Monkey Bread 101

So I have this cousin whose name I will not share, (initials are K.W.), who messaged me asking how to make Monkey Bread.

 While I thought everyone knew how to make this , it seems she did not know, even said I could laugh at her for not knowing!

Well now, I wouldn't do that but I did tell said cousin that I would make a post about it and she could then no longer be ridiculed for not knowing how to making Monkey Bread!

Okay so maybe she isn't exactly being "ridiculed" for not making Monkey Bread but for dramatic effect, let's all agree now that happened!!! LOL!

So for K.W., I proudly present:

Monkey Bread 101

4 cans, 10 count each, "whomp" biscuits

 (We call them Whomp Biscuits because you have to whomp the cans to get them to open!)

1 cup granulated sugar

2 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 stick of butter, melted

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 gallon sized ziploc bag

1 Bundt pan

Non-stick spray

1st thing you are going to do is cut your biscuits into 4 pieces and place into a bowl. I use a clean pair of kitchen shears for this, much quicker!

Here is the biscuits I used

Here they are all cut up and in the bowl

Now put the white sugar and the cinnamon into the ziploc bag

Add the biscuit pieces a few at a time and shake to coat. Only do about 8 or so at a time or they will stick to each other and not get all that wonderful sugar all over them. You want that, trust me, you do!!

Spray your Bundt pan with the non-stick spray. Spray it GOOD! Be sure you get around the part that sticks up in the middle too.

The next step is to take the pieces out of the bag and start layering them into the Bundt pan. Just shake them to coat and throw them in. Continue until you have all the pieces coated. This step takes a bit of time.

When you get to the last pieces you can sprinkle the left over sugar cinnamon from the bag over the pan too if you'd like. Don't have to but I do. I mean what's more sugar going to hurt at this point?

Now you take your melted stick of butter and the 3/4 cup of packed brown sugar and place it in the same bowl you had the biscuit pieces in. (No sense in dirtying up another bowl) and mix it up together. It will be grainy but that's how you want it.

Pour over the biscuits in the bundt pan. Be sure to pour it evenly over. Scrape the bowl to get all that sugary goodness out!

Bake at 350F for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let it stand 5 minutes then place a plate over the pan and flip the Monkey Bread out onto the plate! Be sure your plate is bigger than the bundt pan or has a lip because the caramel like stuff inside will run off the plate if not contained.

Fresh out of the oven:

And On the Plate!

Look at how the light catches the glaze!! Beautiful Deliciousness!!



Chicken & Dumplings....the Easy Way!

When I ran across this recipe on Pintrest I just had to try it! Man I was not disappointed one bit! I love some good old chicken & dumpling but rarely have the time to make it anymore. This easy casserole has all that gooey, chicken deliciousness without all the hassle!

So without further delay, I present to you:

Chicken and Dumpling Casserole

4 cups of cooked chicken*

3 cups chicken broth*

1/2 cup butter

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 1/2 tsp. baking power

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups milk

2 cans cream of chicken soup

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. In a 13x9 baking dish, melt the butter in the oven.

Shred the chicken & spread it on top of the butter in dish.

In a bowl, whisk together milk, flour, salt & baking powder. Slowly pour mixture over the chicken but DO NOT STIR IT INTO THE CHICKEN!

In another bowl, whisk together the chicken broth and the cream of chicken soup. Pour over the flour mixture but again, DO NOT STIR IT IN!

Bake uncovered for about 40 to 45 minutes.

* I use canned chicken I had gotten on sale when I made this but if you have some left over turkey or even some you can boil and debone, then use it! I like to use large cans of the chicken just to save time!

Took 3 of these to have enough chicken. They are 12.5 oz cans. I just empty it out into a small strainer to drain it, then use a fork to shred it up.

* For the chicken broth, I use this:

I keep this for all my broth needs if I am not boiling my own chicken or turkey. Its is cheap, this container has lasted our family for almost a year! 1 tsp of this & 1 cup of water is the same as 1 cup of broth. You can find this in the "Hispanic" foods section of Walmart. 

Buy the Knorr Caldo Con Sabor de Pollo...seriously cheaper than bullion and MUCH taster!

Brown Paper Flooring 101

Upon deciding that I had totally lost my mind and that I needed to remodel my youngest 2 girls room while they were away, I looked at my flooring options. I didn't have a ton of money to spend and really wanted something unique. What I found was Brown Paper Flooring and my adventure began!

Yes you heard me right, PAPER! I did some research on this and concluded this was what we needed. It was very cheap, (I have about $65 in about 130 square feet of flooring), very pretty and holds up really well.

