Jo Mama's World Famous Spaghetti

Good Wednesday morning! :) I hope you're having a great week. It's been a rough week around here; lots of loss of loved ones of people I deeply care about. Please pray for the King family and for the Ingram family. Thank you!

Today's review is for Jo Mama's World Famous Spaghetti from Food.com; we just used the sauce recipe. :)

We're trying to control more of what we eat, where we can do so fiscally-responsibly. And we decided to try making our own sauce; we even froze it in useable portions, so we could use it whenever we needed.

It was a very pretty sauce. We let it simmer in the slow cooker longer than the recipe said; I think our onion was bigger than necessary, and I really felt like it needed to cook into the sauce a bit more. Besides, a good sauce is nice and thick, right? :D

We also didn't add the meat. I wanted to be able to use it for anyone, even vegans or vegetarians. And it freezes flatter without meat. :D

It was a really good recipe. My dad thought it was too "spicy", but I thought it was really good! Of course, season it to your taste. :)

OK, I'm outta here! Have a wonderful day! Be BLESSED!

Stephen's Slow Cooker BBQ Pork

Welcome to Wednesday! :D

Do you remember last December, when I went to Texas to take care of my niece for two weeks? Well, one of the things my brother-in-law made for dinner during my first few days there was his slow cooker BBQ pork. Oh, MY, was it good. It smelled wonderful almost all day, and was it ever tender!

I asked for his recipe earlier this year, but never got around to making it. Until last weekend.

Not only did I pig out that day (pun totally intended! :D ), but I froze it in ice-cream-scoop-sized mounds. That makes it easier to get out exactly how much I want/need for another meal, and means it defrosts quickly when I want. :)

I got permission last week to share this yummy, easy meal with you!

So, here is his recipe:
Boneless pork butt (picnic butt), available at Walmart*

Sprinkle liberally with BBQ seasoning. (They use the dry rub from THE PIG in Memphis; I used one from the grocery store. His is better. :D )

Add anywhere from 1/3 - 1/2 small bottle of liquid smoke.

Cook 10 hours in slow cooker on low. Drain; pull/shred pork, discarding fat. Return shredded meat to crockpot. Sprinkle layers of meat with more rub. Douse with one complete bottle of Bull's Eye Memphis BBQ Sauce. (I used my favorite.) Have more sauce on hand to serve, if desired.


*I got one that had the bone in, and just pulled out and discarded what needed to go when I shredded it.

That's it! It's super easy - although I will admit that I ate as much unsauced pork as I did sauced that first night.... :D

Have a WONDERFUL day! Be BLESSED!!!

Copycat: Cafe Rio's Chicken Tortilla Soup

It's FRIDAY! :) Are you ready for some weekend?!?!? :)

Today's recipe is for a copycat of a place I've never heard of, Cafe Rio. If you have one near you, what do you think of their food? Anyway. :D The website that brings you this recipe is the same as Wednesday's, Favorite Family Recipes - because that pico de gallo I reviewed Wednesday is in this soup!

This is one of the meals I made while my parents were visiting my sister. I don't think they'd like it much, but I may be wrong. Maybe it's just Dad who wouldn't like it. :D Because we did! It gets a YES, PLEASE! - except the leftovers, not so much.

This is an assembled soup, which made it nice because I could do prep work the day before - like making the pico, baking the chicken and freezing what I didn't want to use for another meal. And it's a healthy soup - lots of fresh vegetables, not too high in sodium, chicken.... It's pretty, too! :)

When I reheated the chicken to put into the soup bowls, I ladled in some broth - with all the spices, etc., in the broth, it gave the seasoning to the chicken I wanted. I added a little cumin to the chicken, too, but couldn't find any cayenne pepper in the grocery the day I went. That was the strangest thing...! And I didn't use any taco seasoning; Kenn doesn't like it, and I didn't want to buy a package that we weren't going to use all of it, anyway. :)

The tortilla strips absolutely made this soup. Well, for ME, anyway. :D I've never made them fresh before, and oooooooh, were they good just out of the oil and salted. :D I stored them in a paper bag, so it would absorb the extra oil and they would stay crispy.

