Pie Crust

Do you love pie? Do you make your own flaky crust? Well you should. It is so easy to do! I will help you. There is nothing like a good home made pie crust and lemon or chocolate (or whatever is your favorite) filling. Yum. Rick really liked coconut cream pie, and I can make a mean one!

Pie Crust
3 cups plain flour (again I like White Lily plain)

1 cup Crisco (I use butter flavor sticks)
Pinch of salt
ICE WATER

Cut Crisco into flour and salt with your pastry blender until it is coarse and all the Crisco is cut in.

Add ice water a few tablespoons at a time and toss with a fork until it is moist and can form a ball. For best results, divide the dough in half, wrap well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a few hours.

When chilled, roll dough on a lightly floured surface (I spread out a couple of long pieces of wax paper lightly floured, then fold up and throw the mess away) until it is about 1/8 inch thick (see photo above). Carefully place in pie plate, if filling a fruit pie, then crimp edges and fill and bake per recipe directions. If it is for a cream pie, fill the pie plate, be careful not to stretch the dough because this is what causes shrinkage, crimp the edges and prick with a fork, and bake at 375 degrees in a preheated oven until lightly browned. Fill and enjoy.

Let me know how it turns out! Practice makes perfect! Love y'all! Lemon or chocolate pie next time.......

Apple Dumplings

Now, I don't really have a picture of my own for these, but they are so tasty......and easy. Follow the directions. I use granny smith apples for this. They are always a big hit at church dinners and homecomings. Kim brought them to work the other day. YUMMY! Oh, and don't sub out the Mountain Dew and don't use diet; but you can use low fat crescents if you want to, but if you're gonna make these, you might as well make 'em great!

Apple Dumplings
Ingredients

* 2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled and cored
* 2 (10 ounce) cans refrigerated crescent roll dough
* 1 cup butter
* 1 1/2 cups white sugar
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle Mountain Dew ™

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
2. Cut each apple into 8 wedges and set aside. Separate the crescent roll dough into triangles. Roll each apple wedge in crescent roll dough starting at the smallest end. Pinch to seal and place in the baking dish.
3. Melt butter in a small saucepan and stir in the sugar and cinnamon. Pour over the apple dumplings. Pour Mountain Dew™ over the dumplings.
4. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

Let me know if you like them! Gina Miller brings them to church dinners a lot, they are always gone!

Love y'all!
To be continued........
PS if there is a recipe you really like or one that you'd like me to find and post, please let me know!

Beef Stew

So this past winter I started making beef stew and I will say it is pretty tasty! But, guess what, it has tomatoes in it and I have to hide them from Nick. LOL!

Beef Stew
1 Sweet Onion (Vidalia if available) sauteed in 2 tbsp hot oil in dutch oven
1 pound stew meat, roll meat in flour and place with the sauteed onions in hot oil
Add to browned meat and onion:
6 peeled, washed and cubed potatoes
4 carrots peeled and sliced
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 pkg frozen mixed vegetables
1 pkg McCormick Beef Stew Seasoning
Salt and Pepper
1 cup water

Simmer over low heat until thick and bubbly. Serve with Sister Schuberts rolls or crackers. YUM!!

Enjoy! Love y'all!

Yum, tomatoes

So, today I had lunch at Cambridge Market & Cafe and boy was it good. I had the meatloaf, green beans and scalloped tomatoes. Now, those tomatoes tasted just like the ones I have been making for years. Except, with ours we like to have them with pinto beans fried potatoes fried apples and cornbread. I also like to use my homemade white bread (bread machine recipe) when I have it. Many days Rick, Val and I would enjoy our 'maters. Nick, who dearly loves ketchup, will not touch a tomato. Which brings me to a funny tomato story. When Nick was about six or seven years old, we had started growing a huge garden each year. This particular year in the early spring we had planted a couple rows of strawberry plants and with those the first year you don't let them bear, you want all the energy to be used to establish the plant. So We had to pinch off all the blooms of the strawberry plants. That chore (and boy it was a chore!) took quite a while to accomplish, it is one that had to be repeated several times a week for 3 or 4 weeks to capture all the blooms. OK to the funny part. We sat out a gazillion tomato plants. In a few weeks they grew and started producing blooms. Rick and I came home from town and Nick met us at the car. "DAD!! (He was sooo excited) I helped you! I pinched off all the blooms from the tomatoes in this row!" He really thought he had done something special! Of course, I had to keep Rick from showing his anger because Nick really did think he had helped. And he did. He said thanks to Nick and taught him about tomatoes and why we de-bloomed the strawberries and not the tomatoes.

Scalloped Tomatoes

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ground black pepper to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil (optional)
  
• 4 teaspoons brown sugar
• 1 quart whole or crushed tomatoes (home canned is best but store bought works well)
  
• 2 cups bread cubes (toast bread before cubing, may use french bread, Texas toast bread or white bread)
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375*.
2. Saute butter and onion in a medium saucepan until onion is transparent. Place salt, pepper, basil (optional), brown sugar and tomatoes into the saucepan, stir. Stir in bread until all of the ingredients are well seasoned.
3. Pour the tomato bread mixture into a greased 9x9 inch deep dish casserole. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Enjoy.

I hope you are enjoying these posts! I hope you all have a great day!

