This recipe is an old go-to favorite and I had totally forgotten about it until I stumbled upon it on Pinterest. I'm thinking we're going to be eating this baby this coming weekend with some steaks and a yummy chocolate bundt cake that I can put the fruit on with the sauce.

Your belly can thank me later.



Sauce:
1 20 oz package white chocolate chips
1/2 pint whipping cream

Heat cream over low heat. When the cream is warm, add the chocolate chips, and stir until melted. Remove from heat. Pour over fruit and serve or serve on the side.

I found this recipe last year on Pinterest and it has become my go-to dinner. When I'm in a hurry or just not feeling the dinner mojo, I make this baby. My family loves it and it's so friggin' easy! 

Seriously people? How did we ever accomplish anything without Pineterest?


4-6 raw chicken breasts
new potatoes
green beans (fresh or canned-really any green veggie would work. (Broccoli is good, too).
Arrange in 9x13 dish.
Sprinkle with a packet of dry Italian dressing mix and then top with a melted stick of butter. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Over the years I have had numerous people ask me HOW do you menu plan? And further WHY? It seems like so much work with very little reward. But here’s the thing: When I plan my menus I save money.

I like money. A lot.

When Jefe was in Law School we had ZERO money and I had to learn how to make things stretch. I had $200 to last an entire MONTH! That’s $50.00 a week, people. FIFTY DOLLARS.

Seeing that amount now seems absurd,  but you know what? I did it. I had to. There was no choice. I did the best that I could and I had to be organized and I had to plan. When I didn’t plan, I spent WAY more than what we had. When I planned I always came in under because I could always stretch two more meals at the end of each two week period.

I learned how to make four meals from a whole chicken. Five if I boiled the bones and made a broth for chicken soup. I actually became a very good cook, and once I figured out how to plan my meals, we ate well.

Here’s how:

1. Get yourself a Calendar. I used to print one off each month at printfree.com. Now I prefer to use Google Calendars because I can have that emailed to me and hot synched with my phone.

2.  Next, take 1 hour and write down all of the meals that your family will eat. If you only come up with seven—then hey! That makes your life a lot easier!

3. Write down on the calendar what you will eat for dinners. In the Summer I also include Breakfast and Lunch because I need to shop for those meals.  Realize that you can be flexible with this calendar once you are done—especially if you use Google Calendar. It’s simply a function of drag and drop.  In the past if Meatloaf comes up (My kids LOVE meatloaf. Weird, huh?) and I don’t feel like Meatloaf, but I know that Pasta is on the schedule, then I just change it up.

I use allrecipes.com for all of my cooking. I have favorite recipes that I have gathered from family cook books and other books, that I have taken the time to type into my profile. Literally all of my families favorite meals are housed in my online recipe file. I always include a link in my Google Calendar so that when my meal for the day is emailed to me, it comes with a link to the recipe.

4. Once your list is made, go through and write down all the ingredients you will need to make each item.   After you do this a few times, you will get fast and will be able to remember what you have in your pantry and what you need to purchase.  If I use the last of something, I write it down on the grocery list I keep on the chalk board.

I usually purchase two of everything so that if necessary, I would be able to make two of all the meals scheduled for that time period.  It’s how I do my food storage—in a lazy-don’t-freak-me-out-sort-of-way.

5. Go grocery shopping. I plan my meals around what my family likes AND what is on sale. I haven’t mastered the whole coupon thing (2011 is my year), but I do do the price matching thing.

I use Deals to Meals to find where all the good prices are on all of the items that I need, then I merely write down the lowest price and have Mall of the Wart price match it. Yes. It’s time consuming—but it generally saves me about $100.00 when I take the time to price match.  That’s TOTALLY worth it to me.

6. Make your meal first thing in the morning when you have the energy. You are more likely to eat crap if you haven’t planned and executed your meal plan in the morning. Besides, from about 3pm-8pm I call those hours the witching hours at my house. Everyone needs something and I am expected to at the top of my game. Making dinner ahead of time eliminates one of my biggest stresses.

For my working friends: My girlfriend who is a working professional does this as well. She plans her meals to be strictly crock pot meals. She has found you can make pretty much anything in the crock pot so she whips it up, usually before she goes to bed, and then plugs that in first thing in the morning. Now, I’m too tired at night to do that, so I would totally be willing to get up earlier to get that chore done. But, my working friends, you can do it, too!

