed the memo.
Purple neon seems to help a little!}

{Moi}


"Through food, we learned that there were other people in the world." Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Toad in the Hole

While surfing the internet the other night, I came across the mention of a dish called "Toad in the Hole". I saw that it was a traditional English dish, which caught my attention, so I decided to search for a recipe. I found this recipe on Simply Recipes, and made it last night.

Classic English Toad-in-the-Hole Recipe

Preparation time: 1 hour.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup of plain flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 lb of good-quality sausage (pork, turkey)
• salt and pepper

Method

1 Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F. Sift flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt and pepper. Make a well in the center of the flour. Whisk the eggs and the milk into the center of the well in the flour, gradually to smooth out lumps. Cover and let stand 30 minutes.

2 Brown the sausages in a little olive oil and cook through, about 10 minutes

3 Put sausages in a roasting pan, pour the batter over the sausages and place in oven. Cook for about 20 minutes or until the batter is risen and golden. Serve at once.

Serves 4-6

I didn't have any traditional UK sausage on hand, so I used Hillshire Farms smoked turkey sausage cut into small pieces. Also, I intended to double the recipe, but I didn't have enough flour. I did double the sausage.

Here are a few pictures:

{mmm, fresh corn on the cob from the produce stand!}

{please ignore the stupid hard water stains on my pan
from the dishwasher of the old house...grrr!}

I will definitely be sure to have enough flour to double it next time because there wasn't enough of the biscuit mixture, but it was still very good! The kids enjoyed it.
Nobody seems to know why it's called "Toad in the Hole", but next time I make it, I I think I'm going to make it in a muffin tin, with smaller chunks of sausage. Then it will really look like a toad, popping its head out of a hole!

St Patrick's Day Dinner

I'm not Irish, and not a big St Patrick's Day celebrator, but I wanted to do something fun for the kiddos for our St Patrick's Day dinner. I did the traditional corned beef and cabbage (which was delicious!), and as a surprise, I added neon green food coloring to our cornbread. It was very green! We also had green Kool-aid to drink, which was a treat because I usually don't do Kool-aid at all (mean mama).

This is the Kool-Aid, and the cornbread before baking.

the cooked cornbread...

Andrew's plate. YUM!

What did you do for your St Patty's Day dinner?

Star Fruit

In my quest to get my kids to try new & different things, I picked up a star fruit at the grocery store.
Here are the results of this taste test:

Elayna (9 yr old): said it tasted like grass. I asked her how she knew this; has she ate grass? And she said that she has, many times. Alrighty then.
Andrew (10 yr old): loved it. He's never met a fruit he didn't love.
Shelbie (14 yr old): refused to taste it. Spoilsport!

At least I got some cute pictures out of it!

{I so love picnik.com! }

True English Food

As I've blogged about before, I'm trying to introduce more foods from various cultures to my kids. Or, as I like to call it....

Shoving culture down my kids' throats....literally!

So anyway. This weekend, John and I were in St Augustine. We had a lovely romantic Valentine's Weekend there. While wandering around the historic district, we found a restaurant called The Prince of Wales Restaurant: A Taste of England. We knew we had to go; John's family is from England and he was raised on true English/UK food. Unfortunately when his family prepares English food now, it's rarely the dishes that he likes. (parsnips, ugh!!)
So, we had our Valentine's Dinner at The Prince of Wales restaurant.
Our starter was a Chip Butty. What's that, you ask? A french fry sandwich. And I am not kidding. Buttered bun with french fries covered with cheese in the middle. Carb-o-licious.

John ordered the fish and chips. Fried cod with french fries, for us Americans. His fish was ginormous!



I ordered bangers & mash, which is sausage over mashed potatoes with onion gravy. It also came with corn and steamed carrots.
It.was.delicious!!! So good I decided to make some at home the next day.

Our small country grocery store has a British section. One of our neighbors is from England, and she convinced them to start carrying some traditional UK foods, like PG Tips tea, sausage rolls, spotted dick, flake chocolate....so, I found Scottish bangers there. They had Irish bangers also, which I'd like to try next time.
Mine wasn't as good as my dinner at The Prince of Wales, but it was still very tasty...and the kids liked it too!
If you're ever in St. Augustine, Florida, I highly recommend The Prince of Wales Restaurant...we can't wait to go back and try some of their other dishes!