Italian Beef

Good evening,

For those who know me, I am a huge fan of crockpot meals. They are quick and easy, perfect for busy weeknights when the hubby doesnt get home tkll 7:30 pm.

A friend from work gave me this recipe and it was the most amazing homemade italian beef i've ever had. Although, you cannot beat Portillo's.


So onto the recipe!

Crockpot Italian Beef

1 rump roast
1 packet of McCormick Au Jus Gravy
2 cloves of garlic
1 Beef Buillon cube
1 jar of pepporcini's
Italian shaker seasoning
1/2 cup water


1. Stab the roast all over with a knife. Cover in italian seasoning, place in crockpot.
2. Mix Au jus packet with 1/2 cup of water and dump into the crockpot. (Do not follow packet instructions.)
3. Drop one beef buillon cube and the 2 cloves of garlic into the crockpot.
4. Dump half the jar of pepperoncini juice into the crockpot along with half of the peppers (this gives jt a great flavor)
5. Let cook on low all day and shred witha fork before serving.

I serve this on french rolls with italian cheese and peppers.

I've paired it with chips or frenchfries. Tonight however, because I do have some of this heaven in a crockpot; I am serving it with baked beans and deviles eggs.  It is really up to you, this is just delicious stuff. ENJOY!!

Before :

After:

Doctored Up Manwich

Here's a recipe for busy moms or busy wives like me. When you've been running around all day, the last thing you want to do is come home and slave over a hot stove making dinner.  So if your life me and decide that you want something quick, yet taste good as well heres a good one.

Although, as you read farther, you will notice that there is very littlw measuremments.  This was the kind of recipe where I gathered some ingredients I alread had on hand and eyeballed it.

Doctored Up Manwich

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef

1 can Manwich

BBQ sauce

Green pepper

Onion

Jalapeño

Seasoning

Directions

1. Brown ground beef and drain of remaining fat.

2. Dice up onion, jalapeño, and green pepper while meat is browning. 

3. When fat is drained off, throw in veggies and stir. 

4. Add 3/4 of the can of Manwich and maybe a 1/4 cup of BBQ sauce....any kind you have will be good.
5. Add seasoning, (I used, salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, and Weber gourmet burger seasoning)

6. Let simmer on stove for about 20 minutes.

I served this on some hamburger buns with some leftover macaroni salad that I had on hand. Like I said busy wife. 

Jalapeño Popper Chicken

Hello my fellow Americans,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

On this joyous occasion, I have recieved seceral requests for the recipe for the Jalaleño Popper Chicken. Which consequently was AMAZING!

Even my husband, who is not a big chicken lover (more of a red meat guy), said "this is some of the best damn chicken i've ever had" which is a win for me. Afterall, the way to a mans heart is through his stomach.

Lets begin, as always, with preheating the oven to 400 degrees.

Spray a 8x11 glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray ( or whatever dish/pan you are going to use.

Ingredients:

3 large chicken breasts (I used tyson)

2 packages cream cheese, softened

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 package cooked, crumbled bacon

1 Jalapeño, diced

2 cups Panko breadcrumbs

3 tablepsoons of vegetable oil

2 eggs

Taco seasoning

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. In a skillet combine bread crumbs and vegetable oil on medium to high heat, your goal is to brown them. Dump them in a bowl and mix them with the taco seasoning. 

2. In a shallow dish, whisk the eggs together with salt and pepper. These will be your dredge station.

3. In a bowl, combine softened cream cheese, shredded cheese, crumbled bacon, diced jalapeño.

-On a side note, slice jalapeño in half and remove all seeds and membrane (the white stuff) if you do not want it to taste hot. 

4. Butterfly the chicken open and stuff with the cream cheese mixture. You can hold the ends together with a toothpick if needed but they held together pretty well for me.

5. Dredge in the egg and then roll in the breadcrumbs, place in the baking dish.

6. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked thouroughly, no pink. This all depends on your oven. 