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Biscuits

So tonight I am going to tell you how to make a good, home made biscuit. One of Rick's favorite foods was biscuits. I have been making them since I was eight years old. I think I got pretty good at it over the years. I have tried many brands of flour and I think the best flour for making biscuits in White Lily red label self rising flour. It is unbleached and it is so soft. And the biscuits rise up so high......

One secret to making biscuits is to not overwork your dough. The more you work the dough, the tougher the biscuit so....practice and don't overwork that dough!!!

Another secret or two....invest in a pastry blender. That is one tool I will never be without.
Also, bake your biscuits on an airflow cookie sheet or a pizza stone. Seriously, unless you just forget the things in the oven forever, they will brown nicely and not burn but if you use a single layer cookie sheet or an aluminum pan, you can count on burned crusts.

Let's make biscuits!

Preheat oven to 475*
2 cups white lily self rising flour
1/2 cup Crisco (regular or butter flavor)
milk

In your large mixing bowl, place your flour and Crisco. Take your pastry blender and cut the shortening into the flour.

Stir in enough milk to make a thick, sticky but not wet dough that holds together but you can handle it. This will be about 3/4 cup milk. Don't over stir. You want the dough to hold together well, form a ball and place it on a sheet of floured wax paper. Next, you want to lightly knead or fold over the dough 3 or 4 times, using care not to overwork the dough. Now, pat it out into a nice rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. Cut out your biscuits and place on pan, sides touching will make soft side biscuits that won't rise as much, or about 1.5 to 2 inches apart and they will rise and fall over......bake until nicely browned, about 15 minutes or so. And remember no one ever baked a perfect biscuit the first time.....except maybe me LOL!!! I did this every day I had off for many, many years. Practice and hey, call me, I would love to try your biscuits! I have made these when we go camping too, just "bake" them on the grill but you gotta watch them closely!

BBQ sauce

Rick always loved BBQ. One day he said, "lets try to make our own sauce." I said, Ok we will. So I did some investigating on the internet and he brought home a cookbook of BBQ dishes. So from that recipe book we took one particular recipe and made it our own. This is great to use over ribs, chicken or even smoked tenderloin. I really don't use much bottled BBQ sauce, but when I do it is Kraft. I prefer this recipe. It is very easy. It is a sweet sauce so if you like it hot, you will have to investigate how to accomplish that feat. I'd really rather have sweet. Here goes!

Rick and Myra's BBQ Sauce

3 cups ketchup
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 large sweet (vidalia if in season) onions chopped and sauteed in 1 tbsp oil
1/4 to 1/2 tsp minced garlic (I buy a small jar already minced and keep it in the fridge)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar (I use light brown, but you may use dark if you prefer)
and the secret ingredient is 2 tbsp yellow prepared mustard

In a medium to large sauce pan add the oil, saute the onion and garlic until the onion is beginning to become translucent, add remaining ingredients, bring to simmer over low heat 15 minutes more. Stir occasionally to keep the sauce from sticking to the pan.

Enjoy!

I love potato salad!

Do you love potato salad but hate to make it because you have to wash and peel potatoes and then cook and cube them? Me too. A couple of years ago I started looking for a better way to make potato salad. I tried using the hash brown potatoes that are small cubes. It had OK flavor but the cubes were so tiny and did not hold their shape. Failure. I am one that does not like my potato salad like mashed potatoes. I can eat it, but I prefer the most of the potatoes stay cubed.

One day I was in Kroger. I saw the Steam & Mash Potatoes from Ore Ida. Light bulb went off. Try those for potato salad. I bought a bag and decided I would try. It worked! One bag is enough for a couple of people to eat on for a couple of days. And it is good! So.....now when I make potato salad, I buy those and cook them the evening before and even boil my eggs the evening before. Works well!

Potato Salad

1 bag Ore Ida Steam & Mash potatoes
microwave per package directions and cool completely (I refrigerate over night)

4 boiled eggs, cooled
1 sweet onion chopped
2 tsp pickle relish (sweet or dill or both)
salt and pepper to taste
Celery chopped (optional)
Green and red pepper chopped (optional)

Peel 3 of the boiled eggs, separate the yolks from the white. Chop up the white into the potatoes.

Coarsely mash the yolks in a medium mixing bowl, stir in the chopped onion (and optional vegetables) salt and pepper, and relish. Add several tablespoons Miracle Whip (or mayo, your preference) and 2 teaspoon mustard. This makes a "dressing" that you pour over and fold into your cooked, cooled potatoes and egg whites. Taste and add salt if needed.

Pour into serving bowl. Slice the remaining egg and top potato salad as a garnish. This will make enough to have at least 2 days for 2 people who absolutely love potato salad. Rick and I loved it! I still do!

Ore Ida has several varieties of potatoes too, if you like garlic, they have that already in there, if you like skins on, they have those too. I just use the russet potatoes. YUM!!!!!

When I am taking a big bowl of potato salad to a dinner or cookout, I use 3 or 4 bags of potatoes and increase the amount of eggs and onion. And of course, I increase the amount of Miracle Whip that I use for the dressing. Yes, the steam and mash potatoes do cost about $3.00 a bag, but taters cost quite a bit too, and the time and energy used in peeling and cubing all those potatoes and the waste that is eliminated saves in the end.

*Note that if you use them the least bit warm, you will have mashed potato salad......and don't try to "quick cool" them in ice water. There is a reason they make that bag like they do......it leaks! You will have soggy, unusable potatoes!