Uglies.... it tastes better than it sounds.

Well, I know this may not sound appetizing.... but these little uglies taste great!!!

My friend Kelli was making these one night and posted it on Facebook. 

So of course, I was intrigued and looked them up. 

I actually have a recipe for something similar to these called BBQ cups.... but I like the name uglies better!

Anyway, I finally got the chance to make them and was very happy I did.

Not only were they super easy, they were something different that I figured the kids would like 

I was right!

The great thing about these is that you can make them with fresh burger or use leftovers you have in your

fridge. 

See the TIPS section below to see what I mean.

Happy Cooking!

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef or turkey

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 1/2 cups barbeque sauce

1 (10 ounce) package refrigerated biscuit dough

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Lightly grease muffin tin

In a large  frying pan, cook ground beef/turkey with onion and garlic powder until evenly brown

Drain off the grease.

Stir in the barbeque sauce and simmer for another 3 minutes.

Roll out each biscuit to fit into the muffin tin. *(see Tips section)

Put the biscuit in the muffin tin and fold up sides to create a cup shape.

Fill each biscuit fill almost to the top with the meat mixture

Top with cheddar cheese.

Bake about 15 minutes or until biscuits are baked, cheese is melted and tops are golden brown.

   

***Reviews:

We love love loved these!  It is a rare thing in this house that everyone is happy with dinner.  This was one of those nights.... Yay!  These are being added to the "favorite " list in our house. 

**Tips:

I used crossiant dough instead of biscuit dough because it's what I had on hand.  I just pressed them together and made a rectangle (see above photo) and then cut it in half.  It doesn't have to be a perfect circle...I mean, they are called Uglies after all. 

Also, I have heard that these are great with pulled pork or shredded bbq chicken.  I am guessing that is true. I will definitely try these next time I make pulled pork.  It's always great to do something fun with leftovers.

Another idea is to make them with taco meat and top them with cheese.. then add lettuce and diced tomato after they come out of the oven.  What a fun way to eat a "taco"!!! 

Printer Friendly Directions

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef or turkey

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 1/2 cups barbeque sauce

1 (10 ounce) package refrigerated biscuit dough

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Lightly grease muffin tin
In a large  frying pan, cook ground beef/turkey with onion and garlic powder until evenly brown
Drain off the grease.
Stir in the barbeque sauce and simmer for another 3 minutes.
Roll out each biscuit to fit into the muffin tin.
Put the biscuit in the muffin tin and fold up sides to create a cup shape.
Fill each biscuit fill almost to the top with the meat mixture
Top with cheddar cheese.
Bake about 15 minutes or until biscuits are baked, cheese is melted and tops are golden brown.

String Pie ( A Reader Recipe)

Welcome to my very first Reader Recipe post!

I am so very excited about this.

I've been wanting to do this for a while and I'm hoping you'll all come through and give me some great recipes! 

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about click HERE to read my original call for help.)

Of course my first few recipes are going to be from friends, because they are the best for stealing  getting recipes from when you're getting started.

This one is from one of my very good friends from High School.

I just happened to ask her what she made for dinner one night last week and she said "String Pie".

I asked "What the heck is string pie?"  I couldn't even imagine what it was.  I really had no idea.

Well when I asked 2 of my kids what they thought string pie was they gave me these answers:

1. Probably some kind of casserole with shredded meat
2. Noodles

Apparently they are smarter than me.... well at least one of them is.  ;)

String Pie is, in fact, noodles.  

Well not JUST noodles... but noodles with a few other yummy things thrown in too.

It's pretty much like lasagna or baked spaghetti... but a little different.

Oh and did I mention that it's AWESOME?... hmm... well, it is!

This is why I already LOVE this reader recipe thing.

I was so excited about it, I asked her to e mail it to me right away.

So...Thank you Miss Helena... your String Pie is my first Reader Recipe!

