1- 20 ounce can crushed pineapple
4-5 medium-sized granny smith apples, chopped
10 miniature snickers candy bars
8 ounces coolwhip
Drain pineapple and float apples in pineapple juice. Mix pineapple and candy bars. Drain apples and fold into salad with coolwhip.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Sirloin Tip Beef Roast
We tried this new roast recipe and liked it.
SIRLOIN TIP BEEF ROAST
3 pound sirloin tip roast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 teaspoon worcestershire
1/2 cup beef broth
Put roast in crockpot. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over roast. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.
SIRLOIN TIP BEEF ROAST
3 pound sirloin tip roast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 teaspoon worcestershire
1/2 cup beef broth
Put roast in crockpot. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over roast. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.
Buttermilk Cocoa Cake
BUTTERMILK COCOA CAKE
1/4 cup baking cocoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter, cubed
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
BUTTERMILK FROSTING:
1/4 cup baking cocoa
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1/2 cup buttermilk
3-3/4 cups powder sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cups chopped pecans, optional
In a large saucepan, combine the cocoa and water until smooth; add butter. Bring just to a boil. Remove from the heat. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar and baking soda; add cocoa mixture. Combine eggs, oil and buttermilk; add to cocoa mixture and beat until smooth. Pour into a greased 9x13 dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
In a large saucepan, bring the cocoa, butter and buttermilk to a boil. Remove from the heat. Whisk in the powder sugar and vanilla. Spread over the warm cake. Sprinkle with pecans if desired. Cool on a wire rack.
12-15 servings
Raspberry Fluff Salad
1 small box raspberry jello
2 small boxes tapioca pudding
12 ounce frozen raspberries
8 ounce coolwhip
3 cups water
Boil 3 cups water. Add jello and pudding; cook for 3-5 minutes. Let stand a few minutes. Add raspberries. Put in refrigerator until set or overnight. Fold in coolwhip before serving.
2 small boxes tapioca pudding
12 ounce frozen raspberries
8 ounce coolwhip
3 cups water
Boil 3 cups water. Add jello and pudding; cook for 3-5 minutes. Let stand a few minutes. Add raspberries. Put in refrigerator until set or overnight. Fold in coolwhip before serving.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Cream Puff Bars
These are great if you like cream puffs. The kids volunteer their help just so they can have some to eat.
To make the cream puff: Bring 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup of water to a boil. Add 1 cup flour. Stir and remove from heat. Mixture should form a ball. Add 4 eggs, ONE AT A TIME, stirring between each with a wooden spoon. Spread on a greased 11x16 pan and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
To make pudding mixture: Mix 8 ounces of softened cream cheese, 2-1/2 cups milk and a 6 ounce vanilla pudding. Beat until smooth.
Spread over cooled crust. If you like bananas, slice them on top.
Spread 8 ounces of coolwhip on top of pudding layer.
Drizzle with hersheys chocolate syrup. As you can see, my kids like more chocolate than is necessary.
And don't forget to use those manners!
MMMMM, MMMMMM, GOOD!
To make the cream puff: Bring 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup of water to a boil. Add 1 cup flour. Stir and remove from heat. Mixture should form a ball. Add 4 eggs, ONE AT A TIME, stirring between each with a wooden spoon. Spread on a greased 11x16 pan and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
To make pudding mixture: Mix 8 ounces of softened cream cheese, 2-1/2 cups milk and a 6 ounce vanilla pudding. Beat until smooth.
Spread over cooled crust. If you like bananas, slice them on top.
Spread 8 ounces of coolwhip on top of pudding layer.
Drizzle with hersheys chocolate syrup. As you can see, my kids like more chocolate than is necessary.
And don't forget to use those manners!
MMMMM, MMMMMM, GOOD!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Rhubarb Juice
After you are done making rhubarb jam and your favorite rhubarb dessert, do you wonder what to do with the rest or wish someone would just come take it off your hands? I usually freeze some but mostly I make it into this juice. The kids especially like it made into popsicles. Now I can it and have it ready for use.
To make the juice, you first have to make juice from the rhubarb. The way it is usually done is by adding enough water and cooking until soft and then straining the juice out. The way I make my juice is by using a steam juicer. I just place cut-up rhubarb into the top (water is in pan under it) and cook it for a few minutes until it is soft. The steamer has a hose on it which drains into jars or bowls, etc. I love this juicer for alot of different juices. If you think you might use one alot the investment is not too bad. Anyway....on to making the juice to can...
