Stuffed Bell Peppers

1 lb ground beef
1/4 cup chopped onions
1 tablespoon garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1 15 oz can tomato sauce (use half of the sauce in the mix and half to top the peppers)
mozzarella cheese
1 cup cooked rice

Brown the beef , add onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Drain well on paper towels. Add the beef back to the skillet and add the rice and half can of sauce.
Fill each pepper with the beef and rice mixture, leaving enough room to pour the tomato sauce on top. cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove the foil and add grated cheese; return to the oven for 5 more minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Notes: Sometimes I use spaghetti sauce or add Italian seasoning to kick the flavor up a bit. My family doesn't like for our peppers to be crispy, so I pre-cook them for a few minutes in the microwave with about an inch of water in the bottom of the dish.

Breakfast Bacon Gravy

Bacon Gravy

One of my favorite gravies is served with biscuits for breakfast. A lot of people prefer sausage gravy, and that's very good, but my family always preferred bacon gravy. I think this is also called "Milk Gravy" by some. 

I will never forget the morning I learned to make Bacon Gravy. I was fourteen years old when I begged my Mama to teach me how to make homemade biscuits and gravy.

I'm just kidding. I'll never forget that morning because Mama nearly tore my butt up for being a lazy teenager who talked back to her. “How come Randy doesn't have to get off his butt and help, too?” I asked. “Because Randy is my favorite”, said Mama.

I'm just kidding again, but that's what I thought at the time, and nothing she said could have convinced me otherwise. 

She gave me a brief explanation about how women cooked, cleaned and cared for the children, and men earned the income. So that little story explains to y'all why I feel I should have been a 1950's housewife.

Without further digression, here's how you make basic gravy, of which I prefer to use bacon grease in stead of sausage, but you can use either.

Ingredients

2 T Bacon Grease

2 T Flour

1 Cup Milk




Directions

Heat your bacon grease on medium heat.
Whisk in your flour a little at a time, whisking after each addition.
Cook the grease and flour for about a minute and then slowly add your milk a little at a time, whisk until smooth.
I also add salt and pepper. Let the gravy bubble just a little, add more milk if necessary.

This makes just enough for the three of us, we like a lot of gravy over our biscuits.

My Mama's Chicken And Dumplings

(click on the photo to enlarge. Photos above taken last year when mama was making her famous chicken and dumpling recipe for Stephen and my brother, Randy - their favorite dish!)

Homemade Chicken Broth
* A large stockpot
* Bone-in chicken (this is healthier because of the bone marrow, and I'm sorry if that statement grosses you out.)
* Two or three stalks of celery (With the leaves; they're full of flavor)
* A whole onion, quartered
* Sometimes I add some carrots
* Add enough water to the stockpot to cover everything.

Cook the chicken and vegetables for a couple of hours or so (if you're adding carrots, wait until the last 30 minutes to add them) and let the broth cool enough for you to touch the chicken without burning yourself. Remove the chicken from the broth and set aside.
While the Chicken is cooling, make your dough. You can either roll it out on a floured surface and cut into strips or you can make drop biscuits. Depends on your preference. For me, it depends on how much time I have.

The Dumpling Dough
This is the really hard part for me. My mama always added egg to her dough, and I just had to omit that because the fact that mine was always too chewy was driving me insane. If anyone knows how to add the egg and allow the dough to be tender at the same time, please let me know! So here goes:
* 2 cups of flour (Mama always used White Lily self rising)
* 1/4 stick of Crisco Shortening (I use butter)
* 1/2 cup of milk, buttermilk, chicken broth, or even water

Put the flour in a large bowl, make a well in the center and cut in the shortening or butter until the mixture is blended into the size of little peas (sort of like when you're making homemade biscuits) you can do this with a pastry blender, a fork or do like I do; roll up your sleeves and do it with your *clean* hands. Make a well in the center of this again and slowly add your 1/2 cup of liquid, pulling the flour down from the sides of the bowl a little at a time. Knead a few times times, making sure you do not over-knead it! Form a dough ball and toss it onto a floured surface to roll out like my mama did in the photo up there, using her "Pampered Chef" dough roller. If you like biscuit-like dumplings, just spoon them into the broth. I prefer my mama's technique of rolling them out about 1/8 inch thick.

At this point, return the broth to a slow boil, slice the dough into strips and pinch a little at a time off of the strips into the broth (work kind of fast). Reduce heat to low. ALL recipes tell you to cover for 15 minutes. Usually when I do this the dumplings cook away, so I like to keep the lid off and guard them! Do not stir, you'll end up with a thick soup. In stead of stirring, shake the stock pot a little to move them around. Don't forget to add the chicken meat before you serve it! ;)

The End!

I really wish I could have figured out a simpler way of writing this recipe, but that's just not possible for me. I don't know about the rest of you, but making dumplings is not easy for me, my mama always told me I just needed more practice. I hope she was right. To this day I haven't succeeded with adding an egg to the dough. I can't help but wonder if just for giggles, my mama took her dumpling secret to Heaven with her?

Crock Pot Chicken And Vegetables

This is one of those throw it in a pot meals for busy days. It’s also a good recipe if you’re feeling just plain lazy and don‘t want to stand over the stove. Either way, it’s hearty and comforting.