To start this process you need to buy:

• Rolls of brown craft paper. Usually found in the tape and packing area of Walmart, they run about $5 for a 75 sq ft roll. Figure up the square footage of the area you are doing and add just a little extra to account for overlap and such. My area was 130 sq ft and I used 2 rolls of paper.
• A gallon of Elmer's Glue All, sold at most hardware stores for around $15
• 1 gallon of fast drying, high traffic polyurethane coating in whatever finish you like. I used a high gloss from Walmart, ran about $30.
• KNEE PADS....seriously, this is a MUST! You spend most of your time on your butt with this project but you will need knee pads when you are trying to lay around the wall edges!

I did this over concrete that had 50 year old tiles on top. I removed the tiles and washed the floor several times just to get it ready for the glue to stick once I started. My floor was nice and even, no holes that needed filling. If you need to fill in any spots on your floor now is the time to do so, otherwise you could end up with bubbles in your flooring.

Here is what mine looked like just before I started

Now the night before I started I sat and tore both the rolls of paper into pieces about a foot long, then tore them in half again. I then crumbled them up and placed them into a big laundry basket. This made it much easier to continue working and not have to stop and tear paper.

The next step is to take just a few pieces, like 2 or 3 at a time and soak them in your glue. Now I mixed my glue with water at a ratio of 2 glue to 1 water. This means 2 cups of glue, 1 cup of water. I used an old mop bucket we had to do this in.

You do not want to soak more than about 3 pieces at a time because they will get really soggy and be almost impossible to use. Also you just need to soak them for a small time, just enough to get them wet with the glue. When you are ready to lay a new piece down, gently squeeze the wad of paper to get rid of any excess glue and then gently pull the paper back into the larger size.

Starting in the farthest corner from your door out of the room, smooth the pieces of paper out onto your prepared floor. Try and line the straight edge up with your walls, it just makes it easier for you. You need to gently smooth the paper, it will tear if you are not gentle enough. I tried using gloves but found it was very hard to feel if all the air bubbles were out form underneath so I just got in there and got my hand dirty! I also found that getting a little extra of the glue on my hands aided in the smoothing out process. It gave the paper some added glue that maybe had dried some while working it into place. Use your fingers to add glue to any corners that don't seem to want to stay put too.

Continue along, overlapping pieces as you go! Here is about 1/2 way through my project.

Keep in mind as you go that the more random your pieces look, the better! After you get the entire floor covered you need to let it dry completely. You will know it is totally dry when the entire area is the color the paper was originally. Also, if you happen to tear a part while you are doing this, don't sweat it! Just take a pieces big enough to cover the tear, or the gap if you have some in the patchwork, soak it in the glue mix and smooth it over the tear/gap.

Here is what my floor looked like as it dried

The next step after your floor is totally dry is to stain it! Now you don't HAVE to stain it and I liked the coloring of the plain brown paper but decided to stain it after all! Choose your stain color and get after it! I used a small foam roller and tray to stain my floor, being careful not to leave tons of extra stain on the floor. (On a side note, be sure you ventilate the room WELL when doing this step. If you can, leave for the night because stain is seriously stout smelling stuff that lingers!) This step needs to sit at least 10 hours, longer is better just so the stain has a chance to dry. I stained in the morning around 8 am and it was about 12 hours before I went back to start the next step.

Keep in mind the floor will not be totally dry from the stain, it will be where you can walk on it but the stain will not completely dry no matter how long you wait but give it 10 to 12 hours.

Once your stain has been applied and set for about 12 hours, you are ready to start applying what you will surely think is the easiest part of this flooring process, the polyurethane!!

Here is the floor after the stain has dried:

I love how it looks like tanned leather!



Again, I used a small foam roller and tray set, actually the same tray from the stain, and applied a layer of this to the floor:

I had planned to do 1 coat in the morning after breakfast and then apply a 2nd coat late in the evening, giving 10 or so hours in between coats. However, this stuff dries so fast that in 6 hours time I could walk on it and apply another layer, so I was able to get 3 coats in a day so it really sped things up alot!

MAKE SURE you stir the polyurethane really good EVERY TIME you use it or else you will end up near the bottom of the can and have  a layer that looks like a matte finish instead of glossy. This happened to me but it was easily fixable. I purchased a quart of the same brand poly in a gloss finish and applied 1 more layer, problem solved.

In total I put 8 layers of polyurethane on my flooring. Overkill? Perhaps but it is beautiful and sturdy as can be! We have moved beds across it and it is holding up just fine! If you do for some reason ever get a tear, just get some paper and repair the spot just like you did when you where laying the floor. Follow the steps and it will never be seen!

