Life Sometimes Gets in the Way

It's been a while, and more than a just a week or two since I posted on my blog The Ranch Kitchen!  Life has been just a little hectic.  I have discovered a few new things this fall.  The first being that it's never easy to send even the second kid off to college.  You miss them greatly.  Second...you continue to miss the first one you sent off and realize they are starting to make a life of their own! Third, little sisters seem to be resilient in how they handle both big sisters being off at school, even if mom and dad are not!   Fourth, you will go to any extreme to spend time with your girls and find that quality time when you can.  And fifth with each change in life something new seems invariably around the corner and life adapts, moves on, and you continue to get caught in the whirlwind that is life.  

With that said, I am back to the land of blogging after taking a short hiatus to start a new job, getting used to kids being off at college, running the roads on weekends visiting Texas A&M and stock shows with our retiring American Hereford Queen, and all manners of just being overwhelmed just a tad.  I am now ready to post some new recipes with help of my older two daughters who are going to help me post and manage this site from here on out.  The Ranch Kitchen has always been about my family and now my older two daughters Ilissa and Bethany will help me with recipes for this site keeping our ideas fresh and current.   They are both becoming great cooks in their own right and majoring both in communications and journalism from a graduate program at Texas Tech for our Ilissa, and undergraduate for Bethany at Texas A&M.  They should be able to teach old mom a thing or two and rev up the Ranch Kitchen site.

So, today as the holiday season draws near I wanted to share with your recipe from one of my newest addictions Pinterest that may have hindered some post I could have gotten done!  It addicting to say the least and if you are not a member, just message me your email and I can send you an invitation.  It's like a designer's/favorites' board of sorts that you 'pin' all your the ideas found on the Pinterest site or pin from your favorites bar once you download the 'pin' off Pinterest to share pictures you have found.  One of my favorite things that both my daughter's have done for me this season is to post their Christmas Wish List on Pinterest so that I can get a few hints for presents under the tree.
 
On my board entitled 'Oh Christmas' I have the following recipe for a Christmas Morning Cheese Danish.  It looks absolutely wonderful and I am going to make it for our staff at my school for our Holiday breakfast this weekend and for my family for Christmas morning.  On Christmas we don't eat lunch, but have a huge brunch with our girls.  It's a family tradition I enjoy after opening presents.

And I have to give credit where credit is due, as this recipe is from kitchengirljo.blogspot.com.  You'll want to click on the website link in the previous sentence and check it out.

• 

Christmas Morning Cheese Danish 

 

Ingredients:

 

2 cans ready to use refrigerated crescent rolls

2 8-ounce packages cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg white

 

Glaze: 1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 Tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

Method: Preheat oven to 350* degrees and grease a 13X9-inch baking pan. Lay a pack of crescent rolls in the pan and pinch the openings together. Beat the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and egg together until smooth. Spread the mixture over the crescent rolls evenly and then lay the second pack of crescent rolls on top of the cheese mixture and brush with egg white. Bake for 35-45 minutes until the top is golden brown. Top with glaze after cooling for 20 minutes.

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The fun of Pinterest of reposting what others have found.  This was repinned from Food I know I am going to love a board of my friend Diane Johnson.  I am also enjoying all the wonderful ideas and recipes she post on Pinterest as well.

Cheater's Lasagna

Another already long week at work. The moon has been full and it is evident everywhere!  I have always put a lot of stock into the moon phases as a teacher and this week so far has not disappointed! LOL!

Tonight as I shopped for our annual tailgating weekend at Texas A&M, I wanted dinner in a hurry.  I have desserts and cheese balls to make in anticipation of our crowd on Saturday when we beat IDAHO and all the veggies and such to pack in the RV so we are ready to grill!! We are excited that both our big girls will be in Aggieland to be with us and are excited about their friends ring dunks and getting to visit with both them and their parents and our other special friends while at the tailgate and other events.  The weekend can't get here fast enough!   

