Woman in the Middle

This is a very easy recipe that can be found all over the internet, but, until recently, I had never happened upon it. Just in case it is new to you, to, I thought I would share this recipe for Butterscotch Cake.  I am all about easy and I loved this recipe because it takes so few ingredients, is so so easy to make and is so so yummy!. (BTW – Please forgive my terrible photos. The cake is way more lovely and delicious than these photos show.)

1 yellow or white cake mix

1- 3 1/2 oz package cook and serve butterscotch pudding

1 cup butterscotch chips (or more, many more)

2/3 cup chopped nuts (more or less to taste)

Make pudding according to package directions. Let cool. Add pudding to dry cake mix and stir until incorporated.

Grease or spray a 9 x 13 pan and pour cake mix into pan. Spread around evenly.

Sprinkle with buttterscotch chips and the chopped nuts. (Feel free to use more butterscotch chips. I did!)

Bake in a 350 degree oven  for one hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve warm or let cool before serving. I think a dollop of whip cream on top would be lovely!

And that is it. Feel free to add some butterscotch chips to the batter as well. I did that and it was yummy. After all, you can’t have too many butterscotch chips, right?

With the holiday time of the year just about with us, parties will be happening. Sometimes you just need a big old crock pot of something to feed a crowd. Maybe you have to bring “finger food” to something. Maybe it is a party at your house. The two appetizer “recipes” I am about to give you are both finger licking good and people love them. I guarantee you will get complements on their tastiness.  If you want to make something “homemade” these are not for you. But if you want something easy, fast, and delicious, these two appetizers are perfect!

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Buy a package of frozen meatballs. Stir up a bowl of sauce consisting of ketchup or chili sauce and whatever jelly or jam you have in the fridge. I recently did a batch that had both ketchup and chili sauce, because I had half a bottle of each, and some apricot and some grape jam, because I didn’t have enough of either type of jam. Just eyeball the amount you need, keeping in mind that it is always better if you have too much sauce instead of too little.

Put meatballs in the crock pot. Cover with the sauce. Turn crock pot to high for about three hours. After the meatballs are less frozen, you can stir them around to distribute the sauce better. Put out some toothpicks and watch the meatballs disappear. Seriously, people love these.

Delicious Chicken Wings

Buy a package of frozen, flavored chicken wings. I always buy mine at Costco because they have the big packages. Put wings in a crock pot. Set on high. Don’t worry if the wings are sticking out the top  and won’t let the crock pot lid fit quite right. As they warm up they will settle down and the lid will be able to settle down a well. Set cock pot on high. Cook for four hours.

My friend Barb told me about this delightful way to cook wings. Frozen wings can get a little dry when you cook them in the oven. This way they are moist and succulent. These are great for a work potluck because you can take the empty crock pot and the package of frozen wings to work without having to worry about anything spilling. Once you get to work you pop the wings in the crock pot, set it on high, and they will be good to go at noon. Everyone will be asking for your recipe!

I have been meaning to share this recipe with you for quite some time. We had it at Easter and everyone really liked it. It is so easy, can be made up the day before, and is delicious. What more could a person want?

Salad ingredients:

One head cabbage, chopped

4-6 green onions, sliced

1-2 carrots, sliced or chopped (I just bought a bag of carrot that had been cut into match sticks)

1/2 cup sugar

Dressing Ingredients:

3/4 cup white vinegar

1 T dry mustard

1 T sugar

1 T celery seed

1 1/2 t salt

3/4 cup vegetable oil

Put chopped cabbage and carrots in bowl. Sprinkle with green onions. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup sugar.

Mix dressing ingredients. Pour over salad. DO NOT MIX. Cover salad and place in refrigerator for several hours or over night. Toss right before serving.

The wonderful thing  is that cabbage and carrots are such hearty vegetables, they don’t get limp when in contact with the dressing. The dressing has a nice sweet and sour, almost oriental style flavor. This is great for a crowd!

Please don’t judge me, but I was looking at people.com the other day when I came across one of those ads for other sites at the bottom of the page. It had a photo of a baked potato with the caption “surprising slowcooker recipes.” I thought the photo implied that baked potatoes could be cooked in a crock pot  and I was intrigued, so I clicked on it. Guess what, according to the recipe (if you can call it that) from food.com, you can make baked potatoes in the crock pot. Seriously, this blew my mind!

