COWBOY BEANS ala SLOW COOKER and GREEN CHILE CORN BEER BREAD

It’s cold, wet and windy up here in the Pacific Northwest as a series of winter storms have been moving through one after another.  It’s the kind of weather that wants to make you turn over, pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep – the kind of weather that makes me crave serious comfort food.  One of our favorite comfort foods for this weather is Cowboy Beans. The best thing about this recipe is that it cooks ALL day in the slow cooker and the aroma makes the house smell cozy and homey. BE SURE AND SOAK YOUR BEANS OVERNIGHT THE DAY BEFORE YOU WANT TO MAKE THIS RECIPE.

As this recipe cooks your beans will start absorbing the flavor AND the color.  They actually become more and more tasty in the days that follow.  I usually make BEER Bread with this and it’s a HUGE hit.

COWBOY BEANS serves 6
1 pound navy beans
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 pound ground beef
4 slices thick bacon, chopped
1 cup water
3 cups beef broth
1 cup Sweet Baby Ray’s Original BBQ sauce
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup Bragg’s liquid aminos

  • Rinse your beans and drain.
  • In a large skillet brown bacon pieces over a medium heat until browned and ALMOST crisp. Remove bacon pieces with a slotted spoon to drain on paper toweling.
  • Add beef to bacon grease browning and crumbling to small pieces until cooked through. This adds are flavor! Drain well of excess grease.
  • In slow cooker whisk together the water, molasses, apple cider vinegar, liquid aminos, brown sugar and beef broth with garlic powder.
  • Stir in beans, ground beef and bacon pieces until well blended.
  • Cook covered on high 6 hours.
  • Stir in BBQ sauce,
  • Cover and cook another 2 hours or until beans are tender.

NOTE: BE SURE AND SOAK YOUR BEANS OVERNIGHT THE DAY BEFORE YOU WANT TO MAKE THIS RECIPE!

These beans make for wonderful leftovers too.  We really like them over hamburger patties like the old chili sizes from Bob’s Big Boy.

GREEN CHILE CORN BEER BREAD

3 1/2 cups self-rising flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 small can chopped green chiles, drained WELL
1 can Green Giant white shoepeg corn, drained WELL
12 ounces Beer
1 stick butter, divided 6 + 2, melted

  • Preheat oven to 350°.
  • Whisk together flour, sugar and salt.
  • Add 6 ounces melted butter and beer.
  • Add green chiles and corn.
  • Knead together uniformly, but DO NOT OVERWORK.
  • Form into a well oiled loaf pan.
  • Pour remaining 2 ounces of butter over top.
  • Bake 50-60 minutes until cooked through.

BLOGMAS 2018 – TREES & DECORATIONS – DAY 22

Before I start this post, let me just say THESE TREES ARE JUST WRONG!!

And I love how a neighboring town always does their tree right in the middle of main street. Carlie and Cady thought it was pretty neat.

Now on to our trees and decorations.  How I decorate each year changes based on my mood, weather, where we are living, etc… so it will never be the same twice!

We PREFER real trees, but last year we decided with the remodel and my surgery that we would break down and buy an artificial tree.  SHHH don’t tell hubby, but I really love this tree.


This year we have a real tree again and while it smells real I’m missing the artificial tree.   We’ve reached a compromise for next year – artificial tree with real wreaths and garlands. 😀

This is my Snowman Family arranged from 2 different years.
We made candle yule logs for Advent craft night at church one year and they were a HUGE success and soooooooo easy to do.  The decorations below are a few of my newer favorites.
My cousin that passed away in 2014 made this ornament for me.  From now it will always be hung by my shooting stars in her honor even though I’m still  mad at her for leaving the mess called A HOUSE FROM HELL for me to deal with.
And our handmade ornament by Design Chick Creations.

