Recipe: Sloppy Joes

Sloppy Joes are a family favorite. The girls eat these up when I cook them and the recipe is super easy! I learned to make sloppy joes this way from a fellow coach's wife back when we lived in Indiana when Gretchen was a baby! It's also a quick meal that I can throw together in about 20 minutes for the nights where our family is spread thin with activities. 

Thaw your hamburger meat and season with: salt, pepper, garlic powder. I also add turmeric which is the orange looking spice. I hide turmeric in a lot of recipes that have suace- tacos, spaghetti, sloppy joes. 

Turmeric is great if you have inflammation or plain. Helps memory loss, & fights free radicals in the body. 

Chop your hamburger meat and brown. (I use this tool for easily breaking apart hamburger meat.) Once your meat is browned, drain off the remaining grease 

Now, here's where I measure with my eyes and not with a measuring cup, becuase I don't want to get another dish dirty. 

Add about 1 cup of ketchup. 1/4-1/2 c. of mustard, and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Just squeeze it right on top. You can go back and add more if it's not "sloppy" enough. 

Allow the sauces to come together and heat in the pan. Be sure to stir so it won't stick to the bottom. 

Serve on buns with air-fryed french fries.

Pst- DJ likes cheese on his sloppy joe's, and I'm sure pickles or lettuce would be yummy too! 

 

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

We love baking in our house, and we love chocolate chip cookies! Over the years, we've used the same tried and true cookie recipe, but this time, we're making it gluten free. 

What You'll Need:

1 c. granulated sugar

1 c. brown sugar

1 c. butter

2 eggs

1 1/2 tspn vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

3 c gluten free flour 

1 bag Enjoy Life chocolate chips/chunks

What You'll Do:

In your standing mixer bowl, add your sugars and softened butter, eggs, and vanilla. Mix for 30 seconds, stop and scrape bowl, mix for 30 more seconds. Gradually add baking soda, salt, and gluten free flour to mixture and mix about 2 1/2 minutes. Add chocolate chips, and mix together.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls on to cooking sheet lined with parchment paper. 

Bake at 375 for 12 minutes.

The cookies are the perfect bite size, and so delicious! 

Let me know if you try them! 

 

Marshmallow Play Doh

Adalyn's 3rd grade class, created an activity book for winter break fun! Each kiddo created a page and came up with an activity to be shared in the book, and we found an idea for Marshmallow Play Doh! She thought it sounded like the best idea ever, so we thought we'd share with y'all too, in case you need some winter break or snowy day fun! 

What You'll Need:

Marshmallows

Coconut Oil

Corn Starch

Food Coloring

What You'll Do:

Heat marshmallows on the stove using low heat, and stir constantly. Add 1 tspn of coconut oil and stir in as marshmallows melt. Add 3 tbspn corn starch, food coloring, and mix, mix, mix. 

We opted for a green color for Christmas! 

Let it cool then start playing! 

Our dough was oily, so make sure you don't play on a surface that can't be cleaned easily! Store in an air tight container!

Let us know if you try this activity! 

 

Let's Cook: Ice Cream Cake

Each week, I try to make a treat for DJ's students & staff just as a way to say thank-you for all they do every week. Other than students, he has never had a professional staff working alongside him in the video department, and we are so grateful for their willingness to step in when he needs to leave to pick up a girl, or go in late. They can pick up the slack when family life happens, and we try to not let it get in the way as best as we can, but gosh, we are so thankful for those 3 people that work with him every day. And again, the students that come to film.

So far this year we've made brownies, chocolate chip cookies, rice krispy treats, or just brought in candy. 

This week, they're having ice cream cake! And this one was so fun to make!

Adalyn was a huge help in making this cake! She had so much fun and she requested it for her birthday! 

Here's what you'll need: 

2 bags of Reese's cups, or another candy of your choice. You could use chocolate chips, snickers, milky way... there are so many possibilities. 

1 jar of caramel sauce, and 1 jar of hot fudge. 

2 containers of Cool Whip

24 Ice Cream Sandwiches

Here's What You'll Do:

Open and chop the peanut butter cups. We used almost 2 bags, but had a few left over. 

In a rectangle baking dish, open and lay your ice cream sandwiches down. We broke them to fill in the gaps on the side. This does not have to e pretty. No one is going to see it at all! 

