Oatmeal Broth

This is my latest post on my other blog, Don’t Forget The Old Ways. I’d love for you to have a read and let me know what you think!

The best home remedy for stomach problems.

Source: Oatmeal Broth

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Christmas Sugar Cookies

I recently came across the greatest sugar cookie recipe I believe I have ever had the good pleasure of making.

When it comes to cookies, I am all about simplicity. I don’t like long ingredient lists or special ingredients that I don’t already have in the pantry. If I can throw it together quick, all the better for me and everyone in my house  🙂

This recipe yields a nice chewy cookie with a snap of a crunch on the outside without being “crisp”. However, if you leave them just a minute or so too long in the oven, they will be overly crisp and not very good.

Let’s just say I learn from my mistakes…

Here is what you’ll need:

• About 3 cups of flour
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 and 1/4 cups softened soft butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. This is always the preface to a recipe, but with cookies, it can be of the utmost importance. If your oven hasn’t reached the right temperature when you put the cookies in, the bake time will be off and you won’t get the result you’re looking for.

Next, add your dry ingredients in a large bowl, mixing well to incorporate everything. In another bowl, mix together the butter and sugar until you have a nice fluffy consistency. Then beat in one egg at a time, making sure the first is completely mixed in before adding the next. Once those are nicely mixed, add the vanilla and mix again.

Gradually add your dry ingredients to this mixture, making sure to incorporate everything well before adding more. You might need the entire 3 cups and you might not. You don’t want your cookie dough to be too thin, but you also don’t want it too thick. Once it becomes hard to mix with a spoon, you have your desired consistency.

Wrap the dough in some plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about 30 minutes. You can refrigerate it for longer if you want, it certainly won’t hurt it. But don’t take it out before the half hour is up, as you want it chilled enough to be easy to work with.

Using an ice cream scoop or a regular spoon, make walnut sized balls, rolling them in sugar before transferring them to your greased cookie sheet. For snickerdoodles, roll them in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar, or use colored sugars or sprinkles for a festive look. Flatten them slightly and bake for about 8 minutes. Remove them from the cookie sheet and place on racks to cool before serving.

This is a great cookie base for decorating, especially if you plan on using shaped cookie cutters, which can easily be done. Just roll the dough out to about a quarter of an inch thick before cutting, instead of rolling the dough into balls.

Good luck! If you happen to make these, make sure you stop by and let me know how they turned out. I know my family loved them.

Stuffed Pepper Casserole – From Buttered Side Up

One of my favorite dishes is stuffed peppers. I share the same feeling as the author of this blog, however, in that the normal recipe often leaves me wishing I had less pepper and a lot more filling  🙂

This recipe is an awesome version of the stuffed pepper, that comes together easily and makes for a great family dinner. I’m also betting that it could be done in a slow cooker as well, which is how I will be trying it…just leave off adding the cheese until either just before you serve it, or as you serve it to each individual. You could also vary what kind of veggies you add in, to your specific taste.

Source: Stuffed Pepper Casserole – Buttered Side Up

Peanut Butter Cheesecake Pie

Oh yes, it does sound good, doesn’t it? I am an avid lover of all things cheesecake. However…I’ve never made a true cheesecake, baked in the oven. I plan to, at some point in the near future because…CHEESECAKE!  🙂

However, this incredibly simple, easy to make pie calms my cravings every time. Don’t worry, this is the simplest of simple recipes, trust me.

All you need is:

• 1 package of cream cheese
• 1 tub of whipped topping
• 1-1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup of confectioners sugar
• 1/2 – 1 cup of milk

Put all of that together in large mixing bowl and mix it up really good. You can use a stand mixer, hand mixer or a fork, it’s completely up to you. Then divide this mixture between two graham cracker crusts – chocolate is best, I’m not gonna lie! If you’re feeling particularly froggy, you can make your own crust using graham crackers, either honey or chocolate, or you can even use Oreo cookies, with the middles discarded, mixed with a few tablespoons of butter and then pressed into your pie plate or pan.

