Taco Style Lentils and Rice

Oh my goodness, this was a HUGE hit!! I had my doubts while it was bubbling on the stove, but EVERYONE loved it. Every single member of the family! Yippee!!!! It was delicious and filling. The kids never knew (til they heard us talking about it later) that there was no meat inside the tortilla shells. Whenever I have served brown rice before everyone has complained. Well, again, no-one knew there was brown rice hidden inside of this dish! Cooking the lentils and rice together made it a complete protein, which means we got all the protein benefits of meat without the fat! You have got to try this! Trust me, it looks really really.....what's the word.....brown.....but it is absolutely delicious! It is also really inexpensive. Well under $5 total. I'm going to do a more exact cost breakdown the next time I'm at the store, just because I am really curious to see how cheaply I can feed my family such healthy and delicious food!

The beef bouillon eliminates this as a vegetarian dish (I think) but it obviously counts as a bean dish (I am trying to cook at least one vegetarian dinner and one bean dinner each week).

This recipe is from the Hillbilly Housewife website.

Note for larger families, I made this recipe according to the exact measurements and it was just enough for our family of 7. We were all satisfied but there were no leftovers. If you have hungry teenagers and/or more than 5 children, you will probably want to make one and a half batches or double it.

3/4 cup dry lentils (I used red lentils but you can use any type)
3/4 cup brown rice, uncooked
4 cups water
4 beef bouillon cubes or 4 tsp beef soup base
2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp onion powder (I skipped this because we didn't have any)
1/4 tsp garlic powder (I upped this to 1 tsp because of having no onion powder)

In a 2 quart saucepan bring the water to a boil. As the water is heating, add everything else. Bring the whole thing to a nice fat boil. Reduce heat to low. Place a lid on the pan and allow the mixture to simmer for 45 to 50 minutes or until water is mostly absorbed. It should have about the same consistency as cooked white sticky rice when it's done, though it will be slightly more goopy because of the cooked lentils.

This is what it looked like halfway through the cooking time:




You could serve this in a variety of ways. We chose to put a dollop inside soft tortilla shells, lay the shells in a casserole pan, sprinkle with cheddar cheese and a touch of mango salsa, and bake for a few minutes until the cheese was melted.


I served this alongside waldorf salad and it was a really delicious meal! (Please ignore the paper plates. :-) My wonderful hubby was in charge of setting the table and he always chooses paper.)

Yogurt in the Crockpot - Take Two

My second attempt at yogurt in the crockpot led to yogurt that was even runnier than the first time! All of the children liked this consistency better for yogurt drinks, however, so it was a happy flop. I blended strawberries in this time, and served it in little juice glasses which have lived at the very back of my kitchen cupboard for the last 12 years since breakable glasses don't generally mix well with children. Those were a big hit! Two of the children don't care for the strawberry flavor, but the other 3 love it and are guzzling it down.

Here is the website where I learned how to make yogurt in the crockpot.

Chicken Noodle Soup

After serving the garlic roasted chicken, a good way to use up the chicken carcass is to make chicken noodle soup. This costs almost nothing, is very tasty, and makes your kitchen smell soooooo good all day! After boiling the chicken carcass for a few hours, strain out the bones, cut off the leftover bits of chicken, add more chicken bits from the freezer (if you have some ready to go) or leftover chicken from when you served it the first time, chop up carrots, onion and celery, and at the very end add cooked noodles. It feels like you've pulled a meal out of thin air (yay!), and our children have deemed homemade chicken noodle soup "at least as good as Progresso". :-)

Zucchini Pot Pie from Italy

This was our "official" vegetarian dinner this week. It is one I have made many times before, but I added yellow squash to it this time because yellow squash was one of the veggies I picked up super cheap last week. It has lots of yummy spices in it, tastes very Italian, and has the consistency of queche. The entire pie added up to less than $4 and since it's already a family favorite I knew it would be a winner.


