Use It Up: Cornbread

With the last two weeks being about beans, that leaves a lot of leftover cornbread. There are a few different things you can do with cornbread instead of just heating it up and eating it again the next night. 

I like to save my cornbread in the freezer and when I get enough I make crockpot dressing:
 

Crockpot Dressing

1 Whole chicken

1 8-inch pan corn bread

8 slices white bread

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

2 cans cream of chicken soup

2 Tbsp margarine

onion to taste

Boil, debone chicken.  Reserve liquid.  Break up breads.  Beat eggs and add to mixture.  Add onion, salt, pepper, sage, soup, marg., and celery.  Fill cans with chicken broth.  Mix all. Cook 4 hours on low or 2 hours on high. 

This is the original recipe.  If you're like me, then you see recipes more as suggestions instead of rules and tweak them to suit you and your family. 

I use chicken breast tenders out of the freezer that I have already batch cooked in the crockpot and shredded.  So all I have to do is toss it in with the other ingredients.  Most of the time I don't even use chicken, I use cooked, crumbled, and drained hot breakfast sausage.  Again I like to already have it cooked and stored in the freezer too. 

In place of the chicken soup, I make up a white sauce and add in a rounded teaspoon of chicken base paste.  The chicken broth I substitute with water and chicken base.   I substitute the sage with poultry seasoning. Generally I leave out the celery because I don't keep it stocked, but I  use cooked onion.

If that sounds like too much work then you might like Skillet Dressing. It's great when you get to craving dressing and the holidays are too far off.  Plus, its made on top of the stove and doesn't heat your house up in the summer. 

Skillet Dressing

1/2 cup crushed corn bread (day old and crumbled)

1/2 cup cooked rice (opt) 

2 hard cooked eggs chopped

1/2 c. chicken broth

1/4. chopped celery

2 Tbsp onion

2 Tbsp butter/ marg

1 tsp minced parsley

1/4 teas. poultry seasoning

salt and pepper to taste

In a bowl combine the first 4 ingredients and set aside.  In a skillet, saute celery and onion in butter until tender.  Add the cornbread mixture and seasoning, mix well.  Cook over medium heat until lightly browned. 

Agian you can adjust measuremaents to suit you and omit ingredients that you don't like or don't have on hand. 

A very simple and quick recipe and yummy too.

If you are not a dressing sort of person you might like Cornbread Salad.  It's a great side and a way to dress up plain cornbread.

Cornbread Salad

1 package cornbread mix 

9 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

1/2 cup drained sweet pickle relish

1/4 cup sweet pickle relish juice

1 green bell pepper, chopped

2 large tomatoes, chopped

chopped onion to taste

1 cup mayo or to taste

Bake cornbread according to package direction; cool.  Crumble cornbread into a seving bowl/add remaining ingredients, stirring until thouroughly mixed.  ( May be prepared ahead and refrigerated to serve the following day. )

I do a few things different on this.  For one I don't make my cornbread from a package.  I'd never heard of such a thing until this recipe.  I didn't know they existed.  I also use leftover cold cornbread for this instead of fresh.  My guys don't like raw onion, so if I do include onion I saute it in butter first.  This is a good way to use up your garden produce of peppers and tomatoes.  If it isn't garden season then I just omit the pepper.  I don't like buying extra things at the grocery store just because a recipe lists it.  If it doesn't affect the taste then I leave it out. 

It's a pretty accompaniment, it's different, and very tasty.  You may win over picky eaters with this one on shock value alone.  :)


Happy Frugal Eating!

Words

The sky was very faintly pink, then it was pinker. The color went higher up the sky. It grew brighter and deeper. It blazed like fire, and suddenly the little cloud was glittering gold . In the center of the blazing color, on the flat edge of the earth, a tiny sliver of sun appeared. It was a short streak of white fire. Suddenly the whole sun bounded up, round and huge, far bigger than the ordinary sun and throbbing with so much light that its roundness almost burst.

On the Banks of Plum Creek- Laura Ingalls Wilder

Picture Thought

Watching dirt being hauled wouldn't be near as exciting if it was done in a new dump truck.  There's just something about these old trucks.  Their simplicity and their surprising quietness.

Being around this old truck brings back memories of my childhood.  So much of my time as a child was around old grain trucks and old boom trucks that I can't help but be fond of this old dump truck.  If Heather hadn't already spoke for it......for a minute, just for a minute, I'd be tempted...........!

Until next time...........Have a great weekend! 

Granny Squares Rag Rug

I set aside my oval rug to see what a granny square would look like in a rag rug.....

My sheet rag rug made out of granny squares. 

Just three rounds in three different colors and single crocheted together.

