Meatball Sandwich Casserole

You will need:

1 bag of frozen meatballs (or make your own from scratch)
1 jar of marinara sauce
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 cup Italian blend cheese, shredded
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
1 loaf of fresh Italian bread, sliced

To prepare:

Preheat oven to 400. Place entire bag of meatballs in pot with sauce (I also add garlic, onion powder, salt and pepper to taste) and cook over medium heat until warmed completely through, about 10 minutes. Stir as needed to keep meatballs from sticking to pot.  When we made these for New Year's Eve I gave this job to my very capable nephew!

Once heated through remove from heat. Place meatballs in the center of a 9x13 baking dish, layer mozzarella and Italian blend cheeses over meatballs topping off with the Parmesan. Take the slices of Italian bread and line the pan all the way around with them so that they are kind of keeping the meatballs toward the center of the pan. The bread slices will be standing up in the pan as shown below. You have creative freedom here with the bread...you can lightly butter and garlic the bread prior to placing it in the pan if you prefer or even brush lightly with olive oil and garlic (this is what I do). 

Place in oven and bake for approximately 25 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly. I forgot to take an "after" picture, but here it was in the oven, baking. 

Soooo good!  Assembly is so fast and easy, this is *almost* a meal in 30 minutes entry.

Loved by all.  I will definitely make again!

Easy Pork Chops

The presentation in the above photo isn't very remarkable, but the taste makes up for it!! These are super easy and super delicious.

Line casserole pan with enough foil that you can fold over the top and have the pork chops covered. Sprinkle the bottom of foil with half a package of dry onion soup mix (I use Mrs. Grass's usually). Lay bone-in pork chops on top of the dry onion soup mix and sprinkle other half of package on top. Do not add liquid. Fold the foil over to cover top, and cook at 350 for about 90 minutes, longer if chops were partially frozen or you're cooking two pans of them.

These smell soooo good as they are cooking, and they taste great! They make their own juice as they cook, and are very tender (if they're not, you need to cook them longer!)

A favorite of my family for years!

Pulled Pork

Here is a pork dinner we had recently. Super easy and super delicious! I wanted leftovers, so I put 2 pork roasts (I think they were shoulder roasts, and each about 3 pounds) in my 6 qt crockpot, poured our favorite barbeque sauce on top (I didn't measure ~ it was probably about 2 - 3 cups) and cooked on low all day, about 8 hours.


They were just falling apart at this point, so with two forks I (actually the children did it for me!) pulled the pork apart until it was in long shreds. Serve on wholewheat hamburger buns with some fruit and chips. Delicious!

Ham, Black Bean, and Potato Soup

I originally found this recipe on my friend Jennifer's blog. She was trying it for some variety in using up ham. It was delicious! You could easily leave out the ham for a vegetarian soup.


Ham, Black Bean, and Potato Soup

6 cups broth (I used homemade chicken broth - leftover water from boiling a chicken carcass. Use vegetable broth if making this a vegetarian meal)
1 can black beans, drained
2 potatoes, diced
1/2 pound cooked ham, diced
can of stewed or diced tomatoes (the kind with green chili peppers if you want more zing)
1/3 cup onion, chopped (I just used half an onion)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp ground cloves

Sour cream, chopped olives, grated cheese, tortilla chips, etc for garnish.

Add all ingredients except garnish items to crockpot and cook on low for 8-1o hours, or high for 4-5 hours. Serve with garnish ingredients.

This was a hit and I will definitely make it again!

Split Pea Soup

Someone graciously gave us a ham this summer, and I dearly love ham! I love it because it's delicious, but also because you can do so much with it. We ate ham meat for two dinners, used it to make several lunch sandwiches, froze two baggies of cut up ham to use in other recipes, and I made soup with the ham bone. It is very easy to make and there are long periods of time when you don't need to be in the kitchen, but it is an all day thing, so plan accordingly.

Split Pea with Ham Soup

In large stock pot, cover ham bone with water and slowly bring to boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and let simmer for 2-3 hours (3 is better if you have the time, but I've done it for only 2 and the soup was still delicious!). Add a bit of water if necessary. The water will become your soup base, so you don't want to let it all boil off. When ham bone has finished simmering, pull out of water with tongs and let cool on cutting board. Strain the water that is left in your stock pot for fatty deposits or bits of gristle.

Cut up:

carrots
onions
celery (optional)

Add these to the water and bring to boil again. Cut any clinging ham meat off the bone after it's cooled, and add this to the soup. Throw bone away. Add in other ham meat if desired. Add 2-3 cups of dried split peas (3 if you want thicker soup). Reduce heat and let the soup mixture simmer again until split peas are soft and mushy (about 1.5 to 2 hours). Salt to taste. Eat and enjoy!

Pork Tenderloin in Honey Mustard Sauce

This week I picked up half a pork tenderloin for $8. That was about half price. When I saw the price of the meat in the sale flier, I realized that psychologically I am still thinking/shopping like a meat eater, despite the fact that we have begun to eat vegetarian at least half the time. Even though I could buy bags and bags of beans for $8 (which I already have lots of in the pantry I might add!) I could not resist the lure of purchasing meat for such a good price. I also bought chicken breasts (buy one get one free). So our grocery store gift card countdown has gone down considerably this week. While in the store I actually debated quite a bit about these purchases. Good deals notwithstanding, I *could* use that same amount of money on other items and make it stretch even further. But since we are not a 100% vegetarian family, I decided to be thankful for the good price on meat, thankful that we had the means to purchase it when it was on sale, and just enjoy it! (my husband says I over analyze sometimes ~ and he's right! But in my defense, I'm just trying to make this gift card stretch as faaaaar as possible!)

I cut the pork tenderloin into thirds and used one third tonight to make pork tenderloin in honey mustard sauce for our Valentine dinner. It was delicious! With meat for two more meals in the freezer, that works out to be $2.66 per meal, which is a pretty good price for pork tenderloin!

Pork Tenderloin in Honey Mustard Sauce

Cut pork tenderloin into thin chops (or bite sized pieces - your choice) and brown lightly in a small amount of olive oil. When both sides are browned, add 3/4 cup honey, 1/2 cup mustard, 1/4 tsp chili powder, and 1/4 tsp salt. Stir ingredients and swish pork chops around to make sure they are covered. Cover pan and let simmer for about 15 minutes. This makes a really tasty sauce, so you can serve the pork alone or spoon it and the sauce over rice.

We enjoyed it for our Valentine's Day feast!