Whole30 Rustic Shepherd's Pie and Sauteed Green Beans with Bacon

If you are trying to think of just what to cook for dinner while on the Whole30, then look no further. Here's a super simple recipe that everyone will really love full protein and healthy ingredients and our favorite Hereford beef.  Planning is essential to be successful on the Whole30.  Prepping meals and doing your grocery shopping a week or few days ahead of time will help you stay true to the program with no slip ups.  Leftovers are great for lunch or dinners the next few days as well. 

Click here for the recipe for Whole30 Rustic Sheherd's Pie

Colorful and full of flavor, this rendition on traditional Shepherd's Pie is anything but boring!  Halfway through our Whole30 journey, I created this Rustic Shepherd's Pie for my hungry husband who had been a real sport while my daughter Bethany and I were on the program.  I wanted something that was deceivingly healthy...and this recipe was just the one!

Click here for the recipe for Whole30 Rustic Shepherd's Pie

Our green beans were super simple to make with just Extra Virgin Olive Oil to saute the fresh green beans in with small chunks of bacon, salt and pepper. Just cook until crisp and tender.  Make sure the green beans are Whole30 compliant with no added sugar or preservatives.  We luckily use pork raised by our local FFA, Future Farmers of America students who sold at our local county fair.

Click here for the recipe for Sauteed Green Beans with Bacon

So, here's to your Whole30 journey. Let us know how you like this recipe and check out our growing selection of Whole30 recipes on The Ranch Kitchen Whole30 tab.  

Alise and Bethany

Sure Champs November Post 'Recipes from the Ranch' - Holiday Must Haves!

 

Thanksgiving is almost here and most of us will be thinking toward what recipes to fix for our holiday meals.  For this month's Sure Champ's Recipes from the Ranch we shared some of my families favorite side dishes that have now become a tradition at our house.

It's a cook greatest wish to impress her family and friends and these recipes are always highly requested and loved.

Each of these recipes are easy to prepare the day before, cook the day of or add the dressing to right before serving.  Served here are my Sure Champ Blue Ribbon Green Beans and The Ranch Kitchen's Winter Salad. 

 

Check out the November Blog post below at the link or by clicking on the picture.  You'll find both recipes on the Sure Champ site and also on my recipe tab on The Ranch Kitchen Blog and Recipe Site.

 

 

You can read the blog post here at -
Sure Champ Recipes from the Ranch November Must Have Blog Post.

What are your favorite recipes?  I'd love for you to share them on my The Ranch Kitchen blog.  It's easy to create a login and post your recipes so that your famly and friends can easily access your family favorites for generations to come!

Happy holidays a little early and enjoy the cool, crisp weather ahead!

Alise Nolan

 

Zesty Italian Vegetables

My resolution for the new year is to organize my recipe pictures from the last seven years!  This is a huge task that I started this weekend on our 7 hour drive taking our middle daughter Bethany to graduate school at Texas Tech University.

If you know me, I love to take pictures and with the thousands I've taken my recipe one are scatted throughout them all. Ughhhh....  It's what you might call a 'gaudy goal' that may not be attainable...but I put a good stab at it this weekend and am feeling accomplished.

The Zesty Italian Vegetables is a recipe I forgot that there was a picture of.  It shows you the vegetables before they were cooked in the picture below, but you get the idea. 

This recipe is the only way my husband will eat green beans now and being creative I placed in some yellow squash along with the potatoes.   More times than I can count we've cooked our green beans this way with Zesty Italian Dressing.

If you want an entire meal from this dish, just add uncooked chicken thighs or breast or even pork chops in the center and cook.  It's a 'Ranchman Approved' recipe at our house and so simply that several of my daughter's friends cook saying it's the first dish of The Ranch Kitchen site they ever made.  That makes me the most proud when new cooks use my recipes. 

Click here for the recipe for Zesty Italian Vegetables

Stay warm, safe and enjoy this cold wintery weather.  Now I have to decide what to cook for dinner and this may just be the ticket!

Enjoy! 

Alise - The Ranch Kitchen

Artie's Sugared Green Beans

I love having friends contribute to The Ranch Kitchen!  This recipe today came from dear friend and coworker Carol Elder who teachers at my school.  She's a wonderful cook in her own right and says she learned everything from her sweet mother Artie Montgomery.

Daughters and sons I think keep their parents memories alive by recipes and her mom's Artie's Sugared Green Beans is a real keeper.  We all enjoyed this during our Thanksgiving Potluck at school the other day and thankfully I had my camera in hand!  My girls and I will most certainly be making this for Thanksgiving and for many years to come.

Click here for the recipe for Artie's Sugared Green Beans!

It's a simple dish to make and is pretty in a crystal bowl like the one Carol served this dish in.

Thanks so much for Carol for sharing this recipe today and for teaching my Audrey! She's one of the best teachers out there!  To teach is to touch a life forever!

Enjoy your week long break and Thanksgiving!  You deserve it as all our teachers and students do!


Alise - The Ranch Kitchen

Dinner in a Dish

Dinner in a dish is something I've been making for years.  Whether its out of convenience or laziness or you could call it both, this dish is something any beginning cook can make and the most experienced will love because simply put - it's easy!  It's great the first night you make it and even better the second night. And it's one of my go to dishes when I take dinner to someone for a new baby, loss of a loved one, or just because they need a home cooked meal!

On the night I made this we didn't have my regular package of Kraft Zesty Italian Salad Dressing 'powdered' mix, so I improvised as I normally do.  When you live a bit out in the country, you just don't run back up the store for one ingredient.  So, I used an already prepared bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing (1/2 bottle) and poured that over it instead of the butter mixed with the dry dressing mix.

Dinner in a Dish

4 pork chops or 4 chicken breast or thighs
2 cans green beans, drained
6 -8 red potatoes (any potatoes will work for this), quartered

****here you either get more complicated or do like I did this time and use the bottle of prepared Italian Dressing...either way is great!
1 stick butter
1 package Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing Mix
or
8 ounces of a bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing Mix = 1/2 bottle

For this dish you can use any 9 x 13 inch Pyrex or any casserole dish.  You can use chicken or pork chops and tonight I chose pork chops.  You'll also see that I peeled too many potatoes and squash so the pork chops got placed on top of the green beans and potatoes.  I made sure everything got a good dose of the Italian Dressing. 

You simply divide your dish in thirds by placing 2 cans of drained green beans (I like the Italian green beans that are cut in strings) on one side, 5-8 chopped and quartered new potatoes on the other side, and place in the middle your meat.  Always spray or grease your dish lightly as it makes cleanup so much easier and doesn't cause this dish to stick.  You then either melt one stick of margarine and whisk into it your Italian Dressing mix. 
 
Spoon the seasoned butter over the entire casserole dish that has your potatoes, green beans and pork or chicken in it.  Or the 1/2 bottle of dressing.  As you can see below I added yellow squash from our garden that has just begun to produce.  We will have as always an overabundance of squash, so I will find every way possible to use it up!

This time I sprinkled some garlic salt on top of the entire dish just to add a little more seasoning, but this is totally optional.
 
Cover tightly with foil and cook for1 hour and 15 minutes on 425 or until your meat is done.
 
Serve with a salad and bread and dinner is done! 

 

You'll see instead of salad on for this dinner we had fresh radishes from our garden of my husbands and my homemade mac and cheese.