I have a ton to write about, in fact, I created a list lol, but I’m not in the mood so I’ll start with this.

I made this last night for my husband since I don’t like sausage and sent the recipe to my dad. (I’m totally an outcast in my Polish family…) I tasted it and it was really fantastic, and if I liked kielbasa, I’d be all over it, haha.

It’s taken from the book Incredibly Easy Recipes (Rival Crock Pot). My comments are in brackets.

Polska Kielbasa with Beer ‘n Onions

Makes 6 to 8 servings
Cooking time: Low 4 to 5 hours

1/3 cup honey mustard
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
18 ounces brown ale or beer [I used Coors Light, bottle and a half and
then drank the other half, ha]
2 kielbasa sausages (16 ounces each), cut into 4-inch pieces
2 onions, quartered

Combine honey mustard and brown sugar in Crock Pot slow cooker. Whisk
in ale. Add sausage pieces. Top with onions. Cover: cook on LOW 4
to 5 hours, stirring occasionally.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• Snow on the Mountain Cookies (4)
• Peanut Butter Balls & Dip (veggies or chip) (7)

I want to do a proper thankfulness fo yesterday, nothing eloquent, just important.

I am thankful for family, friends (and my kitty cat, except she thinks she’s people) and my amazing husband.

I am thankful for being able to feast to the glory of God in a home I love. I’m thankful for health and God taking care of my every needs.

I am thankful for life, new adventures and Arbor Mist, because real wine isn’t tastey.

I have the rest of our pictures from yesterday– great pictures from a fantastic day!

So lovely, and very heavy…

Yum, everything, except the gravy. I left that on the stove and forgot to bring it to the table for the picture.

Carving the turkey! And by “carving”, I mean, “RARR EVIL TURKEY!!”

My plate. I only took this because it ended up looking so colorful and pretty! haha

ME EAT TURKEY ROAR.

Related posts

• valentine’s day (0)
• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• thanksgiving planning (9)
• thanksgiving approaching (5)
• thankful thursday (1)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

So, I already have a story and it’s fairly early in the day.

So.. my husband.. yeah. So, I gave him ONE job to do. ONE. haha. I asked him to make the peanut butter balls, easily the very easiest of all things that are being made, short of opening the can of cranberry sauce, which I’m starting to think I should probably not ask him to do. First, it took him over an hour to make the freaken balls, without the dipping in chocolate part– we’re talking a 10-15 minute job tops. During that time, I managed to make potato salad– including the boiling potatoes part, boil and peel two dozen eggs, make deviled eggs and do half of cleanup.

All you have to do is throw in cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and peanut butter in a bowl, mix it up, and make balls from it. That’s it. Really. Then you put it into the fridge over night, and in the morning you dip them in chocolate and put them back in the fridge.

Well, we’re on the dip in chocolate stage… the part where he burnt the chocolate… the chocolate that comes in a “dip ready” container… that has directions on the container on how to microwave it to melt it… he burnt it. Burn. Now he’s at Wal-mart to get more chocolate.

*snickers* This is what I get for leaving him unattended for five seconds.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• thanksgiving planning (9)
• thanksgiving approaching (5)
• thankful thursday by proxy (6)
• domestic diva (2)

At least that’s what my apron says.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• thanksgiving planning (9)
• thanksgiving approaching (5)
• thankful thursday by proxy (6)
• Snow on the Mountain Cookies (4)

A few more recipes, easy ones!

I am making the peanut butter balls for Thanksgiving. I’m probably not going to make the dip, but I wanted to post it anyway. I was going to, but then I decided that with everything else, I’d just buy French onion dip and call it quits, haha. We’ll see, I might end up making it, since I have all the ingredients.

Peanut Butter Balls
The Beverly Lewis Amish Heritage Cookbook (thanks Melissa!!)

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 c. butter, softened
2 c. peanut butter
4 c. powdered sugar
Melted chocolate [they make chocolate chunks that look like wafers made for dipping that I ended up buying]

Mix cream cheese, butter, and peanut butter together by hand. Gradually stir in powdered sugar; mix well. Form into balls and refrigerate overnight. Dip chilled balls in melted chocolate.

Dip

[I have a recipe book that was put together by my aunt. It has all of my grandma's handwritten recipes photocopied and bound into it. My grandma passed away a long time ago, but my aunt gave the books to all of the grandchildren a few years ago.]

8 oz. sour cream
1 C. Hellman’s mayonnaise
2 tbsp. dill seed & weed
2 tbsp. parsley flakes
2 tbsp. onion flakes
1 tbp. seasoned salt

Mix thoroughly and refrigerate, overnight preferably.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• Snow on the Mountain Cookies (4)
• thanksgiving planning (9)
• life, liberty & crabs (3)
• kielbasa with beer and onions (0)

Erika threw a temper tantrum, hehehe, so I decided to post one of the recipes I’ll be using for desserts on Thanksgiving. (Coming later: Peanut Butter Balls and some kind of dip I found.)

