I Made It – Shredded Beef Filling

I love it when my friends recommend recipes, because I can ask questions. Likewise, when I find a really good recipe I like to share it with you, too. Feel free to ask questions and find out if it will work for your family.

Have you ever come across a recipe that intrigued you just by looking at the ingredient list?

My first introduction to this recipe was when FishMama made it for one of her Freezer Cooking Days. She talked about how many different ways she could use it. That sounded like my kind of recipe. I like when I can work once and have several meals from it.

Then I looked at the recipe. It looked quite easy, but the ingredient list – chili powder and oregano? Really? Chili powder and oregano in the same recipe? I would never have dreamed of putting those together. But, as I recall Boneless Chuck Roasts were cheap that week, the slow cooker was sitting idle and I needed a few more meals ready to use in the freezer, so I decided to give it a try.

Shredded Beef Filling

The Review:

If you’ve been following for a while you know that this recipe shows up periodically in our Menu Plan. I’ve mentioned it a time or two, but it really is worthy of a whole post.

If your man is like mine -- one way to his heart is through his stomach. This is most definitely man pleasing food. When Shredded Beef Filling is cooking in the slow cooker the whole house smells delicious, my husband walks in and says, “Where’s my wife? I want my wife!”

No kidding.

This recipe will get his attention.

It’s absolutely delicious. My kids love it too. The first time I made it, I wasn’t too sure what their reaction would be – they can be picky eaters. But they finished off their small portions and then asked for more.

Typically, when I make it, I use 2 large chuck roasts and we’ll eat part of it unshredded as roast beef on the day I make it. Then, after dinner I shred the rest and portion it into bags, about ¾ pound per bag. I add a bit of the drippings so that it stays moist when I reheat it, and then freeze it.

To reheat it, let it thaw in the fridge overnight and then heat it up in a skillet over medium heat. It stays wonderfully juicy. We’ve eaten it as shredded beef tacos, shredded beef sandwiches – with juice for dipping, and as BBQ beef sandwiches. We’ve even been known to steal a bite or two right out of the serving bowl!  My whole family loves it. I still want to try it in enchiladas and taquitos, but I’m a Mexican food neophyte and I need a recipe before I delve into those untested waters.

We highly recommend Shredded Beef Filling. You can find the recipe here. The next time Chuck Roast is on sale for less than $2.00/lb, go buy yourself some roasts and try this recipe. You won’t regret it.


Visit Tasty Tuesday @  Beauty and Bedlam for more recipe ideas.

I Made It - Homemade Pizza

If you're anything like most American families, pizza is on the menu several times a month. It's a wonderfully versatile one-dish meal. If your family loves veggies you can make an all veggie pizza, if you love meats, you can make an all meat pizza, or mix it up. The options are endless.

The Back Story
My family, just like yours, loves pizza too. Back in our DINK (dual income, no kids) days, Hubby and I would order a pizza to be delivered and rent a movie from Blockbuster nearly every Friday night. It was a great stay-at-home date night. Now that we're living on one income with 2 kids, we still love pizza. But the price of ordering out? Not so much.


Thus began my quest for finding a less expensive alternative. The first recipe I found for the dough was a Food Network recipe that involved letting the dough rise. I tried it a few times, but found that it required too much time letting the dough rise. I didn't usually have dinner in the works far enough in advance to make that dough.

Then about a year or so ago I came across this recipe form MoneySavingMom.

The Review:
I love that I can pull this dough together in less than 15 minutes. It goes together incredibly easily. Basically you dump the ingredients in a bowl, mix it all up, knead it a bit and you're good to go. You can make it even easier by kneading it in your Mixer, Food Processor or Bread Machine. If you don't have any of those, kneading it by hand is not very difficult. It's a very forgiving dough and thus, perfect for this yeast-challenged cook. Slap on some toppings and you've got pizza in the oven in less than 25 minutes. It also freezes very well.

One of the reasons I like making homemade pizza so much is that I can adapt it to what we have on hand and my family's personal tastes so easily. My daughter prefers just cheese pizza. The rest of us have other favorite toppings. The pizza in the picture is 1/3 cheese, 1/3  ham and pineapple (my son's favorites), and 1/3 ham, pineapple and I added a bit of red pepper that I needed to use up.

Why We Love It:
I love this recipe because I can serve pizza to my family and not break our family budget. And since I usually use whole wheat flour when I make the dough, I don't feel so guilty about all the extra carbs. My kids love it because we can have pizza more often than we used to. Last week, when I was stumped for a dinner idea, pizza was one suggestion. Thanks to this recipe I can indulge my kids' request and not be the stingy mom-that-always-says-no.

