The easiest applesauce ever!

This is the most Ridiculously easy Crock Pot Applesauce ever!
I read a lot of recipes on how to make applesauce. You can find a zillion recipes on pinterest. Some are more complicated than others. The easiest of the recipes call for tossing some apples into a crock pot, turning it on and walking away. So that's pretty much what I did.

This isn't really a recipe per say. It's really just some pretty vague instructions on how to make the easiest applesauce ever. This is so ridiculously easy that you really don't need super in depth instructions. You just peel, core and cut some apples into slices. How many apples you need depends on how much applesauce you want. You can use as few or as many apples as you want. You can use whatever mixture of apple varieties that you want, too. Me? I used 3 large granny smith apples, 5 Michigan apples and a few gala apples. That just happened to be what I had on hand.



Put these into your crock pot with a little bit of water. Just enough to cover the bottom of the crock pot. I didn't measure this. Start with a little. You can always add more if ya need it. I threw in some brown sugar (roughly a quarter of a cup maybe? Again I didn't measure) Sprinkle some cinnamon on top.

Then I turned the crock pot on high and let the apples cook until they're done. Mine took about 3-4 hours. Just keep an eye on it. When the apples start to break down and you can easily mash them they're done. When the apples have cooked completely, you'll want to mash them into applesauce.

 We like our applesauce chunky so I just mashed them up with a big spoon. If you want your applesauce to be a thinner, less chunky consistency you can run it through a food mill or a food processor. Whatever makes ya happy! You can add more brown sugar and cinnamon at this point if ya want. I didn't find that mine needed any further sweetening, but I did add a bit more cinnamon. We love cinnamon applesauce.

And that's it. So easy but so unbelievably good. We got about 8 cups of applesauce out of those dozen or so apples. My kids have been devouring it! I froze about half of it, but something tells me I will be thawing it soon. Luckily it's apple season so I'll be able to buy bushels of apples! I see lots and lots of homemade applesauce in our future!

Fully Loaded Baked Potato Soup

I made the best soup last night. I had 3 pounds of potatoes that were thisclose to going bad, so I had to figure out something to do with them. It's not exactly the season for hot, thick creamy soup, but it sounded good, so I decided to make some. I've never made potato soup before, but I've read enough recipes for it over the years that I knew the basic premise. So, I used what I had in my cupboards and refrigerator and I just sort of made the recipe up as I went along. It turned out so delicious, I thought I would share it with you! Since I didn't follow an exact recipe and just sort of made it as I went along, I don't know exact measurements of everything. But, I thought I would just try my best to remember everything.

First, I washed, peeled and cubed the potatoes. Not sure exactly how much. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 pounds. I then fried up 6 pieces of bacon, and when it was cool, crumbled it to use as garnish.

In a soup pot I melted a stick of salted butter, and whisked in about a half a cup of flour, to made a rue. I cooked that for a few minutes to get rid of that raw flour taste and then slowly added in about 6 cups of milk, whisking constantly. I seasoned the milk mixture with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder. I added in the potatoes, and brought the soup up to a boil then turned it down to low and put a lid on it to simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occassionally. At this point, the potatoes were cooked through and the soup had thickened up nicely.

I added in about 2/3 of a cup of sour cream, and a couple of big handfuls of shredded cheddar cheese, stirred it all together and added a bit more milk, because at this point the soup had thickened a little too much! I served the soup garnished with a bit more shredded cheese, the crumbled bacon, a dollop of sour cream and some chives. It was so good!! This soup made roughly 8 servings and was so hearty and filling that everyone in my family only ate one bowl before they were full. That means leftovers tonight, and I really cannot wait!

I hope you found this helpful and can make sense of my mangled instructions and manage to recreate this recipe at home. It's so good!!

Easiest Breakfast Burritos

If you follow me on instagram you might notice that I have been making a LOT of breakfast burritos. And I'll tell you why. They are super easy, relatively affordable to make, and my kids LOVE them! I have been making them in batches just about every weekend for the last month. I skipped last weekend because I figured my boys were getting tired of them. Nope! Even though they also really love the egg cups I made, they really missed the burritos. So I made them again this weekend, and I thought I'd share the recipe.

