Cheeseburger Pie

This is one of my favorite quick and easy recipes and it's pretty delicious too!!

Cheeseburger Pie

(I realize this isn't the best picture but I forgot to take one until we had already started eating!)

Ingredients:

1 lb. lean ground beef

1 large onion (chopped)

1/2 t. salt

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 cup original Bisquick mix

1 cup milk

2 eggs

Directions:

Heat oven to 400. Spray a 9 in. pie plate with cooking spray. Cook beef and onion in skillet until brown. Stir in salt. Spread in a pie plate and sprinkle with cheese. In a small bowl, stir remaining ingredients with a fork until blended and pour into pie plate. Bake 30-35 minutes or until knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

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To answer any questions you may have:

1. I didn't post a "Pray for Us Friday" post this past Friday because I was really busy getting ready for my anniversary and our upcoming vacation. I plan to have it back in action by next Friday but I need your recipes and prayer requests to keep it going!

2. My blog looks really plain right now because it is in the middle of a makeover... so get excited about what's coming and make sure you keep coming back to check out the new look! :)

3. We are going to Bar Harbor, Maine, this week and we are SO excited about it. Hopefully I will be able to learn some new recipes to share with you while I am gone! If you have been to Maine before, please leave suggestions of your favorite things to do, see and of course EAT!!

Taco Ring

This is a super easy recipe and it's also really fun... kid's think it's really cool... at least I did when I was a kid. It would probably be a fun thing to serve on this coming Wednesday night, since it's Cinco De Mayo!! :) I'm going to post the picture before the recipe tonight because the structure is the only potentially complicated part! And I did it one way, but I will actually do it differently next time I make this. I wasn't happy with the way it looked but it still tasted GREAT! I was working from memory and I should have looked it up! :)

Taco Ring

Here's how you do it:

brown one pound of ground beef, add one pkg. taco seasoning. Set aside. On a round baking stone, arrange uncooked crescent rolls in a circle. It should look like a sunshine- with the base of the triangles facing the inside of the circle and the points facing out:

(Here's where I would do things differently... I would simply use more crescent rolls and overlap them so that when I wrapped the points over the filling, there would be more points and more of the filling would be covered.) Next step is to carefully place the taco meat on the base part of the triangles all the way around the circle. Top with cheese. Then pull the points of the crescent rolls up over the filling and gently tuck them under the base on the other side. Then follow the instructions for baking on your can of crescent rolls.

This recipe is really fun to serve family style or at a party because you can put a bowl (or even three small bowls) of cheese dip/salsa/guacamole in the center of the ring! OR you can fill the center with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, etc. just like a real taco!

I hope you all had a great weekend... and survived the crazy weather if you're from my part of the world!!

Spaghetti Sauce

Spaghetti is absolutely my go to dinner. I always keep the ingredients for it in the house and when I don't really feel like cooking, this is what I make. It is so simple, so fast and so delicious. The recipe that I use originally came from a Betty Crocker cookbook (circa 1980) but my mom and I have both made several changes over the years.

Although it is traditionally made with ground beef, I have also used sauteed chicken, ground turkey and ground sausage. Sometimes I make spaghetti with the basics and sometimes I add extra veggies (black olives, spinach, mushrooms, or fresh tomatoes, etc.). I also use this sauce for Lasagna, baked ziti, a spicy tomato cream sauce and even tomato soup.

I hope you love this sauce as much as I do!!

Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

1 or 2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 can tomato sauce

1 can diced tomatoes

1 cup water

1 t. salt

pinch of red pepper flakes

1 t. dried oregano leaves

3/4 t. dried basil leaves

1/2 t. dried marjoram leaves

1/4 t. dried rosemary leaves

1 bay leaf

Directions:

Brown meat, onions and garlic in skillet. Drain fat. Add all other ingredients and simmer for one hour. (But honestly, if you don't have an hour, you don't have to simmer for an hour. That just gives the sauce a chance to thicken up but if you're in a hurry, you can serve it as soon as it's heated through.) Remove bay leaf and pour over cooked pasta. I like to top mine with parmesan cheese and fresh basil.

Mmm... fresh Basil :)

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And just in case my "Biscuits and Gravy" post had any of you on pins and needles... I am the hot sauce (Louisiana hot sauce, specifically) and Evan is the Ketchup. And not only do I use hot sauce on my eggs, I also use it on my spaghetti!!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

Taco Soup and Bobby Flay's Blue and Yellow Corn Muffins

On our honeymoon, Evan and I ate at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill at the Atlantis Resort in Paradise Island, Bahamas. While we were there we ate the most AMAZING blue and yellow corn muffins! Today we found the recipe and we had them for dinner! Definitely one of our new favorite foods...

Here they are! And here's the recipe:

Mesa Grill Blue & Yellow Corn Muffins:

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup finely diced red onion

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 1/3 cups whole milk

4 large eggs

1/2 cup red bell pepper, finely diced

2 jalapeno peppers, finely diced

1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels, thawed

2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro leaves

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup blue cornmeal (couldn't find this at Kroger- had to go to Whole Foods)

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

4 teaspoons salt

1. Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees F. Grease a 12 slot muffin pan with non-stick vegetable spray.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter, add the onions and garlic and cook until soft. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly. Divide the mixture evenly among two large bowls.

3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, honey, bell pepper, jalapeno, corn, cilantro. Pour the mixture into a measuring cup and add half of the mixture to each of the large bowls containing the onion mixture.

4. Put the blue cornmeal and yellow cornmeal in two separate bowls. To each bowl, add 2/3 cup flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and 2 teaspoons salt. Mix each cornmeal mixture into a bowl with the liquid mixture.

5. Pour an equal amount of each batter side by side into each muffin cup and bake for 16 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center or a muffin comes out with a few moist crumbs on it. Let muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then remove to a cooling rack. The batters can be made up to 1 day in advance and refrigerated.

This is the Taco Soup we had with our corn muffins. My mom has been using this recipe for years and Evan and I love it. We decided to make it tonight because we needed something to go with our corn muffins. Haha Obviously, it was all about the muffins tonight!!

Ingredients:

2 lbs. ground beef

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 cans stewed tomatoes

1 can pinto beans

1 can rotel

1 pkg. Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing mix

1 onion chopped

1 can kidney beans

1 can black beans

1 can hominey

Brown meat and onions. Drain off Fat. Add chili powder and all other ingredients. Simmer for one hour. Serve with grated cheddar cheese.