Here it is:

Ingredients:
2lb ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped green peppers

1 Jar(26 oz)spaghetti sauce or you can go here for my recipe for homemade sauce

8oz spaghetti cooked,drained (this is about 1/2 of a box)

1/3 cup parm cheese

2 eggs beaten

2 tsp butter

1 (24 oz) container cottage cheese

2 3/4 cup shreded cheese

Directions:

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees

Cook beef,onion and peppers over med-high heat until brown then drain grease

Mix in spaghetti sauce

In seperate pan, boil spaghetti noodles until al dente (not quite done)

Drain noodles

In a bowl, combine spaghetti, parm cheese,eggs and butter ... Mix well

Place  noodles in bottom of 13x9 baking pan

Spread cottage cheese over top of noodles

Next, cover cotage cheese  with sauce/meat mixture (forgot to take a pic of that step...oops)

Sprinkle with cheese ( I used 2 different kinds... just for fun)

Bake 20-25 min or untill cheese is melted

Half mozzarella half cheddar

Makes about 12 servings

***Review:

Oh my goodness... this was so yummy!  It sounded so fun and it was.  But it was also very very good.  I will definitely add this to the favorites list.  Obviously, you can tell I loved it.  But the great thing is, all but one child loved it too!  The hubs is also in love with this.  I am so very happy I made this!
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I think it needed a little salt.  You may not agree... so I didn't add it to the ingredients. 

**Tips:

I used whole grain linguini on accident... it worked out just fine.  My guess is, you could use any pasta if you had to and it would work... but then it wouldn't be "String" Pie anymore.  I know it would still taste good though. 

I didn't add green peppers because I can't really eat them... and adding the onions was a mistake because my one super picky child found them and refused to eat it.  Grrr!  But I liked them.

When pouring the raw eggs over the noodles make sure that you mix it quickly, the hot noodles will start to cook the egg and you don't want it to get lumpy. 

 If you want to save yourself from washing yet another dish, just mix the noodles with the eggs and cheese right in the pan you cooked it in.
Also, don't over cook the pasta when you're boiling it.  You are cooking it twice and don't want it to get soggy in the "pie".

Make sure to watch this closely in your oven at the 20 minute mark. If you take it out too soon, the center won't be hot enough... but you don't want to burn the cheese either.  Everyones oven is different.  I cooked it for 25 minutes and then broild it for almost 2 minutes to brown the cheese.

Oh.. speaking of cheese... I used half Mozzarlla and half cheddar to see which I liked better. I liked them both. Mozz tended to give it a more italian flavor but the cheddar gave it more of a cheeseburger pie flavor.  I liked doing it half and half.. and will probably do that again.  I'm wierd!

Printer friendly recipe:

String Pie
Ingredients:

2lb ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped green peppers

1 jar(26 oz)spaghetti sauce or you can go here for my recipe for homemade sauce

8oz spaghetti cooked,drained (this is about 1/2 of a box)

1/3 cup parm cheese

2 eggs beaten

2 tsp butter

1 (24 oz) container cottage cheese

2 3/4 cup shreded cheese

  Directions:

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees

Cook beef,onion and peppers over med-high heat until brown then drain grease

Mix in spaghetti sauce

In seperate pan, boil spaghetti noodles until al dente (not quite done)

Drain noodles

In a bowl, combine spaghetti, parm cheese,eggs and butter ... Mix well

Place  noodles in bottom of 13x9 baking pan

Spread cottage cheese over top of noodles

Next, cover cotage cheese  ith sauce/meat mixture

Sprinkle with cheese

Bake 20-25 min or untill cheese is melted

Makes about 12 servings

Chili

It's cold!

Reeeeeally cold! 

Time to break out the "winter food" recipes

I love chili!

It's so warm and comforting to eat.

I'm only "allowed" to make it in the winter though.

Hubs has issues with me making soup or chili when it's warm out.

I find that slightly wierd...

So sometimes, I sneak in soup.

I'm a rebel....lol

But, now that it's chili season I thought I'd share my favorite chili recipe with you!

Ingredients:

1 (29oz) can of tomato sauce

1 (28oz) can of whole tomatoes

2 (28oz) cans of crushed tomatoes

1 large Onion (or 2 small ones), diced

1 (1.25oz) pkt of chili seasoning

10 cloves of garlic, diced

2 lbs of ground beef/turkey (cooked)

2 cans kidney beans, undrained

**shredded cheese (optional toppings)

**sour cream (optional toppings)

**crackers (optional toppings)

Dont have packaged chili seasoning?
Make your own-
Ingredients for homemade chili seasoning:
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon seasoned salt
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Directions:

Brown the ground beef and drain grease

Add all ingredients (except toppings) into a large pot

Cook 3-4 hours on low/med (or longer) with lid off
Stir occasionally

**Serve with toppings above or anything else that sounds good :)

FYI: This is a 5 qt pot and it's pretty full. It definitely makes a lot of chili!

