Red Beans and Whipped Cream

Seriously. If you love chocolate, make this. Please oh please make this. It’s so easy, so rich, so chocolatey.

1 1/2 cups white sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk
1/4 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust

Mix the sugar and cocoa together. Beat the eggs with a fork and mix into sugar/cocoa. Add the rest of the ingredients.

Pour into the pie crust and cook at 350 for at least 45 minutes. Mine was probably closer to an hour.

I recommend topping with ice cream or whipped cream.

Make sure the butter is not really hot when you add it, or else you’ll end up with scrambled eggs in your pie. Not so yummy.

I wanted to make another one and had ingredients for it except for the evaporated milk. I replaced it with some heavy cream I had on hand and it worked. That pie was way uglier, but actually may have been better tasting, even. It ended up with a crunchy meringue type crust on top.

One of my dear online friends suggested this recipe when I was feeding my freezer before Lorelei arrived.

I’m writing this for two pot pies because one pre-cooked chicken from the grocery store is perfect for two, but you can always cut it in half.

2 pie crusts and 2 pie crust tops (you can buy unroll-and-bake crusts in the fridge section near the biscuits and use those for the top and bottom or just for the tops)

meat from one pre-cooked grocery store rotisserie chicken

2 cans cream of mushroom soup (if you don’t like the fungus amoung us, substitute whatever “cream of” soup you want)

2 cups milk

frozen mixed veggies

Combine all ingredients in prepared pie crust. Use as much of the chicken and the veggies as you’d like. Top with another crust. Seal edges. Poke wholes with a fork.

You can freeze this uncooked.

When ready to cook (from frozen)- 400 degrees for around 1 hour and 15 minutes.

This is such an easy thing to feed to your freezer. I just froze in two-serving sized bags, since there are two of us who eat solids.

1 pound ground meat- turkey, beef, chicken, or fake meat
1/2 jar salsa of choice
1/2 jar enchilada sauce
tablespoon taco seasoning
some oil for your pan

You can add whatever else tickles you… diced onion, peppers, etc. If you choose to do that, add it to your oil first, before the meat, and let them soften some.

Pour some oil in your pan and let meat cook mostly through. Then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a few minutes- until desired consistency.

If you use fake meat you don’t even need to cook it (unless you use onions or peppers and you want to cook those).

This is my dad’s recipe from back when he ate poultry. It’s soooo easy.

1lb ground turkey, browned
2 cans Great Northern or Navy beans (I used one can great northern and one can of white kidney beans)
1 can white hominy
1 packet chili seasoning

I added 1 small can of green chilies, too.

Combine in pot and simmer for twenty or thirty minutes, or put in a crock pot for about two or three hours on high or four or five hours on low.

Here is the recipe I used. It’s a slight variation of the recipe that my friend, Anelle, posted soon after he son was born.

1 Cup butter
1 Cup peanut butter
1 Cup Sugar
2 Cups Brown Sugar
4 eggs
1 TBS vanilla
1 tsp salt
2 tsp Baking Soda
2 1/2 C flour
1/3 C Wheat Germ
1/3 C Wheat Bran
1/3 C Flaxmeal
4 C Oatmeal (I used old fashioned)
Chocolate and peanut butter chips

Cream sugars and butter/pb, add eggs and vanilla and mix. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients except oatmeal and chips. Slowly beat dry ingredients into wet. Then stir in oats and chips (just use as many chips as you want).

Line a jelly roll pan (cookie sheet with sides) with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray. Press dough into pan evenly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

You can also use all butter instead of butter/pb. And you can use whatever chips or other add-ins you want. Yum!

Oh so yum. Not very pretty to look at, though.

I had no soy sauce, so I looked up soy sauce substitutions online and just kinda guessed. I also went heavy on the honey.

1 cup lentils
2 cups water
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp soysauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp ginger
1 clove garlic
1 small onion
salt & pepper to taste

Bake, covered, at 350 degrees until tender. It was about an hour and a half for me, but they probably could have used another ten minutes.

My freezer was so hungry! I mean, it’s full of breast milk. But it’s seven months old so it’s totally ready for solids. It sits all by itself and everything.

So I decided to feed it. Nom nom nom.

Here’s what I fed it this time:

24 turkey meatballs

5 turkey burgers

5 beef burgers

2 chicken pot pies (8 servings)

1 quiche (4 servings)

4 servings of white chili

8 servings of fake taco meat mix

honey baked lentils

2+ servings of balsamic mustard dump chicken

2+ servings of honey seseme dump chicken

2 pans of lactation bars

Plus I made 7 servings of chicken bbq – but we ate that already

I haven’t tried most of the recipes before, so I feel wary of putting them up yet. But as we eat things I’ll post the recipes and link to them here. If you want a recipe for something in particular just email me and I’ll send it your way.

My freezer is full now. It still has room for more breast milk, though.

My family is all laughing at me right now, I’m sure. “Leave it to Rhiannon to find a way to find another way to eat ketchup.”

Chipotle Ketchup

1/3 c Ketchup
1tsp Lime juice
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin

Mix all ingredients together

I’m cooking up a bag of sweet potato fries to go with this, but I bet it would be good on a burger, too.

Note that this is only as spicy as your chili powder.

So, I’ve given up dairy and chocolate because it seems to make Lorelei upset. I’m trying to cut back on soy and wheat, too.

So this recipe is a definite winner. And it is endlessly adaptable.

The bars are sort of muffin-like in texture.