Recipe for Rhubarb Juice to Can:
6 quarts rhubarb juice
1 quart pineapple juice
1 can Hawaiian Punch (I actually used 2/3 of a one gallon size)
3 1/2 cups sugar
Mix all ingredients in a large kettle. Boil for 5-10 minutes. Skim light foam off if necessary. Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal.
(To sterilize my jars I wash them and put them in the oven at 225 degrees for 10 minutes. After this point just keep them hot.) Remove one jar at a time and fill and seal.
To make the juice, you first have to make juice from the rhubarb. The way it is usually done is by adding enough water and cooking until soft and then straining the juice out. The way I make my juice is by using a steam juicer. I just place cut-up rhubarb into the top (water is in pan under it) and cook it for a few minutes until it is soft. The steamer has a hose on it which drains into jars or bowls, etc. I love this juicer for alot of different juices. If you think you might use one alot the investment is not too bad. Anyway....on to making the juice to can...
Recipe for Rhubarb Juice to Can:
6 quarts rhubarb juice
1 quart pineapple juice
1 can Hawaiian Punch (I actually used 2/3 of a one gallon size)
3 1/2 cups sugar
Mix all ingredients in a large kettle. Boil for 5-10 minutes. Skim light foam off if necessary. Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal.
(To sterilize my jars I wash them and put them in the oven at 225 degrees for 10 minutes. After this point just keep them hot.) Remove one jar at a time and fill and seal.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Here is a great post about slow-cookers. I use them all the time when we are busy (which is almost always). I love the information he gives here. He also has a great blog called How To Cook Like Your Grandmother. Check it out, it's full of great recipes and tips!
______________________________________________________
I’m a fan of slow cookers, but lots of people have trouble with them. There’s a good reason, which most people don’t know: Slow cookers today aren’t nearly as slow as they used to be. Rather than risk lawsuits from people undercooking their chicken, the manufacturers have been raising the temperatures of their cookers for years.
The Low setting on many new cookers will cook faster than the High setting on some older ones. So if you’ve got a recipe your grandmother wrote based on her slow cooker, you’re going to overcook whatever you put in yours.
That’s not the only thing you need to understand to adjust recipes. Manufacturers don’t publish the details of how hot the “Lo” and “Hi” settings are. (They also don’t know how to spell “Low” and “High”, but that’s a different issue.) Actually, they can’t publish how hot those settings are, because they’re not controlled by a thermostat.
Designed for time, not temperature
Here’s the deal. Some slow cookers have a thermostat dial on them, like an electric skillet. These can be set to a temperature, and that’s how hot they’ll get. But most of them — and if yours just has High and Low, or maybe Hi-Med-Lo, yours is one of them — are based on how much power is sent to the heating coil. They are designed based on how long it takes to raise a certain amount of food to a certain temperature.
So for instance, the High setting on a 5-quart pot might be designed to bring 3-quarts of liquid from 60° to 185° in 2 hours — all temperatures Fahrenheit — while the Low setting will do it in 4 hours. (All these numbers are just for example. Your pot is sure to be different.) What that means is if you were to put 2 quarts of liquid in the pot, and it’s already at 85°, you’re going to overshoot “done” in about an hour. On the other hand if you load it to the brim with leftover soup right out of the fridge, it won’t be ready to serve for at least 4 hours.
In any case, Both High and Low stabilize at the same temperature, it is just a matter of how long it takes to reach the simmer point.
Get to know your slow cooker
The point of all this is that you have to adjust all your recipes to your slow cooker. No one else, unless they have the exact same model, can tell you how it’s going to work.
And even then it depends on how much you fill it up, and how cold or warm the ingredients are when you add them. None of this is really hard, but you have to pay attention, not follow a recipe exactly and expect it to come out right the first time.
But are they safe?
Mention slow cookers and someone is going to jump in with the figures on bacteria growth: Bacteria can grow if food spends 2 hours between 40° and 140°. True. But there are a few things you can do to make it safe.
First is to realize that any contamination on whole cuts of beef, like a roast, is likely to be on the surface. Bacteria generally do not penetrate into the meat. So brown the meat before putting it in the slow cooker. You should be doing this anyway for the best flavor. Browning will destroy any bacteria on the surface, as well as raising the starting temperature so that it doesn’t spend as long in the danger zone.
This doesn’t work for whole chickens or turkey pieces. According to Cooks Illustrated:
Bacteria can live inside a chicken, not just on the skin. Chicken parts can be browned to boost their temperature quickly, but this is not really an option for whole birds.
