Week 11 - Meat and Potatoes!!!

Hello Everyone! I am excited to share these 2 recipes with you today. We really enjoyed them and I think you will too!!!

I found a recipe online for Incredibly Cheesey Turkey Meatloaf and wanted to give it a try. We usually make the same meatloaf recipe, so it was time to try something new - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/incredibly-cheesy-turkey-meatloaf/detail.aspx. The only item I changed for this recipe was the cheese. I didn't have cubes of colby cheese sitting around, so I used shredded cheddar instead and it did the trick!

I thought the perfect go-with for this meatloaf was some scalloped potatoes. I searched high and low for an easy recipe and found this one - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/man-lovin-potatoes/detail.aspx

While I boiled the potatoes, I mixed together all the ingredients.

For some reason, I hate cooking bacon, so we decided to use already cooked bacon so it was easier just to heat and crumble up into the mixture.

I poured all the ingredients into a a baking dish and topped with the parmesan cheese.  A lot of the mixture was on the bottom of the bowl so I just spread it around the potaotes evenly.

I cooked it for the longer amount of time noted on the recipe. I wanted to make sure the top browned nicely before serving.

This recipe was a big hit! I plan to make it for Thanksgiving this week as well! 

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!!  I hope to blog some new recipes next weekend from the road!!  Stay tuned....

Week 10 - Bacon Chicken Ranch and MORE pumpkin!!

I can't believe how fast time is flying!  Before we know it Thanksgiving will be here :)

Today I decided to use the crockpot again for a meal I picked out a few weeks ago.  One of Ben's favorite things to eat is bacon, so when I saw a recipe for Bacon Chicken Ranch I knew it would be perfect.

I found this website on facebook and it is really great for crockpot ideas - http://crockpotgirls.com/

For this recipe you need: 4-5 pieces of chicken, 1/2 jar of bacon bits, 1 pkg ranch dressing mix (I used hidden valley), 1 can cream of mushroom soup and 1/2 cup of sour cream.  Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Spray your crock pot with cooking spray and put the chicken into the crockpot. Top with the soup/dressing mixture. I used my crock pot bag again and it made clean up so easy!!!

 Cook on high 3-4 hours. Serve over rice or pasta.

Ben was a BIG fan of this dish and it was very tasty!  I will definitely make this again. I actually couldn't find this recipe on the site, but found an alternative that sounded just as good - http://crockpotgirls.com/recipes/main-dishes/chicken/bacon-ranch-chicken/

Since I still had more pumpkins, I decided to make some more pumpkin items and found a recipe online for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Here is the recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies-III/Detail.aspx?prop24=etaf. The only thing I did different was instead of using canned pumpkin, I used 2 cups of pumpkin puree for the mixture. 

Bake for 10 minutes at 325. Let cookies cool before eating. They will be more cake like and taste delicious!!

I froze the rest of the pumpkin puree, so that I could make more pumpkin goodies another time!  Just freeze it in a Tupperware or freezer bag and make sure to take all the air out.

Enjoy!!!  Until next week....

Week 9 - PUMPKIN TIME!

I had to be a bit creative this week since I wasn't home on Sunday.  I traveled to NJ and decided to have 2 of my favorite people help me bake for my blog this week.

I wanted to use the pumpkins we picked at the farm now that Halloween was over and I didn't want them to go bad. This weekend was my small window to bake pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread from scratch!!!

Here are the 2 recipes we used:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/mrs-siggs-fresh-pumpkin-pie/detail.aspx
http://www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinbread.php

I used the biggest pumpkin we had and prepped it first. It is best to cut your pumpkin up into smaller pieces before cooking.

We used two big pots and filled them both with water. We then submerged the pumpkin in the water and boiled it until it was soft.  Once it was soft, we scraped the pumpkin flesh from the rind of the pumpkin.

We had a TON of pumpkin to use!!!

After mixing all the ingredients together we poured it into the pie crust.  I wasn't sure how it would come out when I saw this:

We followed the exact directions for baking - bake for 10 minutes at 450 and then reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for another 40 minutes. We checked it with a toothpick and it was perfect. We let the pie cool overnight and it was ready to go today!  I tried it this morning and man was it good!!!  This recipe is definitely a keeper!

We made 2 pumpkin pies and still had pumpkin puree left, so we decided to make pumpkin bread too.

We decided to make regular pumpkin bread with no additions but I have made it with chocolate chips before as well.

This came out really good too!!!

Last but not least, I decided to cook the pumpkin seeds which I have never done before.  After pulling them out of the pumpkin I cleaned them and made sure I got all of the pumpkin string off of them.

Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray and put the seeds on the cookie sheet in a single layer.  Sprinkle with salt and cook for 10 minutes at 325. Take the seeds out of the oven and toss so that all seeds are covered in the cooking spray. Cook for another 15 minutes.  Just be sure they don't get to burnt. You want them to be golden brown. Eat and enjoy!!  These were a really good treat!!

 Due to traveling today I don't have a main course to share. I hope you enjoy these fun pumpkin recipes. We definitely had fun baking yesterday!!!!  These recipes are fun and don't require a ton of work!  I look forward to cooking pumpkin pie every year!!!!  Until next time...