You’ll notice in this photo that I’m lazy enough to use paper plates. I don’t care who knows - I won’t apologize - I’m not at all sorry for it.

Crock Pot Chicken With Vegetables

You will need:

* It goes without saying, you’re going to need a crock pot.
* A skillet and some light olive oil and butter for browning the chicken.

Ingredients:

* 3-4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
* 3-4 carrots, sliced diagonally in thirds
* 3-4 medium russet potatoes, cut in fourths
* 1 medium onion, chopped
* 1 teaspoon dried rosemary (fresh rosemary is even better)
* 1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
* salt and pepper to taste
* ½ tablespoon - olive oil
* ½ tablespoon - butter
* 1 tablespoon - flour (enough to make a roux)
* A good quality chicken stock or broth

Directions:

* I like to brown the chicken in equal amounts of olive oil and butter before putting it in the crock pot because it makes it look pretty and appetizing, and the pan juices make a very tasty gravy. Sure, it’s healthier to just use the olive oil to brown the chicken, but if you add a little butter, it’ll brown better and prettier. It’s obvious I like my food to be pretty, because I use that word a lot when I talk about food.
* Because vegetables take longer to cook in a crock pot, go ahead and place the veggies in the bottom of your pot. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper; top with rosemary and chopped garlic cloves.
* Place your browned chicken breasts on top of the veggies; sprinkle with a little salt and pepper.
* Add some flour to the pan you browned the chicken in and cook over medium high for about a minute, scraping the brown bits on the bottom of the pan (This is your roux) You may need to add a little more oil and butter.
* Start adding a little chicken broth to this until you’ve got your gravy the way you like it; turn your heat down! And now you have your gravy.
* Pour your pan gravy all over your chicken breasts; add more broth if you need to, to cover the tops of them. Don't over do it with the broth, because it's going to produce a lot of liquid while cooking. Cover with the lid and cook on high for an hour, then cook on low for about 6 more hours. If that time isn’t feasible for you, just cook on low for about 8 hours. You can also cook this on high for 4 hours. Try not to cook boneless breasts longer than that. Trust me, you won’t like the results. Be sure not to open the lid while it's cooking. But if you must, add about 20 minutes or so to your cooking time.

NOTE: When this is done, you’ll notice the pan gravy that you poured over the chicken has gotten very watery by now. If you prefer thicker gravy, follow the steps you followed in making your pan gravy.
Here’s a good guide:

½ Tablespoon - unsalted butter
½ Tablespoon - light olive oil
1 Tablespoon - flour
1 cup - broth

* Cook the oil and butter with the flour on medium-high heat until the flour has cooked to the point it’s browning a little; Add about a cup of the broth from the crock pot to that and stir until it’s smooth. If you feel like taking in a few more calories and fat grams, you can add a little cream to the mixture, but I usually don’t because I’m trying to watch my boyish figure you know.

My Grandma's Baked Apples

Stephen loves helping me in the kitchen and since he is not attending school right now (I’ll talk about that another time), I’ve been trying to come up with things I am sure he can assist with in the kitchen. We’re having fun with our cooking projects, and I want to keep a journal of them -- if I can discipline myself in keeping my camera handy and making notes. In time, I’d like to print our recipes and stories and make a keepsake book for Stephen, which is one reason I created this new food and recipe journal. How I wish I had recorded photos and notes from my childhood when I helped my mama and grandmothers in the kitchen.

Last Friday, Stephen and I baked apples! It was like taking a step back in time for me. I recall being as young as four years old when I helped my grandmother with this very recipe. Grandma baked apples at least once a week. Her little house, which was (and still is) located on main street in our town would smell so wonderful when she baked apples. The fragrance of apples and cinnamon was most distinctive in the fall of the year -- I believe it was because of the crisp chill in the air, and it just made you feel all warm and happy inside to step onto grandma‘s porch and breathe in the aroma.

Now on to the recipe -

You'll need the following ingredients:




* A baking pan, large enough to hold the apples. I like them to fit snuggly in the pan so they won‘t tip over.
* An apple corer is nice, but not necessary
* 6 - apples, washed
* 1/3 cup - brown sugar
* 1 - teaspoon cinnamon
* 1- teaspoon vanilla (optional)
* 1/3 cup- raisins
* 1/3 cup- coarsely chopped pecans
* 2-3 tablespoons - butter
* boiling water - enough to cover bottom of dish

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 or 375 degrees, depending on your oven.
Core the apples and use a spoon or paring knife to scoop out the remaining seeds. If you use an apple corer, I find this doesn’t make the hole in the apple big enough to hold the ingredients, so I make it slightly bigger in diameter with a paring knife.

* Mix the next five ingredients together in a small bowl.
* Spoon the mixture into each apple.
* Top each apple with a pat of butter.
* Add boiling water to bottom of pan.
* Bake until the apples look all shriveled and a knife easily pierces through them - about 45 minutes.
* Spoon the sweet, buttery pan drippings all over the apples before serving.



These are also good topped with vanilla ice cream, but we usually just eat them plain.