Favorite Mashed Potatoes

We love mashed potatoes at our house! Actually we love potatoes in general.  And I can’t do instant….I just can’t!  I just never have really liked them.  There are a lot of things I can take shortcuts on or make “from the box.”  But I have to do potatoes from scratch!
Today I’m sharing my “recipe.”  I’m using the quotes, because I don’t actually have an exact recipe.  It’s one of those foods that I just sort of throw together.  But I do have some approximations for you at least!
Also, while we’re on the subject of mashed potatoes, I should tell you that Tater Mitts are awesome! My husband bought me some not long after they came out at the stores, and I love them! (So much that my hubby and I even have a song that we sing about the tater mitts….yeah, we’re just a kind of a little bit nuts!)  Anyway I use these every time I make mashed potatoes. (The secret is boiling your potatoes for about 20 minutes—skin & all…not chopped—and then the skin comes right off.  The instuctions that come with the mitts say 8 minutes I think….but I always do it for 20-25 minutes.  And then after you do your peeling and chopping, you just put them back in your pot to cook till they are done.) It’s so easy and quick!

Recipe for Favorite Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients:
4-6 potatoes (boiled, peeled chopped)
about 3 heaping spoonfuls of mayo
little milk (I’d say about 1/2 a cup)
Pepper
Morton’s Nature’s Season  (or salt/pepper/garlic salt)

Directions: Peel, chop, and boil your potatoes. (Or boil, peel, chop, and boil, if using tator mitts.) Drain the water off your potatoes. Add your milk and mayo. Stir.  Add seasonings. (I generally add, then stir, then add, then stir, until I have it right.)   Stir until  you reach desired consistency.  (We like ours a little lumpy.)

-Jerri

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I’m posting a link to this post on the following sites:
Tempt My Tummy Tuesday is hosted by Blessed With Grace.
Homemaker Mondays is hosted by 11th Heaven’s Homemade Haven.
Tasty Tuesday is hosted by Balancing Beauty & Bedlam.

Works for Me Wednesday is hosted by We Are THAT Family
DIY Day is hosted by A Soft Place to Land

Food Friday is hosted by  Designs by Gollum
Tip Me Tuesday is hosted by Tip Junkie
Weekend Review is hosted by Tater Tots & Jello

Creamy Apple Salad

Photo Credit: Kraft

Today Toni at at The Happy Housewife is hosting salads and sides for the Bloggy Progressive Dinner. So today I’m sharing a salad this Creamy Apple Salad. It’s something I remember seeing around Christmas time as a kid. This is very light, and it would be a great thing to make to counter all the sweet and fattening items we generally indulge in this time of year, and as you can see this dish is also the perfect color for the holidays!

Recipe for Creamy Apple Salad

Ingredients:
2 cups of red and green apples, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup light mayonaise
1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Directions: Mix all ingredients; cover. Refridgerate several hours or until chilled.

-Jerri


Thanksgiving Menu Must-Haves

Need a little inspiration to get you through the Thanksgiving holiday? Here’s a collection of recipes to get you started. Happy Eating! And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Cornbread Dressing from Southern Living

Chicken-Green Bean Casserole from Tablespoon

Sweet Potato Casserole from Taste of Home

Sour Cream Mashed Potatoes from Good Housekeeping

Caramelized-Apple Spice Cake from Martha Stewart

Ultimate Pumpkin Pie from Food Network

-Jerri


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I’m posting a link to this post on the following sites:
Tempt My Tummy Tuesday is hosted by
Blessed With Grace.
Homemaker Mondays is hosted by
11th Heaven’s Homemade Haven.
Tasty Tuesday is hosted by Balancing Beauty & Bedlam.
Ultimate Recipe is Swap is hosted by Life as Mom.
Friday Feasts is hosted by
Momtrends.
Works for Me Wednesday is hosted by
We Are THAT Family
Hooked on Fridays is hosted by Hooked on Houses

Sweet Thursday: Muffins & Breads

It’s time for our Sweet Thursday Muffin & Bread round-up! Big thanks to this month’s contributors! These are some yummy treats!

Join the Round-Up: If you have posted a dessert that goes with this month’s theme and would like to be included in my round-up, just leave your link in the comments section and I’ll add your dessert to the post.

Next Month’s Sweet Thursday Theme will be: Cookies. If you’d like to be featured in the next Sweet Thursday Round-Up, send an email with a link to your post to simplysweethome@hotmail.com. Deadline: September 24.

