Homemade Salsa

So we LOVE salsa over here..... and we like it HOT! We also LOVE to can things. It's actually a hobby of ours and we usually can several times a year making our own applesauce, jams & jellies, apple pie filling and salsa.

We've worked on this recipe over the last few years, adjusting and changing things up until we found the flavor that we love! This recipe is for HOT salsa, however, you can easily omit the hot seasonings and replace with milder seasonings. Easy peezy.

Check out our family recipe below!  We hope you LOVE it!

Tip: You do not need to can this recipe. You can put it in tupperware containers and leave it in your fridge for up to 5 days or you can put it in freezerware containers and freeze it! It freezes up really well (we know this all too well because one year we (and I really mean my husband) :) screwed up our cooking time for canning and we had to freeze it all instead. :)

Tip: We always try to get local ingredients from our farmers market in town. Sometimes it won't be possible depending on what time of year you make it, but, if you can, buy from local farmers and help support local agriculture!

Ingredients:
14 cups tomatoes
2 cups diced onions
2 1/2 cups colored peppers (red, green, yellow - or you can use all green)
2 tablespoons minced garlic
3 teaspoons salt
1 cup cider vinegar
2 teaspoon dried cilantro
1/4 cup sugar
1 can rotel
1 can green chilies
3 cans tomato paste
3 tablespoons lime juice
1 cup jalapenos
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
3 packets HOT taco seasoning (you can change these out for mild packets if you want a more milder salsa

To prepare:

Since we always get tomatoes from local farms, we have to peel our tomatoes by placing them in boiling water and then using a cold water bath. It's a ton of work depending how many toms you have, but it's worth it to us so we can support our farmers. Click here to see how to remove the peels: http://dish.allrecipes.com/how-to-peel-tomatoes/

If you don't want to go through this process you can always buy canned tomatoes though.

Start chopping & dicing! All ingredients should be chopped & diced into small pieces/cubes.

Tip: If you are using fresh jalapenos, make sure to wear gloves when you remove the vines and seeds from your peppers! If not, your fingers will burn for days (do not ask me how I know this!).

Add all ingredients into large stock pot and cook on your stove until all ingredients are tender.

If you are canning, there is a specific amount of time you need to cook your ingredients depending on if you are water bathing your salsa or pressure canning it. Make sure to look up those cooking times so you are following food safety and canning standards.

If you are just making this salsa to eat immediately or to keep in your fridge, you can cook on your stove top until all ingredients are softened.

Put your salsa in containers, jars or tupperware and eat, refrigerate, freeze or give away to friends!

I hope you enjoy this salsa recipe! It's our favorite after years of trying to perfect it!  I hope you enjoy it and let me know if you end up loving it!

Watch Out Winter! I've Got Beef Stew!

It's snowing outside with about 5" of snow on the ground already and another 4" yet to fall so I am hunkered down inside snuggling up with the dogs while Christmas music is playing in the background. It's the perfect day to bust out my beloved crock pot and make our wonderful family Beef Stew recipe!

Check it out below!

Beef Stew
2lbs beef stew
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 clove garlic - minced
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
1 onion - chopped
1 1/2 cup beef broth
4 potatoes - diced
3 large carrots - sliced
1 celery stalk - sliced
4 tablespoons tomato paste (1 small can)
1 can cream of celery soup
1 bag frozen peas
1/4 red wine (optional)
 1 packet of stew seasoning mix (envelope)

To prepare stew:

Start by coating your beef cubes with the 1/4 cup of flour. Sear your meat on your stove top, just to put some color on the beef.  I do this by cranking up my burner so the pan is HOT and toss in the meat. Let it sear on one side and then turn pieces over, searing the other side. This only takes 1 minute probably each side, just until you see some color on the beef cubes. You can always skip this step but I will say, for the little time it takes, it truly adds more flavor to your stew and is totally worth it!

Turn off stove and toss beef into your crock pot.

Add pepper to the beef here.

Add 1/2 of your packet of beef stew seasoning on top of the beef next.

Chop, slice & dice all of your carrots, celery, potatoes, garlic and onion now.

Place ingredients in crock pot.

Add in the remaining ingredients now (tomato paste, peas, cream of celery soup, beef broth, wine (optional), worcestershire sauce, other half of beef stew seasoning packet and bay leaves.

Cook on low 6-8 hours or on high 4-6 hours.

This Beef Stew is AMAZING and so delicious for a cold winter night. I serve it with sweet Hawaiian rolls in a large mug and it makes for a perfect warm winter dinner.

I hope you try this family recipe and that you love it!

Thanks for checking in and see you around the lake!

The BEST Sugar Cookie Frosting EVER!

