Guinness Sloppy Joes

Okay, so you know how you just cook supper every night. It's all good, but not like, "blow your socks off" good?
That didn't happen tonight. Instead, it was PHENOMENAL!
The best part was, my husband and I were on Zoom with our friends from Minnesota while I was cooking, which makes the experience of cooking much more enjoyable. In the end, these were the ultimate stretchy gooey sandwich. And oh how it warmed my soul!

Take a bunch of bacon, chop it up, and fry it until it's almost crispy. Drain it, and cook a whole chopped onion in some reserved bacon fat. Then add ground beef to the onions. I used 2.25 lb, as there are 7 of us eating in the household tonight. When the meat is done, drain the fat. Ketchup, tomato paste, dijon or brown mustard, 2 bottles of Guinness beer, some garlic, salt, pepper, and you're good to go. Let it simmer there for awhile. I let it simmer for about a half hour until it was a thick sloppy texture. Then we added the crispy bacon and cubes of sharp cheddar cheese. This is important-add those things when the heat is off. Then the cubes won't melt into nothing and the bacon won't get wobbly. Let the cubes of cheese start melting, and spoon over toasted buns.

Guess what?! It's one of my kid's new favorite meals! And I think one of mine. It's homey. It's comforting. It's the perfect quarantine food.

Hope you're all feeling well and staying healthy! We're just hunkering down waiting for the virus to hit.  In the meantime, we're eating super good food tonight. :-)

Chile Verde on Burrrrrrr-itos!

We had hospitality yesterday. This means we had to make food, and a LOT of it. Yay! I love food. And I love company. And I love Chile Verde.

It's a delicious green sauce poured over burritos. You can make the burritos any way you like. I got this recipe from my fabulous mother in law. She uses refried beans and hamburger in the burritos, but I'm not the biggest fan of refried beans. So mushy for me.

Heat up your dutch oven. HOT. Add cut up pork cubes and onion. Fry it. It needs to be hot and quick because the juice will stay in the pork then.
Add garlic, green chiles, jalapeños, water, salt, pepper, and a few diced tomatoes.

Bring it to a boil. Thicken it with cornstarch.

We made pinto bean and cheese burritos. The other ones were rice, hamburger, and cheese burritos with Complete Seasoning.
You know, I never knew about complete seasoning...until my great friend from Costa Rica came. She made Sopa Azteca and used the seasoning. It's divine! On everything. I mean, I use it constantly. It should be a staple in everyone's cabinet. Unless you're allergic to MSG (A friend of mine can't have it because of that) It's even good on mac n cheese!

This made a whole lotta good warm food, and it's even awesome on eggs in the morning. It's good scooped on tortilla chips for a Green Chile Nachos meal.

Zuppa Zuppa Zuppa

Howdy! Yesterday was a crazy day. It all started out good, but quite frankly, we were all breaking down in this family. So we made the easiest supper ever. Zuppa Tuscana (AKA "Kale Soup").

Fry up mild italian sausage, add onion, garlic, and sliced potatoes. Add chicken broth. Bring to a boil, and throw in some half and half or heavy cream and a bunch of kale. Don't be afraid of the kale! It's really good in there. Top it off with some hot pepper flakes and freshly grated parmesan cheese. Hot, spicy, and warm in the tummy. And the perfect comfort food for a rough day. :-)

Shrimp and Chicken Scampi, y'all!

So my mom was saying she wanted shrimp for some reason, which is kind of unusual because she's not always the biggest shrimp fan. I'm certainly not, but my Mike (hubby) loves it! I haven't made shrimp scampi in a long long time because I've made it only twice, the second time I made it, it wasn't so good.
This was GOOD...
First, the chicken gets thinly sliced (4lb of chicken breasts) and cooked in butter, garlic, and some leftover chicken broth I had in the freezer.  Then when it's finished, remove it from the pan. Put 2 sticks of butter into a large saute pan with a bunch of fresh garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Add 3 or 4 thinly sliced red peppers and a thinly sliced onion, saute it fast.
Add about 1.5-2 cups of white wine and a bunch of lemon juice. Let it simmer.
Mix all the ingredients together and pour it over angel hair noodles. Sprinkle some fresh parsley into the mix for a fresh add-in! Plus it's beautiful. Add fresh grated parmesan and extra red pepper flakes for a little kick.
It's simple.
It's beautiful.
And it's so delicious!