Black Berry Muffins from Snooky Doodle cakes & more

Deluxe Apple Muffins with Streusal Topping Chaya’s Comfy Cook Blog


Cinnamon Bran Muffins from I Blame My Mother

Carrot Cupcakes from Snooky Doodle cakes & more

Black Berry Cream Cupcakes from Snooky Doodle cakes & more

Cinnamon Sweet Bread from Nina’s Recipes

Chocolate Zucchni Muffins from Barbara Bakes

Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins from Obsessed with Baking

Banana Bread from Simply Sweet Home

I’d love to have more Sweet Thursday bakers. It’s a great way to share recipes and show off your blog, so if you’re already posting a recipe that will fit in with our theme, you might as well send it our way. To be a part of my Sweet Thursday Cookie Round-up in September, just email your submission to me by Sept 24. For more information on this event, check out my Sweet Thursday guidelines.

-Jerri


Best of SSH: Summer Food Edition

Just in time for the 4th of July, here is a special Summer Food Edition of Best of SSH, complete with an appetizer, some stuff for the grill, and plenty of yummy desserts!

I’m also going to be posting a Summer Fun edition which will include some posts on Summer Party Ideas, Activities, Vacation Stuff, and some Summer Safety Posts.

I’m doing two separate posts, because I was going through last summer’s posts, and there were just too many links for one post. Plus, I have a lot more readers now than I did last year when I wrote these posts, and I want to give more people the opportunity to see them. Hope you enjoy!

Burgers on the Grill

Yummy Kabob Recipes for the Summer

Bacon Chive Potato Salad

Under the Sea Cake

Banana Cream Trifle

Orange Cream Cake

Flag Cake

Red, White, and Blue Shortcake

Pina Colada Plus

Strawberry Pie

Crab Appetizer Napoleons

-Jerri





Organizing Round-Up: My Recipe Binder

Organizing Blog

This month’s Organizing Round-Up Project was recipes. Last year I started printing out recipes from the internet, and placing them in a simple binder, complete with page protectors, as seen below:

(For tips on organizing your own recipe binder you can read my post from earlier this week.)

Back in January, in an effort to rid by computer of dozens of bookmarked recipes, I copied all the best recipes I had saved and placed them in a word document to be printed. I then sorted through all my recipes and divided them into categories.

I used colored tab sheets to divide the binder into sections. My categories are: Appetizers, Soups, Main Dishes/Casseroles, Breads/Sides, Cakes/Pies, Cookies/Candies, and Misc.

In addition to my recipe binder, I have two recipe boxes. And I decided to place my recipe cards into the binder so that all my recipes would be in one place. The Hershey’s box shown below is now empty. (I haven’t yet decided what to use it for.) And now I’m storing blank recipe cards in the green box.
Below are some recipe cards from one of the boxes. I sorted all the cards into piles so that they could be placed in the appropriate section of the binder.

And I used 4X6 photo pages to insert the recipe cards in. If you want you can place 2 cards in the same pocket back to back. But for cards that had a photo on one side and a recipe on the other, I placed a single card in a pocket, so that I can see the recipe and the photo, just by flipping the page and without removing the card from the page.

Head over to Org Junkie to see how others organized their recipes.

-Jerri


Organizing Your Recipe Binder

This month I’ve been gearing up for the recipe organizing round-up, and I’ve put together a lot of tips on organizing recipes. But since my round-up post will be centered on my recipe binder alone, (and for the sake of keeping the posts below novel length), I decided to just focus this week’s tips post on recipe binders.

-Rather than printing recipes immediately or keeping them on your desktop forever, pick a day each month or every couple of months to have a recipe printing session.

-Only print the recipes that you’ll definitely make. This saves paper and prevents you from cluttering your recipe binder with unnecessary stuff.

– To avoid cluttering your computer, delete the bookmarks after you’ve printed the recipe.

-Copy and paste all the recipes you have bookmarked to a word document. This saves you from printing unneccessary stuff from each webpage. And you can edit the whole document so that everything is in the same format and font/style. (plus you only have to click print once.)

-Use tabs/subject dividers to divide your binder into sections. Or if you have a lot of recipes, divide them into separate binders.

-File the recipes that you print behind appropriate sections in the binder so that they stay organized.

-If you make a recipe and don’t like it, remove it from your binder.

-Go through your binder periodically and remove recipes that you never make.

