Beef and Bean Stew - Crockpot Easy

I love to walk in the door and smell food waiting on me. I am blessed to work from home and be able to have dinner ready for my Honey when he gets home from work. I’m no June Cleaver (tho I did have on a pearl necklace & earrings when he got home yesterday) but I try to give my man the gift of walking in the door to wonderful aromas.

On Sundays I like to get up a little early and put a complete meal in the electric roaster on low to cook while we are at church. By the time we get home, we can smell lunch from the back porch and we’re practically drooling by the time we’ve changed into our more comfy clothes. A little forethought can make this happen for you, too.

Today’s recipe is from our family cookbook, Dinner Will Be Ready When the Smoke Alarm Goes Off! I’ve Tweaked it a bit, of course and it is one that you can tweak in a variety of ways. It only requires dusting off the crock pot that is hiding somewhere. All you ‘working out in the world’ people can do this one and walk in your door to have dinner waiting with wonderful aromas wafting out to greet you, too. If you go with the traditional beef stew option everything is in the crockpot.. If your mornings are too rushed and crazy to assemble before work, brown the beef and mix ingredients the night before, then just pop into crock pot & set on low before you head out!

Remember to start with your meat at room temperature when you can. Pat the meat dry before cutting up so it will brown better.

Beef & Bean Stew

1 pound boneless beef (round or rump)

1/8 cup vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic -- minced

4 medium onions -- quartered

1 19-ounce can beans in sauce** see note below

1 teaspoon honey

1 10-ounce can beef broth

1 teaspoon thyme

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/8 teaspoon pepper

Options: You can add cut up potatoes & carrots to this for a more traditional beef stew or add side veggies to complete meal. This is great over mashed potatoes if you opt for leaving veggies out.

Cut beef into 1-inch pieces. Heat oil in large saucepan; add meat, garlic, and sauté until meat is browned. Once you lay it in pan, do not move around till brown, then turn and repeat for each side. Add onions, beans, honey, beef broth, thyme, Worcestershire sauce and pepper. Transfer to a crock-pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. It will keep till you get home.

***Use beans that will hold up to stirring, like Great White Northern, pintos, kidney beans. Pork-n-beans or navy beans tend to fall apart and get mushy. I have used Ranch Style and it changes the flavor a bit but it is good, too.

Life is too short to make a chore out of everything; so enjoy cooking for your family, the love and good attitude improves the flavors and makes meal time more pleasant.

Portabella Mushroom Ravioli

Perfect working in the garden weather this morning…I can see it plainly through window of my office as I sit inside writing instead. I shall venture out soon however. Writing about food with the veggie garden as my view seems appropriate and inspiring.

Today I am sharing one of my all time favorite Go-To recipes. It is so simple, nutritious and tasty while being the most versatile and potentially limitless in color. The hardest part of this dish is waiting for the water to boil. It starts with a bag of HEB brand Portabella Mushroom Ravioli for a whopping $2.50! This is the base of your meal and your imagination can run wild.

I first served these plain as a side dish. Just cook, drizzle with a little olive oil, salt & pepper and it is wonderful. Then I ventured out and added a handful of frozen green peas immediately before draining them. Same ole’ olive oil, etc. Then one day I decided to add some sausage sliced diagonally to the pot as the ravioli cooked. Hmm! There is no end to the combos you can come up with. My favorites have been asparagus, broccoli, and sliced carrots, left over and shredded chicken…..ok, too many favorites to list them all but you see how versatile this meal can be! Remember, if you are not using fresh veggies, use frozen and only throw in right before you take the ravioli out of the boiling water, except for carrots which need just a few minutes but still just to tender crisp!

Oh, I almost forgot…you can serve with a pasta sauce of choice, too! See? Versatile!

I usually keep two or more bags in the freezer and those last minutes meals are healthy and quick as can be. For the two of us I only cook one bag; that makes enough for dinner and then lunch for one the next day.

Portabella Mushroom Ravioli

1 bag of HEB Hill Country brand Portabella Mushroom ravioli

Chopped fresh or frozen veggies of choice – optional

Chopped, sliced, or shredded (left over meat great) meat of choice – optional

Olive oil, salt, pepper

Boil water, add salt. Drop in ravioli when rolling boil. Stir to separate. Add any veggies last minute, just to heat thru…except frozen green peas, no cooking time at all for those tender little fellows. We like them to POP when bitten into to. Drain well when ravioli floats! Stir in olive oil and seasonings or pasta sauce. Serve hot for happy taste buds and content tummies!

Let me know when you try this and how it worked for you!!

Grown-up Green Bean Casserole!

Holiday food and Easter is coming up! I am behind in my usual meal planning. Today, I will buckle down and knock that out of the way so I can get into the week with more peace of mind.