I make a batch of about 20 burritos. I use the fajita sized tortillas because that tends to be what I can get on sale, and also because I like these burritos to be on the small side. Perfect for child sized hands and portion control. You can use whatever sized tortillas you want, but just keep in mind that the larger your tortillas, the less burritos you will get out of them.

Ingredients:
1/2 stick butter
one pound ground breakfast sausage
one-two cups of shredded cheddar cheese
One dozen large eggs
about 20 fajita size tortillas

I start out by putting half a stick of butter into a 13X9 baking dish and putting it inside a cold oven, and then setting the oven to 400 degrees. The butter will melt while the oven preheats. Just keep an eye on it and pull it out once it's all melted. Make sure not to let the butter burn!

While the butter is melting scramble a dozen eggs together with 1 cup of milk. Once the butter in your dish is completely melted, add the egg mixture and slide it carefully into the oven. Don't spill! Set a timer for 8 minutes.

While your eggs are in the oven, you can cook up your sausage. I like to use a pound of country sausage. Just crumble it up and cook it through.

When the 8 minutes is up, use a spatula to stir around your egg mixture You will notice that it's just starting to cook and set up around the sides. Give it a stir and put it back in the oven for another 8 minutes.

Gather up any other ingredients you want to put into your burritos. We keep it simple here. Just cheese and sausage. But you could add onion, salsa, tomatoes anything you want. Just make sure all of your fillings are precooked.

When your timer goes off, pull out your eggs. They should be pretty much set up now. Stir them up and now is the time to add in your fillings. Toss in your sausage and about a cup and a half of shredded cheddar (more or less is fine, whatever you like!) Mix everything together and return your pan to the oven for another few minutes to melt your cheese.

While your dish is in the oven for those last few minutes, get your tortillas, wrap them in a paper towel and heat them in the microwave for about a minute. You want them warm because they will be easier to work with. I usually take this time to set up a little mini burrito rolling station as well. I put a piece of parchment paper down on my counter, or table, and set up my warmed tortillas, as well as the burrito filling when it comes out of the oven.

All that's left now it to roll your burritos up. One by one place your warmed tortillas down on your parchment paper. Add your filling. You can make these as full as you want. I tend to not overstuff mine because I want them to roll nicely without tearing.

Now just roll. Tuck the two sides in, and roll the burrito up. I like to press down gently on the burrito once it's rolled to make sure all of the filling is evenly distributed. I usually get about 20 small burritos out of my filling. You will get more or less depending on how full you fill your burritos, how large your eggs are and how much of your other ingredients you used.

Now you're ready to enjoy nice gooey breakfast burritos. Or you can do what I do and freeze them so they're available for your kids to eat whenever they want. The trick to freezing your burritos without them getting slimy or limp is to make sure that the burritos cool completely before you wrap them. If they are warm when you wrap them they will create steam and moisture and that lends itself to a not so delicious texture. So make sure to cool completely, then simply wrap each burrito in saran wrap, and them transfer all the burritos into a single layer in a gallon sized freezer bar. Lay flat to freeze. I can't tell you how long these will keep in the freezer, because they tend to get inhaled over the course of a week or two in my family. When you're ready to reheat just pop the burrito, saran wrap and all, into the microwave and cook at 30 second intervals until the filling is warmed through.

There ya have it. Super easy breakfast burritos made in large quantities. Perfect for a party like a big family brunch, or in my case, for feeding very hungry boys! I hope you found this helpful! Enjoy!

Not just any Sandwich!

I love to cook. It's one of my favorite things. But, it's summer. And I don't know about you, but some nights in the summer I just don't want to cook. It's hot outside, so I don't want to turn on the oven, and there's so much fun to be had I don't want to be cooped up in the kitchen preparing a meal. On those night when I just don't feel like cooking, we tend to eat a lot of salads and sandwiches. But when I heard my boys cry, "Not sandwiches again!" I knew I had to mix things up. So I decided to hit my favorite recipe resource, pinterest. I looked up and found several great looking summer recipes, but nothing that suited my fancy. So I decided to stick with sandwiches, but to change things up a bit.