After you’ve put the mixture into the crusts, let it set up in the fridge for about 3-4 hours, if you can wait that long  🙂  And then enjoy!

It really is just that simple. It takes hardly no time to make. I like to make it just before bed and give it all that night and the next day to set up, and it is unbelievable!

Have fun with that, and thanks for stopping by!

A Simple Stew

An “old-time” favorite traditional supper passed down through many, many generations of my family. It’s never the same way twice!

A little bit goes a long way!

Source: A Simple Stew

How to Make an Omelette | The Pioneer Woman

I received this little tidbit in my email this morning and I absolutely had to share! You might think an omelet is one of the easiest things in the world to make, but it’s one of the things I struggled with the most. Now, my wonderful husband was always quick to remind me, “Honey, it’s not about how it looks, it’s going to taste great no matter what.” 

It’s true that not “all” of an omelet’s qualities lies in the way it looks, but, as a cook, it certainly mattered to me  🙂  

So, for anyone who hasn’t quite mastered getting omelet to look as good as it tastes, I suggest you try it this way. I’m sure you’ll be as pleased with the results as I was! If you like this, be sure to subscribe to this blog. You’ll get some amazing stuff on a daily basis.

Confession: My first few attempts at making omelettes were fairly disastrous. They tasted great, but wow, were they ever ugly. I couldn’t get them to hold together, so the filling would spill…

Source: How to Make an Omelette | The Pioneer Woman

A Simple Pot of Beans

Pinto beans. Soup beans. Bean soup. There are many names for it. I grew up with it. In the Appalachian mountains, it was sometimes all a family had, along with a hot iron skillet full of fresh baked cornbread. And sometimes some potatoes, either boiled down low with butter or lard, or fried with onions. Ah, it makes my mouth water.

However, when I was a child, every time I saw it I couldn’t help but think, “Beans? Again?” Of course, you dared not speak that out loud! By God’s good graces, Mom would say, We should be thankful for it because some people don’t even have that, and would love to have it! I knew that, really.

I swore THEN that once I grew up, I would never cook such a thing, no sir, not me. That was “poor people food”, I thought foolishly. And now, I find myself looking for an occasion to cook it! As a matter of fact, I just served a huge pot to my family that gobbled it up, along with cornbread and bits of meat left over schnitzel from last night.

You can tell from the ring in the bean pot and half of the bread being gone that I didn’t get pictures until after supper 🙂  But that’s okay. It’s a simple meal that’s easy to fix (once you learn how to cook it) and it keeps good as leftovers too. Have you ever had a mug of cold cornbread with milk? Oh my goodness, but that is simply DIVINE! It’s one of my favorite things, and was even back in those days when I thought it was just awful to have to have beans and corn bread.

So how do you fix them? Well, it’s not as hard as you think. Now, I’ve heard people talk about soaking dried beans overnight and then pouring the water off, but I’ve never done that. So, you might hear somebody say that’s how it has to be done, but I’m here to tell you, and my Mother will tell you too, we’ve never done it that way and never had a bad outcome.

First, you take your dried beans… I’ve found that a one pound package usually feeds a family of 4+, usually with leftovers. I always put mine into a colander and wash them real good. Even though they’re packaged and on a store shelf, they’ll still be dirty, I don’t care who tells you different. You can find this to be true yourself if you put them in a bowl to hold the water and squeeze them through your fingers a time or two under the water. In some cases, it will nearly turn black. Another reason you want to wash them and look through them is that there may be little rocks or pebbles, clumps of dirt and bad beans that you need to pick out. Nobody wants to find a rock in their soup! I mean, I’ve heard of stone soup, but…  🙂

Once you’ve rinsed them and made sure they’re free of debris, you put them in a big pot, about the size you’d make spaghetti in, and fill it full of water. Bring that to a rolling boil and let it boil like that for about 10 minutes. You can add your fat at this time, either lard, meat scraps, butter…whatever you’d like. Next, turn your heat down to about medium, or maybe a little less, put a lid on it and let it boil. BUT…you have to keep an eye on it! You’ll need to add water as it cooks down, every half hour or so, and keep adding water until the beans are done, which should be anywhere from 2-5 hours. It depends on how mushy you want them and how thick you want the soup to be, and also the altitude plays a part in it as well.

