Hash Brown Casserole - Light

This recipe shaves over 100 calories and 10 grams of fat from the original Cheesy Potato recipe that is a potluck staple. It also has a lower sodium content. It tastes really creamy and the kids love it.

Hash Brown Casserole - Light version

Cooking Light September 2007

3/4 c chopped onion

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp pepper

1 32 oz pkg of hash brown potatoes diced

2 Tbsp butter, melted and divided

1 10 3/4 oz can of condensed reduced fat, reduced sodium cream of chicken soup

8 oz light processed cheese (Velveeta Light)

1 8 oz carton light sour cream

Cooking spray

2 cups cornflakes, coarsely crushed

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Combine onion, paprika, pepper, potatoes and 1 tablespoon of melted butter in a large bowl.

3. Combine soup and cheese in a medium microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high for 6 minutes or until cheese melts, stirring occasionally. Stir in sour cream. Pour cheese mixture over potatoes. Spread mixture into a 13x9 baking dish coated in cooking spray.

4. Combine cornflakes and remaining 1 tablespoon butter; sprinkle evenly over top of potato mixture.

5. Bake for 1 hour.

Calories 181 (30% from fat); Fat 6g, Protein 7.1g, Carbs 25.5g, Fiber 1.5g, Chol 21mg, Iron 1.7mg, Sodium 494mg.

Enjoy!

Spinach Cheese Casserole

Everyone usually has one or two traditional food dishes that they have every Christmas. One of ours is Spinach Cheese Casserole. This dish has actually become a MUST have dish for every occassion at the request of my children!! This dish ranks up there with cheesy potatoes and Ida's Greenbean Casserole! I am sure the sky would fall if I did not make it for Christmas.

This recipe goes back about 19 years. My German babysitter always talked about making spinach pie, homemade soups, and German cookies. My sister-in-law gave me a cookbook that her kid's school put together for a fundraiser and the Spinach Pie in the cookbook looked good. I was hesitant since spinach has never thrilled me, but I saw how much cheese was in this recipe and thought, how could this taste bad? It tasted pretty good but I tweaked the original recipe a bit. Over the years, I have found that I have to double the recipe, because one pie plate was not enough! By the way, my babysitter said, This is not pie!". I kind of agreed with her and stopped calling it pie many years ago! Sorry, Carla Beatty from Lines School in Canada, we still love your dish though!!

Spinach Cheese Casserole
CRUST
2 cups seasoned croutons, crushed
1/4 cup melted butter

FILLING
6 tbsp Parmesan cheese
1 10 oz package frozen spinach, thawed and drained well
1 cup small curd cottage cheese
8 oz Monterrey Jack cheese, cut in 1 inch cubes
3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 tbsp sour cream
1 clove garlic, crushed

Press croutons and melted butter into a 9 inch pie plate. Combine 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese with spinach, cottage cheese, Monterrey Jack cheese, eggs, onion, sour cream and garlic. Spoon into prepared crust. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese. Bake uncovered at 350 for 35 minutes until lightly brown on top.

This recipe can be doubled and baked in a 13x9 baking dish for 1 hour. Casserole will be bubbly when it comes out of oven and will setup after 5 to 10 minutes.

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Enjoy!

This recipe has been linked to

Mommy's Kitchen Potluck Sunday

Breakfast Potatoes

While in New York last month, we had these potatoes for breakfast one morning. They have good flavor so I worked to recreate them once I got home. These were pretty easy to make, just make sure you do not over cook the potatoes or they will be mushy. I think the dish we had in New York may have had a little cheese on top. I left it off when I fixed them this time but anything with cheese is good, so next time I will probably add a little cheese. The peppers and onion are not overpowering but give the potatoes a really nice flavor. I don't really care for peppers but I ate this up. As the peppers cook they mellow out and leave the potatoes with a hint of the peppers that adds a really nice flavor.

Breakfast Potatoes

4 medium potatoes, diced

1/4 c. red pepper

1/4 cup green pepper

1 small onion

butter

Lowery's seasoned salt

Paprika

salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in skillet. Add potatoes, peppers and onion. Sprinkle Lowery's to lightly coat all of the potatoes. Add paprika, salt and pepper to taste. Cook until potatoes are soft.

