St. Patrick’s Day Lunch

First off, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m Mae from over at The Life Of A Compulsive Crafter. I was asked by the lovely ladies at TWSC to guest blog once a month and quickly said yes!

Though I’m not much of a gourmet cook (eek, recipe please!), I still enjoy being in the kitchen. Today I chose to take a super simple and well known lunch option, tuna sandwiches – and show you a fun way to green them up and make them a bit healthier for St. Patrick’s Day.

Green Tuna Sandwiches

1 can of tuna

1/2  an avocado

2 tbsp mayonnaise

relish *optional

1 tbsp

 

Drain your tuna and place into a medium size bowl. Add your avocado and mayonnaise and mix well.  If you like relish, add that as well. Because the avocado has a nice creamy texture, you’re able to use less of the mayonnaise making it healthier. Plus, I just love me some avocado’s. So, if you’re as big of fan as me, slice up the second half thinly and lay it onto your tuna sandwich.

 

 

I chose to eat mine spooned onto foccacia bread and added an extra punch of green by slicing a granny smith green apple as the side.

If you’re feeling extra green today, consider making this recipe, or you can use your imagination to dream up ways of turning some of your go-to recipe’s green. Pesto sauce? Spinach? I promise, it’s pretty fun! Have a great day!

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Mama Nancy’s Sweet Potato Casserole

We all know what sweet potato casserole is: sweet potatoes with a puffy marshmallow topping, right? Well, as much as I love big white puffy puffs of sugar, I really have never been a fan of the sweet potato casserole made this way. I grew up with my mother’s sweet potato casserole. It’s SO sweet but SO delicious!

The ingredients, simple and sweet:  Canned sweet potatoes, butter, milk, sugar, vanilla and eggs.

Drain your sweet potatoes and dump them into a bowl. Mash the crap out of them!

Pour your milk into your bowl of mashed sweet potatoes

Pour in your melted butter. Don’t pee into your casserole.

Dump your sugar, vanilla (Vintage green Tupperware measuring spoons make this casserole taste especially special), two eggs and then mix it all up real nice-like. Mmm mmm good! Now set it aside and we’ll prepare the topping!

Topping Ingredients: Self rising flour, brown sugar, melted butter and chopped pecans

Dump your flour in a clear photogenic pyrex bowl

Dump in the pecans, brown sugar and melted butter in a slow delicate fashion so your husband can snap 3,000 photos to get JUST the right pour picture. Then mix it all up until it’s crumbly and delicious. Yes, I tasted the topping on it’s own. Yes it was delicious.

Pour the topping onto the casserole and smooth it out evenly. If you use a round casserole dish like I did, it’s going to seem like a THICK layer of topping, but it works out just fine. My mama has always made it in this dish, so it probably wouldn’t tasted near as good in any other dish.

Throw it in the oven. Well, don’t THROW it. Just set it in there gently. Unless you’re an angry cook. And you’re not using something breakable. And you don’t mind a big  mess. If that’s the case, go ahead and give it a nice throw.

Take it out of the oven when the topping is looking brown and toasty.

EAT IT. It might seem a little on the runny side when it first comes out. I recommend letting it sit for 15 minutes or so. And believe it or not, this recipe is actually still delicious heated up the next day. And the next day. And 3 days from then. Yum yum delicious!

Ingredients:

3 cans sweet potatos in syrup, drained & mashed
1/2 C milk
1 C sugar
2 eggs
1 T vanilla
1/4 C butter, melted

Topping Ingredients:

1 C chopped pecans
1 C brown sugar
1/2 C self-rising flour
1/3 C butter, melted

Pre-heat oven to 350°. Mix the main ingredients in a the casserole you plan to bake it in. Mix the topping ingredients in a small bowl and then spread evenly over the sweet potato mixture. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until topping is browned and toasty.

Candy

Chicky Stew!

Friday is our normal day to spotlight another blog or person.  However, we also know  things happen.  What happened this Friday?  Well our featured blogger has been ill for the last week and was unable to be spotlighted today.  So instead we offer this recipe for some nutritious soup that’s bound to make anyone feel at least a little better.

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One of my favourite fall/winter meals is Chicken stew! I will use leftover turkey or even just cut up the chicken breast into small pieces for this meal. It is fairly quick and so hearty!  As per How I like things here is THE recipe, my own, made up after many trials and errors to get it how I like it!

Jenn’s Chicky Stew:

• Chicken, Leftover turkey or chopped up breast.
• A celery stick or two
• A good amount of mushroom (if you like them, I love them)
• half a butternut squash
• half a sweet potato
• 3 med size potatos
• onion

Sauce:

• a cup ish of water mixed with OXO (chicken flavour)
• 2Tbsp brown sugar (or a touch more if you like to taste the sweet a little more)
• Basil. I do a good teaspoon worth.
•  Cornstarch mixed with some water for thickening.