And that’s about it. I usually add some onion to the pot about a half hour before they’re done, which adds an excellent flavor, but to be honest, you can over-season beans really easily. I use to try to follow directions for bean soups that had all kinds of different seasonings thrown in, but my family never liked them near as much. Yours might, it’s certainly something you can play around with. It’s a really cheap meal to make, especially if you know where to shop. Some people add things like oregano, beef broth, soul seasoning, curry or cumin…I’ve seen recipes with all kinds of stuff in the ingredient list. But for us, beans, fat, salt and onion are the best way to go about it 🙂

So, I guess that’s it for this post, guys, thanks for reading along. If you make a pot of beans like this, be sure to stop in and let me know how they came out 🙂

Homemade Dill Relish

This is a recipe I found online at The Daring Gourmet, and it’s another one of those that I have been looking for for SO long! We absolutely love dill relish at our house, but all the recipes that I’ve ever been given were for sweet relish. Now that, my friends, simply turns my stomach.

We use dill relish on so much more than just hot dogs. We put it on burgers and bologna sandwiches, into soups and pinto beans, I just can’t say enough about it. And cucumbers go on sale at Kroger sometimes, so I try to keep my eyes peeled 🙂

Do any of you make your own sauces and condiments? I’d love to hear from you if so, and maybe you’ll even share the recipe? 🙂

 

A quick, easy and utterly deeeeelicious recipe for homemade dill pickle relish! Sweet and savory with a variety of uses. Canning instructions included.

Source: Easy Homemade Dill Pickle Relish – The Daring Gourmet

AD NOTICE: PLEASE READ!!

I have known since starting a WordPress blog that there would be ads here, since I’m not yet a paid member. But up until today, I was unaware what types of ads that they placed.

So let me just say this: I DO NOT ENDORSE ANY POLITICAL CANDIDATE. Furthermore, I cannot say that I can, do or would endorse ANY AD you may see on this site. I do not put ads on here myself, it is at the sole discretion of WordPress, as I am not yet a paying member.

Hopefully after the first of 2017, I will be making some major changes to my blog here and I won’t have to worry about that. When that happens, I will send out a notice at that time. So until then, if you see an ad on my blog, All Out War, please do not consider it an endorsement of any kind from me.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed day!

Cast Iron Cookware

Sausage Gravy in cast iron – the only way for me!

Cast iron is one of those things that usually gets passed down from generation to generation. And rightly so – because it lasts forever if properly cared for. But therein lies the trick: proper care. If the piece gets handed down, then the care and cleaning of the piece usually gets handed down with it. But that’s not always the case.

Then there are those people who just decide they’re going to start collecting it one day, because there is a lot of hype out there about it. In antique malls and shops around they country, they can sell for a pretty hefty price. Which makes them seem important for reasons other than what REALLY makes them important. At least to me.

There are a few things anyone should know before committing to cast iron. And by committing, I do really mean committing. You don’t simply get into cast iron – especially if it’s purchased brand new – and then one day just leave it sitting without the proper care. Even though I’ve seen some pretty nasty looking pieces get refurbished, it just doesn’t need to happen 🙂

First of all, let’s talk about the brand new pieces. They do come preseasoned, but this doesn’t mean it’s going to cook like your grandmother’s piece that she’s had since her wedding day. No, even when you pull that new iron from its packaging, you still need to wash it and coat it with a light layer of vegetable oil. I am a HUGE fan of Lodge, which can be purchased at Wal-Mart or directly from the Lodge website, and they have an awesome article here, about the ins and outs of new iron cookware. Please do take a minute to look it over. They even have a video so that you can see some hand’s on stuff, which is a plus for people like me  🙂

Probably the first thing you should cook in a brand new cast iron skillet is bacon. This seasons the iron AS you cook and some people swear by it. I’ve also found that, really, cooking anything that has a good amount of fat in it is also a good way, though never as good as bacon 🙂  When I got my new cast iron dutch oven for Christmas last year, the first thing I did was roast a chicken in it.