I don’t know about you, but I inevitably want to cook something that requires an oven just as summer hits. Lets bake cookies, make lasagna, and bake potatoes with the air conditioner struggling to keep up. It tends to lead to comments from Hubby, like “why do you always want to start baking just as it gets hot?” So the idea that I could “bake” potatoes in my crock pot was very exciting and opened up a whole new way of making easy dinners. If the potatoes are done all I would have to do is open a can of chili, sauté up some mushrooms and onions, or even nuke a package of frozen broccoli and cheese sauce to top the potatoes, add a salad,  and dinner would be done. This idea is so simple and wonderful that I am getting over excited and may need to go lie down.

The “recipe” is below.

Stab potatoes a few times with a fork and wrap each in foil. Fill crock pot with potatoes. Cover with lid and cook on high for 2 1/2 to 4 hours depending on the size of your potatoes. DO NOT add water. The person who submitted the recipe said it doesn’t hurt to leave them in for the full four hours, even if they are  done sooner and that she has cooked five to six large potatoes on low for 8-10 hours and they came out perfectly.

I can’t wait to try this.

I ran across this post in my “draft” folder. I forgot to share this recipe with you back in the summer.  But summer will come again, that time of year when giant zucchini make their way from gardens all around you and suddenly appear on your kitchen counter. What to do with a zucchini you could use as a weapon? Stuff it!

I forgot to take a photo before we began to enjoy dinner. I am not the world’s greatest food photographer either….but I swear it tasted yummy!

The recipe below is a general one. Customize according to your tastes and what you have in your cupboard.

1 large onion

1 lb ground meat

1/2 cup dried bread crumbs

1 1/2 to 2 cups of sauce such as spaghetti sauce, beef gravy, onion soup, etc… (I used a package of Campbell’s Slow Cooking sauce, Tavern Style Pot Roast)

Shredded Cheese

Chop up onion and put in same pan as the ground meat. Cook until meat is no longer pink. Add sauce and breadcrumb to meat mixture and stir.

Meanwhile, cut zucchini in half lengthwise. Scrap seeds out using a spoon. Leave about a half an inch thick shell.  Put the zucchini halves in a baking dish, cutting off ends as needed to make the zucchini fit in the dish. Spoon the meat mixture into the zucchini shells. Cover tightly with foil. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour in a 375 degree oven. I used a fork to check the doneness of the zucchini. (My giant squash needed a little over an hour to get to a pleasantly cooked but firm state, so plan accordingly.) Sprinkle with cheese and put back into the oven for a minute or two to allow the cheese to melt. Cut off a big hunk and enjoy with some garlic bread.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I decided to give you one of my mother’s delicious recipes. My mother, Nell, was a great cook. As a matter of fact that is one of the things my Dad liked about her when they began to date. He had finally found someone who cooked as good as his mother. Talk about the way to a man’s heart being though his stomach!

This recipe is for Angel biscuits. They bake up with a unique taste and texture and are delicious and when you slather then with butter and jam, Oh My!

Angel Biscuits

I pkg yeast

1/2 cup oil

2 cups buttermilk

1/2 cup warm water

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp soda

5 cups self-rising flour

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the yeast and all other ingredients to the flour and mix well. Take amount needed and pat out to 1/2-inch thick. Cut with biscuit cutter and place on baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake until golden brown, about 15 – 20 minutes.

I have had to eliminate MSG from my diet. There are lots of people who are sensitive to this additive and you can now add me to that list. This has forced me to cook more from scratch because MSG is everywhere in prepared foods. It is in most packaged gravy mixes (and I love gravy). It is in most canned soups  (and I love a little soup for lunch). It is in so many things I can’t list them all here. So, at the advanced age of 51 I am having to cook. Sigh.

Last week I made split pea soup from scratch. Hubby declared it was “excellent” which made me very proud! I have to admit it was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. I think it was even worth the half hour I spent chopping veggies for it. The recipe I started off with was courtesy of Martha Stewart. However, I made a few changes that I think mad e it better such as adding more chicken broth and less water and adding a little garlic powder. I made some corn bread to go with it. Yum!

