Everyday Buttermilk Waffles

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4 cup buttermilk*
2 eggs, separated
4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled**
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
oil for brushing the iron

Combine thedry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and egg yolks [may use whole eggs if in a hurry]. Stir in the butter and vanilla if you are using it. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry. Beat the egg whites with a whisk or an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Fold them gently into the batter. Spread in enough batter into the waffle iron to bearly cover it, bake until waffle is done. Serve immedietly or keep warm for a few minutes on an oven proof platter in a 200 degree F. oven.

* May use 1 1/2 cups sour cream or yogurt and thin with 1/4 cup milk.

**May use oil.

These are Awesome. If you like good basic recipes I do recommend Mark Bittaman's Cookbooks. They are very good. And I will freely confess this is his recipe.

Oriental Beef and Noodles

16 ounces broccoli stir-fry vegetables
2 pounds beef stew meat
12 ounces sesame ginger stir-fry sauce
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper, optional
3 ounces ramen noodles, broken

Place frozen vegetables in a 3 1/2 - 4 quart slow cooker. Top with meat, In a medium bowl, combine stir-fry sauce, water, and red pepper. Pour over meat and vegetables in cooker.

Cover and cook on low heat setting for 9-10 hours or on high heat setting for 4 1/2-5 hours. Discard spice packet from noodles [or save it for another use]. Stir noodles into meat mixture in slow cooker. Cover and let stand 10 minutes. Stir before serving.


For the life of me I could not find the sesame ginger stir-fry sauce. So I used Kikkoman's plain stir-fry sauce. Delicious. I would happily endorse Kikkoman's products. I've used the soy sauce, and the sweet and sour sauce, and now the stir-fry sauce. Very excellent. I like more sauce so I used two bottles that makes 24 ounces. No red pepper, and I serve it with rice instead of using the noodles.

It was excellent.

I believe though that I would cook the meat and add the vegetables in the last hour of cooking. If you use low heat turn it on high when adding the defrosted veggies. - there was nothing left of the broccoli by the time we were ready to eat.

Easy Italian Vegetable Soup

Well, it is time to write again. Last Sunday we had Easy Italian Vegetable Soup. It turned out Very Good. There were a few things that I would do differently, and did do differently. But it was very good.

One thing I did differently was to add a small can of tomato paste, and a can of mixed vegetables. I used regular beef broth instead of condensed. Also Instead of using red wine, I simply added another can of beef broth to the mixture. I nearly forgot, I used about 2 tablespoons Ialian Seasoning blend instead of the basil alone. Next time I would add more veggetables, to make the liquid not seem quite so thin. Other wise this was delicious.

14 1/2 ounces diced tomatoes
10 1/2 ounces condensed beef broth
8 ounces sliced mushrooms [canned is fine]
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
1 medium bell pepper, chopped
1/3 cup dry red wine or beef broth
1 1/2 tablespoons dried basil leaves
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon extra virgin olivee oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 ounces shredded mozzarella, optional

Combine tomatoes, broth, mushrooms, onion, zucchini, bell pepper, wine, basil, and sugar in slow cooker. Cover and cook on low 8 hours or on high for 4 hours.

Stir in oil and salt into soup. Serve garnished with cheese, if desired.


This would make a basic soup that would be very adaptable to whatever was on hand at the time.

This Month's Menu List.

Well, here is the menu for this week. A lot of this is the same ol, same ol. But when your budget doesn't stretch very far, well you do what you can.

1st. Pizza
2nd. hamburger helper
3rd hamburgers
4th tuna helper
5th sloppy joes
6th chili burritoes
7th Grilled Chicken Breasts and Potato Salad with Jalapeno Stuffed Olives*
8th Tator Tot Casserole
9th Waffles?* [I can't remember If I've posted this before, gonna have to look]
10th Italian Meatballs*
11th Hamburgers
12th Spam
13th Spaghetti
14th Slow Cooker Southwestern Chicken*
15th Hamburger Helper
16th Pizza Casserole
17th Oven Crusty Fish*
18th Hamburgers [he once bragged that he could eat hamburgers all th time - one of these days he's going to figure out no to say things like that to me...]
19th Tuna Helper
20th Sloppy Joes
21st Oriental Beef and Noodles*
22nd Spam
23rd Spaghetti
24th Hamburgers
25th Beefy Bean Chili?* [I can't remember If I've posted this before, gonna have to look]
26th Chili Dogs
27th Beans
28th Easy Italian Vegetable Soup*
29th Fried Wontons?* [I can't remember If I've posted this before, gonna have to look]
30th Omlete [aka breakfast]
31st Hamburgers

The * titles are the new recipes for this month. Or the recipes that I don't think I've posted before. In this case they will be posted as we [excuse me... I] make them.

I just realized too that one of the changes that has happend for use was a chang from a weekly pay check, and weekly shopping to monthly. And yes, I do do most of our monthly shopping once. All that is except th highly perishables, that's usually only milk. So this is our monthly list. I think in the future I'm going to just post the new recipes, and any old ones that I havn't posted yet.

Grilled Chicken

A few weeks ago we were barbecuing hamburgers and hot dogs when I got this really off the wall idea to get him to cook my two chicken breast halves for lunch later. Now, if I haven't said it before - he hates chicken. This time however, he comes back in with the chicken and tell's me that if I tried the chicken I would want to eat it not, the hamburgers.??? What? You liked this?? Well, of course I had to sample my chicken, he was right!
Last time however he was paying more attention than this time, and this time he burned it - yuck. But it is worth a try if you can keep the black stuff off... Grin.

Grilled Chicken Breasts
Serves: 4

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
8 tablespoons olive oil
1 package all good Italian dressing seasoning mix
8 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste
black pepper, to taste

Rinse the chicken breast. Flatten with the flat side of a meat mallet.

Dry chicken breasts and rub with 1 tablespoon oil per side. Pepper to taste on each side. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon salt on each side. Then divide the dressing mix per each side of chicken. Place the chicken in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Grill over hot, direct heat, for about 15-20 minutes per side, or until a meat thermometer reads 165 degrees F.

Enjoy.

Sorry I've Been Away

Sorry we lost our innernet connection quite some time ago... We have finally managed to get it back on. It's amazing just how much a child will cost trying to keep it taken care of. Then job chabges on top of it all. But, now there are two little ones. So Here I am for now and hopefully for good.

Tuna Casserole

Tonight:

2(6 1/2oz)can tuna fish, water packed, drained
egg noodles or elbow mac, cooked
1 tsp instant onions
1 can cream of mushroom soup

Place cooked noodles in bottom of a casserole. Top with drained tuna. Sprinkle with onions. Cover with soup; spreading to edges to seal. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

Notes: You can use 1 12 oz can of tuna instead of 2 6 1/2 oz cans. This may be doubled, but cooking time needs to be adjusted.