Beef & Barley Soup

A friend asked me for this recipe and I thought I had put it on the blog, but I searched and could only find the intention of putting it on the blog. So, here it is. Super easy. Super yummy. I think I now have it memorized.

Beef & Barley Soup
1 lb lean or extra lean ground beef
1 finely chopped onion
3 cups boiling water
2 Beef Oxo packets (I use 2 tsp Better than Bouillon)
28 oz can diced tomatoes
2 diced potatoes
2 shredded carrots
1/2 cup pearl barley
salt & pepper

Brown ground beef. Drain excess fat. Add onion and saute 3-4 minutes until onion is translucent. Season with a little salt & pepper. Add everything else. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20-30 minutes until potatoes are tender and barley is cooked.

Serve with crusty rolls.

Baking with Bokeh + a little rant

You know, all you need to do to make your baking look yummier is grab some natural light and a low F-stop and you get that nice blur in the background that means you can't tell when it was I last gave my counter tops a good scrub (usually daily, but you never know). These banana oatmeal muffins were pretty good, except the big ones stuck to the cupcake paper like nobody's business.

(Here begins the rant; if you're not one for rants, just skip this part, enjoy the picture. We ate muffins; have a nice day.)

I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com. By itself it would be a fine muffin recipe. I probably should have followed the recipe as written just to have actually made it. But I read the reviews. This is my biggest beef with Allrecipes.com and it really has little to do with the site itself, but much more to do with the users of the site and how they incorrectly use the star system and the reviews. Seriously, no matter how many stars the recipe has, you still need to read through at least 10 reviews to figure out whether you should even bother making the recipe or not and what changes you should make to the recipe should you decide to make it. I mean, it's one thing to make the recipe once, decide it needed a little more *whatever* and write a review saying as much and still rate it well. It's another thing to change 3-5 things about the recipe, declare it fabulous and give it 5 stars. It's like going to Home Depot, going through the self checkout, going home and doing the online survey and saying you got fabulous service at the checkout. "I rock at scanning things and swiping my debit card." I have occasionally seen comments by other users who get upset with previous reviewers who rate a recipe poorly based on the changes they made to the recipe. That makes sense, but it is equally unhelpful to have to read through countless reviews in order to determine what recipe is 4.5 stars. I don't know why someone just doesn't write up their own recipe with the changes they made and then everyone can rate that recipe with 5 stars as written.

This recipe for Banana Oat Muffins has the same issue, of course. These muffins were pretty good made with the changes that most people suggested. They weren't complicated changes, apple sauce for oil, brown sugar for white, add some chocolate chips, whatever. No big deal. I would probably make them again, but follow the recipe as written. 1/3 cup of oil isn't that bad for a batch of muffins and maybe then they wouldn't stick to the cupcake paper so badly.

So that's my rant. I don't know why I don't just use some other site, other than it's just as unpredictable if it's a good recipe or not. I implore you, Allrecipes users, write your own recipe or rate the recipe as written.

Wordless Wednesday

Helping with the Easter Baking

How to Chop a Pepper

My kids love fresh red, yellow and orange peppers. Peppers and other chopped up veggies keep them happy while I prepare the rest of a meal. I learned how to core them like this on the internet somewhere, but now I can't find it, so I made up my own step by step how to. This is how I cut up my peppers now.

Cut off the bottom bit of the pepper.

Cut off the top of the pepper. Set the top and bottom aside for later.

Get in the way of your light while you try to take a picture with one hand while holding a knife. Cut the pepper beside one of the connector white bits.

Do that again, so you get a piece like this and a nice clear look at the insides of your pepper.

Cut away the connector stuff from the side of the pepper on one of the sides.

Cut beside the next connector piece to free another piece of pepper like this.

Keep doing that until you have freed all the outside pepper pieces from the core and connectors. Now you can slice or dice the lovely pieces because they're almost flat and rectangular. Easy peasy.

Now turn to your top & bottom pieces.

Cut in between all the bumps on the top of the pepper.

When they're all cut, loosen them from the stem piece with your hands.

Until you've taken them all off the stem piece.

Even if you're planning to just serve these as crudite, these little pieces of pepper, while not conventional, are bite-sized and perfect for a veggie tray.

I usually chop the bottom piece into wedges, too.

When you're done, this is all that's left for the trash. Seeds in tact, not all over your cutting board or knife, and not a bit of delicious pepper wasted!

Here are all my peppers chopped up and ready for creole sauce.

A Month of Dinners

 Today is 15% off day at my grocery store. It's the first Tuesday of every month. A couple months ago I started planning our whole month of suppers at the beginning of the month. Then I would stock up on all the pantry-type and freezer-type items I was planning to use for the month on 15% off Tuesday, save some money, save time doing weekly meal plans and shopping lists and have a whole list of ideas all at my finger tips. I don't adhere to my meal plans as strictly as I should, but since ideas are half (or more) of the battle, having a plan is super helpful.

Since the next 15% off Tuesday isn't for 5 weeks, I planned 5 weeks of meals, for which I'm pretty impressed with myself. Originally I was using an idea I learned from Passionate Homemaking, assigning categories to each day of the week and slotting 4 different meals into those categories and rotating them through. Our lives just aren't that regular, though. It's a good idea and I think I may modify it still (with my own categories), but I didn't stick with it for this plan.

That image up there is my actual meal plan (you can click on it to see a larger image). The smudges are just my edits getting rid of some of our family's personal information: plans for the day that might affect the amount of prep time I have or if we're planning to have people over. I may post some of the recipes (or links to them) throughout the month, if anyone is interested. But you're welcome to use the ideas to inspire your own meal plans, if anything looks interesting.

As soon as my husband gets home, I'll be headed out the grocery store. I hope it's not too busy!

Make Your Own Popsicles

I mentioned in passing that we make our own popsicles around here. If we have leftover smoothie, I pour the extra into popsicle molds and freeze them for popsicles. Works great. I gave you the recipe for Orange Yogurt Creamsicles. They're delicious! Here's a slight variation on the Orange Yogurt Creamsicles: Pineapple Orange Creamsicles!

1 can pineapple (tidbits, chunks, slices: it doesn't matter!)
1 orange
2 icecream scoops of frozen orange juice concentrate
2 cups plain yogurt (I use homemade)

Put it all in a blender and blend until smooth. Freeze in popsicle molds (I bought some great ones at Ikea this spring). I didn't use all of the juice from the canned pineapple (mostly because I like to drain it and have a little drink), but I did use some to help sweeten it up. If you have a sweeter tooth than me, you might like to add some honey or something. Oh, and on using the frozen orange juice concentrate: I just wrap the can with plastic wrap and put an elastic band around the top to keep it in place and put it back in the freezer until the next time I want to make smoothies or popsicles.
These are delicious! I'm a big fan!