First I want you to peel all those squash and spuds, cube and get into seperate pot. The potato cooks slowest so get those in water first and then the butternut squash and then the sweet potato. Let them boil until done.

Once you have that done, move onto the chicken and other veg.

Put your chicken (if using raw boob) in the pan and fry it up. When close to done, add the onions, celery, and the basil.  When the celery and onion are close to done add the mushrooms.

When your veg is cooked, add 2Tbsp of brown sugar and a teaspoon of oil and let it cook for a few minutes, stirring often.

Then add in your chicken oxo into the pot and heat to just below a boil.

Add a bit of cornstarch to water. I usually do a 1/8 cup water to 2 Tbsp of cornstarch. (ish)

Thicken up that sauce and once it is thickened, gravy thick ish NOT pudding thick.  Add in the potato and squash.

Give it a gentle stir until mixed and everything is nicely coated in sauce.

And there you have it, a pretty and delicious chicken stew! Perfect for using up that leftover thanksgiving turkey you have! Enjoy! And if you make this please feel free to comment and let me know how you feel about my stew recipe 🙂

Jenn

What is your go-to fall meal?

Small FRY-Day Spotlight: Gramma Lollie’s Broccoli Casserole

Hey everyone!  This month’s Small FRY-day theme is “Family Favorites” although I’m still partial to “Thanksgiving Noms”.  Anyway…what better way to start off that by posting a recipe from MY family?  My wonderful mother-in-law is a fantastic cook and always makes me gain like 15 lbs when she comes to stay with us.  I can not help but eat all of everything that she makes.  It’s a sickness caused by witchcraft, I tell you.  Please enjoy this recipe by one of my favorite Culinary Queens.
-Crystal-

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Hello!  My name is Laura but the grandkids call me Gramma Lollie.    I’m so happy to share my recipe with you.  My daughter-in-law can tell you that when I cook,  I mostly just throw it all together and pay no attention to measurements.  This is one of the few recipes that I can actually tell you exactly what’s in it and  pretty closely estimate how much of each ingredient you’ll need.  My broccoli casserole was always a favorite of my kids when they were growing up.  It was devoured VERY quickly once it hit the table.  My daughter even likes to eat the leftovers chilled the next day.  I hope you love it as much as my kids do!

Ingredients:

2- 14 oz packages of Frozen Broccoli

1- Cup Mayonnaise

1- Egg

2 -Cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese

1 -Can Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 – Yellow Onion GRATED (not chopped or diced) (1/2 onion if you’re not a huge onion lover)

Bread crumbs for topping (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350. Cook broccoli florets according to the package’s instructions and drain.  In a bowl, combine remaining ingredients.  Add broccoli, stir and transfer to an oven safe 9×13 dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs if desired.

Cook for 30 minutes or until the casserole starts bubbling.  Remove, let cool for 5 minutes and eat!  Easy and delicious!  I hope you love it!

-Gramma Lollie-

Vegan Dumpling Dessert

Hey all! This is Jenn here and today I want to share with you my easy go to fall dessert! and it is vegan so – win! (especially if you are an allergy family or if you ran out of milk and eggs but need something sweet in a hurry). If you don’t want to eat it vegan go ahead and use regular milk and margarine.

I am going to put the recipe at the start, since I hate scrolling to the end for the recipe and then back up to get hints for steps.  Hopefully this order is ok for all you readers. So without further dawdling here is the recipe for Vegan Caramel Pear Dumplings!

Vegan Caramel Pear Dumplings

Pre heat oven to 350 degress F

Cooking time 20-30 minutes

Pan size: 8×8

serves 5-6

Sauce:

1cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups water

2T vegan margerine (I use becel vegan, but there is also earth balance and likely a few others out there)

Caramelize the above by bringing to a boil and letting it boil for a few minutes.

Batter:

1/2cup white sugar

2 T vegan margarine

1/2cup almond milk

1cup sifted flour

1tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1 peeled and chopped pear

Cream the margarine and sugar together with a fork or in your mixer, then add in the milk. Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the wet and mix ever so slightly and then add in the pear and mix until well combined.

Pour the batter into the glass baking dish and then drop the batter by spoonfuls into the sauce and bake.

Now for the picture hints 🙂

The boil, I do 3-5minutes. If you do less the sauce will stay runny when baking

ready to drop batter into sauce – the batter is pretty goopy.

Here is what it looks like with the batter in the sauce before baking, as you can see there is no “right” way to do this – don’t stress about even spoonfulls or a perfect looking batter drop.

Once it bakes up it looks like this, perfectly golden, sauce bubbled and soaked into the dumplings a bit. YUM!

There you have it! If you have 15 minutes and need a dessert this is the recipe for you!