Shepherds Pie

I grew up with one version of shepherds pie. When we got married, I made it, and Rusty didn't like it, because he was used to his mom's way of making it. Then, when we were in Australia, I saw a cooking show, and I was intrigued by the version of shepherd's pie that they made. I started making it, and we've never gone back. It's very different, but give it a try, I think you'll like it. It makes a lot of the bottom filling, so I always freeze half of it and make another shepherd's pie a couple weeks later.

Shepherd's Pie

1 pound sausage or hamburger (I prefer sausage)

1 small onion, diced

1 can corn

2 small zucchini's, diced

1 cup diced carrots

4 stalks celery, chopped

1 cup green peas

2 cups water

2 chicken gravy packets

3 large sweet potatoes, cubed

Put the sweet potatoes in a pot, cover with water, and cook over medium heat

While potatoes are cooking, saute the onion and sausage until cooked, then set aside. In same pan, saute the celery, and carrots about five minutes, then add the zucchini and cook until tender. Add the peas, corn, sausage mixture, water and gravy packets, and cook until gravy has thickened. (Reduce water to 1 cup, and only use 1 gravy packet if you don't want a lot of gravy.) Pour half the mixture into an 8x8 pan, and the rest into another 8x8 pan. Let the second pan cool, then place in freezer. It will keep for several months, until you're ready to make another shepherd's pie.

When the potatoes are soft, drain and mash. Add a little milk if the potatoes are too dry. Top the sausage/vegetable mix with the sweet potatoes and bake at 350 degrees until nice and bubbly. Liz doesn't like sweet potatoes, so I usually make a small batch of instant potatoes, and put them on one corner of the filling.

Chicken Enchiladas

I was going to take a picture of this meal, but it's really not the prettiest meal. Picture an enchilada with sour creamy chicken covered with diced tomatoes and chilies. Just not that pretty. But oh so yummy. This is one of the few meals that I have made with consistency the ten years we've been married. It was one of the first meals I made as newlyweds (much better than the half cooked turkey!), and it was a hit with Rusty, so I've kept making it.

Chicken Enchiladas

1 large chicken breast, cooked and cubed

5 tortillas

2 cups sour cream (I use low fat, and it's just fine)

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 cans diced tomatoes, with juice

1 can diced green chilies

Chili powder

1/2 cup salsa

Mix chicken and sour cream together. Place 1/5 of the mixture in a tortilla, roll the tortilla and place in a greased 9x9 baking pan. Continue until all the chicken mixture is used up.

Saute onion until soft, then add the chilies and tomatoes, and simmer until sauce starts to thicken. Add chili powder and salsa to taste. Pour on top of the rolled tortillas. Place in oven and bake at 350 until hot and bubbly. Put shredded cheese on top, and cook another 5 minutes.

Tips

I have lots of little tips that I use to make my cooking easier, but I have three tips that I wanted to share right now.

1. Chicken. I don't like raw chicken. Especially cutting up raw chicken. It's so slimy and soft and hard to cut. So, I take a chicken breast out of the freezer, and let it sit for a couple hours. When it's starting to get a little soft on the outside, I take a knife and cut it up. My hands freeze, but the chicken is ten times easier to cut into the shape you want it, and it's not so slimy and icky.

2. Cooking chicken. A lot of the things I make use chicken that's cooked before putting everything together. So I like to fill my crock pot with chicken and then cook it all day. The chicken is nice and soft, and in one easy step, I just cooked enough chicken for at least 5 different meals. I put the chicken into containers and freeze it, and then I can just take it out and use it when needed. I use the cooked chicken in chicken enchiladas, Hawaiian haystacks, chicken pot pie, baked chicken sandwiches, chicken soup and broccoli, chicken rice casserole, to name a few.

3. Ripening pears. I love pears, but the ones from the store are always hard and not ripe. And I never had luck getting them to ripen until I found out this little trick. When you get the pears home, take them out of the plastic bag and put them in a paper bag. Fold the top of the paper bag down, and put them in a corner. Leave them for a few days, but don't forget them! They'll be nice and ripe in just a couple days. This works with green tomatoes too when it's too cold for them to ripen on the vine.

Make Your Own Salads

This is a really easy dinner, but we all like it, and there's no complaining because everyone gets to pick what goes on their own salad. And you can use up stuff out of your food storage, so it's a win-win all around. These are the foods that we like, but you can just add or take away whatever you want.

