Mom's Famous Strawberry Bread

When I think of Christmas growing up and the things we did or the foods we make, one of them that stands out most in my mind is strawberry bread. My mom made it every year for as long as I can remember. We only make it at Christmas time and I look forward to it every year. Of course it can be made at ANY time during the year. Its funny because every time I mention this bread to someone they always get a confused look on their face and say "strawberry bread?!", it may not be a commonly made bread but it seriously should be!

Serving Size: 2 loaves

Ingredients:
2 containers of fresh strawberries, slightly mashed with a potato masher
2.5 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 eggs
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/3 cup canola oil (or any oil if your choice)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
1 cup walnuts (I have used pecans too)

Directions:

Grease loaf pans and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium/large bowl mix strawberries, eggs, and oil.

In a stand mixer combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and nuts.

Add strawberry mixer, stir until blended. 

Pour batter into prepared loaf pans. 

Bake for one hour or until bread passes tooth pick test. 

Your welcome. Don't blame me when you become highly addicted to this stuff! :)

Lentil Bruschetta Dip

Today I'm going to share with you a dip I discovered that I am now o.b.s.e.s.s.e.d with. It is SO good. Not only that but it actually is a healthier option than say a dip made with a whole carton of sour cream or cheese. Not that those aren't delicious, but you know what I mean ;). 

So we do all our shopping at Trader Joes. If you didn't already know I'm somewhat in love with the store. It's the BEST. They always have samples of their products in the store, similar to costco, and a few weeks ago they had some sort of dip, I noticed it said lentils, and I love lentils, so I tried it...and oh my...gosh! A flavor explosion was happening in my mouth. It was SO good. SUPER simple to make as well! 

Ingredients:
-I buy the prepacked cooked lentils for this, but you can absolutely make your own. You'll need about 2.5 cups lentils if you cook them
-1 6oz package of feta cheese
-1 container of bruschetta sauce. Now if you do shop at TJs. Buy the fresh. It turns out MUCH better than getting the jar bruschetta. 

Mix all your ingredients in a large bowl!

 And serve with pita chips! TJs also sells pita crackers which also go really well with this dip.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Pancake "Muffins"

So fall is one of my favorite times of the year, I love the change in weather (this cali girl HATES summer, go figure) the smell of fall, the pumpkins, apples, spices. All of it. Especially because it leads towards my FAVORITE time, Christmas time. But that's not what this is about. Usually on the weekend my husband makes a special breakfast. If we don't have time in the mornings because it's busy on the ranch that day, he will make breakfast for dinner. That was the case today. I also decided to make homemade apple sauce in the crock pot so fall was in the air at our house. He mentioned to me he might want to make pancakes but it's such a mess we figured to just put them in the muffin tins. Since fall is approaching, and the applesauce was cooking away smelling SO good I told him we should make pumpkin pancakes since the can of pumpkin puree in our pantry has just been staring at me lately. 

Holy moly. I had no idea the deliciousness we were about to experience. The pancake "muffins" turned out SO good that I had to share them with you all. They would be fantastic to make the night before also and have for quick on the go breakfasts in the morning as well.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups milk

1 cup pumpkin puree

1 egg

2 tablespoons coconut oil

2 cups all purpose flour

4-5 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice 

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In one large bowl mix your milk, pumpkin, egg & coconut oil until combined. If the pumpkin or coconut oil is a little lumpy that's ok. 

In a separate large bowl combine your flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice & salt.

Slowly incorporate your dry into your wet ingredients. The important rule of thumb here is to not over-mix. Once the wet and dry are mixed together you're pretty much good.

Spray your muffin tins with non stick spray.

Use a 1/3 cup to scoop your pancake mix into the tins. All together this ended up making 17 pancake muffins for us. 

Bake for 13-16 minutes, or until it passes the tooth pic test. I want to add that our bottom rack cooks faster than our top rack so watch out for that with your oven. Our bottom rack was done at 13 minutes and our top rack was done closer to 16-17 minutes. 

These were SO moist and delicious. 

But putting a little syrup on top took them to a WHOLE other level! 

Easy & Delicious Shepherds Pie

This is a dish I've been making for years, and even though I seem to not make it that often, its definitely a family favorite. Especially my husbands. (Its meat and potatoes, duh). For those of you who don't know my husband and I were actually vegetarian for about a year and a half not to long ago and I still made this dish! Our favorite meat substitute was Trader Joes meatless ground beef. Just an FYI ;)

Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef 
1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables
1 onion
2 potatoes
About a cup of cheddar cheese give or take
Brown Gravy Packet
Heaping spoonful of sour cream
2 tablespoons butter 
Splash or two of milk
Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large pan cook your ground beef and diced onion until cooked through. Drain fat.