4 cups zucchini thinly sliced (I don't measure, I just use 3 or 4 of the store sized ones)
1 cup onion, chopped
(yellow squash - not in original recipe)

Saute the above ingredients in olive oil until soft. Add the following and stir well:

1/2 tsp salt
2 T parsley flakes
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp basil
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp oregano

In separate bowl, combine 8 oz shredded mozzarella cheese and 2 eggs, beaten. Stir this into the zucchini mixture. Pour into a lined pie pan and bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until center is set. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving. For the pie crust you can use your favorite pie crust recipe, or for an easier (though more processed) option, separate all the triangles from a can of crescent rolls and flatten them into the bottom of the pie pan.

Herb Crusted Tilapia with Artichoke

Tilapia is not normally an inexpensive dinner meal, but our whole family loves tilapia and a local store had it on sale last week. Plus I was anxious to try this new recipe my husband found in the newspaper. :-) It was absolutely delicious! Even if your family only *likes* fish, I encourage you to try this!

Preheat oven to 425. Place 1 T butter in a casserole pan and place in oven until butter is melted. Remove pan from oven (leave oven on) and pour melted butter into a small dish. Place fish in casserole pan and turn to coat both sides lightly with the melted butter residue that is still in the pan. Spread the tops of each fillet with artichoke dip. Sprinkle each one with Pepperidge Farm Herb Stuffing Mix (original recipe called for Panko, but if you're me you use Peppridge farm herb stuffing mix for everything. But it MUST be that brand and that type!!) and then drizzle with the melted butter that you poured off into a small dish. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until fish is flaky.

Garlic Roasted Chicken

This is not a vegetarian recipe, but it was so good I wanted to share it anyway! I picked up a whole chicken on sale last week, but since I normally don't cook them whole I went looking for recipes on allrecipes.com . I love this website. I have gotten so many really good recipes here, and it's helpful to be able to read reviews from real live normal people just like me. I would have never thought to put sugar/cinnamon/allspice/nutmeg/cloves on the outside of a chicken. Pumpkin pie, yes. Chicken, no. But the unique blend of spices on the outside along with the garlic on the inside gave it a GREAT flavor! Loved by the whole family, even Little Man who is usually my worst critic.

Mix together in small bowl:

2 tsp salt
1 tsp white sugar
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

Rub the chicken with this mixture, cover chicken and place in fridge for 24 hours (I didn't read the directions well enough and didn't do this 24 hours ahead, it was still delicious!).

Preheat oven to 5oo. Crush 5 cloves of garlic. Stuff this inside chicken, place in roasting pan, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Turn temperature down to 475 and cook another 15 minutes. Baste chicken, turn oven temp down to 450 and cook for another half hour (possibly longer depending on size of chicken). I cooked mine a little longer because I was also roasting carrots, potatoes, and onions along with the chicken.

Absolutely delicious! Enjoy!

Yogurt in the Crockpot

This weekend I made homemade yogurt in the crockpot. Thanks to my friend Beth, who sent me this link to a website dedicated to crockpot use! I followed the directions to the letter, with the only exception being that I used 2% milk rather than whole milk. Stephanie at the crockpot website recommended starting with whole milk because the higher fat content tends to gel better than milk with a lower fat content. But all I had was 2% so that is what I used. It was really easy! If you want to try this yourself, do keep in mind that it takes a long time so you either have to start it in the morning, or start it about5 or 6 in the evening and by morning you have a crockpot full of yogurt! You have to do something to it after 2.5 hours of cooking, and again after 3 hours of cooling on the counter, and finally after 8 more hours of sitting out on your counter. So plan accordingly. :-)

This is what it looked like straight out of the crockpot. It was slightly thinner than store bought yogurt, but still fairly firm.



None of my family likes plain yogurt, so I blended up some frozen raspberries (note: this works much better if the berries are THAWED!) and then stirred them into the plain yogurt. This did cause the consistency to become even thinner. It ended up more like a yogurt drink than actual yogurt. But my kids all love yogurt drinks, so this was not a problem for us.


This is what it looked like after stirring in the raspberry puree. I feel a little like a traitor because I did end up having to add a smidgeon of white sugar (after stating here that I wanted to eliminate white sugar from our diet!). I think I can slowly whittle the sugar down to where I am not adding it, but it was so much less sweet than store bought yogurt I had a pretty good hunch my kids would revolt. So I sprinkled a little sugar in to make it more palatable to the children. We all had some for lunch and it tasted great! Making it at home will be a significant savings over buying, and we eat lots of yogurt, so this is a happy discovery for me!