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Enjoy!

Sweet Potatoes

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to try something a little different with the sweet potatoes. I usually make them heavy with brown sugar and Cinnamon and they turn out more like a sweet potato pie. I was digging around on the Eating Well website and I found this recipe. The comments about the orange flavoring caught my eye and everyone loved the flavor. This smelled wonderful while I made it. The taste was refreshing and not really sweet. The topping mixed with the sweet potatoes was so good; I did not miss the old sweet potatoes at all.


Sweet Potato Casserole

2 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes (3 medium) Peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks
2 large eggs
1 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp honey
1/2 c milk
2 tsp freshly grated orange zest
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt

Topping

1/2 c flour
1/3 c packed brown sugar
4 tsp frozen orange juice concentrate
1 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp butter melted
1/2 c chopped pecans

Preparation
Place sweet potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to boil. Cover and cook over medium heat until tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain well and return to pan. Mash with a potato masher. Measure out 3 cups. (reserve any extra for another use)

Preheat oven to 350. Coat an 8 inch square (or 2 qt) baking dish with cooking spray.

Whisk eggs, oil, and honey in a medium bowl. Add mashed sweet potato and mix well. Stir in milk, orange zest, vanilla, and salt. Spread the mixture in the prepared baking dish.

To prepare topping: Mix flour, brown sugar, orange juice concentrate, oil and butter in a small bowl. Blend with a fork or your fingertips until crumbly. Stir in pecans. Sprinkle over casserole.

Bake the casserole until heated through and the top is lightly browned, 35 - 45 minutes.

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Enjoy!

Simple Macaroni and Cheese

If you struggle with making homemade mac n cheese, this is a simple way to make good old basic mac n cheese.



Simple Macaroni & Cheese
2 (7 1/4 ounce) boxes Kraft macaroni and cheese (Make sure to buy creamy variety)
1 cup milk (plus a little more)
2 eggs, beaten
1 stick of butter
salt and pepper
2 (8-12 ounce) packages cheddar cheese, grated


Boil macaroni until tender, then drain water completely. Put macaroni in a large bowl. While it is still hot, stir in the 2 Kraft cheese packages from the boxes, stick of butter, eggs and 1 cup of milk. Salt and pepper to taste. Macaroni mixture should be creamy and milky. If needed you can add a little more milk. I make sure my macaroni is covered in milk but not floating. This mixes with the eggs and makes a cheesy custard.

Pour half of the mixture into a large baking pan (I use my lasagna pan) and cover with 1 package of shredded cheddar. Pour remaining macaroni mixture into the pan and cover with remaining cheese.

If you like a crumble top, melt one stick of butter and crush a whole sleeve of Ritz or Saltines into the butter and top the casserole during the last 15 or 20 minutes of baking.

Cook on 375° for about 45 minutes, until cheese is golden brown.

Enjoy!

Ida'a Green Bean Casserole

Many years ago I was given a school cookbook from Canada, much like the church cookbooks that everyone has in their cookbook collections. I have cooked numerous recipes from this book and I can't think of anything that has not been good. This recipe caught my eye and I have been making it for about 15 years. We have it at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Whenever I eat the traditional green bean casserole, I feel like it is missing something! This casserole has a crunch from the corn and water chestnuts and a nice flavor between the vegetables, cheese and cream sauce.

Gena's Green Bean Casserole
Adapted from Ida's Green Bean Casserole

2 cans green beans
1 can corn
1/2 can of water chestnuts, diced fine

Filling:
8 oz sour cream
1 can cream of celery soup
1/3 cup chopped onions
3 tbsp mayo
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Topping:
1 sleeve of Ritz Crackers, crushed
1 stick of butter

Drain and mix all of the vegetables in a buttered 2 quart casserole dish. Mix the filling ingredients in a large bowl and then spread over the vegetables. Using a spoon, slightly mix the cream filling with the vegetables. Mix the topping ingredients together and sprinkle on top of casserole. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

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Enjoy!