This is seriously the BEST frosting I have ever had before! My mom gave me her recipe and I can literally eat this stuff by the spoonful, it's that GOOD! This is the frosting recipe I make when I bake sugar cookies for the holidays. It's light and fluffy and you can add drops of food coloring to make any color you'd like. .

Check out the recipe below!

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1 cup crisco (yep - good old crisco)
6 drop of butter extract
6 drops of clear vanilla extract (I use clear so the frosting will be pure white)
2 lbs powdered sugar
water

Below are steps to make the frosting:

Start with beating the egg whites until they are all foamy.

Next, add in your crisco.

Then, add your extracts.
 
The next step is to add your powdered sugar. You are going to start by adding half a 1lb bag at a time and mix mix mix.

 
Slowly, keep adding powdered sugar until you've used all 2lbs of it (add powdered sugar, then mix, then add more, then mix until you've used it all).

The frosting at this point will be pretty thick. This is where the water comes in.

There isn't an exact science to this. You will add 1 Tablespoon of water at a time. Add the water and then mix the frosting. Beat the frosting until fluffy & smooth ( I usually end up adding a few tablespoons of water until I reach my desired consistency).

Then, if you are keeping all your frosting white, you can frost your cookies and add your sprinkles!

If you are adding food coloring, separate frostings into bowls and add drops of your coloring at this time and then decorate away!

I hope you love this recipe as much as I do!!

xoxo,
Brenda

The Good in the Bad

It's been awhile since I have done a blog post but I just had to share what God has been teaching me lately about the good in the bad.  I don't mean "the good & the bad" but "the good IN the bad". 

There is a difference. 

This past Sunday night, we were at a friend's house and the sunset was simply breathtaking.  The pics below do not do it justice, mainly because of my crappy i-phone that I've dropped one too many times, but also because it is really hard to capture a good photo of such amazing colors!  

Personally, I had never seen a sunset so beautiful.  The magenta hot pinks and stunning lilac purple colors with streaks of maize shooting through them that were set against this stunning blanket of a sapphire blue background was just ..... in a word.... breathtaking.  Take away all those fancy words and descriptive colors and speak in my language.....

 It was FREAKING FANTASTIC! 

It was one of those sunsets that makes you stop what you are doing and just pause to take it all in.  The kind of sunset where people stop and point and you hear "ooohhhsss & ahhhhhs" like you would hear during a magical fireworks display at Disney. 

During our drive home, the sun eventually slipped below the horizon and the sky grew dark but I couldn't stop thinking about it!  It made such an impact on me that I woke up the next morning still thinking about it!  That morning during my devotional and prayer time, I was wondering and praying about the fact that we don't have sunsets like that all the time and I wondered, if they are so beautiful and sunsets like that exist, then why doesn't God give us sunsets like that all the time?  Living here in southern Michigan, there are only a few times a year during the summer months when I see truly amazing sunsets like that and I thought "wouldn't it be awesome to see one of those every night?" and as I was praying about it, I felt like God taught me this:
 
If we had beautiful stunning sunsets like that all the time, it would just become the norm and we would eventually take them for granted. They wouldn't take our breath away or make us pause where we are.  They'd blend in.  They'd be expected.  They wouldn't be this amazing beautiful event that takes place every so often that catches us by surprise and that we thank God for.

So then I thought about the good times we go through in life and how, if things were good all the time (our relationships, our bank accounts, our jobs, our health) the good times in life wouldn't mean as much either.  Go with me here.  I know what you are thinking.  Is she crazy?!

There is good in the bad.

Think about it for a second.  If things were great all the time, would we have an appreciation for the good times?  If life were good all the time, it would become the norm.  Life would blend in.  It would become expected.  There wouldn't be a need for hope or for looking forward to things.  There has to be bad times in order to make the good times exist.

It's the same with sunsets.  There are sunsets ...... and then there are SUNSETS!  We know about the really great sunsets because we know they exist.  It's the same thing with the good in life.  We know the good in life exists because we know the bad times in life exist, too.  It's like light and dark.  Cold and hot.  Cheesecake and no cheesecake.  Ok.  I may have gone too far on that last one.  ;)

There is good in the bad. 

During bad times, whether it be difficult times at work, or maybe your marriage is failing, or maybe you've recently had a scary diagnosis - it's the good times and the knowledge of them, the experience of them, and the hope of them that gets us through those bad times.

I'm an optimist.  My glass is always half full.  I tend to see the good in situations and I try to see the good in the bad.  Not because I am naturally that way, but because of what God has shown me with my past experiences.  I have not had a difficult life.  I grew up in a loving home with two parents that are still married today.  I always had enough food to eat.  We took family vacations every year.  I didn't struggle in school and I had success in my career.  But I have always remembered.....

There is good in the bad.

