Chicken Ramen Mashed Potato’s

Hi there. I made another batch of Spaghetti here last night Yes we eat a lot of pasta in this house. I didn’t use my usual sauce last night but I used those packets that you can buy and mix with tomato paste.  I added a can of chopped whole tomato’s to two packets of sauce mix and made it the way they tell you to but excluded the oil. I also added a big sprinkle of basil. It came out really good and I will proably be making this again.

One of Tom’s favorite quick meals is Chicken Ramen Noodles and Mashed Potato’s. Ok this is a very easy dish to make and even though it does have a ton of Carbs in it, when your broke you don’t really care right? LOL. I just boil the soup according to the directions. While thats going I make a couple of servings of Instant Mashed Potato’s (you can use real but I usually don’t due to time and easyiness factor).  Once your noodles are done drain the water out and combine with the already made potato’s. Add your season packet to the combo, and mix (you can add a few drops of milk to stir easier).  It looks like wall paper paste but don’t let that scare you. This isn’t the most healthiest of meals but its good and it goes a long way.

Tonight we are having Turkey Burgers. I love ground Turkey meat and I pretty much quite using regular ground beef. I think it has a better flavor and sure isn’t greasy. Jenny O’ is my go to gal for turkey products. Well I am off to knit for a few. Have a great day and enjoy your food.

Best Wishes,Linda

Left Overs

I made another try at the bread in the convection oven and I just don’t think I made the batch right. It came out tasting wonderfully and had a wonderful crust but it was pretty flat. I have seen tons of photos of what it should look like but mine haven’t been so full and fluffy. Oh well. Back to the drawing board I’m going to make a new batch on Thursday.

Today I had a leftover Ham and Cheese sandwich made with the bread I baked today. OMG it was awesome. Usually I buy the store brand everything but I saw this cheese on sale and I thought I would try it. I notice a huge difference in the taste. I don’t like American cheese singles usually but these were excellent. Combined all together I had a wonderfully Pani ( I  just pushed down hard with a hot pad on top of the grill lid) type sandwich on my big George Foreman grill I got from my Mother In Law.

And it was good too.

For dinner we had Leftover Spaghetti. I like to call it Fried Spaghetti. I just take my leftover Spaghetti that I made from the W*Mart brand Spaghetti (we buy as cheap as we can) and Hunt’s sauce. The sauce is our favorite and I usually try and mix it up a bit, with the flavors they have. We use two cans of Sauce and 1 1/4 lb. of a 2 lb. box of the spaghetti.  Ok now with your leftovers , just heat up a non stick skillet and add about 4 pats of margarine from a stick. I just add a huge helping of spaghetti to the melted margarine and then add a big squeeze of ketchup and mix it up until its warmed through. It’s really good and it adds a great flavor. Try it you may like it .

Ok now I want to give you a little back ground information on me. I’m a married housewife who loves to cook and would love to be able to afford all those wonderful, healthy, organic, gourmet foods that we are wanting and needing in life but seriously I can’t afford it. I shop on a very thin budget of just about 100 dollars every 2 weeks sometimes more, sometimes less. The things I make are mostly with just simple ingredients and the ingredients I buy are usually the store brand kind but  some times I find a good deal and I pick up the name brands. I also use coupons when ever I can.

I decided to start this blog for a couple of reasons. One that I like to cook and Two, I like good food, but stuff that’s easy and cheap to make. I get a lot of my recipes online and I love that there is so many to chose from. I also love collecting recipe books.

At this time I only have the following items: a microwave, a single burner for pots and pans, a griddle, a George Foreman grill, a gas grill (outside), and a round convection oven (that I don’t know how to work properly to make bread). I know it sounds like a lot of different things to cook on but I have a lot of problems. Mostly from the  single burner that I use it isn’t strong enough to make things crispy when frying. I can boil water and lightly fry stuff but that’s about it. I also have to use cheap stainless steel pans  or a cheap non stick pan. I have some wonderful Name brand pans I inherited but I can’t use them until I get a stove. I don’t have a stove due to financial difficulty’s or as I would like to say “We’re just plain broke”. My husband Tom said I should have named this blog “Indigent Linda” LOL. But I try and make it all work and most of the time it does.

Well all this is a forever post so I am off to Knit for a while. Have a great day and enjoy your food.

Best Wishes,Linda

Mmmm, Bread

I am not much of a baker I’m not joking either. I have been known to make some serious boo boo’s in the oven. One time I blew up and then caught a cake on fire! Yeah I know that’s pretty bad. But I do know how to make really good Chocolate Chip cookies thanks to the  Nestle Toll House recipe,but I tweak it with half  Dark Chocolate Chips and half milk chocolate. Mmmm so, so good!

So any how I came across an awesome recipe for Artisan Bread in Five Minutes (recipe for master dough here)(Great article and website also) and thought  Hmmm, You know what?  I can do that! Well I mean I can try at least and what do I lose out on really. Ok now here’s the goofy part. I don’t have an oven per say. I have a little round table top convection oven. I have only used it once and that was to make a John Morrell Bone In Spiral Cut Ham recently. OMG was that good and it came out wonderfully so I decided to try the bread in it.

Well I kinda messed up a little on the recipe in only that after I mixed the dough I didn’t let it sit out in the container for a few hours to rise and I just plopped it into the refrigerator.  I did let it sit overnight in the fridge and I made it according to directions thereafter. It came out kinda, well flat. Awww, I know but it was good! I mean it tasted so good that when I bit into a piece I moaned with happiness. The crust came out extra hard because I didn’t know what temperature to set the oven to. I tried 450 degrees but it was to much.  Oh, and another thing I had to do was use the top rack of my convection oven flipped over to make it taller then my bottom rack but shorter then my top rack (nothing is every just easy huh).  I added water to the bottom and used a piece of alumium foil with corn meal to set the bread on. Hey a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. I’m poor and broke. LOL.

So I then set out to make batch number 2. These are an experiment people. This time I prepped my dough and set it on the cornmeal already on the aluminum foil. I let my microwave go for 1 minute without anything in it then set the aluminum foil with the dough inside it to rise. My kitchen is cold so this is why I added this step. I figured since the last one didn’t rise properly I needed a warmer space. Well it rose pretty good I guess (like I said I have never done this) and I stuck it in the convection oven. I turned it on for 30 minutes and set the temperature to 375 degrees this time once it got to 10 minutes I turned it up to 450 degrees  so it could crisp up. Once it was done I pulled that baby out and low and behold that sucker proofed right up and became my first non-mistake bread here’s a photo but its only half a loaf come on people how are we to resist hot fresh bread!

I highly recommend this recipe and I will definately be making more. Have a great day and enjoy your food.

Best Wishes,Linda

My grand entrance!

Hi and Welcome to Justplaingood. I’ll be your hostess Linda. Today’s special is Recipes and Reviews . The Recipes have a hint of this and a little of that, with a nice side of yummy! Following the main course we will have a fabulous Review. I hope you enjoy and please come back and see us again at Justplaingood. Have a great day!