Watch for some more menu planning ideas on my other blog, MMB Community.

I am having a torrid affair with allrecipes.com.  I have been, actually, for about three years now. I try to convert others on a rather regular basis and present them with the tastiest Kool-Aid I can find, but most of the time they scoff. “You are so funny about that website” they say. But, oh! If only they would taste the sweet, golden nectar of the All Recipes Dot Com  Kool-Aid. They would be proselytizing, too!

My sister is the one that got me to drink the All Recipes  Kool-Aid and once I did, I have never looked back.

Seriously.

Best drink I’ve ever had.

You can store all of your family favorites in there—and then there really is no reason to keep all that clutter of 87-bajillion cookbooks because of that ONE recipe. Take the time to go through them all, type those recipes into your online recipe box and then send those books to Charity.

See how awesome Allrecipes.com is?

It’s the site that just keeps on giving.

Good food AND a DE-cluttered house.

Ready to drink the Kool-Aid yet?

Another thing I love is that they have a rating system, and when I follow the system I invented for myself, I have never made anything from this site that isn’t out of this world awesome!

1. Has to have 4.5 stars or more

2. Has to have been reviewed more than 200 times.

3. The more people that have saved it to their recipe box, the better I know the recipe is going to be.

Take, for example, this French Toast Casserole:

• 4.5 stars
• 673 reviews
• 63, 887 people have saved it.

You know what? IT’S FREAKING AWESOME, TOO!

The other thing I love is that I can enter ingredients that I have on hand, and it will find me recipes to make with those particular ingredients.  This is awesome for the last few days of my meal planning cycle—I can usually get 17 days of meals out of a 14 day menu cycle when I do this.

Also, it’s a great way to get out of the cooking rut. We all get there—in the “rut”—cooking the same 5 things every single week. Totally Boring.

This little feature helps you explore new recipes and you don’t have to worry about if it’s good or not. In the past, that was always a big deterrent for me when presented with trying new recipes—it looks good in the book, but what if it tastes like dog crap?

It’s like Russian Roulette with your mouth.

Homey don’t play that. 

BUT! If you follow my system up there, more than likely it will rock your palate!

The last thing I love is this: The Dinner Spinner.

Oh my heavens to Betsy! It is a glorious tool! I have all my favorites right at my finger tips—in my handy dandy little iPhone.  I seriously have no more excuses for not cooking healthy meals for everyone. I highly recommend this App—you can get it on the Droid, too.

This App makes it possible for those rare times when you feel like being nice. You know, the times when you decide while you’re at Wal-mart that you want to make the kids their favorite Buttermilk Pancakes for breakfast, but you can’t remember what goes in the recipe? You could, if you had this App.  No more trying to remember all the secret ingredients—just pull up the dinner spinner and you’ll be good as gold!

You can also add the recipe to an on going SHOPPING LIST – see how it just keeps on giving?

Or, if one of your family members loves what you brought to the annual Super Bowl Party last year and she wants to make it this time, you can simply send her an email—straight from the site. No more retyping recipes. You can also print it as a recipe card if that floats your boat or share it on Facebook.  Which is what I like to do: “I made this for dinner and it’s only 9:30am—what have you done this morning.” 

(Just kidding. Not really. Only sort of.)

Seriously, I could keep on going about all the ways allrecipes.com will rock your world. Because seriously,  it will. I bet they are even right now, as I type this out,  trying to figure out how to get the site to walk the dog. I mean they have already figured out how to help us de-clutter—now all we need is for it to walk the naughty dog.

Wanna drink my Kool-Aid?

 

Disclaimer: I was not paid one single dime or even warm fuzzy foo-foos for this post. It is simply because I am converted and want to share the good news of the All Recipes Gospel.

Imagine my shock—nay, Horror—when I asked my children what they wanted for breakfast, and they actually responded. As if I were their waitress/short order cook.

“Hello. My name is Cindy and I’ll be your waitress/short order cook this morning. What can I  get you?”

"Yes, Thank you. I'll have a pancake for breakfast, he'll have eggs and toast, and she wants a tuna sandwich and she would like macaroni and cheese."

*screech*

*crickets chirping*

*a dog barking in the distance*

Did you say Macaroni & Cheese and Tuna fish??

For breakfast?

That's just weird.