My Honey loves the old standby Green Bean Casserole. I’ve never been much of a fan. When they are having a holiday meal at his job he always signs up to bring it and I make it for him but am thankful I don’t have to eat it. So I got to thinking, what is it about Green Bean casserole I didn’t like? And…can I make it better?

First thing I didn’t like is how mushy it gets…remember, I do not like mushy veggies! Even in casseroles. I like food that is an adventure for your senses…mushy foods just do not bring out the adventurer in me. I want to sink my teeth into something of substance. I’ve seen people use French cut green beans that instantly turn into much when you stir in the other ingredients. Yuk! No texture, no green beans flavor either. So, first thing to go is the canned beans. I opt for frozen cut green beans. *You can thaw them but do not cook them!!! * That’s important. Fresh green beans will need a 1 minute long dip in boiling water and then straight into cold and/or ice water. *Do not cook them*

I’m careful about salt these days and some canned soup can be very high in salt. It is easy to make a simple homemade sauce to replace the canned soup but if you go with the cans, do not add additional salt to the dish during preparation. People can add a bit at the table if they need more but canned anything, unless otherwise stated, has enough salt! So, assuming we are going with soup from a can for convenience sake, I prefer cream of mushroom. Here’s a tip** Generic cream of mushroom soup is every bit as good and a lot less expensive. I use it exclusively now.

As with the green beans, I want mushroom flavor and texture so I add fresh mushrooms for both. You can get them in bulk or in the package but make sure they are plump and pretty! Mushrooms of your choice but plain old white buttons work well. I like to lay sliced portabella mushrooms on top for that special appeal and richness of flavor.

Canned onions are a staple in the dish but they can be stale tasting. I decided to give them an edge by adding fresh bread crumbs I’ve run through my coffee grinder. To clean out the grinder and remove any coffee residue first, I take a slice of plain bread or a hunk of un-sliced and buzz it. It cleans the grinder our very well. Another tip**when you buy French bread or any other kind of bakery bread save any that didn’t get eaten in freezer bags. I save all left over rolls, breads, etc and then use them to make my own breadcrumbs when I need them. Nothing wasted here! You can use store bought bread crumbs if you have to. Adding the bread crumbs to the canned onions give them a boost and they go further, to boot! Wal-Mart has a bag of the fried onions that is far cheaper than the cans & you get more, too!

Here’s my Food Tweaked a Bit version of Green Bean casserole:

1-2 bags of frozen cut green beans (depends on size you are making)…generic work fine!

2 cans of generic mushroom soup or 1 large family sized can

1 large Portabella mushroom sliced or pkg of Portabella slices

1 pkg white button mushrooms sliced or chopped…not too small, you want the texture & flavor!

1 bag or can of fried onions

Bread crumbs…….

In large bowl mix thawed but uncooked green beans with soup and chopped or sliced button mushrooms. Stir gently but mix well. Spread out in 9X13 baking dish (or two smaller ones) that have been sprayed with cooking oil spray. Lay thick Portabella slices down the center of casserole…you can use more if you prefer. *Do not add onions and bread crumbs at this time, they will burn before casserole is done.* Bake in 425* preheated oven till bubbly. Remove from oven to add fried onion & bread crumb mixture over top. You can put just around the edges or cover whole top, my Honey’s preference! Everybody loves the crunch!!! Place back in oven till bread crumbs start browning a bit and onions are releasing their fragrance.

This version brings the comfort of the traditional dish, with more distinct flavor and texture your mouth will appreciate. It’s a more sophisticated, grown-up version of the holiday dish we all grew up with. It’s still easy to prepare, relatively inexpensive and far more interesting! Let me know how this works for you.

Happy Heart Burgers

I’m now resting after some planting in the veggie gardening this morning. This seemed like a good time to write about healthy eating and food preparation. Let me state emphatically…I am not an expert on anything! Every recipe I send out is one I have made, then re-made and tweaked some more to be as healthy as I can make it but I am NOT a nutrition expert….or any other kind of expert.

My Honey and I love food, I love to cook and we both love to eat…this can be a dangerous combination if you do not use wisdom and health advice when you can. Most of the year I cook food that my cardio guy would approve of; during the holiday season I make a huge batch of seafood gumbo, a family tradition, and tamales, another family tradition. I have switched from using butter in making the roux for the gumbo to veggie oil and I no longer use only lard for the masa in the tamales. Other than that, they are made traditionally as our holiday indulgence. I did make a batch of tamales using olive oil one year…don’t do that…..yuk! My gumbo has fish, shrimp, oysters, scallops, crab and anything else fresh I can get my hands on. I make a variety of tamales: chicken, pork, venison, been/cheese and only the occasional beef tamale. Quiche, hot and moist gingerbread with a dollop of real butter melting down the sides also make up some of the holiday favorites and regulars. They are the exceptions….healthy eating is the lifestyle we live.