Considering dinner, I thought of my love for lasagna, but wanted my own take on it.  So, with a little help from some jumbo pasta shells, store bought spaghetti sauce, cheeses, and browned hamburger meat I have a updated version I call 'Cheater's Lasanga'! 

I learned early on that as a cook you don't have to follow all the rules.  You can tweak recipes and come up with new reinvented ones that can be just as fabulous!  This new lasagna recipe is right up there with some of my favorites.  I hope you'll try it and learn to experiment more in the kitchen.  I think the thing that turns most developing cooks off are long winded recipes with ingredients that are not found in their local groceries.  Don't make life hard.  Pressing the easy button in the kitchen is done a lot of my house and you should try it! Use what you have and you'll find that you are more creative in the kitchen than you think!

Cheater's Lasagna

2 lbs. ground beef, browned and drained
1 package of jumbo pasta shells, cooked and drained
2 - 16 ounce cans of store bought spaghetti sauce
     - I prefer Hunts 4 Cheese Spaghetti Sauce
1 cup Colby Jack Cheese
1 - 16 ounce container of Ricotta Cheese

Brown ground beef and drain.  Cook pasta according to package directions and drain.  In a 9 x 13 inch Pyrex dish place one can of Spaghetti Sauce.  Spoon half of Ricotta Cheese over spaghetti sauce in 1 tsp. sections over sauce.  Please cooked pasta shells over mixture.  Add second half of Ricotta Cheese in 1 tsp. sections over pasta.  Place browned hamburger meet over mixture.  Sprinkle Colby Jack cheese.  Pour second container of spaghetti sauce on top of mixture.  Cook on 425 until mixture is bubbly and cooked through.  

Enjoy....recreating lasagna is as easy as you make it!  So cheat away!

Alise  

Snickers Cookies

Exchanging recipes are the heart of what cookbooks and friendships are for me. Just the other day at a meeting a colleague and friend just knew I had heard of the recipe I share with you today.  I hadn't and immediately went out and bought the ingredients so that I could make these Snickers Cookies asap!  I finally made them tonight, two weeks later and am so glad I did.  My middle daughter will be proud they came out slightly browned as I tend to over toast bread and desserts as I get distracted!  :o)

So give it a try...the variations on this recipe could be endless with all the candies available in our market and grocery stores.



Snickers Cookies ala Sigrid

1 roll of ready made sugar cookies, sliced in 1 1/2 inch rounds -do not roll with out with rolling pin -
1 package of Snicker's Mini Candy Bars

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Slice sugar cookies rolls in to 1 1/2 inch slices (see pictures).  Place one Snicker's Mini Candy into the center of each round and form sugar cookie dough around the candy, much like when you played with play dough as a child.  Place Snicker cookies on a cookie sheet and bake until slightly browned. 

Cool and serve with a big glass of milk.



These are at the top of my list now.  Get cooking.  Enjoy!

Golden Pork Chops and Rice Casserole

I've told you how much I love to cook with Campbell's Soups right?  It's a staple in my pantry and one of the easiest ways I know to throw a dinner together in under five minutes!  The other night I was a little exhausted.  Work had gone long and the family was hungry.  So out came the Campbell's Cream of Celery Soup and Cream of Chicken Soup, a package of pork chops from our show piggy from last year, two cups of rice, water, spices, and a stick of margarine!  With a side of green beans and garlic toast...dinner was served in an hour while I caught up my youngest daughter on her homework. 

Below is the recipe...it's just my variation.  You can use most soups and make a meal as good as this one yourself...so give it a try. 

Golden Pork Chops and Rice Casserole

4 pork chops
1 can Campbell's Cream of Celery Soup
1 can Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup
2 cups rice (I prefer Uncle Ben's Rice - not Minute Rice)
4 -5 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
1 stick of margarine cut in 1 tsp. squares

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray a 9 x 13 inch Pyrex dish with Pam spray or coat in margarine.  Add soups, seasonings, water and whisk.  Sprinkle rice over mixture evenly.  Add pork chops.  Place margarine over pork chops.  Cook uncovered for 1 hour or until dish is slightly browned on top and meat is done.

