Summaries
As many of you know already, I am doing Christmas Eve dinner at my house. Now, last time I did this, I catered it. This year we are making dinner. I have never ever ever made a turkey in my life. I have never made real mashed potatoes either (I am great at instant though! LOL). Needless to say, I am a tad worried about Christmas Eve dinner especially now that my husband has informed me that he didn’t take off (if looks could kill . . .). However, in this insanity I call my life, there is one thing I can count on. Dessert.
I have to thank Pillsbury for making dessert so much easier for me. I’m all about easy cooking, and once again, they have come through for me. Did you know that Pillsbury has pie crusts? All you need to do is roll them out in your pie pans! How much easier does it get than that? Now, they also save you when you are looking for an easy pie to make for dessert too. By checking out Pillsbury’s website, you can find a ton more pie recipes. How does this one sound?
Candy Bar Pie
Prep Time: 20 Minutes
Start to Finish: 3 Hours 40 Minutes
Crust
1 Pillsbury® refrigerated pie crust (from 15-oz box), softened as directed on box
Filling
5 bars (2.07 oz each) chocolate-covered peanut, caramel and nougat candy
4 packages (3 oz each) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
Topping
3 tablespoons whipping cream
2/3 cup milk chocolate chips
Heat oven to 450°F. Place pie crust in 9-inch glass pie plate as directed on box for One-Crust Filled Pie. Bake 5 to 7 minutes or until very light golden brown. Cool while preparing filling. Reduce oven temperature to 325°F.
Cut candy bars in half lengthwise; cut into 1/4-inch pieces. Place candy bar pieces over bottom of partially baked crust. In small bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Beat in 1 egg at a time until well blended. Add sour cream and peanut butter, beating until mixture is smooth. Pour over candy bar pieces. Bake at 325°F for 30 to 40 minutes or until center is set. Cool completely on cooling rack, about 2 hours.
In 1-quart saucepan, heat whipping cream until very warm. Remove from heat; stir in chocolate chips until melted and smooth. Spread over top of pie. Refrigerate 2 to 3 hours before serving. Cover and refrigerate any remaining pie.
Do you have any tricks that you use for your pies? Any time saving tips like using Pillsbury Pie Crusts?
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I am all about easy, and I am definitely not talented enough to make and construct my own gingerbread house. However, I can definitely decorate one. That is where Hope, Faith, & Gluttony saves me yet again. You may remember my post about their awesome cookies and brownies I did. Well, they also do Gingerbread Houses too! Here is what their kit looks like:
I love that they send you a preconstructed house. That makes it ten times easier to make a fun project for the kids. The hardest thing about this gingerbread house was getting the right consistancy for the icing. Besides that, it was fairly easy. We let both kids help decorate and this is what we ended up with:
Being that this was our first gingerbread house ever, I think we did pretty good and a good time was had by all. We will definitely be ordering another one of these from Hope, Faith, & Gluttony next year!
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I luck out, I have children who do love their veggies. I even have one that actually eats her veggies first before anything else. Crazy, I know. However, most moms aren’t as lucky as I am. Hidden Valley is looking for the best vegetable advocates out there and is holding an awesome contest. They are picking 10 moms to go to a two-day retreat aimed at learning and sharing tips and tools on planting, harvesting, cooking and eating vegetables with children. These moms will also receive $5,000 to start or maintain a community vegetable garden in their hometown. How awesome is that?
Entering is super easy. Go to Love Your Veggies and fill out the application. You will have to answer some questions about what your plans are for the $5,000 grant and a few about yourself also. It is super easy (I promise!), and I have even signed up too! Good luck and thanks Mom Central for letting me know about this great contest.
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When it is just me and the kids, I tend not to take pictures. I have a hard time getting everyone situated and that is just what happened with this recipe. Now, this is a recipe you can definitely customize to what you want. I am going to list this easy to make recipe the way I made it. However, next time I will be adding some diced tomatoes to this and possibly some ricotta cheese too.
1 lb ground beef
3 garlic cloves
1 jar (26 oz) spaghetti sauce
1 2/3 cups of water
1/4 cup of Italian Dressing
12 lasagna noodles (broken into quarters)
1 cup shredded low moisture part skim mozzarella cheese
Brown ground beef and drain.
Add in garlic, spaghetti sauce, water, and dressing. Bring this to a boil and then stir in the noodles. Reduce the heat to medium low and cover. Cook 10 - 15 minutes or until your noodles are tender. Remove from heat and sprinkle with cheese. Cover again and let stand 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.
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My family and I got to try some of the best beef we have ever had last night. We cooked up a couple of New York Strip steaks on our Foreman grill, and “awesome” is the only word I can use to describe them. The directions said that they would cook quicker than a regular steak, and they definitely did. What surprised me was how tender these steaks were. Will (my 18 month old) is picky about meat. If it has a weird texture or if it is too hard to chew, he won’t eat it. However, he cleaned his plate off last night!
