At home does not always mean homemade

If this is going to be an honest blog about what really gets cooked over here at the Drosche house, I need to lay all my cupboards bare.  :)  Yesterday for dinner, it was one of those get food on the table in 30 minutes or less kind of nights; I know you have them too.  I had leftover spaghetti and meatballs in the fridge and some hunks of leftover pot roast.  Spaghetti did not sound good at all.  So I grabbed the leftover pot roast, shredded it, threw it in a saucepan and flavored it up with a bottle of barbeque sauce from the pantry.  I know, I know, I could make a homemade sauce and it would probably be uber delicious, but it was definitely a get it done and get-to-the-table kind of night.  I cringed as I read the first ingredient on the label of the barbeque sauce which was high fructose corn syrup, but then I thought about what the first ingredient in McDonald's chicken nuggets might be and I let it go. So just a few minutes later, with barbeque beef on the buns, some frozen french fries (gasp), and apple slices on the plate, our family was sitting down to eat.  The truth is that I'm not going to be able to make everything from scratch everyday; it's just never going to happen.  So I'm going to be honest about these quick, throw-together meals that hit the menu (whether planned or unplanned) here at the Drosche house.  Maybe they'll help you in your get dinner to the table on those 30 minutes or less kind of nights.

Chocolate glaze

My mom has been out of town for the last week, dropping my little brother off at college in Nebraska.  My brother, Adam, is nine years younger than me, and I love him so much!  He was accepted this fall into the business program at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.  He's going to do a fantastic job, but we're all going to miss his, ah wit and charm, so very much.  To welcome mom back, we picked her up from the airport and had a delicious dinner ready for her.

We tried out a new chili recipe (post coming later) and made a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Yummo!  Yellow cake with chocolate frosting is my absolute favorite.  But truth be told, the cake came from a box, but I still count it as homemade because I had to mix and bake it myself.  :)  I didn't want a ton of big, puffy, chocolate frosting so I went searching for a simple chocolate glaze to cover the cake.  This recipe came together so easily and was super delicious!!!


Ingredients:
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation Instructions:

1. In a double boiler over hot, but not boiling water, combine chocolate chips, butter, and corn syrup. Stir until chips are melted and mixture is smooth. Remove from heat.  Then add vanilla.
2. Spread warm glaze over top of cake, letting it drizzle down the sides. 
3. Add sprinkles!!!  Because no cake is complete without sprinkles.  :)
4. Hide from your husband - mine kept trying to convince me to cut him a slice of the cake before dinner so that he could assure quality control.

From an All Recipes recipe found here:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/satiny-chocolate-glaze/detail.aspx

New Year's Resolutions

Ok - to be perfectly honest, I'm not a huge New Year's fan.  I don't like to stay up late.  I'm terrified of sparklers.  And I hate making New Year's resolutions.  But, I totally appreciate setting achievable goals and well, Dusty's been bugging me about them so I guess I'll jump on the band wagon.  :)  My cooking, grocery shopping, and budget-maintaining responsibilities in my house give me a ton of satisfaction so I'm going to center my goals around that. 

1. Try a new recipe each week.  I like routines and predictability but sometime that means that the food at our house can get boring.  I can get new cookbooks on my Nook super cheap and I've found a ton of other food blogs that I love (Pioneer Woman, Two Peas and their Pod, and Taking on Magazines one Recipe at a Time to name a few).  I'm going to set a goal to try a new recipe each week.
2. Have a plan.  Although I try to be organized, sometimes I totally miss the mark (we all do, right?).  Either I haven't planned meals for the week, or thawed out meat, or scheduled my time well.  I going to set a goal to write out a meal plan each week on Saturday and get organized for the coming week so that meal time isn't stressful and I'm totally organized.   
3. Eat out less.  I really want to eat out less.  Nothing against eating out, but we usually fall back to fast-food or kid-friendly restaurants when I don't have a plan.  If we're going to eat out, I want it to be for a special occasion not because I didn't have my act together.  So for this year, I really want to keep the eating out to once a month or less.  
4. Use coupons.  Coupons are like free money.  Yes, it takes some organization and little bit of extra effort, but the savings can add up super fast.  We are already staying away from the boxed/prepared foods (think inside aisles of the grocery store) and I know a lot of coupons are for those items.  But there are a ton of great coupons out there for cleaning and paper products, meat, cheese, fresh produce, and health and hygiene items.  I know some people the can figure out these deals on their own but the Grocery Game (check out the link below) makes it super easy for me.  I'm going to set a goal to keep up with the Grocery Game for the entire year (sometimes I get lazy and jump off the coupon train) and keep track of my savings.  

Alright, I think those are four great and achievable goals.  And I'll keep you posted through the year on how it's going.  :)  Oh, and Happy New Year everyone!!!!