I've also found a great recipe for home made pizza sauce. That review will be coming soon.

What's your favorite topping for pizza?

I Made It - Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

"You need to eat a good healthy breakfast."

"A hot breakfast would do you good."

Does any of that sound like your mother? Much as we don't want to admit it sometimes, Mom was right. Breakfast is important. And as mothers ourselves we want to feed our children healthy meals. But sometimes, mornings are hectic and getting a healthy breakfast on the table is a challenge.

Enter the easy and healthy recipe. I have been making this Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal recipe that I found on Lynn's Kitchen Adventures for several months. In short... we love it.

The Back Story:

I've been on a quest to feed my family something healthier than Pop-tarts and cereal for about a year now. It's taken a bit of time, but I now have a good hand-ful of recipes that I make on a regular basis that feed my family a good hot breakfast. At the top of the list is this recipe for Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal.

The Review:

This recipe goes together incredibly easily. You just melt the butter and peanut butter together, dump it in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Pour that into a pan and bake. Very simple. And there aren't any funky ingredients that I don't have on hand either! It bakes in about 20-25 minutes; just enough time to pop through the shower or read a few chapters in my Bible.

Over the past few months I've tried a few variations of this recipe. The first time I made it I got up early and made it. Since then, though, I've mixed it together the night before and then baked it in the morning. Fresh from the 'fridge I've added about 5-8 minutes to the baking time so that the top crust is just the way we like it. My family really likes peanut butter, so I usually add a bit more for us. I've also made it replacing the peanut butter with mashed banana. I use about 1 whole banana to replace the peanut butter. This has become our favorite way to eat it, because it gives my kids a bit more fruit, and those who really like peanut butter can add peanut butter to the top while it's still warm - really yummy that way.

Lynn has the recipe for a full 9x13 on her site - you can find it here. I found that a 9x13 made too much for my family. I cut the recipe in half and use an 8x8 square pan - this makes enough for our 2 adults and 2 small children with a tad leftover. It will depend, of course, on the size of your servings and appetites.

Here's the ingredients for the smaller version:

1 ½ cups quick oats

½ cup milk

¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup peanut butter, melted
1 Tbsp butter, melted
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt

For the direcitions go to Lynn's Kitchen Adventures.

Updated: I've recently discovered you can cut this into squares and freeze it. Just reheat in the microwave. That makes this recipe even better in my book.

Do you have a great breakfast recipe? I'm always on the look out for good breakfast recipes. Let us know in the comments.

I Made It - Easy No Rise Cinnamon Rolls

Several weeks ago I started this occasional series featuring recipes I've found around the internet. I'll post my thoughts, our story of the recipe and my family's reactions.

This week I'm reviewing The Happy Housewife's Easy, No Rise Cinnamon Rolls.

The Story:
Recently I decided that I would start making "breakfast treats" for my family for Saturday morning. The rest of the week I try to keep fairly healthy, but I figured a splurge once/week wouldn't be a terrible thing. And I would still serve it with fruit or something else healthy. I'd been seeing a bunch of recipes for cinnamon rolls recently and was thinking I might try making them. But, every recipe I reviewed involved yeast and letting them rise. This was a problem for two reasons 1) time to let them rise was a huge hurtle for me, but more importantly 2) I don't have a good reputation when it comes to using yeast. Really, yeast and I have not had a happy relationship thus far. I am still rather nervous about using yeast - ever since that huge flop. So when I found this recipe for cinnamon rolls that uses baking powder instead of yeast, I thought, "This, I've gotta try." 

The Review:
I love this recipe! It went together pretty easily. I used a pastry blender to cut in the butter, but I'm wondering if a few quick pulses in the food processor would be easier and quicker. I think I'll try that the next time I make them - and there will definitely be a next time. I only needed about ¾ Cup milk. Rolling dough into a rectangle presents challenges for me, but I managed to do reasonably well this time. I'd suggest using very soft butter to spread over the dough, it's much easier to spread that way.  I found a 9x9 square pan was the perfect size for this recipe, but maybe I sliced mine thicker. For the icing I used the leftovers I had from these cookies. I warmed it up in the microwave for a few seconds and added a small bit of milk until it was "drizzle-able".  It worked great.