La Cense Beef is 100% grass fed, and I have to believe that is what makes these steaks so good. Their steaks are lower in fat and calories than conventional beef too. It is also high in Omega-3 fatty acids (good for heart health) and low in the Omega-6 fatty acids (which can contribute to heart disease, cancers and depression). It is also has much higher beta-carotene in it. Lastly, La Cense Beef contains no pesticides, antibiotics or hormones.
Now, are you hungry yet? If you are, I am giving away three prize packs of some of this awesome La Cense Beef. Each prize pack will have 2 lbs ground steak and 2 petite sirloin steaks. Interested? Here’s what you need to do:
Each one of these gives you one entry:
1. Leave a comment on this post. Check out the La Cense Beef website and tell me what you’d like to try.
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.
Each one of these gives you 5 additional entries:
1. Join the Grass Fed Party. Please leave me your username.
2. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
4. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
5. Add my badge to your sidebar:
Good luck! This contest will end December 31, 2008 at 8:00 PM CST and is for US residents only.
Copyright © 2009 Lisa Cooking. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@lisacooking.com so we can take legal action immediately.
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This contest is over. The winner is Michelle. Congrats!
Every so often a product comes out that I seriously don’t know how I lived without it. The SmartShopper is that product for me. I can’t tell you how many times I have been working on a shopping list to have it disappear to who knows where. Then I have to restart my list, and I have no idea what was on there. I also have had my list walk off with little children who are trying to help (even though they don’t know how to read and write). Now, if you have kids, you all know what I am talking about. However, the SmartShopper really is my answer to this. The SmartShopper is an automated grocery organizer that allows you to add items to your shopping list by simply speaking into it. Yes, it is seriously that easy. You can edit and customize your SmartShopper using the easy-to-read LED display, and SmartShopper will automatically sort your items alphabetically. Now, there are 2,500 things already listed in here that are categorized. There is going to be something you need that isn’t listed. No problem. You can easily add your custom entries. The best part: when you are ready to go grocery shopping, hit the button that says print. It will print you your list printed out into categories! You have no idea how much time this saves me. I use to make my list and then rewrite it that way! You can also wall mount this or stick it on your refrigerator (which is what I did). I literally just walk around the kitchen and figure out what we need. I hit record, say the item, select the item it thinks I said, and then repeat. That’s it! Now, if you are interested in purchasing a SmartShopper can use the exclusive code LM12398 until December 31 to receive $5 off your order. Also, all orders placed between now and December 31 will receive free ground shipping (although be sure to order before December 18, if you want the SmartShopper by Christmas).
Now, if you’d like to win one of these for yourself (or someone else), here’s what you need to do:
1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know what feature the SmartShopper has that you love.
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.
For 5 additional entries,
1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:
Good luck! This contest will end December 16, 2008 at 8:00 PM CST and is for US residents only.
Copyright © 2009 Lisa Cooking. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@lisacooking.com so we can take legal action immediately.
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If you are a busy mom like me, you definitely need EmailsforYou in your life. This is an online service that helps you do customizable web based meal planning. They will help you with recipes, shopping lists, wine pairings (I seriously needed this), techniques, and just overall ideas to help you! You can get all of this for one year for $36! Now, if you use the code COOKIN-23, I can save you an additional $8! You will not find all of this elsewhere for this low of a price! Think of it this way — this is just the cost of a dinner at a restaurant. Cut that out, and you’ve got meal planning made easy for a whole year! My personal favorite part of this site is that it will scale the recipes down for you (you can go as low as 2 people). I personally hate having a recipe and standing there trying to figure out the math to cut it down (it has been a long time since I have had to divide fractions). Now, since I have such great readers, I am able to give away 3 ten year memberships to their site!
How to Enter: I need to know is your favorite recipe to make. The recipes should be:
- makeable in 30 -40 minutes,
- using products and ingredients that you would normally have around the house,
- something you have made (no downloads from websites).
Your recipe also needs to fit under one of the categories listed here.
Besides the free memberships, the winners will have their recipes published both on the Emailsforyou blog and their site. You will be given credit for the recipes on the sites too. I will also be mentioning the winners on a post on here with credit to you for a great recipe. The judges for this contest will be me, EmealsForYou, Elizabeth from MomCooks.net, and Val from Fun, Crafts, and Recipes.
I’ll be running this contest until Dec. 15th at 8:00pm CST, so good luck. I am looking forward to some new ideas to be making this holiday season!
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A new snack we recently tried at my house are the Original Honey Filled and Chocolate Filled Wafer Thins. I never had these before, but Bill recalls have these a young child. He actually might have. Bill grew up in this area and this company is based out of Crestwood, IL! What are Honey Wafers? They are two crispy light 8 inch wafer rounds that are hand-sandwiched together with a honey filling. I’ve been hoarding the chocolate ones to myself, because I like them so much. However, I have let the kids and the hubby at the honey ones. We even brought some of these to a family get together, and they were a huge hit. Everyone wanted to know where we got them from! I also like that they are 100% natural. Honey Wafers have no preservatives, no saturated fat, no trans fats, and no cholesterol. They are even certified kosher! These make an excellent snack too, because they are only 90 calories! My first thought when I took a bite was that it tastes like an ice cream cone. When you get down to the filling part, that just makes it all the more better. I actually found this snack pretty filling and something I could definitely give both of my kids to eat as a snack.