Just because I have had good experiences in life doesn't mean I have escaped the bad.  I have loved and lost.  I have lost a best friend to cancer.  I have had tough ministry experiences.  I have been through tough losses with friendships and have been through difficult relationships.  I have been disappointed, struggled with self esteem, and have searched for self worth.  I have had bad bads.  I've lost a baby due to miscarriage.  I've recently feared a cancer diagnosis.  But, something God has taught me through each of these circumstances.....

There is good in the bad.

If we are going through something difficult; something that is really hard, emotionally draining, tough on us physically, or weighing us down - if we don't see the good in the bad, than our suffering is for nothing.  If we don't have hope that God will use our tough times for something good or if we don't remember that good times in life DO EXIST, then how will we get through the difficult times?

There is good in the bad. 

God doesn't punish us.  He doesn't put us through difficult times for sport.  God doesn't change either!  He is a loving Father that loves us more than anything!  

God does allow us to go through things in life that are hard to shape us, mold us, and to teach us things.  He allows us to go through things so we can find the good in the bad.

If you don't find the good in the bad, then you are missing out on learning what He is trying to teach you.

If you don't find the good in the waiting then you are missing out on what God has for you. 

If you don't find the good in your broken marriage, your awful diagnosis, your awesomely sucky job, then you are not finding the good in the bad.

There is always good in the bad and God proved that to us the day His Son Jesus Christ died for you (and me!) on the cross! 

My prayer for you today is whatever you are going through, because we all have something - my prayer for you is to find the good in the bad.  Find the light in the darkness.  Reach for hope in your trial and remember how beautiful the sunsets are!

xo,
Brenda

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

This chicken noodle soup recipe is so good!  My husband said "it's the best chicken noodle soup I've ever had", so in my book, that is a HUGE win!  I love when he tells me that he loves my cooking and I make sure to write down those special recipes so I have them at my finger tips.

This is a simple recipe but it will taste like it's been simmering on the stove all afternoon.  This soup has tons of depth and is perfect for those cold blustery winter days with some warm fresh bread from the oven!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

32oz. chicken broth
2 cups of water
1 cup thinly diced carrots
1 cup thinly diced celery
1 cup finely chopped onion
6 small chicken thighs (you could use less if you wanted or you could use 2 breasts, too)
3 tbls olive oil
1 tbls butter
1/2 tspn nutmeg (yep - you heard me right)
1/2 tspn garlic powder
1/2 tspn salt (I did not add any salt to the soup bc the broth has plenty - I only salted the chicken)
1 1/2 tspn pepper
1/3 - 1/2 cup of Ancini De Pe Pe noodles (little tiny dot noodles)

To Prepare:
-heat olive oil in pot and add butter
-add diced carrots, celery and onion to pot and saute till transluscent

-Once transluscent, add in water and broth.
-Add 1 tspn pepper to broth and heat on med/high heat.
 
-Once chicken is done roasting (see roasting instructions below), shred while hot with forks.  Pour chicken into pot of simmering soup.  Make sure to pour any juices and tid bits left in chicken pan from roasting and add those to your pot of soup (that is the good stuff!  Don't leave it behind.  There is a ton of flavor there).

-Once you have the chicken added, you can add your Ancini De Pe Pe noodles.  Let simmer for 8-10 minutes.

-You are done!  Told you it was easy!

To Prepare Chicken:
-place chicken in glass dish or on pan and coat chicken with olive oil (both sides).  Next, sprinkle with garlic, remaining pepper, salt, and nutmeg.  Coat both sides of chicken.
-Bake at 375 for 45 minutes, turning over half way through.

Hope you love this recipe as much as we do!  Please comment below and tell me what you think!

Pumpkin & Peanut Butter Treats For Your Furry Loved One!

I love making homemade dog treats for our dogs because then I know exactly what ingredients are in them and where the ingredients are from.  Making homemade treats are easy to do and you can find cute little cookie cutters to use that come in fun shapes and sizes (bones, fire hydrants, dog shapes, etc)! 

Below is an easy 3 ingredient recipe you can use!  This recipe makes a ton of soft cut out treats that can be frozen for months in your freezer.  I just place mine in a freezer bag and pop them out one at a time for a special treat for our Max & Sammy.

Pumpkin & Peanut Butter Dog Treats

1/2 Cup of Peanut Butter (natural peanut butter is best because it contains less sugar but you can use whatever you have on hand)

1 Cup 100% Pure Pumpkin Puree

1 3/4 Cup Whole Wheat Flour (or you can use regular flour)

Instructions:

Pre-Heat your oven to 350 degrees.  Line a sheet pan with parchment paper (just to avoid the treats sticking to the pan)

Stir all ingredients together (it may help to add the flour 1/4 cup at a time so it's easier to mix)

Roll out dough to 1/4" thick and cut out your cookie treats

Place your treats on your pan and bake for 8-10 minutes. 