Oh yeah, of course,

we had bread with it to soak up the delicious wine sauce.

Back online!

Hey my people! I haven't looked at this blog in years, it was sort of part of my "healing process" after my sister died. I was home all the time, watching a billion kids, looking for a way to express myself and let out some of my emotions. I did it through food.
Since then, we have moved from snowy Wisconsin to Douglas, Arizona, which is about as far opposite as you can get. Pretty much we live as close to Mexico as you can get without actually crossing the border. It's been a huge change!
The food is different, the people are different, the culture is different. The weather is different, which means we make much less heavy food now. But I'm getting sick of the same old food we always eat.

I've been inspired by my own blog, and I think I want to get back online and express myself through food again. Food defines me. I love to find myself through my cooking, and I'm ready to begin that process again.

Our kids are 15, 13, and 9. All homeschooled. I'm never home, as opposed to back in 2011. I'm always out in service, preaching about Jehovah. People need it. They need to know there's a God who cares, and that things will be better.  They need hope.
I can't just do that, though. I need an outlet. So in addition to learning guitar, I'm going to start cooking more often and loving it more often.

We have a huge flat-top grill in our back yard. It's the best purchase I think we ever made. We use it constantly, and if you are thinking of buying one, you will not be disappointed, I promise you that. So I will be writing about that as well.
I also have my parents living with me! My dad loves to cook. He's overflowing with ideas, so I will be including all of his ideas too.

It's on like Donkey Kong.  Let's do this!
(Oh and on the photo, yes, that's the wall. To Mexico. We're that close) :-)

Pizza #3: Buffalo Chicken Grilled Pizza

I didn't get a picture this time because I want you to be able to use your own imagination for this wonderous pizza.

I topped our homemade pizza dough (you can find the recipe under pizza #1) with cooked pulled chicken, drizzled Red Hot Buffalo sauce ontop, added green onion, fresh tomato, Marzetti's Ultimate Bleu Cheese dressing, a sprinkle of Monterey Jack cheese, and fresh parmesan cheese.  Grilled it for 12 minutes, and WOW was it good!  My favorite so far.
I'm thinking Mike's favorite is still number 1.  It has bbq sauce and onions, what's not to love?!
But I love this one.  It's amazing.

Pizza #2: Italian Sausage & Homemade Salsa Grilled Pizza

So fresh, so good...
I actually made extra pizza crust last time we had pizza and had put it in the freezer.  It only took like an hour to defrost.  So I rolled it out and added a bunch of salsa on the bottom (made of tomatoes, peppers, onion, lime juice, salt, pepper, and cilantro) then cooked italian sausage and monterey jack cheese.  Throw it on a medium low-medium grill for, let's say, 8 minutes...
Top it off with homemade guacamole and sour cream.
Good to go! 
And don't grab the pan while it's in the grill with your bare hands.  Take my word for it, it's hot!

Pizza #1:  Bbq Chicken Pizza


Did we like it?  Yes, we did!  Soooo good.  First I made a quick and easy homemade pizza crust and put it on my pizza pan after spraying it.  Then added pizza sauce (half the amount as you usually use) cooked and sliced chicked breast sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper, thin slices of red onion, drizzled Bbq sauce on it (we used Sweet Baby Rays-Cola).  Whatever kind you like is great!  Then top it off with cheddar cheese and crumbled cojita.  Pop it in a medium grill for about 10 minutes or so.  Mmmm!!!!!  It wasn't very greasy at all either.  So good!  What will we do next???