I usually serve with a side of boxed rice-a-roni and some sort of vegetable. It is very filling and it is great left overs. I had extra cream cheese mixture so I stuffed a few burgers with it, we are grilling them today. 

HAVE A GREAT 4TH OF JULY AND PLEASE COMMENT WITH HOW IT GOES!!! 

Cheap Easy Fried Ice Cream

You know how you go to a Mexican restaurant and have amazing food because lets face it what Mexican food isn't amazing. Our favorite restaurant is Jalepenos, its great, we try to eat there on special occasions to make it seem even better! I love their chicken chimichangas with some guacamole and sour cream. To die for.

Back to the initial point, after you ate the deliciois meal and at this point you probably need to pop the button of your jeans to feel comfortable but dessert still sounds enticing? Yeah, we all know how that feels. Well my husband and I's go to dessert is sopapillas with fried ice cream. Yes, FRIED ice cream.

Well the correct way to do it is to roll ice cream into a ball then roll it in cinnamon and sugar, corn flakes and freeze completley before frying ina  fryer. However, because I am supremely lazy when I decide I want ice cream....thats too much work.  I geniously came up with a cheap easy hack for fried ice cream.

I scoop some ice cream into a bowl...which happend to be the cheap container of chocolate revel from the grocery store.

Crush some frosted flakes into the bowl and sprinkle with cinnamom and sugar and voila!!! Fried ice cream.

Enjoy! I apologize for the sloppy looking bowl....I dug in before I took a picture

Monkey Bread

Hello my people,

I woke up this morning craving some ooey gooey deliciousness and I had 3 cans of buttermilk biscuits I wasn't using so I though why the heck not. My husband was playing on the floor with a pile of Legos...yes I know he's a child but he is so much fun. So I decided that my biscuits needed to be made into Monkey Bread, the delicacy that my mother taught me to make. It's easy, it's simple, and it's the most delicious morning bread you will ever put in your mouth....yes I just said that.

To start this heaven, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. I always preheat the oven before I start anything because I am impatient and hate waiting for anything.

Now for this recipe, typically my mother would use a bunt pan (the cake pan with a hole in it), but sadly I do not own one of those yet, and the dollar store didn't even have one...I mean come on, but its whatever.  I just used a 9x9 square casserole dish and it worked out just fine.

Now ingredients:

3 can buttermilk biscuits (I used Pillsbury)

2 sticks butter

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons of cinnamon (b/c I LOVE cinnamon)

Assembly of the ooey gooey deliciousness is easy.

First generously butter your bunt pan...or whatever pan you decided to use.

In a mixing bowl, add the 1cup sugar and the 2 tablespoons of cinnamon.

Open your cans of biscuits and cut each biscuit into four smaller pieces and toss in the sugar mixture.

Randomly toss the pieces into the buttered dish, there really isn't any specific way to lay the biscuits in the pan.

In a saucepan on the stove on a low/medium heat, melt the butter and add 1/2 cup of the remaining sugar mixture as well as the 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Once fully combined, raise the heat and bring to a boil, make sure you are stirring often so that you don't burn it.

Once brought to a boil, pour in a layer over the biscuit's and put in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes or until the top is crispy and the biscuit's look done.

Once done,  let sit for 5 or more minutes and then cover with a plate and flip over and you have the ooey gooey deliciousness that is perfect for a lazy sunday morning.







Pecan Pie

Todays weather forecast: crappy with a chance of snow and sleet.  So today is a great day for hibernation and baking.  What better to bake than a delicious pecan pie...mostly because I already have the ingredients and it's one of my husbands favorites.

I've only made pecan pie once before, it turned out to be a hit.  Which made me happy because according to my husband, it's very easy to mess up a pecan pie.  Even though the consistency was "off", apparently it was good.  Don't panic, it was simple to make.