Here is Martha’s split pea soup, with a little help from Kim.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 chopped medium onion

4 carrots, thinly sliced

3 celery stalks, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon dried thyme leaves

Sprinkle of garlic powder (maybe 1/2 a teaspoon)

4 cups chicken broth

3 cups of water

1 bag (16 ounces) split peas, picked over (Really, this is very important. It is very common for there to be little stones mixed in with the dried peas, beans, etc…)

Ham bone, slice of ham, or I used 1 package uncured English style bacon from Fresh and Easy Market.

Salt and pepper to taste (Don’t add salt before tasting. The broth and ham add lots of salt)

In a Dutch oven or other large pot, heat olive oil and add chopped onion, celery, carrots, thyme and garlic. Cook until veggies begin to soften, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Add broth, water, split peas, and ham or bacon. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium-low and partly cover pot with lid. Simmer until peas are soft, about 30 – 45 minutes. When the soup first begins to boil you may want to skim the foam off that rises to the top.

Many recipes, including Martha’s, have you puree half of the soup to give it that creamy consistency. Yeah, I don’t think so. I just let the soup cook a little longer and the peas break down and fall apart and that is good enough for me. But feel free to puree away if you would like, Martha says to work in batches and only fill the blender half full each time and to make sure the lid is on the blender. You don’t want hot soup going everywhere!

My friend and neighbor Linda brought a dish to our house that was a big hit! Half salad/half dessert, the best part of this yummy dish are the sweet crunchy bits. The party game during dinner became “Guess what the crunchy bits are.” I finally cornered Linda and found out that they were pretzels! These pretzels were baked with butter and sugar to make them extra yummy!

Linda tells me that this is not a dish to make ahead or to make extra for the next day because the pretzels lose their crunchiness overnight.  However, I suppose you could make extra and just save the pretzels to be added right before serving. Whatever the case, enjoy!

Pineapple Pretzel Salad

2-3 cups pretzels

1 stick butter (yes, the good stuff, not margarine)

1/2 cup sugar

Crush the pretzels and pour into a 9×13 backing pan. Slice the stick of butter and place over the pretzels. Sprinkle sugar over the pretzels. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes, stirring every 2-3 minutes. After removing from the oven, continue to stir frequently until mixture is cool.

1 -8 ounce package cream cheese

1/2 cup sugar

20 ounce can crushed pineapple, drained

12 ounce carton Cool Whip

Cream together the cream cheese and the sugar. Add drained crushed pineapple and mix well. Fold in the Cool Whip. Add pretzels just prior to serving so they stay crisp.

Sorry, I don’t have a photo of the salad. Instead, feel free to contemplate how uncomfortable it was for this little girl to sit in a box of pineapples….

Courtesy State Library of Queensland, via Flicker

Today I am going to give you my Pumpkin Pie recipe. Over the last few years I have tweaked the standard recipe found on the back of the Libby’s pumpkin can to suit my tastes more. It all started with a mistake I made several years ago. The standard recipe calls for two cans of evaporated milk to make the two-pie recipe. Well, I messed up and put only one can of milk in that particular batch. Oops! But I liked the result as it was just more pumpkiny. Then it evolved even more because of  the pumpkin pie my mother’s best friend Emma Jane makes. She uses less sugar in her pie and I liked that as well as it made it less overwhelmingly sweet and made the pie and whipped cream work so well together, as opposed to fighting it out for the title of which is the sweetest. The last thing I did, which I just started last year, it to put all the ingredients in the blender and blend the heck out of it. That makes up for any creaminess lost due to cutting down on the milk. I like my pumpkin pie to be really creamy! So here it is!

Kim’s Pumpkin Pie

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cloves

4 large eggs

1 -29 oz can pumpkin (not pie filling!!!)

1 -12 oz can evaporated milk

2 unbaked deep dish frozen pie crusts

Put everything (but the pie crust) in a blender and blend until well mixed. I recommend putting the wet ingredients in first and then the spices so they don’t get stuck in the bottom of the blender. Pour into the two pie shells and bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat and bake for 40-50 minutes more until knife inserted near center comes out clean.  Serve with whipped cream, lots of whipped cream!