SALTED PUMPKIN CARAMELS

I was recently hunting for a gift idea for a friend and thought she might like a digital candy thermometer (she’s a baker and makes the most wonderful cupcakes). So I sent her a quick text to start the conversation. It went like this:

ME: Do you have a candy thermometer I could borrow?
H: No I don’t… if a recipe requires me to use a thermometer, I find another recipe 😀
ME: LMBO 😀 😀 😀 😀 That’s great unless you’re actually making something that needs to be a specific temperature to set up.
H: You’re more adventurous!… if it requires a certain spice or ingredient, I just won’t make it.

LOL I had to come up with another idea 😀
SALTED PUMPKIN CARAMELS
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
FLAKY Sea Salt
finely Chopped nuts (optional)

  • Line 9 x 9 inch pan with foil.
  • Spray foil with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.
  • In a 3 quart pan melt butter over medium heat.
  • Whisk in sugar, pumpkin pie spice, allspice and cinnamon until well blended.
  • Whisk in corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk and pumpkin.
  • Attach your candy thermometer to the side of the pan and get ready to stir for quite awhile.
  • Stir constantly until you reach 248 degrees a.k.a. firm ball stage.
  • Remove from heat and quickly add nuts if your using them.
  • Pour into prepared pan.
  • Immediately sprinkle with salt.
  • Let stand 2 hours or until firm.
  • Use the foil to lift the caramels from the pan.
  • Using a BUTTERED knife cut into 3/4 inch squares.
  • Wrap in individual non-stick foil or waxed paper and twist ends.

NOTES:  If you want a bit of a change up stir in some chopped honey roasted peanuts or pecans at the last minute before poring into cooling pan.

BLOGMAS 2018 – PRESENTS – DAY 21

When does your family open their presents?

This category has changed a lot over the years for me as I got older. 

My family traditions as a kid were of a BIG Christmas eve open and that carried on through college, but as we (cousins) all got older and began getting married with families of our own, our grandparents passed on, blended families (with their own traditions) were formed, etc… getting together for both Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day became harder and harder to do. 

Eventually Christmas eve became a much smaller event for immediate family for a small dinner and to open our gifts to each other.  Christmas morning was for being at our respective home with kids opening presents and then the larger family get together much later on Christmas day for dinner at just one place, usually my mom and dad’s house which became our house after my dad passed away.


BRIGADEIROS

I found this recipe over at Rebecca’s blog and was intrigued so I did a little history.

The Brigadeiro is a traditional Brazilian dessert created in the 1940’s.  It is made of condensed milk, butter and cocoa powder and then rolled in chocolate sprinkles. While it is uncertain of when and where the recipe was actually created, there is some history that the name originated in 1945 after WWII.  Eduardo Gomes, whose military ran was Brigadier. He was campaigning for president in Brazil and his slogan was “Vote for the Brigadier who is handsome and single!”

This slogan gave him enormous success especially among women. Many of his most devoted voters decided to try and promote his campaign by organizing fundraiser parties to give him more visibility. Instead of traditional merchandising it was decided to sell candy. But, there was a significant problem everywhere – a lack of fresh milk and sugar in this post war era. It was decided to use condensed milk and mix it with butter and chocolate.

This new creation, specifically these candies were come to be known as “The candy of the Brigadeiro” in his honor. While the candy was a success, the candidate was not.  The name was then shortened to BRIGADEIROS in the 1950’s.

BRIGADEIROS
1 can Nestle’s La Lechera sweetened condensed milk
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons cocoa
Candy Quick, optional
Sprinkles

  • Put all ingredients in a pan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until you can see the bottom of the pan between swipes across middle (about 15 to 20 minutes); continue to cook until almost solid (about another 5 minutes).
  • Pour mixture into buttered plates to cool.
  • Using buttered hands, pull away pieces of the candy and roll into balls.
  • Roll each ball in candy sprinkles of choice to complete.

