Joy in the Kitchen!

Spring Break is here and that leaves more time for playing in the kitchen with the kids!  I love the days the kids are home and we're not rushing off to school, hurrying to get homework done, dinner eaten, scriptures read and kids in bed by 8pm.  We're going to take advantage of the time off this week to play.   One of the fun things about cooking is, that even though we're on break from school, we get to practice a fair bit of math while we're having fun!  If we have 3 people that want Crescent Dogs, and 2 people want 2 Dogs each.... how many do we need to fix?  Our strawberries were huge!  We cut them in 4 pieces.... how many will each person get when we divide those evenly?  If I were working with younger children I'd work more on colors when we strung our skewers.  :)  So much learning just HAPPENS in life! Crescent Dogs are super easy because we use a package of the refrigerated crescent roll dough.  This time we used Pillsbu...

Celebrating special days can be so much fun in the kitchen!    St. Patrick's Day is an easy one especially if you're not trying to do an authentic meal.  I made Corned Beef and Cabbage last year and I was the only one who liked it.  This year we'll be more relaxed....  and have fun with GREEN .  I've got to stay at home today as I have someone coming to pick something up.  I don't know a time, so I'm planning on needing to be here all day.  THEREFORE, I need to work with things I have on hand.  (seeing as I don't always plan ahead lol) I found a recipe for Colcannon.    You can find the description and some history on it here ...   and I'm using a recipe I found for Colcannon, here .   I have cabbage, potatoes, bacon & onion on hand - sounds easy!  I think I'll just do either pork chops or onion burgers as our main dish, a tossed GREEN salad and GREEN beans to go with it.  Who cares about needi...

Oh my!  If you've been following my blog long, you know that soups are one of my favorite meals to cook AND eat.  Every Tuesday is Soup Day on our menu.  I usually try to make some french bread or cornbread or biscuits to go with it. The little girls love some soups but not others - this is one they don't love, but they fill up on bread and eat some. This Ham and Wild Rice Soup is one of MY favorite soups!  I love the crunchy texture of wild rice and adding it to this creamy soup makes a wonderful flavor and texture combination.  The recipe comes from Jane, who makes the best soups at the restaurant I used to work at.  I'm not sure where she found it, but it's a keeper.  I've only changed a few things in this recipe, one of those being that the original recipe calls for butter flavored Crisco.  I MUCH prefer a more natural approach using regular butter instead.  I also use less green pepper and a bit more chicken bouillon. A bowl of Ham and...

I was going to quit posting my weekly menu's.  But it appears that I am more accountable if I do - so here I am. :) March 8-14 Monday - Grilled chicken salad, whole wheat rolls or breadsticks Tuesday - White Bean Chili , cornbread Wednesday - Fried Rice for the family, a Relief Society dinner for me (making ham & wild rice soup!) Thursday - Spaghetti and meatballs, French Bread , tossed green salad Friday -  Turkey and black bean enchilada's, green beans Saturday - Leftovers or oven fries with cheese Sunday - Roast Turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, Jello with fruit, corn I'm hoping to have quite a few leftovers from the turkey Sunday to use for dinner the following week!  My potatoes stored in the garage are going to start getting soft soon if the weather stays warm like today.  I think I'll start doing batches of Oven Fries and freezing bags of those.  They are pretty quick to reheat when we're ready to use them.

Any time we serve these it feels like a party!  Hawaiian Haystacks are a delicious assemble-it-yourself meal!  They offer a terrific range of texture and taste; crunch and smooth, warm and cold, sweet and savory.  One of the little girls today declared SHE didn't see how it looked like a haystack.  I suppose if you compare it to the neat bales of hay stacked together it doesn't.  BUT, as you pile ingredients on top of each other, a main one of those being crunchy chow mein noodles, it can resemble the old fashioned stacks where hay was just piled as high as one could toss the hay with a pitchfork.  This is more a meal with directions rather than a recipe.  You increase or decrease amounts according to the number of people you're feeding and tailor it to your likes. Hawaiian Haystacks Cooked rice (1 or so cups per person) chicken gravy cooked chicken to add to the gravy chowmein noodles These items are the base.  I like to boil a whole chicken,...

These little graham cracker sandwich cookies are quick and easy to assemble, even for little hands.  Kids of any age love them, at least at our house.  We make these mostly when we have leftover frosting from another project, sugar cookies, birthday cakes, etc.  A little tub of frosting from the store would be a fine substitute. Graham Cracker Sandwich Cookies frosting graham crackers hungry kids Let each hungry kid spread a nice, thick layer of frosting on one graham crackers half.  Top with the other half of the graham cracker and carefully squish it down into the frosting.  Eat right away OR if you're able to wait a bit, make several cookies, put in container with a lid, and let sit a few hours....( this allows the graham crackers to soften) Today for our after school snack, the girls made up several of these to enjoy...  making them and licking the spreading knife is half the fun!  I would love to know if anyone else grew up with these tasty t...

Just take a look at that beautiful sunshiny Plum Jelly!  I love the translucent plum color.  You wouldn't even have to eat this - just use it as decoration!  :o)  The flavor is fabulous too though, so it wouldn't last long as a decoration at our house... it would be slathered on toast and piled on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! This batch of jelly is nostalgic.  Dave's Grandpa and Grandma were always so resourceful and frugal.  They rarely let things go to waste.  Their yard, years ago, had a huge Damson plum tree .   In 1994 there was a bumper crop of plums!  I remember picking quite a few and making jelly.  Grandpa couldn't bear to see that fruit fall and go to waste so he spent hours juicing those plums.  I don't know for sure how many gallons of juice he got, but I would guess between 10-15 gallons.  They put the juice in containers in the freezer.  A year later, Grandpa passed away.  He was in the hos...