Here is my finished floor! Ain't she a beaut??

Oh So Yummy Chocolate Cobbler

This is one of my favs, Chocolate Cobbler. Super easy, great for those that love chocolate!

Chocolate Cobbler

2 sticks butter

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 1/2 cup self-rising flour

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 milk

Chocolate Layer

1 cup sugar

6 TBSP Cocoa powder

2 Cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a glass baking dish, melt the 2 sticks of butter in the oven.

In a bowl, mix together the 1 1/4 cups of sugar, the flour, vanilla and the milk. Once the butter is melted pour the batter over the butter but DO NOT STIR!

In a separate bowl, mix together the cocoa & the 1 cup of sugar. Sprinkle cocoa/sugar mixture on top pf the batter. DO NOT STIR!

Pour the 2 cups of boiling water on top of the cocoa/sugar (DO NOT STIR!!!) and bake for 35 to 45 minutes.

It should look something like this:

Three Envelope Picante Roast

This recipe is currently cooking my crockpot and man does it smell good in here! Super easy and very tasty, the best combination for food if you ask me!

Three Envelope Picante Roast

1 envelope dry onion soup mix

1 envelope dry Italian dressing mix

1 envelope brown gravy mix

1 cup water

1 cup picante sauce or salsa

1 chuck roast, (mine is about about a 3 pounder) or any kind of roast really

In a bowl mix the 3 envelopes of mixes with the water. Mix well. Pour just enough of the mixture to cover the bottom of a crockpot.

Place chuck roast on top of the liquid. Pour the remaining liquid on top of the roast. (DO NOT season your roast, there is plenty of seasoning in the mixes!)

Pour the 1 cup of picante or salsa on top of the roast.
Cover and cook on high for 4 to 6 hours or on low 8 to 10 hours.

Once your roast is done, remove the meat from the crock and slice thin. Take left over liquid and place in a sauce pan. Add about 1 tbsp cornstarch to about a 1/4 cup of water and mix well to make it smooth. Add to roast liquid and heat on a medium heat until mixture thickens, making a gravy.

Chicken Enchilada Pasta

Found this recipe on Pintrest and just had to try it. I love me some Chicken Enchiladas and I love me some good pasta. This little beauty has both! I present to you:

Chicken Enchilada Pasta

3 to 4 boneless skinless chicken breast, cooked and shredded

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 tsp fresh minced garlic

1 onion, chopped

1 large red bell pepper, chopped

1 can (4oz) chopped green chilies

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cumin

2 cans (10 oz each) green enchilada sauce

2/3 cup red enchilada sauce

2 cups shredded Mexican blend cheese

1 cup sour cream

4 cups Penne Pasta

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Cook onions, garlic & bell pepper for about 5 minutes.

In a large stockpot cook pasta according to directions while you complete the next steps.

Add chicken, chili's, cumin, salt, chili powder, & enchilada sauces to onions. Bring to a boil then simmer about 10 minutes.

Turn the heat off and add the cheese. Stir just until melted. Add in sour cream and mix well.

Drain pasta and then add the chicken mix to the pasta. Mix well.

Serve with extra sour cream, guacamole or chopped green onions.

Looks good don't it??

Make Your Own Shrinky-Dinks!

The kids and I wanted to do something special for the youth group to commemorate their upcoming mission trip to Joplin, Mo so when I came across this idea I thought this would just be too cool! AND I was right, it is!!

Here is how you too can make your own jewelery with homemade Shrinky DInks! Yes I do realize that a lot of people have no clue what a Shrinky Dink is but all I can tell you is they are cool toys from my childhood! They are still available but why buy what you can make? Here is a picture of some I had as a kid:

Basically they are sheets of plastic that you color and shrink in the oven to make little charms, etc.

So to get started you need this:

1 cookie sheet

Parchment Paper

Scissors

A hole punch

Permanent Markers

#6 Plastic Lids from foil containers, any container as long as its #6 plastic!

You can find out what # your plastic is by looking for this symbol with a # in it. Most take out containers are made of #6 plastic too.

Once you have everything together, go ahead and set your oven to 350 and move a rack to the lowest setting in the oven. This way by the time you get ready to bake them, your oven is good and warmed up!

Take your plastic container lid and cut the flat part out like so:

At this point you just go crazy! Scribble all over the plastic or cut it into whatever shape you want! We did 2 inch by 2 inch squares for the pendants we wanted to make! We then used the permanent markers to put our design onto the pieces.