So for poultry you want to get it through the danger zone as quickly as possible. Start on High until the cooking liquid is over 140° before turning it down to Low.
For me, that defeats half the point of slow cookers. I like to set it and walk away. If I have to babysit the pot and check the temperature, I’d just as soon roast the chicken in the oven with a meat thermometer in it to tell me when it’s done.
Perfect use for them
For a really great recipe to start getting used to it, you could try slow cooker BBQ ribs. Because ribs are tough, it takes a long time to break down the connective tissue. It’s almost impossible to overdo them in a slow cooker. I know that’s like giving someone driving directions and saying, “You can’t miss it.” Someone will find a way.
But slow cookers are forgiving, and so are ribs. Give it a try and tell me how they came out.
______________________________________________________
I’m a fan of slow cookers, but lots of people have trouble with them. There’s a good reason, which most people don’t know: Slow cookers today aren’t nearly as slow as they used to be. Rather than risk lawsuits from people undercooking their chicken, the manufacturers have been raising the temperatures of their cookers for years.
The Low setting on many new cookers will cook faster than the High setting on some older ones. So if you’ve got a recipe your grandmother wrote based on her slow cooker, you’re going to overcook whatever you put in yours.
That’s not the only thing you need to understand to adjust recipes. Manufacturers don’t publish the details of how hot the “Lo” and “Hi” settings are. (They also don’t know how to spell “Low” and “High”, but that’s a different issue.) Actually, they can’t publish how hot those settings are, because they’re not controlled by a thermostat.
Designed for time, not temperature
Here’s the deal. Some slow cookers have a thermostat dial on them, like an electric skillet. These can be set to a temperature, and that’s how hot they’ll get. But most of them — and if yours just has High and Low, or maybe Hi-Med-Lo, yours is one of them — are based on how much power is sent to the heating coil. They are designed based on how long it takes to raise a certain amount of food to a certain temperature.
So for instance, the High setting on a 5-quart pot might be designed to bring 3-quarts of liquid from 60° to 185° in 2 hours — all temperatures Fahrenheit — while the Low setting will do it in 4 hours. (All these numbers are just for example. Your pot is sure to be different.) What that means is if you were to put 2 quarts of liquid in the pot, and it’s already at 85°, you’re going to overshoot “done” in about an hour. On the other hand if you load it to the brim with leftover soup right out of the fridge, it won’t be ready to serve for at least 4 hours.
In any case, Both High and Low stabilize at the same temperature, it is just a matter of how long it takes to reach the simmer point.
Get to know your slow cooker
The point of all this is that you have to adjust all your recipes to your slow cooker. No one else, unless they have the exact same model, can tell you how it’s going to work.
And even then it depends on how much you fill it up, and how cold or warm the ingredients are when you add them. None of this is really hard, but you have to pay attention, not follow a recipe exactly and expect it to come out right the first time.
But are they safe?
Mention slow cookers and someone is going to jump in with the figures on bacteria growth: Bacteria can grow if food spends 2 hours between 40° and 140°. True. But there are a few things you can do to make it safe.
First is to realize that any contamination on whole cuts of beef, like a roast, is likely to be on the surface. Bacteria generally do not penetrate into the meat. So brown the meat before putting it in the slow cooker. You should be doing this anyway for the best flavor. Browning will destroy any bacteria on the surface, as well as raising the starting temperature so that it doesn’t spend as long in the danger zone.
This doesn’t work for whole chickens or turkey pieces. According to Cooks Illustrated:
Bacteria can live inside a chicken, not just on the skin. Chicken parts can be browned to boost their temperature quickly, but this is not really an option for whole birds.
So for poultry you want to get it through the danger zone as quickly as possible. Start on High until the cooking liquid is over 140° before turning it down to Low.
For me, that defeats half the point of slow cookers. I like to set it and walk away. If I have to babysit the pot and check the temperature, I’d just as soon roast the chicken in the oven with a meat thermometer in it to tell me when it’s done.
Perfect use for them
For a really great recipe to start getting used to it, you could try slow cooker BBQ ribs. Because ribs are tough, it takes a long time to break down the connective tissue. It’s almost impossible to overdo them in a slow cooker. I know that’s like giving someone driving directions and saying, “You can’t miss it.” Someone will find a way.
But slow cookers are forgiving, and so are ribs. Give it a try and tell me how they came out.
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