Spread 1 container of cool whip across the top of the ice cream sandwiches. 

Drizzle on the caramel and hot fudge sauce. I did have to heat up the fudge so it would drizzle. Then, sprinkle on the candy.

And repeat. We added another layer of sandwiches on top. 

More cool whip. 

More peanut butter cups. 

And more sauce!

You can cover with foil and place back in your freezer for a few hours or overnight to freeze everything together. 

It's literally the simplest dessert ever and so yummy too!

 

Let's Cook: Mini Meatloaf

Ii am not a big cook, especially during football season, but, every once in a while I surprise myself and whip something up for dinner. 

Last week, Adalyn and I made mini-meatloaf for dinner, and I thought I'd share my recipe with y'all! 

Except, it's not a true recipe because I don't measure anything. I'm sorry.

What You'll Need:

1 lb Ground Beef

1 egg

Almond Crackers (because I wanted it to be gluten free) but you can use Saltine crackers or bread crumbs

Carrots

Bell Pepper

Spinach (optional)

Salt

Pepper

Garlic

I use my stand mixer to mix everything together because it's just easier.

Throw in your ground beef, and seasonings. I used a few that weren't mentioned above like turmeric and celery salt. 

We chopped a bunch of mini carrots and bell peppers. 

Then, I added it to the bowl, along with a handful of crackers and an egg. 

Turn on your stand mixer and mix it all together. 

Divide in to muffin tins. I found that this bakes way faster than making it a larger "loaf" and I don't have time to wait forever on dinner. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

They will shrink down, but that's fine.

Pull out of the oven and top with a large spoonful of spaghetti sauce. 

Throw back in the oven for 5 more minutes. 

So easy. Also, I know this isn't a traditional meatloaf recipe. I prefer spaghetti sauce on top over ketchup, and most meat loaf isn't full of veggies. My kids love this meal and they don't complain when I make it, so it's a total win for me.

Enjoy! 

 

Peanut Butter Cookies

Each week, I bake treats for DJ's staff and students. I made peanut butter cookies and thought I'd share the recipe! These are light and fluffy and not overwhelming. I am picky about peanut butter cookies, and these are the only ones I'll eat. 

What You'll Need:

1/2 c. peanut butter

1/2 c. butter (softened)

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tspn vanilla

1/2 tspn baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour

What You'll Do:

Place peanut butter and butter in your mixer bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater and mix until smooth, about 1 minute. Stop and scrape bowl. Add sugars, egg, and vanilla. Beat another minute. Stop & scrape bowl.

Turn your stand mixture to stir speed. Gradually add all remaining ingredients to sugar mixture and mix about 30 seconds. 

Roll dough in to 1 inch balls. I use a cookie scoop, to scoop, and then roll. Place balls about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Press flat with fork in a criss-cross pattern.

Bake at 375 about 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy!!! 

 

Sourdough

Last Spring when we were in quarantine, I had a lot of friends that were jumping on the sourdough bandwagon. I started a starter then, but when I tried making bread, I failed miserably. I was able to use my sourdough starter I had made then for cookies, waffles, pancakes, and we tried brownies too, but my bread was not successful. 

Eventually, we got busy with summer and I threw it all away. The day after Christmas, I thought maybe, I'd try it again and see what happened. 

I started making my starter, which takes several weeks. In fact, it took me a solid month before I was able to have a starter that was bubbling and dubbling after each feed. 

To make my starter, I used King Arthur Flour's starter recipe. Basically, you mix 1 cup flour with 1/2 cup water, and each day, you'll discard all but 113 grams, add in 100 g flour and 100 g water, and stir. You do this over and over again until your starter bubbles and dubbles. 

I found a big glass jar from Ikea to keep my starter in and I use a rubber band to mark where the starter  starts after I feed it. 

The part of the starter you remove (all but the 113 grams) is called "discard." There are some people who never have discard, but I keep my discard in a bowl in the fridge, and when I want to bake cookies, pancakes, or other sweets, I use my discard rather than my starter. I've actually found that after adding in my discard each time, it's nice and bubbly too. I keep it in the fridge, and take it out when I want to bake, and I don't feed this one extra flour or water. It's literally just everything I take out of my starter. 