Using the single-hole punch, punch a hole in the plastic so you have somewhere to hang your earring parts or the string to make a necklace. You have to so this now because if not you will have to use a tiny drill bit to get through the shrunken plastic. You need to round the edges with some scissors as well because again, you can't do it after they bake and the edges will be sharp if you don't!

Here is a shot of some small round ones we made too!

Line your cookie sheet with some parchment paper. Place your cut outs on the paper and then in your 350 degree preheated oven.

This what ours looked like before we baked.

While these are in the oven, they will curl up really badly. You will think they are ruined but they aren't! Be patient, they will start to shrink and flatten. When they are flattened out they are done shrinking! It can take anywhere from about 30 seconds to 2 minutes for this to happen.

Here is before and after:

We even made some earrings with the left over wavy bits! The waves make cool lines if you don't color in between the waves!

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

There is nothing as yummy as slow-cooked, homemade spaghetti sauce! Here is my recipe for a huge batch of sauce that you can freeze in portions you need or even pressure can in jars. I must warn you...its delicious!

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

20 to 25 large tomatoes

4 large green bell peppers, seeded

4 large sweet onions

4 (6oz sized) cans tomato paste

1 cup canola oil, (you can also use olive oil)

2/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup salt

8 cloves of garlic, minced ( I use the already minced fresh stuff, about a tsp per clove called for)

4 tsp dried oregano

2 tsp dried parsley flakes

2 tsp dried basil

2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

3 tsp Worcestershire sauce

The first thing you need to do is get the skin off your tomatoes. Bring a large pan of water to a boil on the stove. Cut the stem out of the tomatoes and cut out any bad spots. Place them a few at a time into the boiling water. You will see the skin start to separate from the tomato. Using a slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes and place into a large bowl filled with cold water. While another batch in the boiling water, peel the skin off the ones in the cold water and cut them into about 1 inch slices. Set aside in another bowl until you get them all done this way.

In a food processor, chop the green bell peppers and the onions until they are finely chopped.

In a large stockpot, (seriously a HUGE stockpot), combine the tomatoes, the peppers, the onions, the tomato paste, oil, sugar, salt, garlic, oregano, parsley, basil. red pepper flakes, and Worcestershire sauce. Mix well and simmer on very low heat, uncovered for about 4 hours. Stir this quite often because you do not want it to stick to your pot. I suppose you could transfer this into 2 large crockpots and cook for 4 hours or so on high and it should do fine. I have never done it that way but it should work in theory.

You can store this in the freezer in containers or baggies for future use or you can pressure can it in mason jars.

Cube Steak Casserole

This recipe was a big hit here with The Herd! Sorry no picture to go with this one but I promise you this one is worth trying!

Cube Steak Casserole

4 to 6 cube steaks or pork cutlets

( 4 of they are large, 6 if they are small)

1 envelope of dry onion soup mix

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 1/2 cans water (the can from the mushroom soup)

1 cup minute rice

1 cup flour

salt and pepper to taste

Mix the flour with the salt and pepper in a shallow dish. Coat the steaks in the flour and brown in hot oil on each side.

Transfer once browned to a 13 x 9 baking dish.

In a bowl mix the onion soup mix, mushroom soup and the water together. Pour over the steaks.

Sprinkle the rice over the top, making sure you get the rice in the liquid.

(if you don't get the rice in the liquid , you end up with crunchy rice!)

Cover and bake at 350 for 1 hour!



You can even use chicken cutlets, just change the cream of mushroom soup to cream of chicken and follow the rest of the recipe!

Beignets

Well, so many of you asked for my beignet recipe that I decided to post it!

For those of you who do not know what a beignet is, it is basically a french doughnut. It is also the single most effective way to have powdered sugar ALL over you!

Here is a pic of these yummy confections!

Beignets

1 cup warm milk

(heat in the microwave for about a minute)

1 pkg. dry active yeast

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup melted butter

1 tsp salt

3 cups of flour

In a bowl, stir together the warm milk, yeast, & sugar and let it sit for about 5 minutes.

Place the yeast mixture into your electric mixer bowl and add the eggs, mixing well. Then add the melted butter.

In a bowl, mix the flour and salt then add to the mixer bowl. Using the dough hook, mix until a dough ball forms. You may need to add a little more flour as you go because you want the dough soft but not wet.

Spray a large bowl with non-stick spray and transfer the dough to the bowl. Cover with a towel and let sit for about 40 minutes in a warm place so the dough can rise.

40 minutes later, remove towel and place dough on lightly floured surface. Punch down the dough and let sit for 15 minutes, covered.