These are delicious Cinnamon Rolls, and they're not too difficult to make either. Eveyone in my family loved them. I heartily recommend this recipe to anyone who has issues with yeast. I had enough from the recipe that we ate some the first day, and then I froze the rest and we ate them a few weeks later.

I Made IT - Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

For those who have been visiting here for a while you know that I like to cook.. Those who know me in real life know that for the most part I don't invent recipes. I am not that kind of cook. I usually find recipes from someone else and follow that recipe. Occasionally I'll tweak something about that recipe to make it fit my family's tastes, but not often.

For most of my cooking life I have relied on several good basic cookbooks for the recipes I needed. But, in the last year or so I've been finding more and more recipes on-line, many of them on blogs.

So, I decided to start an occasional series titled, "I Made It."

When I make a recipe found on another blog, I'm going to post a review of the recipe. I'll tell you my thoughts, what I changed (if anything) and how my family reacted.  At least some of the time I'll tell you our story connected to the recipe.

Today's review is for Chocolate Sandwich Cookies from Lynn's Kitchen Adventures. Lynn graciously agreed to let me post her picture of the cookies, since my family devoured them before I remembered to take a picture.

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies - Review

The Story Behind the Recipe:
Back a few months ago, when my kids were begging for Oreos and I was refusing because they're so expensive, I went in search of a recipe for homemade Oreos. I found a few and then never had the time over the summer to make them (or the desire to turn the oven on when it was 90+° outside). Then I spotted this recipe back in August and saved it in my Recipe folder. It looked easier than the other recipes I'd found and didn't require so many specialty ingredients.  I liked that. I'm not fond of recipes that require ingredients that I don't keep on hand. Why should I buy a bottle of some spice, when I'm only going to use a tsp of it in one recipe in 6 months time?

So, the recipe sat in my folder for a while. Then one day last week my son asked to buy lunch the next day - a grilled cheese sandwich and a fudge bar.  Hmm. $2.00 for a grilled cheese sandwich? Mmmm, not so much.

I gave him a choice. I could make his lunch and we would have grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner that night (my compromise) or he could pay the $2.00 for his lunch. He chose grilled cheese for dinner. Smart boy.

But, the conversation made me realize it was time to up the "Wow Factor" for his lunch. This is the same boy who was content to take a peanut butter sandwich, applesauce and granola bar every day all year of kindergarten. But, this year, his tastes have expanded (a good thing) and he's feeling a bit deprived when looking at the sweet-processed stuff his classmates are eating (not a good thing).

So, I decided it was time to pull out this recipe and make it.

The Review:
As I said, one of the reasons I was initially attracted is because it doesn't have any funky ingredients that I don't keep on hand. This made it easy to make.

The cookie recipe itself goes together very easily. You basically dump everything into your mixer and let the machine do the work. When using a dry mix, I always use a whisk to break up any lumps before I add the wet ingredients. I definitely found this helpful as there were a bunch of lumps in my cake mixes. Baking went exactly according to Lynn's directions. I baked them for 8 minutes, but this will vary a bit with each oven. Some of them I cooled on the pan and then moved to a rack, others I moved to the rack right away. It didn't seem to make a difference either way.  Confession: some of the cookies did not get cool before they were consumed. They smelled wonderful and I was craving chocolate. I ate them. I enjoyed them. I'm not sorry. (My hips may be sorry.)

The frosting also went together very easily. I used 4 cups of sugar because it seemed a bit too soft after only 3 cups. One addition I would make to the directions would be to sift the confectioner's sugar before adding it to the butter/cream cheese mixture. I find confectioner's sugar to be on the lumpy side and this does not make for smooth icing, therefore, I sift. I did not add food coloring, but if I were making these around a particular holiday this would be a fun addition. Even with 4 cups of sugar I found the icing to be a bit soft (maybe my butter & cream cheese were too soft to start?), so I chilled the icing before I iced the cookies. They iced very easily, but I will say, between the cookies we ate without icing and the fact that I didn't stuff them too full I think I have enough icing for 4 or 5 batches of these cookies. (I wonder if you can freeze cream cheese icing. Anyone know?)

My family loved these cookies - as evidenced that I had to beg a picture off of Lynn because we ate them all. These are not the crispy crunchy lard filled cookie of an Oreo. These are, however, wonderfully chewy cookies. We liked them iced as sandwich cookies, but we also enjoyed them non-iced, especially with a cold glass of milk. They were really delicious. And, I think they satisfied my son's craving for more "wow" in his lunch, at least for a week or two.