6 hard boiled eggs
4 slices hot buttered toast (I like to chop my toast)
1 1/2 c. white sauce (below)

Chop egg whites into sauce and put on top of toast.
Mash and mix yolk to sprinkle on top of toast very last.

*WHITE SAUCE:

2 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. self rising flour
1 c. milk
Dash of pepper

Melt butter in pan on burner. Add flour and pepper; blend together. Add milk small amount at a time and stir. Cook until thick and smooth. Can use plain flour adding 1/4 teaspoon salt.

* I usually do 8 Tbsp. butter and 8 Tbsp. of flour and then add the milk in until it’s the right consistency.

1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
2(16-ounce) cans diced tomatoes in juice, undrained
2 (15-ounce) cans pinto beans, undrained*
1 (16-ounce) can yellow cream-style corn (I usually put in 2 cans)
1 (16-ounce) can Beef Broth
2 (16-ounce) cans tamales, unwrapped and cut into 1-inch pieces**

1. Brown the ground beef with the onions and bell pepper; drain.
2. Add remaining ingredients and simmer
   
   covered for 10 minutes or 2 hours in crock pot.
3. Serve with shredded cheese, sour cream and Frito Chips. 

Makes 8 servings.

*Black or kidney beans may be substituted, if desired.

• 4- 5 lb roast (chuck works well-- I usually have to use two but I put them in the same crock pot)
• 1 can beer (alcoholic or non alcoholic works. If you use alcoholic-- use Coors-- it doesn't have a strong hop smell or taste.)
• 5 beef bouillon cubes
• 3t. Italian Seasoning
• 8 oz. jar pepperoncini
• ½ of the juice from the pepperoncini (I use the whole jar)
• Garlic salt (some is the best measurement I can give you)
• Onion salt (some is the best measurement I can give you)

 Directions

1. Put all of the above in a crock pot and cook on low for 12-14 hours. I typically put this together the night before and let it cook all night.  The longer you let it cook, the easier it is for the meat to fall apart and ALL of the alcohol will burn out. 
2. Serve on a roll of your choice with provolone cheese and mayo.
3. Enjoy-so easy and serves many. 
   
   "Great Sandwiches" 100 of Americas Favorite Sandwiches

I use the Pillsbury Frozen buttermilk biscuits and put them in to cook once I have started on the gravy.

I have the found that the trick to creating enough drippings for the gravy is to cook bacon before I cook the sausage, and reserve the bacon drippings for later.

Cook 1 pound of Jimmy Dean Regular Sausage on medium heat. Crumble while cooking. Trust me, this is easier.

Pour Bacon drippings into sausage drippings and then slowly reheat.

A good gravy has the ratio of 2 Tbsp flour to 2 Tbsp drippings to 1 cup milk. You need at least 4 Tbsp of drippings to make the gravy.

I cook the flour and drippings mixture for a little bit and slowly stir in the milk. Once it is thick and bubbly, I add in the sausage and simmer to marry the flavors. I add salt and pepper to taste-- usually more pepper than salt because we like our gravy spicy.  Serve over open faced hot biscuits and it is DIVINE!

*My Family LOVES this for dinner.

German Pancakes

4 Eggs
3/4 C Milk
3/4 C Flour
1/4 C Sugar
1/4 - 1/2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Vanilla
3/4 Butter - melt in 9x13 pan

Mix all ingredients and beat together until fluffy. Bake in 9x13 pan at 400 for 30 minutes or until puffy. Serve with syrup, warm jam or powder sugar and fresh fruit.

* 3 (12 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuit dough
* 1 cup white sugar
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1/2 cup margarine
* 1 cup packed brown sugar
* 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional - I omit)
* 1/2 cup raisins (optional - I omit)


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 9 or 10 inch tube/Bundt® pan.

2. Mix white sugar and cinnamon in a plastic bag. Cut biscuits into quarters. Shake 6 to 8 biscuit pieces in the sugar cinnamon mix. Arrange pieces in the bottom of the prepared pan. Continue until all biscuits are coated and placed in pan. If using nuts and raisins, arrange them in and among the biscuit pieces as you go along.

3. In a small saucepan, melt the margarine with the brown sugar over medium heat. Boil for 1 minute. Pour over the biscuits.

4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 35 minutes. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. Do not cut! The bread just pulls apart.