1 can corn

1 can kidney beans

1 can black olives, sliced

1 cucumber

1 red pepper

1 cup green peas

1 cup chopped broccoli

1 cup chopped carrots

Craisins

Sunflower seeds

Chopped lettuce

Put all the toppings into bowls and let everyone make their own salads. Simple and easy, and good served with homemade bread. A healthy, yummy meal with no cooking and little mess!

I don't like pie crust, so I make this recipe with biscuits on top instead of pie crust. So it's kind of like chicken and dumplings, except it's not a soup. So I really don't know WHAT to call it, except yummyness. Sometimes I get a little carried away making the filling, and I make way too much of it. When that happens, I get out 2 9x9 pans, and divide the filling between the two. I'll put the biscuits on top of one of the pans, and the other pan I put a cover on and put it in the freezer. When I'm ready to make the second pan (a couple weeks or even a month later), I just pull it out, let it thaw, then make the biscuits, put them on top, and back. 2 meals with about half the work, because it really doesn't take any more prep time to make enough filling for two meals. I do the same thing with shepherds pie (which maybe I'll make this week and post!)

Chicken Pot Pie

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed

1/2 cup chopped carrots

1 onion, chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup water

1 packet chicken or brown gravy

Put diced chicken in large pot and brown, then add the carrots, celery and onion, and cook until vegetable are soft. Add the peas, 1 cup water, and gravy packet, and cook until gravy is bubbly and thick. Pour into 9x9 baking pan.

Biscuits

2 cups flour

1 TBSP baking powder

2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup shortening or butter

2/3 cup milk

In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, sugar, cream of tartar, and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add milk all at once. Using a fork, stir until just moistened.

Roll out dough, cut biscuit pieces, and place on top of the vegetable and chicken mixture. Once mixture is covered, put in oven at 350 degrees. Bake about 35 minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown and cooked through.

Serve and enjoy!

Beef Stew

When you make one of my recipes, you need to understand that about 75% of the time, I'm not following a recipe. I probably followed a recipe the first time I made it, then I adapted the recipe, and I make it out of my head. So a lot of my ingredients I'm just eyeballing, especially the spices, so always do the spices to taste. With that said, this was a really good recipe and I was truly winging it the whole way.

Beef Stew

1 pound stew meat (I like to buy the already diced stew meat because I hate cutting raw meat.)

1/4 cup flour

5 small potatoes peeled and cubed (you don't have to peel red potatoes if you have them)

1 cups chopped carrots

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 small onion, diced

5 cups water

4beef bouillon cubes

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

2 TBSP ketchup

Put the meat in a bag, put the flour in, and shake until coated. Grease a large soup pot and cook meat over high until it is browned on all sides (it doesn't need to be cooked all the way through, just browned). Don't panic, it will make a mess of your pan, but the next step will take care of that. Just make sure to not burn the flour.

Add water, bouillon cubes and the chopped vegetables. Reduce heat to medium, put cover on and simmer for about 1 hour. When vegetables are nice and tender, add the worcestershire sauce and the ketchup. If it needs more of either one, add a little more. Remove from heat and serve. Yummy yummy yum!

Barbecue Chicken

All I can say is I LOVE Barbecue Chicken! It's so, so easy to make, and it has saved my bacon many times over. I make a huge crock-pot of it, and then I freeze it in 2-cup containers for a quick meal.

Barbecue Chicken

6-7 chicken breasts (or as many as you can shove in your crock-pot)

2-3 bottles of your favorite barbecue sauce

Place the chicken in the crock pot, and pour in one bottle of barbecue sauce. Cook on low for at least 7 hours, until chicken is cooked through and comes apart easily when poked with a fork. Remove chicken from crock pot and drain all the juice (the chicken makes a ton of juice/fat, and it will be too juicy if you don't drain it now). Shred the chicken with two forks, and return it to the crock pot. Add half the second bottle of barbecue sauce. Stir, and add more sauce until it's as saucy as you like it (we like our chicken sauuu-ceeee!) I know it's a lot of barbecue sauce at one time, but it will last for a long time, so it's really worth it. Let the chicken simmer for another hour or so to let the sauce and chicken meld together. Place in containers (I use 2 cup ones, they're just the right size for 1 meal for us.)

Cool and then place in freezer. I use the chicken for barbecue chicken sandwiches when I don't feel like cooking, don't know what to cook, or ruin what I'm cooking that night! I also use it for barbecue chicken pizza. It's so nice to just be able to pull the chicken out, thaw it in just a couple hours, and just like that, dinner's ready!