Cutie Beef

Jackson, my youngest son, is totally enthralled by the Cutie orange commercials.  He insisted that I buy them for him at the grocery store because they are made for kids and he is a kid and so he needed them.  Since he was asking for a healthy snack, I totally gave in and bought some.  (Plus, they are on a crazy good sale right now at HEB and I had a coupon!)  Of course, as soon as we got home, he took one bite of one section and decided that cuties were not for him.  The baby and I have been tearing them up though, so yummy!

I started up on E-Mealz again (and Grocery Gaming).  Links for both sites are listed on the blog here, but combined they make my life so easy.  Grocery Game is a great way to match coupons and store sales to save a TON of money on food.  E-Mealz recently came out with a new Natural/Organic plan that features easy-to-make recipes without using a lot of processed or canned/boxed products.  So, I'm using E-Mealz to help plan meals for the family while using Grocery Game to stock our house with healthy food super cheap.  It's a good plan.  :)  Tonight's meal, Cutie Beef, is an adaptation of an E-Mealz recipe with items that I had on hand already through my stockpile by doing the Grocery Game.

Long story short...  this was a super yummy meal that we all enjoyed!  It marinated overnight and was quick to prepare.  The kiddos ate it deconstructed, as we like to say here, and we enjoyed it with the beef over rice with the pan sauce.  You really have to try this meal, yum-yum!

Ingredients:
(for the marinade)
1 cutie orange, zested and juiced 
 4 green onions, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1" of fresh ginger, grated using a microplane
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tablespoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons of sugar
red pepper flakes to taste
3 thin-cut, lean beef steaks (a little more than 1 lb of beef)
(for the pan sauce)
2 Tablespoons of orange marmalade

Preparation Instructions:

1. In a small bowl, combine the ingredients for the marinade, Cutie orange zest and juice, green onions, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and red pepper flakes.  Whisk together.  Place thin steaks in a baking dish.  Pour the marinade over the beef, cover dish, and place in refridgerator overnight.
2. Place a cast iron skillet on medium-high heat.  Add one Tablespoon of butter to the pan.  (Reserve the marinade.)  Cook steaks until medium rare, just about 4-5 minutes on each side.  Remove beef to a cutting board and allow it to rest for 10-15 minutes.  Tent with aluminum foil.
3. Add the reserved marinade to the pan, scraping up the pan drippings.  Allow it to come to a boil and thicken slightly.  Add two Tablespoons of orange marmalade and allow the sauce to come together.  
4. We served our Cutie beef with cooked white rice and steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. 

Weekend Waffles

After much nagging from Dusty over our Christmas vacation (love you honey!), I'm once-again writing for my blog.  :)  There hasn't been a lot of cooking in our house during the last part of 2011.  Just a month after my shoulder surgery in September, Dusty and I found out that we had a baby on board.  Drosche #3 is due in June 2012 and since then I've struggled with morning (noon & night) sickness.  We've eaten a lot of boxed, already prepared, and fast food.  But it slowly starting to get better and I'm looking forward to cooking again and resurrecting the blog.  :)

So, onto a new and exciting post...  I love big breakfasts! During the week, I have a list of quick and healthy breakfasts for me and the kiddos posted on the side of the fridge, things like yogurt, cheese sticks, toast and peanut butter.  Lots of things that we can just grab and go.  But on the weekends, I like to do breakfast up right.  This morning, we had the cousins over for a sleepover and so with three extra mouths to feed, I knew my go-to waffle recipe would be awesome.  We're trying to cut out a lot of the processed, boxed/canned foods and so a few weeks ago, I found this waffle recipe.  It's super easy and if you double it, you'll have plenty of leftovers to freeze.  And the best part is that you can pop them in your toaster or microwave just like an eggo during the week.  So this is written as my doubled recipe which will make a TON of waffles, but you can always half it if you don't want all of the leftovers.  And fear not, I know there's a lot of powdered sugar on those waffles in the picture, they are sweet enough, I just like my waffles almost like desert.  :)

Ingredients:
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup white sugar
4 eggs
3 cups buttermilk (regular milk can be substituted but I love the tang this provides)
2/3 cup butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preparation Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder and sugar.  Set aside. 
2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Stir in the buttermilk, butter and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture; beat until blended.
3. Preheat your waffle iron.
4. Ladle the batter into a preheated waffle iron. Cook the waffles until golden and crisp. Serve immediately. 
5. If you are going to freeze the leftover waffles, allow them to cool completely.  Then stack between layers of wax paper in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag.  

Adapted from a recipe posted on All Recipes:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/classic-waffles/detail.aspx 

Greek "Spanakopita" Spaghetti and Meatballs

My boys LOVE, LOVE, LOVE pasta.  They really don't care how it comes as long as it involves pasta.  However, they have a strong aversion to anything green.  So when I stumbled upon this recipe for a Greek-style pasta dish and I just had to try it, even if it had a lot of green.  I think what drew me in was the Feta cheese.  You see I've discovered this new love affair with Feta.  I'm not quite sure what kicked it off but we've been putting Feta deliciousness on just about everything coming out of our kitchen for the past week.  Creamy, salty, tangy, yumminess!!!