Bubble and Squeak

I have heard this dish called several different names. My husband grew up in a polish family and when they had this dish, it was call Bubble and Squeak. A friend of mine would always say she was frying up cabbage and egg noodles. I always thought is sounded gross. Well, I was watching Diners, Drive Ins and Dives and this dish was made at one of those small diners. Everyone raved about the dish. I looked around on the web for the recipe and I found it called Haluski. The recipe was basically noodles, cabbage, onions, and butter. As I was cooking it, my husband remembered that bacon was always in the version he had when he was growing up.

Here is what I came up with and it is pretty good.


Haluski with Bacon
1 stick of butter
1 head of cabbage, shredded
1 large onion, diced
6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
12 oz egg noodles

Melt butter in large skillet. Add cabbage, and onion. Cook covered on medium low heat until tender. While cabbage and onions cook, boil water and cook noodles according to package.

Once cabbage and onions are soft, add noodles and bacon and cook over a medium heat. You will start to hear it "bubble" and "squeak". Cook for about 15 minutes.

The leftovers reheat beautifully.
Note: The last time I made this I used bacon bits, the "real" kind in a bottle. It turned out just as good and saved me the time and mess of cooking the bacon.

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Enjoy!

Christmas out - New Years in

Well, it is the day after Christmas. I am kind of glad it is over. We had a really good Christmas this year, even though I fretted through most of December because I was late doing everything. All of my cookies did not get baked, I did not fully decorate my house, and I was not really in the mood for the shopping. After all of the worrying, we had plenty of treats, the house was festive enough and the kids received a lot of great presents.

December started out with us going to Walt Disney World in Florida. We went the day after Thanksgiving and stayed for five days. The weather was great and the Hotel we stayed in was nice. We had a two bedroom suite at the Lake Buena Vista Spa and Resort. We will stay there again.

Our family went with my husband's sister. She has two adorable little boys that really enjoyed Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Gabe, who is four, really liked the "parts" ride (Backlot Tour). My family really liked the Soaring ride at Epcot.



We went to my mom's house for Christmas eve appetizers and when we came back home the girls were all hyper running around. I was exhausted and finally told them to leave the first floor so Santa could come. Usually they open PJs on Christmas Eve but I did not know which boxes contained the PJs, so they had nothing to open.



Baylee decided they would wake up at 6:10 a.m. to open their presents. I am not sure why ten after the hour was chosen, but sure enough they were up at 6:10 and ready to open presents. Half way through opening presents, it hit me the flash was off on my camera and most of my pics were dark. oops! I still had quite a few that turned out. All of the girls received clothes, scarfs, gloves, fancy tights, over the knee socks, and an assortment of gift cards. Baylee got some Wii games, Chelsea got a camera, and Lauren got two pairs of boots. They older girls also got steamers for their clothes since neither like to iron. I got my cast iron dutch oven, a ceramic casserole pan and pie plate, and two scarves. T J got shoes, t-shirts, NCIS and Seinfeld videos.


My family came over on Christmas day for brunch. We had ham, french toast, raspberry muffins, fruit salad and spinach casserole. Later in the day we had left over ham, and my mom had brought over stuff to make a salad. I also made a broccoli salad and Pioneer Woman's Fancy Macaroni. I did not really get any decent pictures of the food or the gathering. I guess I was busy socializing.

Fancy Macaroni and Cheese from The Pioneer Woman

This is really good. I have never had goat cheese before and was hesitant, but this was really good. I did take her advice and only add macaroni a little at a time to ensure the casserole would not be dry. The 4 cups of macaroni is probably a little to much. I used elbow macaroni and I had a small bowl of noodles that I did not use. This was yummy and I will make this again. I will probably adapt this to my family and chop the onions up smaller and add cheddar to the top.

We don't have plans for New Year's Eve yet but I am looking forward to the new year. I am hoping that next year goes a little easier on my finances! I think everyone wants that! I am not much for new years resolutions so I am not sure if I will have one.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and they have a safe and happy new year!!