This comes from Amish Cooking by Publications International, Ltd.

Snow on the Mountain Cookies
Makes about 6 dozen cookies.

Cookies

1 1/4 Butter Flavor CRISCO Sticks or 1 1/4 cups Butter Flavor CRISCO all-vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups (12-ounce package) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts

Glaze

1 2/3 cups (10-ounce package) vanilla milk chips
2 to 5 tablespoons whipping cream or 1 to 3 tablespoons milk

1. Heat oven to 325° F. Place sheets of foil on countertop for cooling cookies.
2. For cookies, combine 1 1/4 cups shortening and and sugar in large bowl. beat at medim speed of electric mixer until well blended. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
3. Combine flour and salt. Add gradually to creamed mixture at low speed. Beat until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts with spoon. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Shape top of ball into cone or mountain shape. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake at 325°F for 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown around bottom edge. Do not overbake. Cool on baking sheet 2 minutes. Remove cookies to foil to cool completely.
5. For glaze (prepare while cookies are baking), soften vanilla milk chips. [Melt in microwave or saucepan until smooth. Drizzle from tip of spoon. Or microwave in sandwich bag on 50% power, cut off corner of bag, and squeeze from bag.] Add enough whipping cream to make medium glaze. Heat and stir until smooth. Spoon 1 teaspoon over top of each warm cookie. Cool completely.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• Peanut Butter Balls & Dip (veggies or chip) (7)
• thanksgiving planning (9)
• life, liberty & crabs (3)
• kielbasa with beer and onions (0)

Was my last entry just that exciting that I got five notes? Lol!

Husband and I are discussing Thanksgiving and we’ve decided to have it by ourselves and at home this year, much to everyone’s hate. Oh well, they’ll live. We’ve never done that before, so bite me.

I guess we sort of want to start somewhat of our own tradition. We were talking about getting up early and starting the turkey and then watching the Macy’s parade. Then I’d be cooking a lot, ha, though I’ll probably make a lot of stuff the night before. After dinner, we’d pass out and die maybe pull out the Christmas stuff and start decorating.

For Thanksgiving, I’m thinking: turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, bread stuffing, macaroni and/or potato salad, deviled eggs, rolls or biscuits, cranberry sauce, some kind of veggies/olive/pickles/ring bologna/cheese tray, the same sorts of stuff we always had in my house growing up. Frankly, these things are non-negotiable. Only desserts are negotiable. I’m going through some recipe books for them, right now. I don’t really want pie this year. I’m not a big pie fan unless it’s lemon meringue, and Thanksgiving pies are always pecan and pumpkin, and I don’t like the first, and I could be like whatever on the second.

Okay, I started this post hours ago and now I’m back to finish it– we were discussing dessert. We decided on snow on the mountain cookies– basically chocolate chip and walnuts with a thick glaze on them, and peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate and hardened. I’ll share the recipes at some point later after Thanksgiving, probably! Maybe even take pictures if I think of it.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• domestic diva (2)
• thanksgiving approaching (5)
• thankful thursday by proxy (6)
• Snow on the Mountain Cookies (4)

A few weeks ago Husband decided he wanted an egg sandwich. So, I’m like, “okay, egg salad sandwich– ya know with chopped up boiled eggs, onions and mayo, like tuna salad?” Nope. Hmm. Okay. Try again. “So, a dippy egg (over easy for those who weren’t raised in PA) sandwich?” Nope. Hmm. Okay.. “So what’s left?”

Apparently, he was raised with scrambled eggs and mayo on a sandwich. Ick. Never heard of anything like that, but hey, I eat kipper snacks dipped and mustard, so who am I to judge?

So, I made one, and it wasn’t too bad– as long as you squish the sandwich really well, and I pretty much almost despise scrambled eggs.

Today I tried it again because it’s really a fast thing to make and you can do a lot with it. For two of us, I took 4 eggs and cracked them into a bowl. I added a splash of milk, salt, pepper and some cilantro. Whisk it all up really well. (I learned that if you mix eggs first in a bowl, it’s much easier to cook them! haha! No one in my family ever did this– they always just cracked them right into the skillet.) Swish it around, cook ‘em up, light and fluffy (no brown parts, ew). I took some potato bread, added mayo and added the eggs and some muenster cheese. Voila. The muenster and the cilantro make it much, much better.

Related posts

• thanksgiving recipes (0)
• thanksgiving planning (9)
• Snow on the Mountain Cookies (4)
• Peanut Butter Balls & Dip (veggies or chip) (7)
• life, liberty & crabs (3)