Here’s a super easy cake recipe from my dear friend, Wanda, that you can mix together in five minutes. Great for the hectic holiday season!
INGREDIENTS:
Combine ingredients and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or top with your favorite cream cheese frosting. It’s that easy!
This sounds like a good, easy recipe for the holidays, from my Eat Better America calendar:
INGREDIENTS:
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix broccoli, cream cheese, bell pepper, and red pepper sauce. Cover and cook on stove top on medium-low heat for 20 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes. Put in casserole dish and bake uncovered in the oven for 20-25 minutes until veggies are tender. Sprinkle onions on top and bake 5 more minutes.
I grew up having fresh okra from our garden every summer. Every. Single. Summer! I learned to love fried okra at an early age, and it became one of my favorite veggies, and when I got older then I even learned to eat it stewed. I must admit, though, that it took me quite a while to acquire a taste for stewed okra. Once I got past the slimy texture of it, I really liked it. Now, okra is one of my very favorite “comfort foods.” I must admit again, though, that “fried” okra is my go to veggie for comfort food, not stewed okra. Not only is okra a favorite of mine and many other people, it also has many benefits:
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Here are just some of the health benefits contained in okra:
That’s a lot of green goodness packed into that one vegetable! So next time you’re choosing veggies, don’t overlook okra!
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Keep thinking about pumpkin pie. I may have to make one really soon!!
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If you need a recipe for a large group of people, here’s one that we used at the Ronald McDonald House when a group of us from church provided an evening meal: Homemade Chicken Pot Pie
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Here’s another good recipe for the cool days of fall which is from my calendar, Eat Better America:
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INGREDIENTS:
Grease 3-quart casserole dish. Place bread in bottom of baking dish. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 cups cheese (save 1/2 cup) and tomatoes. Mix lightly.
In medium bowl, beat eggs, milk, mustard, basil, and salt. Pour over bread mixture. Cover tightly and put in fridge for 2 hours (but no longer than 24 hours).
Bake at 350 degrees, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Sprinkle crumbled bacon and 1/2 cup cheese on top. Let stand 10 minutes before eating.
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Our menu for this week is much like last week’s because last week turned out to be a crazy week, and our whole menu changed except for Friday. We’re still having healthy salad nearly every day.
Monday: Rotisserie chicken, zucchini, yellow squash, & onion medley (didn’t have this last week after all)
Tuesday: Leftovers from Monday, salad
Wednesday: Salmon Patties, salad, corn
Thursday: Leftovers from Wednesday, salad
Friday: Pizza, salad
Here’s a good recipe (Julie’s recipe) if you ever need to feed a large group of people. One pan feeds around eight people, so multiply the ingredients by how many pans you think you need. We were serving families at the Ronald McDonald House so our team made 10 pans. We needed enough to feed around 75 people, so that gave us 80 adult-size servings. I’ll give you quantities for a single pan & you can multiply by however many pans you need. When making multiple pans, mix one pan at a time to ensure proper amount of ingredients in each pan..
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Mix pot pie ingredients & pour into 9 x13 pan. Mix crust ingredients thoroughly & drop on top of chicken mixture by spoonfuls. Gently spread to cover entire dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. Serve with salad.
.* Reminder: When making multiple pans, mix one pan at a time to ensure proper amount of ingredients in each pan.
Here’s a great meal with home cooked chicken pot pie, salad, strawberries, and delicious bakery cakes: 
This week is Teacher & Staff Appreciation Week at my school. We had a beautiful luncheon, which included a cake that several said was too pretty to cut. Here’s the recipe for this impressive cake that was also delicious:
INGREDIENTS:
Place the cake on a large, pretty plate. Fill the center of the bundt cake completely with fresh whole strawberries so that the strawberries are overlapping onto the top of the cake a little bit. Place remaining strawberries on the plate, completely surrounding the bottom of the cake. Enjoy!
Central Market has a kale salad recipe that sounds great. However, I had only one of the ingredients…kale. But I did have ingredients that make good substitutions, so below is what I came up with plus some added ingredients such as sesame sticks and chicken. (The pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, almonds and cranberries were in the Central Market recipe plus crystallized ginger, chopped.) My husband and I liked the substitute recipe so much that we’ve had it for supper two nights in a row. This makes enough for two servings.
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DRESSING:
Are you looking for some special recipes? And not only special recipes but healthy ones as well? When loved ones and friends come to visit or even if it’s just our own family at home, we like to fix something special for them on holidays or certain occasions and might need a new recipe. Or maybe we’ve gotten into a recipe rut and fix the same things week after week and need a recipe revival.
Whatever the reason, here are some delicious sounding recipes I’ve seen recently on a Bed & Breakfasts Foodie Blog: Eight Broads in a Kitchen. These recipes come from Kristie at Lookout Point Lakeside Inn which got an award of Innkeepers of the Year a couple of years ago. I can’t wait to try them!
UPDATE: These unassuming yet delicious cookies can be ordered on Amazon!
What an unassuming little cookie! Just to look at Dad’s Original Oatmeal Cookie, one would never guess how delicious they are. We first encountered them a year ago when we visited the St. Louis Gateway Arch (the nation’s tallest monument at 630 feet). Unseen from ground level is an underground mini-mall area complete with an impressive little museum and shops. We (hubby, me, and our son) went in this cute little 1900-style market. On the checkout counter stood a cookie jar filled with oatmeal cookies, priced modestly at 3/$1. We needed a little snack so I bought several cookies.
When eating these cookies later, we were surprised how yummy they were and wished we had bought more. We were headed to Springfield, Missouri, and figured we might could buy more there but were disappointed to find out the cookies are sold only in the St. Louis area. Sometime after we got back home, I researched Dad’s Original Scotch Oatmeal Cookies and found out their interesting history. I searched and searched for the recipe but didn’t find one that sounded suitable until one day I found this Whole Grain Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookie Recipe (minus the walnuts) that sounds like it’s very close to Dad’s cookies.
My dear husband suggested ordering some of the cookies from Dad’s website recently, but I would rather wait since I’m trying to lose weight. If I need to bake a batch of cookies to take somewhere, though, I just might try the recipe I found online!
Update: We visited the actual bakery, Dad’s Cookie Co., in June 2012.
Photo courtesy of our son!
Even when a person is trying to lose weight, it’s good to have little treats or rewards along the way. Here’s a healthy cookie with fiber and nutrition that makes a nice treat:
Ingredients:
Cream together the olive oil, butter and brown sugar. Blend in the egg and applesauce. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Add to the creamed mixture. Blend well. Mix in the vanilla. Add the oats, raisins, and walnuts. Drop by spoonfuls on baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 9-12 minutes.