A GRILLED PIZZA A WEEK

Hello everyone!  It's been a long time since I've written...but I've had an epiphany.......
Is that the right word?  I don't know, BUT, I got this new grill pizza pan from Pampered Chef over the winter and thought I'd try it  out this summer.  Last summer, if you remember, I made a "burger of the week" almost every week, so this summer we're having a "grilled pizza of the week".  I've got some amazing recipes up my sleeve and intend to tell the world the ups and downs of each pizza.  The crazy horrible ones, the awesome delicious ones.

So stay tuned!  Yumminess is to come!!!!!!

Quinoa Cakes with Lemon Aioli

HI!  We're back from Costa Rica!  And I'm now inspired to start trying some new foods and incorporating even more veggies and fruits into what we eat already.

We went to the Harrises Saturday night.  I have to say, Pinterest is also an inspiration for this...but since  coming back we've been eating junk junk junk.  Chips, pizza, pop...junk.  I feel GROSS!  So we had fish over at the Harrises house.  But for me the star was Quinoa Cakes with Lemon Aioli.  Superfood and lemon together?  What could go wrong?

So...take the cooked quinoa, mix up eggs with it, some parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and green onion. Make them into little patties, and fry them in olive oil.  Not a lot, just a little bit of oil.
I roasted an entire head of garlic (in the oven at 400 for 30-45 minutes with olive oil drizzled on it).  Put that in some mayo with ceyenne pepper, lemon zest, and juice from one lemon.  And the garlic.  Puree it and serve it over the quinoa cakes.

AMAZING?!?!  I think so.  I loved them.
And so I will make them again.

Coming soon this summer:  a grilled pizza per week from the Stute household!

Cinnamon and Cocoa Chili with Rum

Sounds wierd, right?  Well,  you all know I put chocolate chips in my chili sometimes.  This time I opted for cocoa powder instead of chocolate chips because I also put some rum in and didn't want it to get too sweet, especially when I threw in some cinnamon.
It's also got black beans, garbanzo beans, and light red kidney beans.  It's all about texture, baby!

YUM.  Don't knock it till you try it!

Oh and by the way.................check out my new shop on Etsy!  Classylil'sprout.etsy.com
It's got nothing to do with cooking.  But hey, if you're a mommy, you'll like it!

Another stir fry. And delicious at that!

Liz went to the grocery store with me and got me the stuff for supper tonight.  First of all, I would like to thank her for the food!!!!!

Okay...onto the food.  We had stir fry.  Pork loin that I sliced up.  The stir fry had (and all the ingredients are fresh, just so I don't have to keep saying it.) Pea pods, broccoli, broccoli slaw, mushrooms, red pepper, pork (of course), green onion.  So I sauteed all of that up.  Meanwhile, made a sauce that turned out just great!

In a saucepan I heated up olive oil and added some crushed garlic.  Then I had toasted a bunch of sesame seeds (I can't get enough sesame seeds!  I love them!) so I threw those in, added some green onion, and grated ginger.  Then let that cook up a bit.  Then added soy sauce, brown sugar, pepper jelly, some water to make it not so salty.  Let it cook down, and added it to the stir fry mixture after.
We had it all ontop of jasmine rice, which I've really come to love versus regular old rice.  Although I have to say, Uncle Ben's is still my favorite, it has a great flavor. 
Digressing...anyhow, we had those crunchy chow mein noodles ontop, and I don't love those, but my family sure does.  Mike loves to put crunchy noodles in a bowl with stir fry ontop and skip the rice all together. 

Concensus????  "Honey, this is the best stir fry you've made!"

Yay!  Victory!

SUYA

What is Suya????
I had no clue.
My mom and dad went to Africa and had Suya, which they wanted to recreate.

Dad took all kinds of spices-chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, I think cloves (?) but I'm not sure, I don't even know what else...and he mixed them up.  Then he ground up a cup of crushed peanuts.  The The mixture was supposed to be very dry, but it wasn't because he ended up using a regular onion instead of onion powder so it was wet.  So he added a little bit of oil so the meat could marinate in it.  Anyhow, he put super super thin slices of venison in a bag and let it marinate in the sauce he made for a couple of hours.