Baked Oatmeal- Original recipe
6 C oats
4 eggs
1/2 C oil
3/4 C sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 C milk

Mix all ingredients together. Bake in 9 X 13 inch pan for 30 mins at
350 F.

Baked Oatmeal- My adapatations

I cut the recipe in half.
I used applesauce instead of oil
I used wheat germ/wheat bran/ground flax in place of 1/3 of the oats
I used maple syrup in place of sugar
I added chopped nuts
I used almond milk

I mixed some margerine and brown sugar together for a quick topping for the bars.

Baked in an 8×8 pan at 350 for 45 minutes.

SO good.

You could use egg substitute. You could add raisins/craisins/chocolate chips. I think I might make peanut butter ones next time. Caramel chips would make it a good sweeter snack. The possibilities are endless!

And oats are good for milk supply.

These supposedly keep for one week in fridge and freeze well

EDIT #1: Peanut butter and carob baked oatmeal
I made these again but this time used peanut butter in place of oil. Brown sugar in place of the white sugar. And I added carob chips. I also did the same thing with replacing part of the oats with flax/wheat germ/wheat bran, and almond milk in place of milk.

Edie #2: Peanut butter and jelly baked oatmeal
I made the Peanut butter ones from above, but without carob chips. When they were about halfway through cooking I dolloped low-sugar grape jelly all over the top, and then topped with a crushed graham cracker/butter/brown sugar mixture.

EDIT #3: S’mores baked oatmeal
I’ve decided that small-moderate amounts of chocolate don’t seem to be too much of an issue, so I tried out some s’mores baked oatmeal. They’re a total winner.
I, once again, used wheat germ and wheat bran in place of 1/3 of the oats. Almond milk instead of regular milk. Applesauce instead of oil. To sweeten I used a mix of brown sugar, molasses, and honey. Then I added semi-sweet (dairy free) chocolate chips, and some mini marshmallows. Oh yum.

I couldn’t quite decide if this should go here or on the pregnancy blog, but I decided that this blog is the more neglected of the two, and that while I was feeding my freezer because I’m about to have a baby, there might be more reasons to want to feed your freezer. That was a very long sentence.

This isn’t a recipe post, it’s just a random post of what I’ve been doing this week in the kitchen.

Thursday I did a huge $200 grocery trip to gather the supplies I needed. It seems like a lot, but I made a ton of food, so I actually think it was money well spent. As long as we actually eat the food and it doesn’t just turn into icy bags of freezer burned random food that never gets eaten.

In order to avoid the random chunks of ice-food in the bottom of the freezer I enlisted the help of several tools. First off, good freezer bags. Ziploc brand. None of the store brand “storage” bags- I’m talking about heavy duty Ziploc brand freezer bags.

Next, sharpies. Luckily I have acquired a ton of sharpies from my baby shower. Use the sharpies to label what the food is, how much it is (for sauces and broths, especially), and when it was made.

The third thing isn’t altogether necessary, but I have enjoyed it. Ziploc makes a cheap vacuum sealer. The sealer pump cost $3.99 and came with three quart-sized bags. Unfortunately the bags for it aren’t very cheap, so I used it sparingly, and for the items that I thought were most likely to suffer from serious freezer burn. They are resealable, so with things like muffins you can quick-freeze a bunch, then vacuum seal them, and then when you want one, just pull one out and re-vacuum the bag.

So here is what was cooked this week:

Thursday I made two large chicken pot pies and froze them uncooked.

I pulled out my trusty Cuisinart and chopped a bunch of onions and a bunch of red/green bell peppers. I set aside the correct amount for a couple of recipes I was going to work on, and then froze the rest in 1/2 cup servings.

I heated up some Morning Star Farms fake burger and added some onion, peppers, taco seasoning, taco sauce, and salsa. I separated this into two bags.

I made four small meatloaves- I think they’re going to be one serving each. I didn’t cook them, I just froze them uncooked in little disposable pans.

I made a bunch of my simple pasta sauce, and froze it in two-cup (if I recall correctly) servings.

Then there was chicken broth. Oh-so-much chicken broth. I had all the various odds and ends for it saved in the freezer already, so I just dumped it all into the crock pot with some water and cooked it on low for about 36 hours. I strained it, and it’s now a beautiful dark brown broth frozen in two cup servings. Bonus: if you save the pieces for it ahead of time, it’s free. I made 11 cups, total. For free.

Yesterday Charlotte and I made a huge batch of Dinosaur BBQ sauce.

We put a pork butt in the crock pot (didn’t even bother cleaning it well, since chicken broth certainly wasn’t going to hurt anything). I ended up overcooking it, so the BBQ is probably going to be better suited to sandwiches than just eating it off a plate.

We made a big batch of pizza won tons.

We made blueberry muffins that were whole wheat with a handful of flax, wheat germ, and wheat bran. And a crumble topping. Mmmmmm.

We were going to make more muffins, but Home Depot was out of the freezer we wanted, so we won’t have enough freezer space until they deliver it next weekend.

Charlotte also brought me a huge batch of lactation bars. They’re basically a cookie bar with lots and lots of oats (which is good for milk supply), peanut butter (protein), and some chocolate chips (yum factor).

Today Zach shredded the pork and I dumped a bunch of the BBQ sauce in it, and froze it in individual bags. Then I froze the leftover BBQ sauce separately.

In addition to all of that I also bought a couple packages of chicken breasts and a package of ham steaks.

Hopefully this will feed us for a while after the baby gets here! We also have promises of food from a few family members and friends.