So tonight, I nervously prepped all of the ingredients for this new dish.  I rarely make homemade meatballs and I had never made a creamy pasta dish on my own before.  I have to say if you get all of the prep work done ahead of time, this recipe is a breeze!  From start to finish it was about a 45 minute dish, which probably could have been faster if I wasn't so nervous.  :)

I promise you that this recipe will not disappoint!  And if you have picky kiddos, you might be surprised by how much spinach they will willingly eat when it is surrounded by pasta.  Enjoy - and let me know what you think!

Ingredients:
For the meatballs:
1 lb of ground lean ground beef
1 Tbs of lemon juice
2 cloves of garlic - grated
1/2 Tbs of fresh mint minced
1/2 tsp of dried oregano
1/2 tsp of red chili flakes
1/4 cup of bread crumbs
2 Tbs of milk
salt and pepper to taste  

For the Pasta Sauce:
1/2 medium onion chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic - grated
1 cup of milk (whole)
1 cup of chicken broth 
1 Tbs of fresh mint minced
1 tsp of dried oregano
1 tsp red chili flakes (or to taste) 4oz of crumbled Feta
4oz of onion and chive cream cheese 
1lb of frozen spinach (thawed and squeezed) 

Preparation Instructions:

1. Cook 1 lb of pasta according to instructions.  Cook just shy of done since pasta will cook more in the sauce.  Reserve 1 cup of pasta water in case it is needed for the sauce. 
2. Mix ingredients for meatballs - beef, lemon juice, garlic, mint, oregano, red chili flakes, bread crumbs, milk, salt, & pepper.  Shape into meatballs and cook in a large skillet with 1 Tbs of vegetable oil.  When meatballs are browned, removed from skillet to a plate.  
3. With the remaining oil and drippings from cooking the meatballs, saute onion.  When onions are softened, add garlic and cook for another minute.  
4. Next, create the sauce for the pasta dish by adding the milk, chicken broth, mint, oregano, chili flakes, Feta, and cream cheese to the onion & garlic mixture in the skillet.  Cook, over medium heat, until the Feta and cream cheese have melted into the sauce.  Add the meatballs and any drippings from the plate where they were reserved.  And finally, add the spinach and then taste for seasoning.  Adjust the salt and pepper if needed.
5. Finally, add the cooked pasta to the sauce.  If needed, thin the sauce with the reserved pasta water. 
 

Adapted from Curry and Comfort post found here:  

http://curryandcomfort.blogspot.com/2011/09/greek-spanakopita-spaghetti-and.html

Pear & Blue Cheese salad

Well, the school year got off to a fantastic start.  However, on the fourth day of school, I dislocated my shoulder.  Yes, you read that right, on just the FOURTH DAY OF SCHOOL!!!  In the process of dislocating it, I tore the ligaments from the bone of the front of my shoulder, some from the back of my shoulder, fractured the back side of my socket, and lengthened the ligaments in the joint.  I've since had surgery to correct it and will start physical therapy next month.  It's been an incredibly frustrating process and I'm dealing with doing things with just one arm.  But I've been blessed by tremendous support from my family and my work family.  :)  So my cooking for now is extremely limited but we are still eating home-cooked, wholesome meals.  It may not be fancy, but I have missed blogging and I am committed to getting back to it.

Over the summer, Dusty and I ate at some "fancy" restaurants.  You know, the kind of places where they don't have kiddie menus or crayons or color sheets.  On one of our trips. we went to RDG Bar Annie with my mom, my brother and my sister.  One of the dishes in the four course meal we enjoyed was a pear, endive, and blue cheese salad.  I did not like blue cheese at all before this salad but I stepped out of my comfort zone and I was truly surprised.  I loved the creamy texture and tang of the blue cheese.  That combined with the sweet crunchy pear and delicious salad greens, and I was in heaven.  Salads at my house up until this past week have been pretty boring.  Salad greens, grated cheddar cheese, bagged croutons, and bottled salad dressing.  With this salad, I'm kicking up the bar a bit.  :)  And I invite you to take a step out of your comfort zone and try a new salad this week!

Ingredients:  (enough for 2 nice sized side-salads)
5 cups of mixed spring greens
2 Tbls. italian dressing
1/2 pear, peeled, cored, and diced
2 Tbls. chopped walnuts
2 Tbls. blue cheese

Preparation instructions:

1. Toss mixed greens with Italian dressing in a bowl.  Divide between two plates
2. Peel pear.  Cut in half (reserve remaining half for another salad).  Dice pear into small pieces.  Sprinkle pear pieces on top of mixed greens.
3. Sprinkle walnuts and blue cheese on top of pears and mixed greens.  
4. Abandon blue cheese fears and dig in!!!