I can understand why the boys would be bored of sandwiches. After all, I was making them ham and cheese on white bread. Not exactly gourmet. So instead of that, I made a giant party size submarine sandwich, and immediately their sandwich complaints went right out the window. There is something so much fun about assembling and serving a giant sized sandwich. It's like having party food for dinner! My youngest son laughed about the possibility of a man large enough to eat the whole big sandwich for dinner, while he happily scarfed down two servings!

This isn't rocket science, but I thought I would share with you the idea, in case your family is in a summer meal rut as well. Here's how I made my sandwich!

I started out with one of those bakery loaves of seeded italian bread. We scored ours on sale at the walmart bakery for $0.39! (My hubby recognized the good deal and bought 4 to stockpile in the freezer! All my budget nagging must be paying off!) You can get these in your bakery generally for a dollar or less. I just used a serrated knife and cut it open sandwich style. Then I added my sandwich ingredients, closed it up and we cut it into single serving size and served it with potato chips.

 The toppings I put on ours were Caesar Dressing (my husband isn't a fan of mayonnaise, and I am not a fan of mustard so this is how we compromise) Ham, colby jack cheese, bacon (another grocery store steal I found this week, bacon for a dollar a pack - I bought 5!!), romaine lettuce and tomatoes. You can put any combination of yummy sandwich toppings on here though. It's totally customizable.

This meal (which my kids call the giant sandwich) is great for a family meal but would also be great for parties, or picnics! It's quicker and easier that making a large number of single serving sandwiches, and it got my boys excited about eating sandwiches again!

Cheesy Bacon Egg Cups

I recently discovered that you could bake eggs in the oven. I don't know why it never occured to me before, but it didn't. Ever since I made the discovery I have been playing around with different recipes, taking a lot of inspiration from pinterest. If you aren't on pinterest, you really ought to be. (and you ought to be following me there www.pinterest.com/Jwhackers84)  It's an amazing resource for all sorts of things, but my favorite use for pinterest is recipes. There are about a zillion recipes available on the site for everything you could ever dream of. So I just typed baked egg recipes into pinterest and about a zillion recipes came up.

Something that I saw over and over again were different versions of "egg cups" Eggs mixed with other yummy ingredients and baked in a muffin tin, and thought "aha!" My children love eggs. Especially omelettes with lots of gooey cheese and breakfast meats. I however, do not love making them. I can never seem to flip them right. And even if I do get them right, they're a pain. The last thing I want to do is stand at the stove and make omelettes. I'd much rather sip coffee while perusing social media. So I thought that these egg cups would be perfect.

Ingredients:

8 large eggs
2/3 cup milk
Shredded Cheese
6 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
non-stick cooking spray
salt and pepper to taste

Start by spraying an average size muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray. In a bowl combine eggs and milk. Beat well and season with salt and pepper. Put a layer of your crumbled bacon into each cup of your muffin tin. Then add the egg mixture on top, filling each cup 3/4 full. Next top each egg cup with a bit of cheese. Add a little or add a lot. It's completely up to you. Bake in a 350 degree over for 25-30 minutes. They are done when the eggs are completely set.



This is the easiest recipe ever. The best part is it's completely customizeable. I used cheese and bacon in mine. But you could just as easily substitute breakfast sausage. Or do them veggie style with onions and green pepper. Tomato and mushroom would be amazing! You can add pretty much anything to these and they would be amazing. These are the perfect handheld breakfast in my opinion, and are super affordable to make depending on what fillings you decide to use. Just make sure anything you put into them is pre-cooked!

The best part about these is they freeze beautifully. I love making up a big batch of them and then freezing them or breakfasts all week long! The kids can just pull out an egg cup of two, zap them in the microwave for 30 seconds and they are perfect. They get a healthy, nutritious hot breakfast, and I get 5 more minutes of coffee time!