Author: brooke

Egg in a hole, more leftover Christmas ham, and pineapple. The pineapple was a dollar and tasted like it, so it made it’s final appearance New Year’s morning in a smoothie.

Tomato soup (even with nonstop canning in August and September, I’m still going to run out of tomatoes before summer), grilled cheese on homemade bread, and pineapple.

Leftover Christmas ham, california blend, and noodles in casserole form. This made a good dinner and an even better lunch for a couple of days! Sorry the applesauce doesn’t look particularly appetizing, but Meg sure likes it (“appo…saw”)!!

I had a potato candy revelation this year. In the past, I’ve made plain candy, mint, cherry, chocolate, coconut, and nut. Why I never thought about peanut butter, I’ll never know. So, this year, I went with peanut butter candy. Andy usually does the chocolate dipping because it frustrates me when the candies don’t look perfect. But, we just dipped the bottoms this time and then drizzled more chocolate on the top. I think they look super pretty and taste even better. The new and improved method/recipe is below!

Ingredients:

• Medium potato (about the size of an adult’s fist)
• 2 pounds powdered sugar
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• Chocolate (I used a combination of semisweet, milk, and baking, just to use up some ends of packages)

Method:

• Peel the potato and chop it into large chunks, as if making mashed potatoes. Cover chopped potato with water and boil until tender. Drain and dump potatoes back into your pot to make sure any remaining water evaporates.
• Mash potato and peanut butter together. If you happen to have a fancy stand mixer, feel free to do this part in there and save your arm muscles.
• Slowly mix in the first pound of powdered sugar. You’ll notice the potato sort of liquefies when you start mixing. That’s supposed to happen, so don’t freak out. Begin mixing in the second pound of powdered sugar, a cup or so at a time. You might not need the whole two pounds for your candy, but it was rainy the day I made mine, so I ended up needing it. The candy should just hold together when you try to scoop it, but not be sticky at all.
• Scoop the candy using a small cookie scoop (or bigger if you want). Line the scooped candy up on a Silpat or parchment lined baking sheet that will fit in your freezer. Freeze for a few hours until firm and dry.
• Dip candy in melted chocolate. If the candy becomes too soft to easily dip, put the tray back in the freezer for awhile. Drizzle additional chocolate on top in a “Z” pattern.

Last Tuesday’s Family Dinner. Biscuits and gravy, hashbrowns (made in the oven), and fruit. You can’t really see the food in this picture, but my sisters are usually the most fun part of Tuesday night dinners, anyway, so you get to see them!

Pork roast with carrots, potatoes, and onions. We were supposed to have this the day before we did, but I forgot to plug the Crock Pot in. This is not the first time this has happened, either….

I can’t give away all of the details for this one because a part of it is going into some Christmas gifts. I can tell you that it was a delicious take on Swedish meatballs with cheese and that Meg LOVES peas!

Beer cheese soup with roasted garlic bagel croutons. I veered off of our meal plan for this one, but it was totally worth it!

I guess I’m a little behind. This one was bean soup made with Plochberger “soup beans.” Descriptive, right? Sometimes, I use the beans to make a bean with bacon sort of soup with veggies, but this is the way the beans were intended: a little bacon grease, celery salt, and pepper for seasoning and some rice to thicken it up!

Meg liked it too! (well, at least she liked to make a mess with it…)

Pizza with peppers (from our Iowa garden!), onion, and meatballs. I really had enough crust for two pizzas, but I wanted to get it out of the fridge, so I had to prebake it for a few minutes before adding the toppings.