Sometimes it requires a continuous effort to turn your eating habits around; it does not happen overnight for the majority of us….nor does it come easily. When my Honey ad I married I was aware our eating habits were very different; I chalked it up to a cultural difference. I grew up with a diabetic mom, veggies, fish and gardening. He grew up in the city in a Hispanic culture with pan dulce (sweet bread/pastry), barbacoa (shredded meat kind of like what you get on a chopped BBQ sandwich) and tacos, tacos, tacos! If WE can do it, anyone can! More on that another time.

Today’s recipe isn’t so much Food Tweaked a Bit as it is something I came up with to substitute a craving I was having one day. You know those days when your mouth decides it wants something and wants it now!!? I was struggling thru one of those days fighting the desire for a big ole’ fat juicy hamburger….it had to be fat and loaded. Choosing not to give in, mind over burger desire, if you will…I created the Happy Heart Burger. Here it is……

Happy Heart Burgers (for two adults or 4 kids) You may wanna double up for teens...LOL

1 lb of ground pork, chicken or turkey

4 Multi-grain English muffins

1 avocado – peeled & smashed with fork, salt & pepper to taste (no mayo, please!)

¼ small onion thinly sliced

Garlic clove finely diced

4 slices Muenster cheese

Dijon Mustard

1 carrot cut in ½ across then into ¼ inch strips

Salt, pepper, turmeric, smoked paprika

Mix ground meat with garlic, salt, pepper, pinch of turmeric, little more of the paprika. Divide meat mixture into 4 equal parts making each patty muffin sized. Cook in hot skillet or grill covered with cooking oil spray.

Separate English Muffins; spread Dijon on each of the 8 rounds. When meat is cooked placed 1 patty on each bottom. Place 1 slice of cheese on each patty. Lay sliced onion on each of the 4 muffin tops. Place all in toaster oven or in conventional oven at 350* until cheese is melted and onions start to make the room smell awesome! Once out of oven, top melted patty with mashed avocado. Put the tops back on. Serve with carrot sticks – they are very sweet right now…odd, it’s not carrot season but I’ve had awesome luck with the bulk carrots from HEB.

Happy Heart Burgers have everything I insist on; the familiar feel of comfort food, the crunch of the toasted English muffin, the savory meat patty, the gooey melted cheese, the cool creaminess of the avocado, the sweet semi-caramelized onions, the hint of tartness & tongue tingling from the Dijon. It a good combination! Add the crunch of the carrot sticks and call it dinner! My Honey had two, I had one and the last one went to work with Honey the next day for lunch. Burger obsession satisfied, I walked away from the table with happy taste buds and a content (but not over filled) belly. Satisfying food can be healthy food....they are not mutually exclusive.

Let me know if you try them and how they work for you! Enjoy!

Cottage Pie

“Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven”…old commercial song that still lives on in truth with families today! I have childhood memories of walking in the neighborhood past open windows with smells of dinners to come wafting out. Guess I was a ‘foodie’ before the word was invented. Food smells are firmly imprinted on our brains at an early age and can take us to the past with a mere whiff. Homemade fried chicken, the only kind around when I was a kid, is a favorite smell memory. My Honey tells of smelling his grandmother’s kitchen from the next block His Hispanic roots come complete with specific ethnic smell memories. I guess mine were more regional than ethnic. I grew up in coastal Texas so ours is more a combination of Southern – seafood -country living. Fresh veggies out of grandparent’s gardens, seafood from the bay or gulf and all the old Southern traditional foods made up our culinary roots. Just try to think about a pot of beans and cornbread without having a smell memory, I dare you.

The recipe today is another Food Tweaked a Bit recipe. It is based on the old familiar Sheppard’s Pie, which, by the way, to be an ‘official’ Sheppard’s pie would be made with mutton. Mutton is not easy to find in our south Texas hill country grocery stores so we are using ground beef. You could use ground pork or chicken or turkey…..doesn’t matter. Your spices might need a tweaking to be more suited to the meat of choice tho.

One thing I have to say before we start…..regardless of how your momma cooked veggies, please do not over cook them. My mother boiled every vegetable to death! All the nutrients washed out, colors changed or disappeared and texture…well, there was none unless you consider mushy to be a texture. So in my recipes, unless otherwise stated, mushy veggies do not come into play. This one has mashed potatoes. I make this recipe when I have left over potatoes from another meal. Even left over baked potatoes can be transformed into mashed potatoes, don’t be legalistic in your meal planning.