Get cooking!

Alise

Perfect Pot Roast on the Stove

I learned so many things from my Granny. The first lesson was about unconditional love. My Grandmother or 'Granny' on my mother's side of the family grew up in a rather large family, as most people did in the depression. From that love of family she had five children of her own and I always marveled as she loved each for the unique individual that they were. Their wives and husbands became immediate members of our large family and felt as welcome in her home as they did their own parents. My father loved my grandmother immensely as did my husband Scott. She was spirited and everyone's cheerleader; reminding us all from time to time her years as cheerleader at her high school, and always had time for her family.

Granny's second lesson was how to give of one self. I fondly remember as a child how she would drive up to my parents married dormitory in college at East Texas State University and bring huge bags of groceries to my very needy, poor college student parents with two small children! Many times she would take my brother and I home for a week during my parent finals or just because my grandparents wanted to be with us. I vaguely remember those times, but the memories I have are of how much I enjoyed being with both my grandparents and aunt and uncles.

As I grew up, my grandparents divorced, but neither one never stopped spending quality time with my brother and I through our weeks spent at their homes. I don't think she or my grandfather for that matter ever thought twice about us being there or infringing on their weekends. That is just how it was and they wanted us in their lives.

Third, you know if you are follower of my blog, that one of the biggest lessons I learned from my grandmother was my love of cooking. She passed that on to my mom and down to me instinctively. Large family meals were an easy task for her. She was used to cooking for 3 sons, two daughters, a husband, and her sons and daughter in-laws. I remember watching in awe as she would cook a pie in the outside grill to not heat up her house and cook a roast on the stove top for meal that she needed in a hurry. Granny didn't measure and she wasn't a fussy cook, but she could make a Holandaise Sauce and the best cornbread you ever ate.

Today, I want to share with you her roast recipe with a little twist in spice that I made the other night. Not many people think of cooking a roast out of the oven. But in all honesty, it couldn't be simpler. My husband loved the new potatoes that cooked in the broth of the roast and dinner was ready in under an hour and a half on a week night! Roasts in my household are usually reserved for Sudnay night.

I used my Crueset Roaster, but any good quality pot will do. Just be careful to not boil your water out of the pan by having your fire up too high. So with that said, add water as you need too! Reduce your fire or temperature on your electric cooktop once you have brought your roast to a boil or a low simmer. Cover and in a relatively short time you will have your usual weekend dinner on a weekday night!

Granny's Perfect Pot Roast

1 - Chuck Roast
2 onion, quartered and sliced - not too thinly
7 new potatoes, quatered and sliced - not too thinly
5 - 6 cups water
2 tbs. Tony Chachere's Cajun Seasoning
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 package of brown instant gravy

Wash pot roast and place in a roaster coeverd with 5 - 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil for ten minutes. Turn fire or temperature down to a simmer and allow to cook for 30 minutes adding 1 tbsp. of Tony Chachere's Seasoning. Prepare potatoes and onions and add to the pot. Add 1 tbsp. of Tony Chacheres Cajun Seasoning, 1/4 tsp. pepper, and brown gravy packet. Mix gravy packet in pot until it is dissolved. Make sure you have enough water the entire time your roast cooks to cover your roast by 1 inch. Continue to cook for 45 minutes or until your roast is medium rare (when sliced through with a knife your roast will have a pink center - but not too pink).

When roast is cooked place on a serving tray and allow to stand/sit for 5 minutes. Slice going against the grain and spoon potatoes and onions around your roast. Serve with some Lima Beans, salad, and soft roll and it's a great meal anytime!

Thanks Granny! I love and miss you greatly!

Make this soon!  It's super simply and your family will love it!  One tip is use your left over roast with an added gravy the next day over toast!  It's wonderful!

Alise