Joy in the Kitchen!

Dinner meals when I was a child most often consisted of four items on the dinner plate; meat, potato, vegetable, and a salad.  Very seldom did we have casseroles or dishes like spaghetti or rice.  (My Dad ate a LOT of rice while he was in the Navy during WWII and Mom rarely cooked it because of that.)  Mom made meals from things we had on hand, meat that we raised or vegetables that we grew. Sometimes cream, butter, and eggs that were produced at home were available to use as well. This vegetable dish, Green Bean Spanish, was a fun accompaniment for the meat, potato and salad that was so common. I was going through my recipe cupboard a few weeks ago and came across a newspaper article I had saved that featured my Aunt Lois's "best recipes".   She had included this recipe of Green Bean Spanish with those.  Though she called it String Bean Spanish. Rumor has it, that this recipe was handed down from my great-grandfather who lived in Mexico for a while as a child.

My Favorite Guy and I decided to stay home for Valentine's Day this year.   It just doesn't seem as romantic having an intimate dinner for two..... with 75 other people in the restaurant!  Not to mention waiting in line, waiting to be seated, waiting to order, and waiting for your food.   We banned the kids to one of the bedrooms upstairs with a movie, chicken nuggets, apple slices, pop, and sugar cookies.  They seemed happy enough.  Their steak and crab days will come.  Right now the 6 year old is as happy with chicken nuggets as we are with steak and the 12 & 14 year old girls understand that we want space to ourselves and they got to pick the movie. I set a small table in the living room by the fireplace. Rounded up a yard of Valentine'y fabric someone gave me a few years ago and set the flowers Favorite Guy had given me earlier in the day there to enjoy.   A nice Pandora station of Harry Connick Jr. gave us some nice background music. We started wi

I just LOVE Valentine's Day!   I love baking and doing nice little things for my husband and the children. I bake and do nice things throughout the year, but it is fun to have a theme for it once in a while!   Some years I have more time than others to do treats and sweet things.   This year I found this cute candy/cookie mold on clearance and thought I'd give it a try.  How can you go wrong with chocolate and Oreo's?  I mean really?! You can order one of these on the Wilton website.   Hearts Cookie Candy Mold   is what it's called and it's very inexpensive.   The mold does 8 cookies at a time.  It takes maybe 45 minutes to chill them enough to turn out and do the next set. I used some red candy melts to add the accent colors and then I just melted some of my 10 lb chocolate block I got for holiday candy  making and melted for the rest.  Candy melts are easy to use, but I love the dipping chocolate best if I need plain, delicious, milk chocolate. I melted

This week I've had some banana's that look like this sitting on my counter.  They were screaming at me to be used! This stage of banana ripeness usually turns into banana bread.  NOT TODAY!   I found a few that looked okay but the one I followed closest was this one:   Banana Cookies  at Simply Recipes.    I changed it up a bit for my own tastes (and because it's hard for me to leave a recipe alone) and these cookies turned out delicious!  (I'm curious to see if my banana despising daughter will eat them when she gets home from school today - they do have chocolate chips in them to tempt her!) As you mix this you'll notice it is more of a batter than a dough.  I used my 1 oz. cookie scoop to place them on the parchment paper.  I love my cookie scoop!   I have a few.  I like the one on the left best because I love the squeezey handle rather than the thumb squeeze,  and my girls like the one on the right best.  Maybe because it has a pretty pu

I love breakfast !   I love cooking  breakfast!   I do NOT, however, love cooking breakfast at 6:30 a.m.!      My children need to catch the bus by 7:30 a.m.  I let them sleep until 6:40 and then it's a mad rush getting lunches packed, kids dressed, and bags found.  Most mornings the past year they've had cold cereal (which they love actually) or eggs and toast, or oatmeal, or sometimes toast with homemade bread and some hot chocolate to drink. But 90% of the time on school mornings it's cold cereal.  Sometimes there are pancakes or waffles left from a Saturday and then frozen and they love those.   I have 3 children at home right now... I adore them.  They are 6, 12, and 14 years old.  I have 5 children who are grown and have moved away. (I adore them too!)   I used to cook for 8-10 people on a regular basis.  I used to cook breakfast quite often.  I used to be more organized.  It's time to get back to planning ahead!    Today I decided to spend the day ma