It goes with my countertops nicely!

May add a few more blocks to make it bigger.  Not sure yet.

Within five minutes of being down, she decided it was "fit for a Queenie".

Use It Up: Much Ado About Beans

Last week I talked about pinto beans, if you missed it you can read it here, and while the recipes I put on could be substituted with white or navy beans, the way I cook my navy beans differs somewhat.

Kristi’s Navy Beans and Sausage

1 lb dry navy beans, looked and soaked overnight

1 lb hot breakfast sausage, cooked, crumbled, and drained

Italian seasoning

Chicken base or chicken broth

Salt and Pepper

Garlic and onion, optional

Rinse and drain beans. Place in slow cooker and cover with water or broth. Add in sausage and seasonings and a spoon of chicken base if using. Cover and cook until beans are done.

Another favorite:

Senate Bean Soup

1 lb dry navy beans

1 meaty ham bone

1 cup chopped onion

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup chopped celery

2/3 cup instant potato flakes or 1 ½ cups mashed potatoes

¼ cup chopped parsley

1 ½ tsp pepper

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp basil

1 bay leaf

Salt to taste

Wash and sort beans; soak overnight or cover with water , bring to boil, boil 2 minutes remove from heat cover, and let stand for 1 hour. Add more water and ham bone. Bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer 1 ½ hours. Stir in remaining ingredients; simmer 20-30 minutes until beans are tender. Remove ham bone, rim off meat and return meat to soup; remove bay leaf. Serve hot; freezes well. This is great made in the crockpot as well.

Great Northern Beans can be substituted in the above recipes without changing the taste very much.

One way I like to use up these white versions is to make a pot pie with them.
Make up your favorite pie crust recipe and fill with cold beans. Top with a another crust and poke a few holes in the top, seal and bake until done. If desired you can make up a chicken gravy and pour over the beans before topping with crust.

Very good and filling especially on cold winter days.

Until next time….Happy Frugal Eating!

Pure Poetry!

Yep, you read it right....

50 lbs!!

Update Last of September

Last week was such an odd week. Full of sickness and healing and worry and thankfulness and disappearances and revisits.

It started with Charlie’s visit to the emergency room Sunday night week. So he stayed home on Monday. That day was spent running after his prescriptions and watching him sleep so there was no school.

Tuesday he went back to work but was draggy. On this day Buddy hurt his paw somehow and hobbled around and whined and whimpered and needed constant attention and carried up steps and stairs. Buddy’s paw has gotten better. He is walking on it finally and to be honest I think he’s missing the baby-ing he was receiving as a result of his injuries.

Our cat , Queenie, has been missing for over a month. I figured she was gone for good. I didn’t know what had happened but I figured she must of gotten hurt or up and moved on us, never to be seen again. She just appeared out of the blue, very vocal and hungry. She’s been by every day to eat and visit until we put her out at night.

I have been coughing my head off. My sinuses can’t seem to adjust to this weather. I had my doctor appointment on Thursday but with the week being so screwy I hadn’t had much time to worry about it. It turned out pretty good. At least I don’t have to worry for a year. LOL!.

Zach finally got over his coughing this week. So thank the Lord for healing around here!

In sewing news: I finished one rug I’ll post pics later this week. It wasn’t the oval one I started. (remember the side-tracked syndrome I told you about?) I got to wondering how one would look made in granny squares. Only one way to find out!

On the home front: We moved the loveseat up to Zach’s room. It doesn’t look as cozy in the living room now but boy do we have room. I don’t know what we’ll do if we have company but we all like the results. Zach has a nice place to sit and play video games. He has a regular bachelor pad going upstairs. He has hinted that all he needs now is a refrigerator to save all that running back and forth downstairs! Funny, ain’t he? (insert sarcasm there)

I sprinkled a few fall decorations throughout the house too.  I love this time of year!  The colors are so pretty.

School didn’t happen this week because of Dad’s allergic reaction and my doctor appt. I wasn’t going to try to cram the civil war into two days! It was a cruel, devastating, yet interesting war and it deserves more than speed reading! I hope he enjoys it as much as the French Revolution. There was just something about all those heads rolling in France that he loved! Boys! That’s why Treasure Island couldn’t hold a candle to Robison Crusoe; there weren’t any cannibals!

The field is coming along! All that’s left is to fix the rhythm sections and plant the rest in rye grass that we aren’t using. Then maybe our free time can be used to get some of our projects done around here before winter; sort of batten done the hatches before old man winter comes around. Plus, maybe some of that free time can be spent riding.

Hope you all had a great week and I wish you a fun and safe and productive week this week!

Until next time…Kristi.