If you are looking for a healthy snack for you or your kids to try, Honey Wafers is definitely something you should check into. Not only are they healthy, they taste great too!
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This is an easy to make recipe. However, it does need a couple of tweaks. This was the first time for us to make this recipe, and I would definitely not add as much beef broth. It was super good, but very soupy. Besides that, this is an excellent recipe that I got from the Kraft Foods website.
1 jar (16 oz) spaghetti sauce
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (10 oz) beef broth
1/4 cup Zesty Italian Dressing
24 oz of frozen ravioli (you can use fresh also)
1 cup Part Skim Mozzarella cheese
Preheat over to 375 degrees. Combine spaghetti, tomatoes, broth, and dressing in a 13×9 backing dish. Add ravioli and toss to coat. Cover with foil.
Bake 50 minutes or until ravioli is tender.
Remove foil and stir. Sprinkle with cheese and let stand 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.
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Filet mignon are small, thick, tender steaks cut from the narrow end of the beef tenderloin.
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Cooking sweet potatoes with their skins on intensifies their flavor. Place the potatoes in a large pot with water. Cook uncovered 1 hour or until potatoes are tender (but not mushy).
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Now, when I heard that I could make some awesome party meatballs with little to now work, I was all over that. This site is all about easy to make recipes and these ultimate party meatballs definitely fit that bill. Now, when I first saw how to make these, I was surprised. However, these meatballs taste great and would be a hit at any party or get together you plan on having. Here is the awesome recipe:
1 16 oz can Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce
1 12 oz bottle Heinz Chili Sauce
1 2lb bag frozen, precooked, cocktail size meatballs
Combine sauces in a large saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat stirring until smooth. Add in meatballs. Cover and cook for 15 minutes or until meatballs are heated through.
Now, how easy is that? The Ultimate Party Meatballs site also has more easy to make recipes (all using Heinz Chili Sauce and Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce) for both appetizers and main dishes, entertaining tips, and even a sweepstakes with a grand prize of $3,000 to throw the ultimate party! Now, I have already entered that one. I think I could definitely spend $3,000!
Make sure you check out the Ultimate Party Meatballs site for all your holiday cooking needs. You can definitely find some good ideas to put out on your table.
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Now, I have been slacking with my recipes on here, but I am hoping to get my butt into gear and get some more easy to make recipes for you all. These pork chops are both good and easy to make. I have to thank Kraft Foods for the recipe (even though I have made some changes to it).
4 pork chops
1 16 oz pkg frozen vegetables
1 tsp dried oregano leaves
1/4 cup ranch dressing
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 cup shredded park skim mozzarella cheese
Heat a skillet sprayed with cooking oil. Add you pork chops and vegetables. Cook for about 2 minutes or until the bottoms of the pork chops are browned. Turn the pork chops over.
Sprinkle with oregano and drizzle with the dressing. Now, cover everything with the diced tomatoes. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to low and simmer for about 12 minutes. Stir occasionally.
Before serving, sprinkle with cheese.
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Sweet potatoes have tan skin and yellow flesh. Yams have copper or purple skin, orange flesh, and a denser texture.
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The best way to refrigerate leftover raw onions is to place them in a screw top glass jar. They can be refrigerated this way up to 1 week.
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There are several types of dried oregano. Dried Mediterranean oregano is found in most grocery stores. If you want a spicer dish, look for Mexican oregano.
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A medium size, sturdy serrated knife is the best tool for cutting tomoatoes into thin slices.
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To test meatloaf for doneness, use a meat thermometer. Insert the thermometer into the center of the loaf. If the meatloaf is 155 degrees, it is okay to take it out. The meat will warm to 160 degrees as it rests.
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In these trying economic times, we are all looking to save money whatever ways we can. One way to save money is what we are using in our kitchen. Did you know that potatoes are one of the least expensive items in the produce department, andbone of the most nutritious? In most places, you can still get potatoes for less than 25 cents a spud. With only 110 calories in a medium potato and being naturally fat-free, sodium-free and cholesterol-free, the tater can’t be beat.
The US Potato Board has come up with a website to help us all out called Mom’s Dinner Helper. You can find great recipes, dinnertime tip, and Nutrition information. There are even places for you to share your own recipes, comment, and rate recipes to win prizes. They even have a blog called Tater Talk where everything from parenting to potatoes is discussed.
If you are looking for a way to save some money in the kitchen, incorporating more potatoes in your diet is a good way.
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Bread crumbs in meatloaf absorb excess moisture so the meatloaf is firm and easy to slice.
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