In a large pot or saucepan cook your peeled and largely diced potatoes, I never time this, I just generally stick a fork in them from time to time to check. Probably about 10-15 minutes.

Add your frozen mixed vegetables to your beef, season with salt and pepper. **I usually add a few cloves of minced garlic in at this point but I didn't have any this night* 

Start to make your gravy, I usually always use the packets you can find in the spice aisle, but you can use your favorite brand of gravy. 

Once your potatoes are done add them to a large bowl with your butter, milk, sour cream and season with salt and pepper. (I always usually also sprinkle in some garlic powder and cayenne pepper to my mashed potatoes but use whatever YOU like)

And mash! Sad day in our household. My hand mixer broke! Womp Womp Wooomp. But look at me doing it all old fashioned like ;) it works just as well!

Add your gravy to your meat mixture.

Spoon mixture into a 13x9 baking dish and spread evenly.

Spread your mashed potatoes on top!

Then, add your cheese.

Add to your preheated oven, and cook uncovered for 20 minutes.

Let cool and serve! Enjoy :)

Easy Crockpot Lasagna

So remember my last post about how I mentioned that since becoming a mom, cooking lately has needed to be something quick and fairly easy? Well, my crockpot has been getting a lot of love from me lately because it does just that. Its easy and is automatically done at dinner time. Earlier in the day is when Lincoln is content playing with something for a few minutes and its an easy opportunity for me to throw together a crockpot dinner. This recipe is one of my favorites! 

Ingredients:
*1 lb ground beef (You could use ground turkey or veggie meat substitute to make this vegetarian)
*Lasagna noodles
*28oz of marinara (or your favorite jar spaghetti sauce)
*1 small onion, diced
*1 container low fat cottage cheese
*12 oz light mozzarella cheese
*Parmesan cheese & dried parsley for topping
*salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Brown ground beef with the diced onion. Drain the fat. 

Spoon 1 cup of your marinara in the bottom of your crockpot.

Mix the remaining sauce with the beef. 

Place your lasagna noodles over the sauce in the crockpot. Doesn't have to be fancy. Mine sure wasn't ;)  

Spread about 1/3 of the meat mixture over the noodles. 

Put about 3/4 cup cottage cheese evenly over the meat mixture.

Top with around 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (you guys should know by now I don't measure, these are all close estimates ha!)

Do another layer of noodles, meat mixture, cottage cheese, shredded cheese

Repeat once more and end with your shredded cheese on top. 

Sprinkle on some Parmesan and some dried parsley and cook on LOW for 3.5-4 hours. 

Serve and your done!

I made mine with some lazy garlic bread (basically just french rolls with butter, granulated garlic, parm & parsley broiled in the oven!) :) Enjoy!

Quick & Easy Pesto Pasta with Peas & Tomato!

I love cooking, love it. My love for it has developed over the years and its something I've really grown to enjoy. Now, with that being said, since becoming a mom my time has become just a tiny bit limited-as you can imagine-and I don't mind it one bit! BUT, it has put cooking on the backburner a bit. We hardly EVER go out to eat, 1-because have you taken a 5 month old to a restaurant before? Enough said. 2-Its 'spennnnsive! $$$ 3-fast food makes me want to hurl. So I have to get creative in the kitchen! Lately, I've been making really quick and easy recipes most of the time otherwise we won't eat until 9:00pm (yes, its happened before, more than once!). So tonight I threw this together and it was great! Definitely a hit, and something I will continue to make. I've TRIED making homemade pesto once in the past and wasn't a huge fan. Trader Joes has a great pesto I've found, and that's what I used tonight. 


Ingredients:

*1/2 lb pasta (so half your bag of rigatoni, or any pasta you like basically)
*Pesto- however much you like, I ended up using about two large spoonfuls of it
*Small tomato, diced
*1/2 onion, diced 
*3/4-1 cup of frozen peas (however much you like)
*Salt & Pepper to taste
*Grated Parm for topping

Directions:

Boil your water for your pasta.

Add pasta and cook according to package directions. 

In a small saute pan, cook your onions. This ingredient is absolutely optional if your not a big onion fan. I am, and I pretty much put them in everything, ha! :)

When your pasta is about 4-5 minutes from being done, here is my secret trick. I dump my frozen peas in the water with the pasta and let it finish cooking. Peas end up being perfectly done and I didn't have to dirty another pot! 

Strain pasta and put back into the pot, add your onions, tomato, pesto, salt and pepper.

Combine and your done! Enjoy!