The pieces that get handed down are generally already well seasoned because they’ve probably been in use for years. These need little in the way of preparing, but there’s always the care and procedure for clean up, which is pretty easy. For me, it boils down to not letting anything sit in the piece. When I’m done cooking and serving, anything left in the iron goes into a dish I can stick in the fridge and that piece immediately gets washed. After you wash a piece of cast iron, don’t just throw it on the dish drainer and leave it or IT WILL RUST. No if, and’s or but’s here – it’s iron, and iron is a metal that rusts. It will rust if you leave it in the drainer and it will also rust if you leave it setting on a wet counter or even a damp cloth. So don’t do that.

If you DO wind up with a little rust in or on your iron though, please don’t freak out! Although, whenever I’ve had a piece that has rusted, I did usually freak out just a little. However, it’s savable! It sounds crazy, and yes there are other ways to do it, but the best way to clean a little rust out of your iron skillet is to give it a generous dousing of kosher salt (because it’s very coarse), cut a decent size potato in half and use the cut side to scrub your skillet. The rust usually comes right off and all you have to do then is rub on a little oil and set it aside. All is well.

The harder cleaning comes when a piece has been found, say, in an old barn after an estate sale, or buried in the yard (YES, I’ve had friends that have found pieces that way!), or just cast aside and not properly cared for. The rust can build up to the point that you’ll think you might as well just throw it in the trash. But very few cases are actually to the point that they are not able to be saved.

Now, where I’m from in the Appalachian mountains, when a piece is this rusted, the women-folk just start a big fire in the yard (we called ’em gnat-fires, but some of you all know them better as bonfires, lol) and just threw the afflicted piece in and burnt the rust off. It works great, and after a little re-seasoning, you’d never know there was any rust on it to start with.

HOWEVER… let me just go ahead and throw this out there because there are some people who will literally freak out, get nasty-mouthed and have a true to life conniption fit! IF you do put a piece of iron in a fire, some pieces will warp. Now, I’ve never seen the GOOD pieces do that, because back in the day, they didn’t make thin pieces of wanna-be cast iron, but apparently they do now. So if you’re not sure if yours is “good” or not, don’t try that. Well, unless you’re like me and think even a warped cast iron skillet is WAY better than these Teflon coated  things that some people want to cook in.

There is another way to clean the really gnarly looking, super-rusted pieces using something called an “E-tank” that uses water and electric current and lye…I’ll admit, I don’t know much about that method and may even be wrong in listing those three things as being a part of it – so don’t quote me – but I HAVE seen the results of the pieces that were cleaned that way and they are phenomenal! If you are thinking of using this method, let me just point you towards YouTube, where there are an array of great video tutorials and walk-through’s on the subject.

Now I’ve also had people ask me about cast iron and the glass-top stoves. Some people swear you absolutely cannot use cast iron on these stoves, but I have seen it done. There are a lot of precautions though, and you can’t skimp on any of them if you want to keep your stove. Cast iron is no joke: it’s heavy, it’s abrasive and it can do irreparable damage to your stove tops. So if you have a class top, here are a few things to keep in mind…

• Do NOT leave them sitting, especially stacked one atop another, on the surface of your glass top stove. After awhile, they will crack or flat out break the glass top.
• Don’t ever use cast iron on a glass top stove if you’re angry. Slamming down that first iron skillet will also break the glass top. Yes, I’ve seen that done too, so trust me.
• Don’t shake the skillet back and forth on the burner like you can normally do with traditional burners. It will leave scratches on the glass top that you won’t be able to get out and it looks hideous.

So there are some thoughts on cast iron that might help someone out there, I hope. I love my collection and wouldn’t take a million dollars for it. If you’re avid about yours, I know you wouldn’t either. And if you’re just honestly starting out, you’ll soon get that way. A well-seasoned cast iron skillet works far better than Teflon – even eggs won’t stick!

How about you guys? Any cast iron tips or love stories you’d care to share? Please, by all means, feel free to share!

As usual, thanks for stopping by! I appreciate it!