I used a recipe that has been around for years and years. I do love old recipes that have never changed and continued to be good.  Although, I did attempt to change the recipe after reading a few others. I used melted butter last time and softened butter this time, we will see if that caused the odd consistency or if it just needed a tad more baking time.



(please ignore my crappy cookie sheet, it was still warm from the oven)

Alright, let's begin, as always, with the ingredients:



1 pie deep dish pie shell (I just did already frozen)

3 eggs

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup Dark Karo corn syrup

1 stick of butter...softened until updated otherwise

1 cup chopped pecans

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Now that we have that out of the way, lets begin.

First, place your pie shell on a cookie sheet for easy transfer from the oven.

Then beat the eggs in a mixer till light a fluffy

Add the sugar, a beat again.

Then add the butter, corn syrup, salt, and vanilla.

Add the pecans and fold in a with a spatula and pour into the pie shell.

Bake the pecan pie starting at 350 degrees for ten minutes.

Then WITHOUT opening the oven, reduce the temperature to 325 degrees and bake for 30 min more...however, I have found that I still needed to bake my pie for at least 15 more minutes.

A knife should come out pretty clean when inserted in the middle and the middle should jiggle slightly like Jello, If you're middle is still liquidy after the 30 min, go ahead and continue baking. 

Let the pie rest and cool completely before serving, this could take a few hours so plan accordingly if you are deciding to wow a party or guests.

GOOD LUCK and let me know how it turns out!! :)





Pickled Eggs

Well, I decided to dive into blogging. Mostly because of my interests on Pinterest and my inane habit of photographing my attempts at recipes.

For my first blog post, I decided to post one thing that has made my husband happy...pickled eggs.

I find them gross but my husband begged me to make them since our good friends used to make them all the time.  So after researching and deliberating, I agreed...not that I deny him anything anyways.

With all of that being said, here's how to make pickled eggs of deliciousness.

First figure out what size jar you are going to be using, so that you know how many eggs you need. I used a 1/2 gallon mason jar I found in a six pack in the canning section of walmart.  This jar fit 14 eggs and all the crunchy goodies that go in with them.

When you narrow that down, boil your eggs. For those who don't know how, place all your eggs in a medium sized pan and cover the eggs with water. Oh and here's a life hack, toss some baking soda in the pan, it will make the peeling easier.   Bring to a boil and boil for 12 minutes....I dont know why 12 minutes is the magic number, but it is.  Once the magic 12 minutes is up, removed the pan and place under running cold water and peel. 

Now here is all the goodness that gets put in the jar:

14 eggs

1 banana pepper--sliced

1 jalepeno--sliced

1 Tbs crushed red pepper

3 Tbs black peppercorn

3 Tbs mustard seed

1/2 large red onion

3 cloves garlic--sliced

bunch of dill (I eyeballed this to my liking)

salt and pepper  

The only directions that I give is that remove the jalepeno seeds if you do not want any spice to your eggs.  Otherwise, I just roughly sliced everything and tossed it in the jar.  They are there for flavor...or if you're my husband, for eating. 

My husband and I discovered that if you poke the eggs with a toothpick, it will add more flavor over time, so I do recommend doing so before adding the brine.

Now for the brine, this recipe was given to me by our good friends, who got it from her mother. So why mess with something that is tried and true.  BEWARE, this will smell up your kitchen, my husband goes running as soon as the stove turns on.

For the 1/2 gallon mason jar, the measurements I used were:

3 cups water

3 cups vinegar

1/4 cup pickling salt

Bring all of this to a boil, once boiling, remove from stove and pour into the jar. MAKE SURE THE EGGS ARE COVERED. This is very important for health reasons.  Seal the jar tightly, let sit on the counter to cool a bit, and then put in the fridge. 

My advice is to wait at LEAST two weeks for maximum enjoyment and keep refrigerated.

On a side note, I would not recommend using the same brine twice....but in case that you are dead set on doing so, make sure that you re-boil the liquid to kill off anything that has the potential of being a bad day for Osmosis Jones.