Baked Spaghetti

My friend Robin brought us her baked spaghetti after we had Hudson, and we ate it all. in one night. {To our defense she brought a 8x8 pan, but I might have had 3 servings} Delicious! I asked Robin for the recipe and made it this week. I didn’t take pictures, but it’s delicious {and easy} try it!

Baked Spaghetti

1 lb hamburger meat

1 jar of spaghetti sauce

2 eggs

1 cup of parmesan cheese

4 tsp butter

8 oz thin spaghetti

16 oz. cottage cheese

2 cups of mozzarella cheese

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  
• Boil spaghetti according to package directions
• Brown your hamburger meat, drain, and add spaghetti sauce
• Mix 2 eggs, softened butter, and Parmesan cheese. After the spaghetti is cooked drain and add to this mixture.
• Add the spaghetti mixture to a greased 9x13 pan.
• Add the 16 oz of cottage on top of the spaghetti mixture
• Top with meat and sauce mixture
• Bake for 20 minutes; should be bubbly
• Add the 2 cups of mozzarella and bake an additional 5 minutes.

Today I got very motivated and made a few things for the freezer. I bought 8x8 aluminum pans and split this recipe. I’m not sure about the cooking times yet, but I’m excited about having dinner made ahead for another evening! I’ll let you know how it tastes from the freezer.

Molten Chocolate Cake

So not everything we’ve made has been gourmet around here, but it’s been fun trying new things.  And this is as good as Chili’s-I got this recipe at the Pampered Chef party last week.  And let me just say it’s delicious {and easy}-especially with vanilla bean ice cream! 

First you spread a can of chocolate icing in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. 

Then mix a box of chocolate cake mix according to the box directions and pour on top. 

 

Then you bake on 350 for about 40 minutes.  I’m telling you delicious and EASY!  Yum! 

Cornbread Salad

We’ve been doing great eating at home.  I’m happy to report that we haven’t cheated at all!  We did go out to Moe’s for our youth missions night on Thursday, but we had planned that ahead of time and won’t be going out again until the next one on March 25th. 

I went to a pampered chef party on Tuesday night and we made this yummy salad!  Most of these ingredients are staples at our house so I had to make it the next day too.  And Jeff loved it. 

Cornbread Salad

Cornbread Mix (I use Jiffy)

Green Chilies

1 small onion

1 tomato

1 bell pepper

1 can corn

1 can pinto beans

1 package of grated cheddar cheese

ranch dressing mix

sour cream

mayonnaise

1 package bacon

• First make your cornbread and add a can of green chilies to the mix.  
• While your cornbread is cooking chop your bell pepper, onion, and tomato. 
• Cook your bacon (I guess you could buy the precooked bacon)
• Also, make your dressing by mixing the dressing packet, a cup of mayo and a cup of sour cream
• You are going to layer this salad by starting with half of the cornbread.  You crumble it in the bottom of the bowl.  (I used too large of a bowl-a truffle bowl was perfect for this.  That’s what we used at the party)

The you begin layering starting with half a can of drained pinto beans, half a can of corn, half a bell pepper, half an onion, and half a tomato.  I didn’t have any tomato so I didn’t add it.  Just to keep it real…I forgot to add the corn too I ended up putting the entire can on top and it still tasted yummy, but wasn’t as pretty.

Then you add the layers-half the bacon, half the ranch and half the cheese and then do it all again!  You can eat it immediately and it sits really well.  We had it left over a few days for lunch.  

Changes I’d make-I think it would be really yummy with green onions and I would definitely recommend using a smaller bowl.  I thought I was going to run out of room and used this giant bowl, but it made my ranch layer much thinner and it was a little dryer than at the party.  Also, the tomatoes were really good in the one we had at the party, but I think ours was great left over without it.  I don’t know how soggy they would make it if you were planning on eating it over.

The Best Quiche Ever!

Ok, so we’re the night before our eat at home challenge (2/16) and I’m so excited to start! Last night we planned out our menu and I went grocery shopping today. We did eat out at lunch today, but we kicked off the evening by trying a new quiche recipe. And it was the best quiche ever. My friend Dana made this for a girls brunch and I had to have the recipe. She found it on allrecipes.com.

Quiche Lorraine

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie

12 slices bacon

1 cup shredded Swiss cheese

1/3 cup minced onion

4 eggs, beaten

2 cups light cream

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon white sugar

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

2. Place bacon in a large skillet, and fry over medium-high heat until crisp. Drain on paper towels, then chop coarsely. Sprinkle bacon, cheese and onion into pastry shell.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, cream, salt, sugar and cayenne pepper. Pour mixture into pastry shell.

4. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce heat to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C), and bake an additional 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean. Allow quiche to sit 10 minutes before cutting into wedges.

Changes that I made:

• I had heavy whipping cream so I used a cup of that and a half a cup of 1% milk. Several people on allrecipes.com commented that it was too runny when they used the 2 cups of cream so I decided to use just a cup and a half.
• The recipe called for 1/3 a cup of onion, but we used at least a 1/2 cup and we sautéed them in butter (and I’m sure they would have been good sautéed in the bacon grease, that sounds really bad doesn’t it? I wasn’t patient enough to wait on the bacon to cook before I started the onions.) I think next time we’ll use even more onion.
• I put my pie dish on a cookie sheet and thank goodness! It did spill over a little bit so I highly recommend that you do that!!!
• My new oven cooks a little hot and fast so when I turned the temp down during the last 30 mins of cooking I lowered it to 275, and next time I might cover the crust with foil, but I don’t think you would have to do that depending on your oven.

And then we made these for dessert. YUM! We only had the big marshmallows, but they were still tasty. Jeff said he thought they were almost too much for him, but seriously, how can chocolate, marshmallows, graham crackers, and brownies be too much!?

Eat at home challenge

So I’m a little apprehensive to even type this out because it makes it more real, but I think it will also help to hold us accountable. This ‘eat at home challange’ all came about because my bloggy buddy Kim is giving up shopping for Lent. While we are not Catholic I can appreciate the idea of making a sacrifice and how we all have areas in our lives that can become more important than they should be. I starting thinking about giving up shopping. Jeff and I talked about it, and while that would be difficult for me in recent years with budgeting I’ve been forced become much better about not shopping excessively. However, one area the we continue to spend excessively is eating out. We eat out several times a day sometimes week, so we are officially giving up eating out for Lent. We are making a few exceptions for a youth fundraiser and we are celebrating Valentine’s on Thursday, but other than that we’ll be eating at home for the next 40 days. I’m hoping this will be fun and that it will become a habit.

Here are a few challenges I see:

• It has to be easy-with a 3 year old and 5 month old I can’t spend tons of time cooking and then cleaning up my kitchen 3 times a day.
• It has to be ‘normal’ I’m not real adventurous in trying new things and I like to know that other people have tried a recipe and like it. I have found a few recipe blogs that I love and have been trying several of their recipes. Cara’s taco soup and upside down taco pizza are staples around here these days. I also love this recipe blog too and look forward to trying a few of her recipe’s.
• I’d like to eat as healthfully as possible. We try to limit the grains, bread, pasta that we eat because of Landree’s eczema. I do use corn pasta and bought a new rice pasta to try too.
• I would like to stay in our normal grocery budget and just save the money that we normally use to go out if possible (updated: I went shopping today and spent exactly our grocery budget. I’m really excited about this! I know I’ll have to get a few more things like fresh fruits and veggies in the next few weeks and milk, but that won’t be much! YEA!)
• And the kicker…I don’t touch meat. I know it’s weird. I really think it’s a sickness. I can NOT touch raw chicken without gagging. period. the. end. My handy dandy crockpot has become my new best friend in that area. I don’t mind dropping a frozen piece of chicken into the crockpot to cook and then I can deal with it after it’s done :) I don’t touch hamburger either so as long it can be dumped into the pan I’m safe.

So what do you think? Anyone want to join us? Any good recipes you want to share? I might…no promises here…try to start a little recipe blog. Ok, I’ve started a new little blog, but again, not promising to post :) You can find it here.

I’ll leave you with a super yummy, easy new fav around here.

Creamy Chicken Italiano (my friend Patti’s recipe) serves 4-6

1 pound chicken

1 packet of Italian dressing mix

1/4 to 1/2 cup of water

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 package of cream cheese

1 can of mushrooms (optional)

bowtie pasta (4 servings)

Mix Italian dressing mix with water. Pour over diced chicken in crockpot and cook for 3 hours. Mix softened cream cheese and cream of chicken and add to crockpot, basically to melt for the one more hour. Add mushrooms at this time if you like. Cook bowtie pasta (4 servings) and add to chicken mixture after 4 hours. Serve immediately.

Y’all this is so easy and delicious! Seriously! And I actually cook my chicken for 3 hours and then cut it up when I add my soup mixture. You know, to avoid touching the raw chicken! It makes a lot and is even good leftover. I would recommend when severing it the second time that you heat it on the stove top and add a little water. Let me know what you think.