-When you try a new recipe, make notes of any changes you make to the recipe and/or any changes you want to make next time. (different ingredients, change of cooking time, change of recipe size)

By being extremely selective about the recipes you choose to print & getting rid of bad or unused recipes, you can ensure that you have a clutter-free binder filled with ONLY the most delicious recipes!

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This post is featured on Rocks in My Dryer and Tammy’s Recipes.

-Jerri

Favorite Recipes of 2008

Last year I did a post, highlighting my favorite posts of 2007. This year I’m doing something a little different. I did a round up of some of my favorite recipe posts. After all, the recipes seem to get the most comments; plus, a lot of my other posts are seasonal in nature, but recipes are relevant for the entire year.

I can’t really say that I have any *absolute* favorite recipes. Then again, does anyone really have a #1 favorite recipe or even a favorite recipe post? But I felt that all of these were worthy of a second look. Happy New Year!

Cakes & Pies

Slow Cooker Hot Fudge Cake

Mini Almond Bundt Cakes

Coconut Cream Cake

Egg Custard Pie

Easy Autumn Pear Cake

Other Desserts

Apple Crisp

Peanut Butter Balls

Cake Mix Cookies

Unbaked Caramel Cookie Bars

Cinnamon Muffins

Other Recipes

Crab Appetizer Napoleons

Fantasy Football Meatballs

Chicken Florentine

Bacon, Caesar, Mozzarella Panini


-Jerri

Menu Plan Monday for December 29


This past week has gone by so fast. On Christmas day (Thursday) I felt like it was a Wednesday, and on Friday, it felt like a Thursday to me, and so on and so on…

Luckily due to the holidays and everything, I didn’t get a chance to make some of the things I had planned on last week, so they’re getting moved to this week. (which makes for some easy meal planning.)

I did get the chance to make one of my new recipes last week. I made the bacon cheeseburger skillet, which turned out very well. I’ll try to post the recipe and picture later on in the week. Till then, here is this week’s menu. Happy Monday!

Breakfast – cereal, pancakes, eggs/grits/bacon

Lunches – sandwiches, beef stew (from the freezer), leftovers from dinner

Dinners
Monday – Roast beef & gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans
Tuesday – Chicken Tetrazzini (didn’t get to make last week)
Wednesday – appetizer night: finger sandwiches, buffalo chicken bites, chips & dip, nuts, and leftover christmas candy
Thursday – ham, black eyed peas, cornbread, and boiled cabbage or salad
Friday – Leftovers
Saturday – Chicken Tortilla Soup *new recipe*
Sunday – not sure yet

Go to orgjunkie.com to participate in MPM.

-Jerri


Recipe of the Week: Cake Mix Cookies


A lot of the times when I want fresh-baked cookies, I just buy cookie dough and bake it, because it’s so easy, especially now that they have the break-and-bake stuff. But for gift baskets and parties, I like to have cookies that I can truly say were made by me.

Here’s an incredibly easy cookie recipe that I just tried for the first time the other day. These are so sweet and delicious, I could hardly wait to share them! The best thing about this recipe (besides the taste, of course) was that I had all the ingredients on hand already. I just hate finding a new recipe and not being able to make it because I’m lacking ingredients. As soon as I found the recipe, I got up immediately and had them made in minutes. Perfect!

I’m planning on making cookie & candy gift baskets for people, and these are definitely going in the baskets! I’m also submitting these to the following carnivals: Cottage Magpie hosted a cookie exchange this week, and My Kitchen Treasures is hosting a Homemade Christmas Gifts event. I’m also posting these on The Happy Housewife for the dessert portion of the Bloggy Progressive Dinner and to the Eat Christmas Cookies event at Food Blogga.

Happy Baking!

Recipe for Cake Mix Cookies:
Ingredients:
1 Yellow Cake Mix
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup oil
1 egg
candy sprinkles (optional)
Directions: Mix eggs, water, oil, and cake mix. After well mixed, add sprinkles. Roll into balls and place on greased cookie sheet or cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Place about 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. (Makes 2 dozen cookies)
Tips & Suggestions:
-After baking, cover with additional sprinkles or dust with powdered sugar.
-If you’ve got a real sweet tooth, upon cooling, cover cookies with your favorite icing.
-Try this recipe with other flavored cake mixes, or change it up by adding nuts or chocolate chips.
-To keep dough from sticking to your hands, cover your hands in powdered sugar.


-Jerri