***Reviews:
I really like this chili.  The hubs would prefer if it was much much more spicy, but he likes it otherwise.He just adds his cholula hot sauce to his own bowl.  The kids will not eat it.... and I don't expect them to.  But it's a pretty good recipe I think.  I really love all the garlic in it! It's pretty chunky too... not a "soupy" kind of chili.

**Tips:

Chili is a pretty basic dish.  You can add almost anything you like.  That's the great part about it.  You can add steak chunks, jalapenos, hot sauce, green pepper.  Or you can take out the garlic or onion .... it's flexible. Add more beans or take them out entirely. If you want it more soupy, you can replace the whole tomatoes for tomato sauce or even (blah) tomato juice (my mom does this). She also adds little noodles so it's more like goulash.  I have even seen people add cocoa powder.

Also, I had a friend that used this basic recipe and added a can of hormel chili as well. I thought that was pretty good too.  What I love about chili is that no two chili's are alike.... so get creative and make it your own.

Cooking it as long as you can is best... but  make sure it's on low because you do not want to burn the bottom... yuk!  It's almost always better the next day too.  

Another bonus?  You can put it all in the crockpot and cook it all day.  How cool is that!

You can easily freeze any leftovers too! 

Gotta love chili!

*Serving it:

I cannot eat chili without sour cream and cheese in it... seriously! 

It's awesome with crackers too.

One of the best add ins?  French fries!  Serious... try it somtime.

You can also just eat it plain OR with a little Italian bread.

Anything is better with Italian bread!

Meatball Sub Casserole

Well, I don't know about you but this winter weather is getting to me already.

I miss the sunshine.

I miss the warm air.

I miss my motivation!

For some reason, I have not felt like cooking at all this past week

I mean, I'm even too lazy to put something in the crockpot

Yeah... it's that bad.

My kids need clean socks

Hubs needs clean work clothes

And here I am.... sitting in my heated blanket.

Blah! 

I just don't feel like doing anything.

I think I have that seasonal affective disorder

Or I'm just lazy...lol 

Luckily, I have a stockpile of things in the freezer

And my father in law made dinner for me one night.

He's a great cook, by the way! Mmmm!

Last night I got a little motivation and made a recipe I haven't made in years

My friend Laura made it for me when I had a baby and I had to have the recipe.

It's great!

I've been wanting to share it with you, but didn't have all the ingredients in the house at one time

Until recently.

See, I have these rules....

Like, grocery rules.

There are certain things I WILL NOT buy unless they are a certain price.

My friends are laughing right now because they know this and make fun of me for it

For example I will not buy grapes unless they are under a dollar per pound!  No exceptions.

Yes, really.

It can't be helped..... I have standards....lol

One of the other things I won't buy is pre made meatballs.

They are expensive...

So I wait until they go on sale BOGO and then I buy a few bags and keep them in the freezer.

Last week they went on sale....

So now I can share my recipe with you!

And in case you're wondering, yes, I do have my own meatball recipe. 

But remember above how I said I was being lazy?  Yeah.

I'll share that recipe with you another time.

Ingredients:
1 loaf Italian bread
8 oz. Cream cheese
1/2 C Mayo
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp Pepper
2 C Shredded Mozzarella
1 lb.  Frozen meatballs (thawed)
28 oz. Jar pasta sauce or make your own with my homemade sauce recipe
1 C Water

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
Slice bread into 1 inch slices

Arrange slices in an ungreased 9x13 baking dish

In a bowl, combine cream cheese, mayo & spices
Spread them onto bread in dish

Sprinkle bread with 1/2 C shredded cheese

In another bowl, mix meatballs, sauce & water and stir
Pour meatball mixture over bread in baking dish

Sprinkle with remaining cheese

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! 


