... but Miles loves it.

I just think that a giant hunk of ground beef that you cook in a clump and then smother in ketchup to eat is gross.  (As many of you know hamburgers are my favorite meal... they don't count, even though they are clumps of ground beef that I smother in ketchup and eat. They are different due to the lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, mayonnaise and a bun that accompany the meat.)  Not to mention that the way it is usually served reminds me of a loaf of bread, meat bread... mmmm! sick

So in order to placate Miles' need and near constant nagging about my unwillingness to make meatloaf, I have decided to try some meatloaf recipes.  One has pesto in it and the other has spinach and mozzarella cheese. I'll let you know how it goes.

Note: This picture makes me laugh because they tried to dress the meatloaf up with a sprig of parsley... oh yeah, that totally makes it look more appetizing.

Note #2: I am being totally melodramatic; I know that there are a lot of people that really like meatloaf. If you are one of those people, I am so glad! As my mom says, "If you don't like it... good, more for the rest!"

This stuff is amazing! Marinade and cook chicken in it, put that over some rice; serve with some steamed green beans... a super simple supper (this is what we had tonight)!   Also good are mushrooms sautéed in this sauce over rice.  If I didn't think it would make me sick, I might consider drinking this stuff... yes, it is that good.

Recently, my friend, Kristy was telling me that her mom reads our blogs and has a few questions for me, but is too intimidated to leave a comment, since I don't actually know her.

Mrs. Kent, leave all the comments you want, we might as well know each other!  Besides, there are only a few people who read this blog, so I need all the comments I can get! :)

So one of the questions that needed answering was my Granny's recipe for Mint-Chocolate Pillows... here it is.

Blend together: 1 cup unsalted butter (or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup shortening) and 3/4 c sugar

Beat in until creamy: 1 egg and 2 teaspoons of vanilla

Then add: 2 1/2 cups flour and 1/2/teaspoon salt

Press half the dough through a saw tooth plate on a cookie press or roll and cut into 2 inch strips. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Place pieces of chocolate cany bars (Andes Mints are my fav.) about 1/2 inch apart on the dough strips.

The following is what the strip of dough should look like with the chocolate in place.

Using second half of the dough, press another strip of dough over the candy and bake at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

When it comes out of the oven it will look kind of like this with the chocolate melting out the ends.

While warm, cut into pieces so that each cookie has one piece of chocolate in it.

They are best if you let them cool completely before eating... I hope you enjoy them, they are my favorite! 

Taking a page from Miles' blog, I decided that I would start a "Things that I love" strain on IMR.

Andes Mint Chocolate Pillow Cookies are a Granny (my dad's mom) specialty. She makes them during the Christmas season, and they are WONDERFUL! Since I wont be home this year for Christmas, I have to make them myself. (They wont be as good, but I'll make due.)

Other Granny cookie favorites are Honey Funny Men (Halleigh's fav.) and Hamburger Cookies (Miles' fav.).

I have waged an epic battle on recipes... and I am going to win. At first I thought I wanted a gigantic cook book that I could manually organize all the recipes that we use and throw the rest away. So I asked for one for Christmas, but my mom found this instead, and is forcing me into the depths of technology once again.

The Living Cookbook, this thing is awesome. It is a recipe management computer program.  It is going to take quite a bit of work to set it up and customize it so that it is at its peak usefulness, but after watching all of the tutorials, I am very excited about all that this thing can do.

If you want to see the miracle for yourself, click here to see the video demos. 

 
Here are some of my favorite features:

1.    Enter recipes with as much or as little detail as you like.

2.    Add images to recipes. In fact you can add a main recipe image, a source image and an image for every recipe procedure step, if you want to.

3.    Copy recipes from the Internet.

4.    Calculate recipe nutrition from the recipe ingredients or enter the nutrition data manually.

5.    Search, filter and save searches

6.    Calculate recipe costs.  

7.    Enter preparation time, cooking time, inactive time and total time.

8.    Organize recipes into cookbooks, chapters, sub-chapters, etc. according to your needs.

9.    Print your recipes on any paper format: US letter, legal, A4, 4x6 index card, 3x5 index card and more.

10. Scale recipes to any number of servings.

11. Publish your cookbooks with tables of contents and indexes.

12. Print your publication from within Living Cookbook or export it as a Microsoft Word document.

13. Format your publication using your choice of fonts, colors, spacing and layouts.

14. Choose from over 7000 ingredients with nutrition data provided by the USDA.

15. Enter your own custom ingredients or copy them from the Internet.

16. Import new USDA nutrition as it is made available by the USDA.

17. Assign costs, grocery aisles and preferred stores to ingredients.

18. Calculate menu costs.

19. View nutrition and cost summary information for a day or a range of dates.

20. View meal calendar in month, week or day mode.

21. Add recipe, ingredients, menus or meals grocery lists or enter the grocery list items manually.

22. Create a grocery list for multiple stores.

23. Calculate grocery list costs and subtotal by store.

24. Automatically organize the grocery list by aisles.

25. Customize grocery aisles by store, including grocery aisle order.

26. Create a grocery list to restock inventory.

27. Create a grocery list for a range of meal plan dates.

28. Automatically combine like grocery list items (e.g. "1 cup milk" and "1 pint milk" will be combined automatically to read "1 1/2 pints milk".

29. Manage your kitchen inventory.

30. Control the ordering properties of any inventory item (minimum order quantity, order at level, order up to level, etc.).

31. Create a printable inventory worksheet to help you take stock of your kitchen.

32. Print multiple recipes, ingredient, etc. at once.

 To continue my canning kick, last night Miles and I put some of our cucumbers to good use and made pickles. Using my grandparents' recipe I slaved away over a hot stove (literally) and made/ canned 6 quarts of pickles.

Not knowing that you are not really supposed to store cucumbers in the refrigerator, we lost a ton of our pickle sized cucumbers, so we sliced some of our big cucumbers and pickled slices and spears.

In a couple of days we will have plenty little cucumbers to make whole pickles, but until then we are waiting 30 days for our sliced pickles to be ready to eat! 

Here are a couple pictures of our end product. We made Tzaziki sauce last night too, and besides it having too much lemon, I think that we have finally found a recipe that we like. I would post pictures, but Miles was so excited about it, I'll let him post those.

My friend Katie just sent me the link to a blog that I thought that I would pass along. It is a girl that is fulfilling her new year’s resolution of using her crock pot every day. There are MANY great recipes that I am excited to try. Take a look at this great crockpotting blog here.

Now I am going to have to find my Crockpot and clean all the dust out of it... where is that thing?!?