Then he soaked some bamboo sticks.

When we were outside for the bonfire last night, (and let me tell you, people, dad has created this AMAZING bonfire area with lanterns hanging and big rocks everywhere and the bonfire itself was BEA-U-TI-FUL!!!! )  he put a grate and propped it up so it was at an angle over the hot coals.  When the coals were piping hot and blazing away, he laced the meat onto the skewers, making sure the meat isn't too tight on there because it cooks more even when it's loosely skewered.  Then he put it on the grate and waited.

I can't even tell you all how divine it was!  The meat was soooo good.  It melted in your mouth.  Plus, it was sort of chewy and crunchy on the outside, and soft in the middle.  The peanuts tasted like they were glazed or something.
We're going to have to make this on a regular basis.  GO DAD!!!!!!!!!!!

Mini Meatloaves

we're totally running out of food, but it's okay because friday is payday...so Liz brought me some hamburger a couple of days ago, and mom brought me a bag of groceries yesterday.  Our lame supper turned out good.
we had mini meatloaves.
I made my normal meatloaf recipe, and put them in a cupcake pan instead of a big loaf pan because mike was starving and i took a nap for too long so i was sleeping when he got home.  anyhow, for the top i mixed sweet and sour sauce, brown sugar, spicey brown mustard, pepper, and ketchup.  then put that on the tops right at the end and broiled them.
it was good...my explanation point doesn't work so i don't seem excited but i really am.  :-)
along with it we had a mixture of canned wax and green beans.  not the highlight of my cooking career.  and we had a salad.
Not too bad for a family with no food.  thanks mom and liz. (exclamation point) :-()

Smoked bbq beef brisket & Red Potato Salad

This one was not fully my making.  Oh wait...all I did is sit there and look cute while dad did it all.  :-)  (jk) Anyhow, we had this GINORMOUS brisket, so dad trimmed the fat off until there was 1/4" or less of fat all over the whole thing.  Then we cut it in 3rds because it was so big and we needed it finished in 6 hours instead of 8.
Let me tell you, a brisket is SO tough.  We baked it for a few hours on 350 in beef boullion, and apple cider.  We could hardly poke the fork in, it was like leather!
So we cooked it longer another 2 hours after dipping it in a "mop" sauce dad made of...um....like apple cider, tomato sauce, can of diced tomatoes, garlic, salt, cumin, chili powder, whiskey, and brown sugar.  We let it boil down a lot.
Then dad cut up some maple wood and put that in the smoker.  He kept dunking the meat in the sauce every 30 minutes or so, but it was DONE at an hour more.  So I guess he only did it a couple of more times.  It was sooo tender!
We decided to chop it up and put it on some fresh chewy buns.  SSSOOOO good!  Our first brisket was a total success.  We watered the "mop sauce" down with more apple cider because it was super strong, and used that to moisten the meat after it was chopped up.
We had red potato salad with it.  I took red potatoes, cooked and chopped them up, and added diced red onion, celery, zucchini, green onion, and a BUNCH of hard boiled eggs because I love hard boiled eggs in my potato salad.  And for the sauce, I did it was 2/3 greek yogurt and 1/3 mayonnaise to make it more healthy with more protein.  I also added sweet relish, salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley, and dill.  Only a little big of dill though.
Everyone loved it!  The potato salad just needed more sauce.  Too dry.  But that can be fixed.  And the greek yogurt was good in it too.  Y'all should try this one.

It's a dream!-breakfast, that is

This doesn't sound that wonderful.  But for breakfast I did this:
fry an egg overhard.
Then toast a piece of bread.  Butter it.  Add fresh parmesan cheese and real bacon bits on it and the egg.

It's so good I wanted to go back for seconds.  And thirds.  And fourths.  And fifths.
But I stopped after seconds.  Figured 2 eggs and 2 pieces of toast was sufficient for breakfast.
Try it.  Really, don't knock it till you try it.

