Beets are a great vegetable. They are full of vitamins and are very healthy. they also have a very unique flavor. I usually roast beets in the oven coated in honey, but I wanted to make a quick meal when I decided to boil them. Boiling these beets enhanced the pickled flavor and gave them a different flavor from baking. Baking beets will mellow the flavor, but these beets were very full of flavor. I decided to strain them and place them on our plated before adding honey. We added about 2 tsp to 1 Tbsp of honey for our 3-4 beets, and coated them before eating.
Open a jar of pickled beets and add to a small saucepan. Place over medium low heat, and boil for 5-10 minutes until hot.
Strain using a slotted spoon and place on plate before topping with 2 tsp of honey, or place in a bowl and add 3-5 Tbsp honey toss and serve.
This tilapia recipe creates beautifully fried tilapia. The process is the same as my fried pork chops, but the results are very different. I reused my oil from when I made donuts, french fries, and chicken nuggets. You could smell the chicken nugget seasoning in the oil, but there was no additional flavor to the fish because of it. Tilapia is also a light fish, but I found that serving it this way makes it a bit fishier than baking or cooking in a pan. I also found, though the paprika gives it a beautiful appearance, I personally did not like the overwhelmingly earthy flavor. My husband loved this meal though, so try it before you decide, but I just was not a big fan of the earthy flavor, and/or I should not have served it with beets, since that just emphasized the earthy flavor of the tilapia. I also served this meal with classic flavored Suddenly Salad. It is one of my favorite pastas, and it did compliment the meal by adding extra flavors. I also made my own tartar sauce by placing 3 Tbsp sweet pickles and 1/2 cup of mayo in a food processor. (I do not actually use mayo for any of my dishes, I always use “salad dressing”, the store brand Miracle Whip, because it has even less of a fatty flavor than Miracle Whip.)
Thaw 2 fillets of tilapia. Place on a plate and sprinkle paprika on both sides of the fillets.
In a deep, open mouthed dish, add 1/2 cup of flour. Coat both sides of each fillet until all fish is covered.
In a large dutch oven, add 2 cups of oil, and heat over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot (about 200 F), gently add each fillet and cook on each side for 2 minutes before removing.
Remove and place on paper towel lined plate, or dab with a paper towel on your serving plate. Serve with tartar sauce, and let rest 5 minutes before eating.
I did a lot of research before starting this recipe. I was interested in how people usually make roux based soups at home. I use mushroom soup in my Tuna Noodle recipe and since everyone says it was easy, I thought I could make other classic bases for recipes, such as cream of chicken or cream of celery. I was looking through my freezer for what meat I could put in this casserole, and by far, I had many packets of Venison Minute steaks. This was steaks that were sliced on a meat slicer. You could easily use cubed up meat instead or even ground burger, but I liked the idea of a steak casserole. I was thinking of making a gravy base sauce, but I didn’t know what that would do to the potatoes, and dark stained potatoes didn’t seem very appealing to me. Thinking of soups, I thought of onions. Steak and onions go well together. So the roux base is done like any other cream soup. Instead of adding minced onion, I could have added sliced onions and onion powder, and 2 cups of milk to get a condensed onion soup (which is similar to cream of celery, chicken, and mushroom made at home). I wanted to reheat the meat a bit before baking, so I did that while the soup was getting up to temperature. I really enjoyed this dish. I served it without waiting and it wasn’t as good as it was a few minutes later, so let it rest a bit. The meat became super tender and just fell apart as you ate it, and the potatoes were done for me by the 50 minute mark.
Wash 6 medium potatoes (4 cups), dice and place in a 9×13 pan. Peel an onion, half and slice into ringlets. Separate and add to potatoes. Mix and set aside.
In a large skillet, begin heating it over medium high heat. If you have minute steaks, you have nothing to do. If you have a whole piece of meat, slice into thin slices only 1/4 inch thick or make 1/2 inch cubes. Add 2 Tbsp of oil to pan. Add meat to pan and cook each side for only 1-2 minutes, until browned. Once cooked, add to side plate for the time being.
Heat oven to 350F. Turn down heat to medium low. Melt 2 Tbsp of butter into the pan, but do not brown butter. Once just melted, add 3 Tbsp flour. Whisk flour into butter, and cook until butter and flour is bubbly. Add 2 Tbsp dried minced onion, and 1 packet of Onion soup mix. Add 4 cups of milk and stir.
Add meat back to skillet and coat. Mix in 2 tsp of garlic powder and 1 Tbsp Onion powder. Heat to a simmer and cook for another 2-3 minutes, then pour over potatoes and onion, even out meat distribution, and add to oven for 50 minutes.
After time, stab a potato with a fork to assure they are done. Let it rest for 5 minutes before serving.
I didn’t follow the recipe to a T, because I don’t have cornmeal on hand. I also may have rolled out the dough longer than instructed, because my loafs were long but smaller than I was expecting. I didn’t add sugar to this recipe. I also didn’t brush with butter at the end. My dough also took a while to rise, so I gave an extra 15 minutes to each time estimate.
This bread smelled amazing, and the texture was amazing. It is a crumby bread, with a hard crust but soft and light inside. This bread isn’t sweet or too salty without sugar. This is also a bread that is versatile, and can easily be used for sandwiches, garlic bread, or pizza.
I’ve had this tin of cookies since Christmas. I really love these cookies, but we need the counter space back and we’ve stopped eating them, so I decided it would be fun to repurpose them into a pie crust. Some of the cookies we had had coconut flakes in them, and you can still taste them in your crust, so make sure you like the cookies before you make a crust of them. I have a really small food chopper, if you have a bigger one, you can add the butter to the crumbs and mix it quicker by just pulsing a few times. The pie also turned out really well. I followed the directions on the side of the box for the pudding mix, and the mix I used came from Aldis. I also was short by about 1/2 a cup on butter cookies, so I added a little under 1/2 a cup of graham cracker crumbs.
Cookie Crust
In a food processor or blender, crush up your leftover cookies until they have a sandy texture and about 1 1/2 – 2 cups of crumbs.You can supplement with graham crackers or graham cracker crumbs to reach that range if you are short. Also pulse in 2 Tbsp of packed brown sugar.
Turn out crumbs into a 9 inch pie pan. In a side bowl, melt 6 Tbsp of butter. Pour the butter over the crumbs and mix til all of the crumbs have an wet sand consistency. Pack into the edges of the pan in an even layer using your fingers, the back of a spoon, or a rubber spatula.
Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes until fully cooled.
Pudding Filling
Using a box of pudding, combine the pudding powder and 1 3/4 cup of milk in a bowl. Beat with an electric mixer for 1 minute. Once mixed, pour the pudding mixture directly into you crumb crust.
Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving, or freeze for pieces that will come out more intact.
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