Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Elephant Ears

This isn't really a dinner recipe. It's from the Joy School manual and I like to fix it for my kids' lunch every once in a while. Only I can rarely find the recipe in all of my Joy School stuff, so I'm posting it here so I'll know where to find it. :)

Elephant Ears
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 1/2 TBSP butter (melted)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar

Put eggs in a medium bowl and beat them.
Add milk and butter, then beat again.
Add flour, sugar, and salt and mix well.
Heat some oil in an electric skillet (or spray with Pam).
Pour batter in 3 or 4 inch circles.
Cook until browned and then brown the other side.
Spread with butter or applesauce.
Roll up and eat. :)

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Banana Bread

2/3 cup butter, softened
2 1/2 cups flour
1 2/3 cup sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup mashed ripe bananas
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
2/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional - we leave them out)
chocolate chips
cinnamon and sugar

Place butter in medium bowl.
Stir in flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. (It would be a good idea to stir those dry ingredients together and then add them to the butter, but I sometimes skip that step.)
Add bananas and half of the buttermilk.
Mix till moistened. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed.
Add the rest of the buttermilk and the eggs.
Beat for 2 more minutes.
Fold in nuts (if you choose to use them) and chocolate chips.
Bake in two 9 x 6 x 3 loaf pans for about 35 minutes.
Sprinkle top with cinnamon and sugar.

Cool 10 minutes and remove from pans.

Notes: If I don't have buttermilk on hand, I often use sour cream or a mixture of sour cream and milk (about a 1/3 cup of each). Or, you can put a little less than one TBSP or so of lemon juice in a measuring cup and add milk to make 2/3 cup. The texture of the bread will be thickest and richest with the sour cream; the milk alone will be the least rich.

From my Mom and Grandma

Monday, February 2, 2009

Recommended Recipes

I thought I'd list a few of the recipes that I've tried from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.
She does such a great job of writing them down (and illustrating them with photos), it would be silly for me to try to improve them. Here are the links, instead.

Delicious Creamy Mashed Potatoes -We had these with our Thanksgiving dinner. Sooo good, and just in case you have some cream cheese haters in your home, the cream cheese flavor didn't really come through. The potatoes were just GOOD.

Egg-in-a-hole - John and I sometimes have these for a snack before bed. Yum.

Farfalle with Zucchini - This is a great recipe for summer zucchini. We haven't had it for a few months, so I'm not sure whether it was a hit with the kids, or not. I'll have to update after I make it again.

Chicken Rice Soup - This was really good. A nice, creamy soup. I even added the yellow food coloring. :)

Ranch Chicken - We had this for dinner last night. I was skeptical because I'm not a big Dijon Mustard fan, but the flavor was really good. John really liked it (although he admits that not having eaten all day might have pushed this recipe from just "good" to "really good").

Crash Hot Potatoes - I know that we had these potatoes last summer. I don't think that the kids liked them, and John wasn't impressed, but I thought they were good.