Cheesy tomato rigatoni

Thanks again to Rachael Ray, I've made a most delicious supper!  Hey, and I made a huge step.  I got rid of my cookbooks at the garage sale we had at Hertzners.  With the internet there's no need for them so much!  They take up space.  I'll always love cookbooks though.  (I love the pictures!)

So....she didn't put this in the recipe, but I fried up a pound of ground chicken and half a pound of mild italian sausage.  Cook up rigatoni, in a seperate bowl, combine ricotta, fresh parmesan, fresh mozerella finely diced, thyme, basil, salt, pepper.  Add to the cooked noodles.  On the side, saute some garlic in butter, add a can of basil plum tomatoes and crush them up.
So, to assemble, put the noodle/cheese/meat mixture in a sprayed casserole dish, pour the tomato sauce ontop, and top with a mixture of the mozerella, parmesan, and I put a little sprinkle of cheddar just because it's pretty.
YUMMMY!
Remember...if you use ground chicken, (which is super good by the way.  And good for you.) use olive oil because the chicken hardly has any fat so it tends to stick and burn!

AMAZING grilled shrimp scampi!

First of all, let's just start by telling everyone that I HATE shrimp.  I mean, I try my very best to like it, and I want to like it.  But I can't even bite into it due to that bouncy "shellfish" texture.  On that note, I made a special supper for my man tonight.  Shrimp scampi!  Not any shrimp scampi though.
Here's how it goes:

slice up half a garlic bulb and put it in olive oil and saute until the garlic is golden brown.  Transfer the oil to a bowl, reserving the garlic in a seperate little bowl.  Then add juice of 2 lemons, zest of 2 lemons, crushed red pepper flakes, and salt.  Slice up yellow squash and zucchinni and brush them with the lemon mixture.  Grill the slices for a couple of minutes.  Meanwhile, put almost all the rest of the lemon mixture in a big bag with the thawed shrimp and let it marinate at least 5 minutes.  When the squash is done, grill the shrimp.
While that's grilling, cut up the reserved garlic really small and add butter to it.  Butter baguette slices.
Take the shrimp off the grill and put in bowl with the rest of the lemon mixture.
Grill the bread for a couple of minutes.  Serve with parsley and slices of lemon.

The squash was soooo delightful!  And the bread was pretty good too.  What I loved about this dish was the clean flavors that popped.
Mike loves this more than the regular pasta shrimp scampi I've made him in the past.

Let's just say "I think I'm gettin' lucky tonight!"  (for you younger readers, please don't read that last part.)

The best tuna ever!

I put my creative juices together in my brain today.  I was sooo hungry at night since I didn't have a big supper, so I got a pouch of tuna out, the albacore white kind, and put it in a bowl with coleslaw mix, a chopped tomato, fresh shredded parmesan, chives, salt, pepper, a splash of vinegar, little bit of olive oil, quarter of a lemon of juice, chili powder, garlic powder, and fresh chopped cilantro.
I guess I love tuna now!  With all those flavors it doesn't even taste like tuna.  I guess what I hate about tuna is the tuna itself.  I'm not a fan of fishy fish so much.
Try it in a grilled corn tortilla or with Tostitos Lime and Salt thins.

SO GOOD...and good for you.

Fish tacos with watermelon salsa

I haven't cooked in awhile again...nothing adventurous anyhow!  So I found this recipe in the food network magazine.  Grilled fish with a salsa made of diced watermelon, red onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt, and pepper.  I also took coleslaw mix and put the juices from the watermelon on that.  Grill the corn tortillas, and assemble the tacos, adding sliced avacado at the end.

So I think I picked the wrong kind of fish.  The recipe called for Wild Striped Bass.  We, of course, living up here in the Northland, have no such thing.  So I thought maybe Pollock would be a good guess.  But the fish is far too soft.  It almost mimicked the texture of the watermelon, which made for a very squishy taco.  The fish was actually even mushier than the watermelon.  So I didn't love that.  Maybe another kind of fish next time.

To trying things out....