NOTES:

  • I also coated each one in candy quick to give it a hard shell before decorating.
  • Rebecca’s recipe stated that Nestle’s La Lechera sweetened condensed milk was the brand to use for best results, but out of curiosity I tried the La Lechera AND Eagle brand with very little difference in FLAVOR ONLY.  Texture wise, Nestle’s La Lechera was DEFINITELY the best though!
  • You can also use Nesquik chocolate or strawberry flavored drink mixes, peanut butter powder or espresso powder for different flavors… There really appears to be lots of ways to flavor and decorate Brigadeiros!   For one version I added a couple drops of peppermint extract.  Our favorite version trades 1 1/2 tablespoons of the cocoa powder for peanut butter powder.

BLOGMAS 2018 – FAVORITE TRADITIONS – DAY 20

This is a really hard category for me.  I LOVE Christmas!  There is nothing about this season I don’t like short of maybe crowds of rude people and Black Friday.  Being a military family on a tight budget I’ve always started shopping early (like in January) to work everything we want to do into our tight budget.

If I had to pick just one tradition though, it would be putting up the tree as a family while eating leftover turkey (from Thanksgiving) sandwiches.  When I was a kid we usually put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and leave it until Kings Day, the Epiphany on January 6th.  Hubby and I still do that and for that reason we like to go cut our own tree so it’s fresh and lasts the entire time.  I use an apple cider/sugar mix that keeps the sap from forming on the cut area and keep the water cool and full.

When I was a kid we did a BIG family get together with a buffet of food and opening our family presents on Christmas Eve.  I just saw a few of my cousins recently and we were reminiscing about some of those holidays and LOL how horrible our wardrobes were back then.

Thankfully, I’m not in the bottom picture because I remember what I was wearing! But I love my brother’s plaid pants and Monica’s floral blouse. If you don’t hear from me for a few days I’m Sure it’s because one them found me LOL.Then on Christmas Day we did Christmas morning and “Santa” with just the immediate family and then we would do a BIG turkey with all the trimmings including my dad’s stuffing and giblet gravy with all the family as well as extended family, which included crazy Aunt Louise and Uncle Herb. I replicated dad’s stuffing recipe a few years ago (Oatnut Sourdough Herb Dressing) and that is now a MUST TRADITION for the Christmas meal no matter what the protein is.

Our newest tradition in the last several years is watching Christmas movies and dreaming about moving to every small town depicted in them, kind of like Stars Hollow from the Gilmore Girls.  We loved that show!


BLOGMAS 2018 – IDEAS FOR FUTURE CHRISTMAS – DAY 19

This is a category I have given a lot of thought to.  Christmas is full of tradition and with tradition comes a cyclic nature in how we do things year after year.  Our traditions and practices though stem from our experiences.  As life progresses things change and evolve over time.  All of this is my round about way of saying that in a future Christmas I would like to revert and try an inverted Christmas tree.
I found several places offering background on the upside down tree. One was, ChristmasCarnivals.com which also has many other links for Christmas history to check out too.

“Christmas is associated with many traditions, of which the Christmas Tree is an inherent part. The history of the upside down Christmas Tree has its roots in the 7th century. It is during this period that St Bonafice journeyed from Devonshire, England to Germany to preach the message of God. He engaged himself in religious as well as social work and spent a lot of his time in Thuringia, a town located in Germany itself, which is the birthplace of the industry dealing with Christmas Decorations.

It is believed that St Boniface, while staying in Thuringia, took the help of the triangular fir tree to represent the Holy Trinity made up of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. As a result, the converted people started to [consider] the Fir tree as God’s Tree. Then St Bonafice, using this triangular shaped tree tried to introduce to the pagan tribes the paragons of Trinity.

By the 12th century, it became a custom, especially in Europe to hang the Fir trees upside down from the ceilings to symbolize the Holy Trinity. The Upside down Christmas Trees was also considered the symbol of Christianity. However, the real history behind the hanging of the upside down Trees remains vague. Presently the trend of hanging a Christmas Tree has changed, because nowadays the tip of the Christmas Tree is made to point towards Heaven, as many think that an upside down Christmas tree is a sign of contempt.”

St. Boniface~Wikipedia
St. Boniface~New Advent
ChristmasCarnivals.com