(To those of you who do not know what Punch down the dough mean, seriously...think about it. Its pretty self-explanatory really! Just punch the dough!)

Now you want to GENTLY roll out your dough into a rectangle, about 1/4 of an inch thick. (I have to cut my dough in half due to the fact that I have no counter top space so if you need to make 2 batches, you can just work quick and you should be fine!)

Cut your dough into 3 to 4 inch square-ish pieces and deep fry in shortening for about 2 minutes tops. Look for that golden brown color and flip them to get both sides done. Remove and place on a paper towel lined pan.  

(I recommend shortening over oil because it just seems to make the beignets crispier!)

As soon as you get them on the pan, sprinkle a heavy layer of powdered sugar on top!



Homemade Laundry Soap

     Well here it is ya'll! My recipe for homemade liquid laundry soap. I got the original recipe from the Duggar family but have through the years changed it up a little and it works great for us. I have been making this for about 6 years now and have saved us a small fortune by not buying laundry soap from the store.

     It will cost you around $4 for a box of borax and the same for the Super Washing Soda but one box will last you over a year. The bars of soap will vary from $ .50 to $1 each so that will be your big expense. Once you have it all together it will run you about $3 to make a batch!

     You need:

• 1 (14 oz) bar of Zote brand soap. This is normally found in the laundry isle. There are two kinds, one bar is white and one bar is pink. (Naturally I use the pink because I am a girl and I love pink! lol) You can use Fels-Naptha bars but you need about 2 1/2 to equal the soap in one Zote bar. You can also use Ivory because it is pure soap, just realize you need about 14 oz of soap.

• 3/4 cup of Borax. You can find this in the laundry isle too. I pour mine out of the box it comes in into an airtight container simply because it helps keep it from clumping up between rounds of making soap. Borax is used for so many things, the box has some great cleaning ideas too!

• 3/4 cup of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda. This can be hard to find but I have noticed more places carrying it because alot more of us are making laundry soap at home now! Look in your laundry isle at the grocery stores or even at the hardware store. You can get it online it will just cost to get it shipped.

• 1 clean 5 gallon bucket with tight lid

• Hot Water

       The first thing you will need to do is grate your soap. I have an old cheese grater I keep in the laundry room just for this purpose. Depending on what soap you use, when you grate it could look like grated cheddar cheese or like Parmesan cheese, just depends on how hard or soft your soap is. Either way grate all the soap into at large saucepan. On a side note, do not try to save time by using a food processor. It will end badly for the appliance and no, I will not be saying where I got this info from!

    To your soap you will want to add 6 CUPS OF HOT WATER and set aside for about 15 minutes. I found out quite by accident if I let the soap sit in the water and soften up, it melts so much better! Be sure to give it a stir when you add the water so it all get wet.

    Next you will place the soap on the stove and slowly melt the soap. It will become clearer as it melts. Be sure you do this step slowly, stirring often. You want to get any big lumps of soap melted down. This is what it looks like before you start melting.

And this is after!

   Take the 3/4 CUP EACH OF BORAX AND ARM & HAMMER SUPER WASHING SODA and add it to the melted soap. Continue to heat until powders are dissolved and you have broken up any clumps of powder. It will resemble thin honey at this point.
  

   Fill your clean 5 gallon bucket about 1/2 way with HOT WATER. Pour the soap mixture into the water and stir. Add more hot water to the bucket to get to about 2 or 3 inches from the top of the bucket.

  
   Place a tight lid on your bucket of laundry soap and let it sit over night. In the morning you will find that you have this.....

   The soap will be in kind of a gel like state with liquid around it and you will need to mix it up to break up the huge gel mass. This is where having a paint auger comes in so very handy! I used to use a yardstick to help me mix it or my hands but that is icky feeling and kinda mess! I bought this paint stirrer at the local hardware store for about $5. It fits on my drill and works like a charm to mix the soap all up. AND everyone knows it is the soap mixer and therefore falls under the "that's Mom's don't touch it" rule so it is always ready when I need it! LOL

Get yourself a container and add 2 parts soap and 1 part water. You can do 1/2 and 1/2 but I like this mixture best. I have found the spout type of containers don't do that great if you have any lumps in the soap so I just hung onto an old color safe bleach bottle and refill it as needed. Also, if you don't do laundry everyday you will need to give the bottle a good shake before you use it just to mix the soap and water up a little again.

Let me know if you make some! If I live close enough to ya, I'll be more than happy to come over and help you make a batch! If not, well......message me if you need me!