Yu know your discard is ready when it's nice and bubbly! 

When I first made bread with this new starter I used a recipe a friend shared on Instagram and it did not turn out well. I think that my starter wasn't quiet ready. One afternoon, we had lots of cooking going on in the kitchen- my parents were in town, we were cooking, the oven was on, lots of bodies were in the house and it got really hot in here. That's when I noticed my starter really bubbling and rising, and I knew it was finally ready. 

I found a recipe online and screen shot it and that's the recipe I've been using each time I bake bread. (I'm sharing it below.)

I also purchased a proofing basket for when the dough needs to rise. 

Once your starter is ready, you add the ingredients, let the dough rest for 30 minutes, complete a fold and stretch, and let the dough rise overnight. In the morning, you complete a few more fold and stretches, and then form it in to a ball, and place in your proofing basket and let it rise for another hour and a half. 

You'll then flip the dough out of your basket on to parchment paper, score the top, and bake for about an hour. 

The result is gorgeously warm and delicious bread! 

The inside is nice and bubbly. 

I made bread again at the end of last week, and the girls and I devoured it that same day. There's something amazing about fresh, warm, homemade bread right out of the oven.

The nice thing about your starter is that you can leave it in the fridge, and pull it out when you want to bake. So, when we went camping, I put it in the fridge, and pulled it out about 2 days before I was ready to bake, and started feeding it again. Right now, I'm planning on baking bread weekly- Friday mornings or the weekend. 

Here are my screenshots of the recipe I'm using, and maybe one day, I'll type it out ;) 

I told DJ as I was making our 3rd loaf that I feel very domesticated. There's just something about the process that feels very domestic and brings me back to my roots of watching my grandma make her bread. Having the dough in your hands, shaping, forming. It's a process I'm falling in love with. 

 

Strawberry Banana Bread Muffins

You know those times when you go to the grocery store and buy bananas and your kids eat them up so fast? Why does that not happen every time you buy bananas? For this very reason, I don't buy bananas often. The last time I bought them, which was just a few weeks ago, the girls gobbled them up so fast. So, I bought some last week when I was at Costco, and they were just sitting there already turning brown. Sigh. 

Since the bananas weren't going to be eaten, in their original form, I made banana bread.... with strawberries! Yum! 

This recipe isn't the healthiest. Sorry friends. This is a family recipe from a family cookbook, but it is oh so easy and the muffins (or bread) always turn out beautifully and so tasty. 

Mix 1 c. sugar, 1/2 c. oil,  and 2 eggs

Add 3 over-ripe bananas. You can mash these ahead of time, but I feel like they mash well in my mixer, so I skip that step.

Next, add 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1 3/4 c. flour. 

For a boost of flavor, I added 2 drops of Nutmeg Vitality essential oil, and Cinnamon Bark Vitality. You can add in the spices or the oils. 

Mix it all together. 

Now, you can add in nuts, chocolate chips, or bake it as is. I really love adding in strawberries! Especially if we have strawberries that need to be eaten, which doesn't happen often. Strawberries are typically gone from our house within a day, and for some reason, the girls weren't chowing down like they usually do. 

You'll want to chop at least 1/2 c. of strawberries. 

Add in to your mixture and mix for a few seconds. 

Scoop in to muffin tins or a loaf pan. I love our square muffin tin from Pampered Chef. I use this pan all the time- mini meat loafs, brownies, muffins.... this pan gets a lot of use in our house! 

Bake 350 degrees fro 25 minutes. If you're baking in a larger loaf pan, you'll want to cook for an hour. 

Feel free to copy/paste below:

What You'll Need:

1 c. sugar

1/2 c. oil

2 eggs

 3 mashed bananas

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 3/4 c. flour

Optional Add Ins:

2 drops Nutmeg Vitality or a dash of Nutmeg Spice

2 drops Cinnamon Bark Vitality or a dash of Cinnamon

1 c. nuts

1/2-1 c. chocolate chips

1/2-1 c. strawberries or other berries of your choice

Mix in order given. Bake in loaf pan at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or in muffin pan for 25 minutes. 

Remove from pan and cool.

Bonus: You can freeze these and re-heat, but we gobble these up really fast!