This will probably be a soup I make when we have people over on the beach; I can get almost everything ready the day before, and keep the broth and beans in a crock pot while we're doing things on the beach. :) It's Kenn's idea of what food should be: fresh and flavorful.

And I'll make extra tortilla strips next time. ;)

OK, I'm outta here. Have a WONDERFUL day! Enjoy your weekend - and let me know if you try anything new!!

Beef Vegetable Soup

Welcome to Wednesday. :D Have you had a good week so far? I've got a doctor's appointment today. booooo, hisssssss. <sigh>

So, anyway. :D Today's recipe is for "steak soup" - aka vegetable beef :D - from Gimme Some Oven! :D I made this soup last Monday, when I opened up the stampin' studio for a free evening. The bread I shared on Monday was a nice accompaniment for this soup.

The soup got a definite YES, PLEASE! from everyone who tasted it. I used 4 cups of beef broth, then about 5 cups of water with a container of Knorr Homestyle Stock (it's condensed) and an envelope of Swanson Flavor Boost. The recipe includes Worchestershire sauce - a touch of brilliance, there. It's got so much "stuff" that I wouldn't think to add to the soup, and a little goes a long way to boosting the flavor and richness of the broth. As a matter of fact, when I made beef stew a couple of days later, I used some Worchestershire sauce in it, too. It was wonderful. :)

This soup was wonderfully hearty, and I have to admit I don't really like soups with tomatoes in them. I cut the amount of tomatoes I added in half from the recipe; I also used fire-roasted tomatoes, which I'd gotten as a freebie to try.  I thought, if you have to have tomatoes in the soup, they were pretty decent. :D And I ate two bowls of this soup. Unheard of for me. :D

OK, I'm outta here! Have a BLESSED day! And do try this soup! :D

Pear Butter

Good Monday Morning!

I'm sorry you didn't get a post on Friday, if you came looking for one. I just ran out of OOMPH. I'm weary; last week was a LONG week. But it's Monday, so we get to do it all over again! :D

Today's recipe for pear butter comes to you from About.com.

I'm not quite sure what to tell you about this recipe. :D Yes, it's pear butter. But I don't think I'd go out of my way to make it. Let me put it this way: if you have lots of extra pears, this is a good way to use them. I wouldn't recommend getting extra pears just to do this one.

We had two crockpots almost full of pear slices, and I think I got eight half-pint jars out of it all. The recipe does call for pureeing the pears before putting them into the cooker, but I used an immersion blender on them once they'd cooked down. It was much less messy, and less work.

The flavor is OK. Don't add extra cloves! :D I wish I would remember to get some English muffins; I'd like to try it on those. And I cut the sugar by 1/3; it definitely doesn't need more than that.

So, I guess it's a MEH. :D However, I'll continue to try to find SOME pear recipe that I like. But unless I get more pears this year, I'm out!

Have a wonderful day! Be BLESSED!!!!

Make-Your-Own Rotisserie Chicken

Hello, one and all - or all of one, if that's all who's here! :D I hope you're enjoying my blog; I am really enjoying doing it. I love to try things out! :D

Today's recipe I'm reviewing is from Busy-Mommy.com, and it's on how to make your own chicken that tastes like a store-bought rotisserie chicken.

I love rotisserie chicken; it's versatile and easy to use, tender and juicy. HOWEVER. This recipe makes it in your crock pot.

I'm a huge fan of the IDEA of cooking meals in a crock pot; what could be better than sticking ingredients in in the morning, and having dinner ready later?

In practice, however, I have to tell you: I think the crock pot dries meat out. It LOOKS wonderful, and if tenderness is your game, it wins, hands-down. But JUICY? Nope. Not in my experience.

So, as it stands, I have to give this recipe a NO, THANK YOU. The flavor was great, so I think I'll try it in the OVEN next time, and I think that will change the whole thing for me. But even in my second-day meal, which is sauced with olive oil, the chicken was dry. I'll let you know when I do it in the oven!

OK, I'm outta here! :D Have a WONDERFUL, BLESSED day - and let me know if you've had the same experience with your crock pot, or if I'm doing something wrong. :D