Thirty-Five minutes to a home cooked meal

 Last night we came home from a quick 2-day trip to Virginia.  We haven't been able to travel much with my husband's knee issues.  We ate out every meal and even though some like that, we get tired of it pretty fast, so I got to work when we got home.  In keeping with the title of my blog, we passed a Food Lion and I stopped and got milk, some ground beef, and a bag of salad.

When we got home and after unpacking the car, I got to work.  Looking in the pantry for what I needed to make something, I realized a half-opened box of spaghetti and voila, the plan was made.  I quickly got a cast Iron pan heating up and got the beef in and found half an onion and bell pepper and chopped them up and added them to the beef.  We had just received our recent shipment of Thrive groceries and husband had a choice of RAO marinara sauce or Thrive's Roasted Garlic Sauce, he chose the latter.

I also found a half empty container of light sour cream, we don't like light stuff, so I added turned it into Ranch dressing.

Having the meat and vegetable cooked, I poured the sauce and let it simmer for about 30 minutes until it was nice and bubbly and reduced a bit.  Spaghetti cooked, meat sauce made, and the dressing on the table with the bag of salad greens.  We had a nice thrown together dinner within 35 minutes.

Ice cream was the dessert of choice for the husband, I chose to have a couple of the double-dipped chocolate peanuts and that hit the spot.

Try Thrive for yourself.  Use my link here:  http://thrv.me/L2EPRy

Again, another on the fly dinner that was a happy ending to a wonderful weekend get-away.

Until Next Time,

Blessings,

EBeth

Rainy Autumn Day Apple Butter

 It was a cold and raining October day.  I was home alone and found myself with nothing much to do.  The cats were asleep; the turtles are beginning their hibernating for the winter.  Realizing that I had purchased way too many apples, I decided to make something warm, spicy and delicious for us.

Searching for a recipe in several of my cookbooks and online, I came upon apple butter.  Well, I have been following Allrecipes for some time now and they had a couple of recipes, so I dug in and read them all and decided on one, changed a few things and began the process.

Here's the recipe: 

Rainy Autumn Day Apple Butter

1/4 cup  Maple syrup  (Log Cabin) 

 2 lbs. of Macintosh apples peeled, cored and diced 

 1/4 cup  dark brown sugar

                                                1 tsp each of cinnamon and ginger

                                                1/4 tsp of Cloves

Directions:

Combine the diced apples and maple syrup and cinnamon in a heave medium pot.  Cook for an hour on simmer until the apples can be easily mashed.   Mash the apple mixture to the desired consistency, I like it chunky.  Add the brown sugar and remaining spices and cook for another hour or so on simmer until the house smells like fall and the apples are a richer brown color.  

Place the apple butter in a glass jar and refrigerate.   It is amazing on toast, bagels and pancakes!

Commercial Break. It's a good one

Husband and I have been using Thrive for many of our groceries for several months now and am impressed with the healthy selections we get to choose from.

Use this link and try them for yourself, I think you will like it.  It is a subscription service, but if you always have foods/snacks/pantry items/household/personal items that you use, you will be able to find them here as well.

 http://thrv.me/L2EPRy

If you try Thrive, please come back and tell me what you think, I'd love to hear from you!

My best!

E

It's October and I'm married to a GERMAN!

 So, I get bored with the same old sausage and kraut, so I looked around YouTube to see new ideas for sauerkraut. I found a great channel called, Cooking the World, and the video on ways Germans have it in their meals. This video, she talks about 10 German dishes that include sauerkraut, their health benefits and other good information about kraut itself.  Several dishes I will be trying for sure.

Anyway, I didn't have a recipe from her video, so I had to put my meal together just with her description of the dish, so here goes.  Oh and I am cooking for 2, you will need to double or triple it for a family.

Sauerkraut-Auflauf - German sauerkraut casserole

Ingredients

4 small/medium potatoes, peeled and sliced thin

1 Tbsp salt

2 cups sauerkraut, drained

onion

garlic salt

Pepper

Liverwurst, I used Ground Beef

2 cups Cheddar cheese, shredded

Instructions:

In a pot of water, cook the potatoes until tender, then mash them with a tbsp of salted butter till smooth. While your potatoes are cooking, brown your ground beef in onions, salt, garlic, and pepper. Grate up the cheese, 2 cups or more. In my house, there is very too much cheese!

To put it all together, in a small casserole dish, spread a layer of potatoes, then the kraut, the meat and top with cheese. Repeat another time and top the whole thing with the remaining shredded cheese.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, since everything is cooked, it's just to get it all warm and melty.

My German husband thoroughly enjoyed it and it's going to be on the repeat from now on. Let me know if it is for your household.

Until next time!