Clean 6-8 potatoes.  Place them in a large pot and add water to cover them.  Add salt and boil until they fall apart when you prick them with a fork.  About 20-30 minutes.  Drain.  Place in mixer bowl.  Add milk, butter, cream cheese, salt, and pepper to taste.  I use a whole block of cream cheese and then add the rest as I taste it and see what it needs.  Mix on speed 1 and moving to 2 if necessary until smooth.

Whisk together in a bowl:

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp honey
1 sprig worth of rosemary
pepper to taste

Pour in a ziplock bag, add whatever you are marinating and refrigerate.

All of these measurements are approximate.  In reality I just dumped the ingredients in until it looked right.  I made the recipe with boneless skinless chicken breasts.  I get the pre trimmed kind because I would trim away the whole chicken if left to trim it on my own.  I refrigerated the mixture for a few hours.  My experience has been to try to refrigerate for not less than 2 hours and not more than 24 hours.  I don’t know how correct this is but to cook, I throw the chicken in a skillet on a pretty low setting (just low enough so that the oil doesn’t spatter but maybe that’s the wrong way I don’t know) until the chicken turns color half way up the side and then flip.  To check to make sure it’s done, I cut into it while still in the pan to make sure no more pink is left.

Cube a 2-3 lbs boneless pork roast.

Add the meat to the crockpot and pour a bottle of your favorite barbeque sauce.  Then pour on enough honey to lightly coat the top.

Let cook for 6-8 hours and for heaven’s sake don’t take the top off the crockpot while it’s cooking except maybe once to stir.  Shred it with two forks and you are ready to go.

I don’t eat much pork so I went to the store looking for something that said “pork roast”.  Well I didn’t find such a thing but I’m pretty sure I ended up with a boneless pork loin.  It worked.  To cube it, I sliced it like bread and then took each piece and cut it apart however I could.  This is the first time I had ever cooked pork that wasn’t bacon so I might have done it totally wrong but it turned out pretty tasty.  It took forever to shred it with the forks but I don’t know of a better way to do it.  I used Sweet Baby Ray’s Original BBQ sauce and although we like it on other stuff, I think I will try a different kind next time I cook this.

For the time being, here are some foods I like that come in a box:

-Suddenly Salad Original flavor.  I like eating this for lunch.  I cook half the box at a time because it doesn’t taste as good after it has been refrigerated.  It’s really easy to make, boil the noodles, fix the dressing, drain the pasta and rinse it, then add the dressing to the noodles.  I find that when doing half a box that I can use a regular bowl to make the dressing and then add the noodles to that bowl and mix.  This is seriously one of my favorite things but my fiance can’t stand it at all.  Oh and I pick all the little red things out of it before I boil the noodles.  I think they are tomato pieces.  You can also boil the noodles in the microwave.

-Mashed Potatoes in a box.  So easy.  I use all milk instead of milk and water and sometimes add more butter to make them tastier.  This is how my great grandmother made them and I figure if potato flakes are good enough for her then they are good enough for me.  Besides, with the all milk and extra butter they are as tasty as the real thing and are ready in no time.  Sometimes I add cheese to them or really just about any spice.  The smallest amount it recommends making is usually 2 servings but I half the ingredients and make a little bit for a snack or side dish for one and nothing bad happens.  It’s really hard to screw these up.  Sometimes I get in a hurry and heat all the non potato flake ingredients in the sauce pan and then add the flakes with nothing to cool them down.  It usually just takes more flakes.  If they are too stiff, add more milk.  If they are too soupy, add more flakes.

-Hamburger Helper or Tacos from a box.  There really aren’t any tricks to these.

I’ve got a pork roast in the crock pot today for pulled pork sandwiches.  Recipe to come.

Mix in a medium bowl:

2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

In another bowl:

Soften 1 cup (2 sticks) butter

Add in

3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix these together really good

Add 2 eggs one at a time and stir really good after each addition.