Remove from oven and allow to completely cool before storing. 

I hope your fur baby loves these treats!  You'll love how easy they were to make & you will feel confident in knowing what you are feeding your fur baby and what is in their food.

They are pet approved by the Max & Sammy council! 

Happy Baking!

17 Freezer Meals for Quick & Easy Dinners

Ok ladies....  I won't go into why it's so awesome to make freezer meals because you probably already know!  We don't have kids yet and I find it extremely convenient and it makes my life easier having freezer meals ready and prepared, so, I can only imagine how helpful it would be with kids and a family.  1 day of work can save you hours of time in cooking and prep everyday.

I am going to get right down to the recipes.  I made these recipes with only my husband and myself in mind, so adjust the amounts for your larger family.  I spent $90 total and was able to get 17 meals, which breaks down each meal to just over $5, for 2 people!  Talk about savings!  I did use coupons and bought items that were on sale, and the 2 lasagnas I made make up for 12 of the meals alone.  

*You will notice on some of the meals that I have made a note to add the chicken/beef.  That is simply because I didn't feel like opening up the chicken and I just left it in the freezer.  I buy the individually wrapped frozen chicken breasts from Costco so it's easy to just open a 2 pack and add it in.

Crock Pot Beef Fajitas 

*this recipe will make 2 freezer meals.  Just prep everything and then divide into 2 separate freezer bags)

2lb beef (1lb per freezer bag)
1 green bell pepper (1/2 pepper per bag)
1 yellow bell pepper (" " " ")
1 red bell pepper (" " " ")
2 onions (1 onion per bag)
2 tsp chopped garlic (1 tsp per bag)
1 - 16oz World Harbor Fajita Marinade ($1.99 Kroger) split the marinade in half in each bag
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/8 tsp cumin per bag
red pepper flakes (I use 1/2 tsp but it depends how hot you want yours to be)
2 limes (juice from 1 lime per bag)
salt & pepper


Other items needed for day of dinner:
-Tortillas
-Mexican Cheese
-Rice & Beans
-sour cream

Crock Pot Chicken Marsala
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (I buy mine at Costco)
1 onion sliced
Campbells Marsala Skillet Sauce packet (complete sauce packet with mushrooms)
6 gold potatoes (small ones) halved
pepper
No salt added due to the sauce packet having salt in it

*you can swap out the potatoes for rice)

Crock Pot Beef Stew
1lb of beef 
1 celery stalk cut into pieces
2 carrots chopped or you can use 1/3 bag of mini carrots
6-8 gold potatoes halved
1 onion
1tsp garlic
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can tomato paste
salt & pepper
1 packet beef stew seasoning

*I add in 1/4 cup red wine on the day that I cook it)

Other items needed for day of dinner:
-Rolls, biscuits or bread

Crock Pot Honey Mustard Chicken
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 onion sliced
1 tsp garlic
1 tsp paprika
1/3 cup Dijon Mustard
1/4 cup honey
1/8 tsp dried mustard
salt & pepper
8 gold potatoes halved

Other items needed for day of dinner:
-Rice (take out potatoes and use rice instead)

Meat Lasagna
Lasagna noodles (9)
Roll of Italian sausage (I use Kroger but you can use Bob Evans or whatever you can find)
8oz Low Fat Cottage Cheese
8oz Part Skim Ricotta Cheese
1/2 cup Parmesean Cheese (reserve 1/4 cup for top of lasagna)
1 cup Mozzarella shredded cheese (reserve 1/3 cup for the top of lasagna)
1 large jar marinara sauce (or whatever spaghetti sauce you like)
1/2 tsp dried oregano

*I pre-cooked the sausage prior to putting together the lasagna

Other items needed for day of dinner:
-Steamed broccoli
-small side salad

Bake at 350 for 1 hour

*Each lasagna gave me 9 LARGE pieces of lasagna or 12 smaller pieces
*I froze these in tupperware containers - 2 pieces in each

Veggie Lasagna
Lasagna noodles (9)
8oz Low Fat Cottage Cheese
8oz Part Skim Ricotta Cheese
1/2 cup Parmesean Cheese (reserve 1/4 cup for top of lasagna)
1 cup Mozzarella shredded cheese (reserve 1/3 cup for the top of lasagna)
1 large jar of marinara sauce (or whatever spaghetti sauce you like)
1 yellow squash sliced
1 zucchini sliced
1 onion
1 cup spinach
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp garlic
salt and pepper

*I sauted all of the veggies prior to putting together the lasagna

Other items needed for day of dinner:
-bread or rolls

Bake at 350 for 1 hour

*Each lasagna gave me 9 LARGE pieces of lasagna or 12 smaller pieces
*I froze these in tupperware containers - 2 pieces in each

That's all folks!  I hope you love these recipes as much as I do!
Happy cooking!