Next time I am going to experiment with adding plain gelatin to make it "set" better. This was recommended when using 2% milk but I had no gelatin so we did without. It was still delicious. A winner with everyone!

Stuffed Sandwich

Some people have asked me how to make the stuffed sandwiches that I mention from time to time. So here are picture directions for making one! This recipe is not an original. I got it from the country baker. Though my baking utensils are not essential to making this recipe, I purchased those from the country baker also, as well as my Bosch mixer which kneads the dough for me. Start with a chunk of bread dough, about the size you would use to bake a loaf of bread. This should be yeast bread dough before any rising has occurred. Roll it out to about 1/3" thickness in the shape of a rectangle. Because you are rolling it so thin, it doesn't need to rise before baking. You should bake immediately after making. The dots you see on my bread dough are flax seeds, which are not essential to this recipe but just something I like to add to my bread. Mentally divide this rectangle into thirds. The middle third will hold the food, and the outer two thirds (one third on each side) will become the faux braid. Using a knife, or this dough cutter scraper, cut slits about one inch apart and slightly on a diagonal all the way down both sides of your dough rectangle.

Then spread some type of pesto or mustard or whatever type of sauce you'd like to experiment with down the middle third. It's been fun for us to experiment with different spreads!

Now you are ready to layer your meat and cheese. I would normally layer the meat pretty thick, but this time I had frozen an amount that I thought would be sufficient and it turned out to be pretty slim. Oh well. Good thing the bread is good all by itself!!

I have also put precooked veggies such as peppers and onions inside, and my husband and I like this flavor but our children don't.

Once you have all the "stuffing" layered down the middle third, take the outer strips and begin laying them across the middle, crossing the ends over each other to look like a braid. Crimp each end closed so the stuffing doesn't come out while baking!

When you are finished, you'll have something that looks like this:


Now comes the tricky part. Transferring this yummy looking sandwich to a baking sheet. I have a large bread dough spatula (in picture) that I purchased from the country baker, however it no longer appears on their website. Before purchasing this handy tool, which also works well for homemade pizza by the way!, I used two regular sized spatulas, the kind you use to remove cookies from a tray.


Once the stuffed sandwich has been transferred to your baking sheet, whisk one raw egg with a bit of water and then brush this over your sandwich.

Sprinkle with poppy seeds.....

.....bake at 350 for 30 minutes, and enjoy!

Aztec Chicken

This recipe for Aztec chicken has been floating around the internet for at least a couple of years and I honestly don't know who to attribute it to, but I first got it from a homeschool mom named Melanie off the Sonlight Curriculum forums. Aztec chicken is a mexican dish, and it is truly easy. If you have the ingredients on hand ahead of time, all you do is layer them and turn the crockpot on. No chopping, slicing or dicing! Leftovers are wonderful either by themselves or rolled into a warmed tortilla shell.

Layer the following ingredients in your crockpot:

2 cans of black beans, undrained (or if you make your own beans, about 2 cups)
large bag of frozen corn
about 3-4 cups of cooked chicken strips or cubes
medium sized jar of salsa

Turn on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-6. During the last half hour of cook time, add an 8 oz package of cream cheese. Cut the cream cheese in chunks, and push them slightly under the surface of the salsa. When cook time is finished, stir all ingredients together well.

Serve over rice and sprinkle cheese on top. Voila!

Turkey/Barley/Vegetable Soup

1 pound browned ground turkey (can use hamburger instead)
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 stalks of celery, chopped
3 or 4 carrots, cut in medallions (I use half a big bag of baby carrots instead)
can of chunk tomatoes or stewed tomatoes, including juice
enough water to fill your crockpot (or however much soup you want)
3 tsp beef soup base, or 3 beef bouillion cubes

Throw everything into the crockpot and turn on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-6 hours. During the last half hour of cooktime, add in 1/2 cup of barley and whatever leftover vegetables you've accumulated from the previous week. Today I'll be adding leftover corn.

I love that you can add just about anything to this soup and it tastes great. Plus the whole grain from the barley makes me feel like a good mom!

We'll add bread or muffins to this menu and be good to go!