Slowly blend the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

Add

4 cups chocolate chips (24 oz)

Mix well.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Notes: Don’t use a blender.  I don’t know why, but they never turn out right if I do.  When you are ready to put them on the cookie sheets, get you hand very lightly damp in cold water and pick up a very small amount of dough and put it on the cookie sheet.  Use about 2/3 the dough you think you should and if you find the dough sticking to your hands, wet them again.  Be careful not to get them too wet or your cookies will not turn out right.  This happens to me about half the time.  I cover my cookie sheets with aluminum foil and spray them with cookie spray so I can take the cookies right off to cool and then use the sheet again right away.  I have made half this recipe before with no problems.  Any more reductions and you’d have to use half an egg which I don’t care to mess with.

My recipe (this is approximately half the recipe):

Brown in a large pot:

Half pound ground beef (I found this as patties that my grocery store had packaged)

Drain.

Add:

One regular sized can tomato sauce
One regular sized can Great Northern beans (undrained)
One regular sized can chicken broth
1 and 1/2 cups water
1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried basil

Simmer, covered, for 40 minutes.

You can go about adding the pasta in two different ways but regardless you will need:

1/4 pound small shaped pasta.  You can either add it to the soup and cook it with the soup until the pasta is done (10 ish minutes) or cook the pasta separately.

Assembly: When I worked for Miss Rose and we had this soup, we always spooned in the pasta first and put the soup on top.  Just start with enough pasta to cover the bottom of the container well and add more if you want.  Also if you want, add Parmesan cheese sprinkled over the top.

Notes:

Pasta- The advantages to cooking pasta separately is that everyone gets as much pasta in the soup as they like and it stores better.  If you know it’s all going to be eaten the night you cook it, I would just go ahead and cook the pasta with it, less work.
I just used the tiniest pasta I could find.  It came in a 1 pound bag that measured out to 2 cups and I just used 1/2 cup of this particular pasta.  Obviously, it would vary depending on the type of pasta.  Macaroni would work fine.

Spices- As a shower gifted, I received a lovely spice rack with all kinds of spices already in it.  I would suggest you go out and get a collection of spices so you have them on hand whenever you need them.  Yes, this is an initial investment, but you will never wonder if you have the right spices to cook something (unless it calls for something off the wall.)

2 and 1/2 sticks butter
1 and 1/4 cups peanut butter

Bring these to a boil.  I used a wooden spoon to mix them together and I was happy with the results.  Once they reach a boil, remove from heat and stir in

1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 and 1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar

This should give you a nice paste that isn’t really sticky.  Put it in a 8×8 greased pan and smooth it over so it looks pretty.  Cover with plastic wrap and cool in the refrigerator for about two hours.

Note: I didn’t sift the powdered sugar.  Nobody died.  But I could definitely taste the powdered sugar in the final result which perhaps would have been minimized if I had sifted it.  This took me more time to get the ingredients together than it did to cook.  Great if you have just a few minutes to cook and then can leave it in the fridge for later.  This is pretty rich and I would suggest cutting it into little tiny blocks.

-Extremely healthy.  In general, I try to cook things that aren’t terrible for us but it doesn’t always happen.  One step at a time folks, and that step is fixing dinner at home.  Then maybe I’ll move on to cooking healthy.

-Full of veggies.  We just don’t like those.  Sorry.

-Touching onions or mushrooms.  Seriously I can’t even stand for them to touch food I eat (except onions in very rare circumstances.)

-Hard to cook.  I have a very small amount of cooking skill and a moderate amount of baking luck.

What this blog is:

-Recipes that I like cooking and eating.  They aren’t hard and I’ll give my thoughts on what I could have done to make it better.  This probably won’t be like a change of ingredients, I’m thinking more “Make sure to use a large pot as mine was almost too small,” that kind of stuff.

-Not fancy.  My fiance doesn’t like fancy.  I’m still trying to figure out what that means exactly but I do know that if I refer to the crock pot as a “slow cooker”, then it’s fancy.