Cottage Pie

1 lb ground beef…fat content up to you based on dietary issues or preference

½ med onion white or yellow diced

3 cloves garlic peeled and finely diced

2 handfuls of frozen corn – appx ¼ bag

2 handfuls of frozen green peas – appx ¼ bag

2-3 cups of mashed potatoes, great for leftover mashed potatoes

2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil = two turns around the pan with bottle oil

Salt, pepper, touch of ground cinnamon, Paprika, Worchester sauce

Brown ground meat, diced onions and garlic in olive oil. Drain off some of the meat fat if using high fat content meat. Season with salt & pepper to taste, add pinch of cinnamon and splash of Worchester sauce. When almost cooked thru, throw in the frozen corn and green peas. Turn off heat immediately; we want the frozen veggies to cook in oven so they do not get mushy. Pour meat mixture in a deep dish pie plate. Dollop mashed potatoes around top of meat & veggies, then spread to completely cover top of mixture like meringue on a pie. I sprinkle a little paprika on top for color. Place in 425* oven until hot and bubbly. Potatoes may start to brown a bit.

Cool a few minutes before cutting. It will not hold completely together like a pie but it is still pretty dense.

This dish is easy to put together, makes about 6 servings. Can be made ahead and baked at meal time. Remember, we are after healthy meals with color, budget and nutrition in mind that can be simple and quick to make. Let me know if it works for you!

Lazy Man Lasagna

Ah, Good morning! Should you choose to read this blog regularly, you will find I am not one to be fussy about what I eat for breakfast. Food is food and is not relegated to a certain time of day. This morning I had leftovers from dinner last night…which, in part, were left over from another meal. Waste not, want not mentality is alive and well in this house!

The leftover dish was a Food Tweaked recipe (my name for recipes I tweak a bit) from a cooking show on frugal meals. I’m all for frugal meals when and as often as you can but it has to be healthy and meet my other criteria…colorful, tasty and appealing to all the senses. Some people see food as simply fuel for the body but I am not one of those. Perhaps I could regain my girlhood figure if so, but alas, it is not to be. I am a mother of many, a grandmother of many more and the wife of a man whose love language is food! These add up to yummy things from the kitchen in our home; we see it as a good thing to be relished.

In our family cookbook we have two rules for submission of recipes. First, if you submit it, you get to name and claim it as your own. Second, you have to submit tidbits for the ‘Things We Learned the Hard Way’ section; stories on yourself basically.

The recipe below has yet to be named officially so let’s call it Lazy Man’s Lasagna. It’s quick to prepare, cheap, very tasty and makes great leftovers. I’ll use brand names from time to time, sharing the approximate cost where I can, try to use fairly accurate measurements and amounts. Much to Daughter #1’s chagrin, I rarely follow a recipe; I just dump ingredients and cook till it’s done! Not helpful to those needing to follow a written recipe but I will try to make it a repeatable recipe, I promise.

Lazy Man’s Lasagna

1 box of Wal-Mart brand pasta, not spaghetti or angel hair or noodle - $1.00

1 can Hunt’s traditional spaghetti sauce - $0.92

1 large container of Ricotta cheese – less than $2.00

1 bag shredded Mozzarella – less than $2.00

1 bag of shredded Parmesan – less than $2.00

Cook pasta in boiling salted water till almost done. Drain. Place pasta in large mixing bowl and pour can spaghetti sauce over and stir gently to coat all pasta. Next add in whole container of Ricotta cheese and about 1/3 of the Mozzarella cheese, stir in to mix with pasta. Spread out in 9 X 13 baking dish or two smaller casserole dishes. Cover top of pasta mixture with Mozzarella. Sprinkle 1/3 bag of Parmesan cheese over that. Bake at 425* until heated thru and cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

I gave one half of the pasta dish to a friend up the street but I could have frozen it for another time. We had dinner that night, dinner last night and my breakfast this morning from the half I kept! It cost $8.00 to make and made five large servings from just one half! Do the math…that’s at least 10 servings for $8.00, more if you don’t have big eaters…we do! I served it with salad and garlic bread the first night. Last night I steamed some Swiss Chard from my garden with garlic and red pepper flakes and put simple carrot sticks on the small plate to round out the meal. Sweet tea for Honey and water for me. It had it all; healthy, colorful, tasty, texture and low cost. It’s going in the cookbook!

The most time consuming part of the whole meal was waiting for the water to boil. Let me know if this works for you.

Food for Thought

Hi there!

Welcome to Food Tweaked a Bit. This is a site for people interested in healthy food they can prepare in a timely fashion be it for themselves or a hungry family. I am not a fan of boxed food and all the additives. There will be a minimum of can goods used because of too much salt. People - we can eat well with healthy dishes that won't tip your food budget on its side. You'll see!

As you can see, this blog is still under construction but will be up and running soon with recipes for those that love food, love to cook or simply have to feed the growling bellies circling your feet.

See you soon!

Lynn