***Review:
I got an all thumbs up for this!  ALL of them!  Can you believe it?  It's a Christmas miracle!
This is a great comfort food on a cold night! I love it!  Now that I have lots of meatballs, I can make it more often ;)

**Tips:
You may want to use more than 1 lb of meatballs.  There just wasnt enough in this dish... although I didn't measure them, I think next time I will just make sure the whole top of the dish is covered in meatballs. 
As for the Moz. cheese, I think I might add more of that too.  I actually added a little fresh Parmesan to the top of mine as well to give it a little more flavor (aprox. 1/4 C)
Also, I forgot to defrost the meatballs before I added them to the sauce so they went in mostly frozen.  It seemed to work out fine.  I just left it in the oven a few minutes longer....making sure to keep and eye on it so the cheese didn't burn.  No one likes burnt cheese. 
The only complaint I got from this dish is that it was "too cheesy" meaning the cream cheese part.  I didn't add the whole bowl of mixture to the bread slices.  I just basically "buttered" each slice with the mayo/cream cheese mix and had a lot left over. Next time I might just cut that part of the recipe in half and see if that is better.  I still liked it this way, but I think a little less cream cheese would be good.
Oh and last but not least, this took about 45 minutes from fridge to table.  Not too shabby!

Turkey corn casserole

Ok... I will admit right off that I did not want to make this dish.

I would not consider myself a food snob, but there are certain foods I won't eat

Hamburger helper is among them (sorry if you like hamburger helper)

This dish kind of reminded me of a hamburger helper-ish meal

Anyway, long story longer, I had a yummy chicken dish I was going to make tonight

I went to the freezer to grab the bag of chicken that I knew was there and guess what?

Hubby decided to use it to experiment with a recipe of his own (yes... the whole bag)

This is in no way a good thing, since hubby is ONLY good at making breakfast foods.

One day I will tell you the story of him making his own BBQ sauce..... not pretty

Anyway... there was no chicken. 

There were also 70 mph winds and tornado warnings... so I wasn't going to the store.

What to do? What to do?

I searched the pantry, the freezers and the cookbooks.

I came up with this somehow. 

Really I think it was just that I didn't have much food on hand and I happened to have all the ingredients for this dish. 

Also, I was starving....so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Guess what?  It WAS a good idea. 

I liked it.  Granted, I was starving..... but I wasn't the only one who liked it.

The kids liked it

The neighbor liked it

Did I mention I liked it?

The hubby liked it... a lot.

This is what the pan looked like when I got home last night:

This is in no way a "company" type meal though.

Meaning, I would never serve it to company( because it's not pretty - see photo below), but it did the job...and that's what counts right?

No Dinner drama for this mama!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
- 1lb ground turkey
- 2 cans cream of mushroom soup
- 1(16oz) pkg egg noodles
- 1 (15 oz) can corn (drained)

- 2 (10.75 ounce) cans cream of mushroom soup

- salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9x13 casserole dish
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add noodles, cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until not quite done, and drain.
Place turkey in a skillet over medium heat, and cook until evenly brown. Drain grease.
In a bowl, gently mix cooked noodles and turkey, corn, and soup. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to the prepared baking dish.
Bake 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until bubbly.


***Review:
As you can tell from what I wrote above, we really liked this one.  It's not pretty, but it's a decent dinner... it tastes good... which is half of what counts...lol

**Tips:
As you can see from my lovely photos, I did not use egg noodles.  Why? because hubby somehow used those too and left me with a half of a bag.  I improvised and used bow tie noodles... they worked fine, which leads me to believe you could pretty much use any kind of pasta you want in this dish. 
Also, next time I might throw a little cheese on top just for fun!  I also think you could easily use ground beef or even shredded chicken or turkey... pretty versatile dish.  Add a few green veggies too and it might look better...lol

Mini Burgers

Ingredients:
- 1 lb of burger
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tsp garlic salt
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 1/8 C Italian bread crumbs
- 1 tbs ketchup or ranch dressing
- Serve on Hawiian bread rolls or dinner rolls
** Optional:  Cheese slices, oninon, lettuce, roma tomato

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and form mini burgers. You can pan fry them or cook them on the grill. They don't take very long at all ... maybe a few mintues to cook.
Slice the rolls in half for mini buns and serve your burger with whatever you like on top.

***Review:
My kids were so happy with these. They found them fun and tasty. I used the hawiian sweet rolls and they were great because I like the sweet and salty together. Hubby loved them as well! This was the first time
we've had these and they were a big hit!
**Tips:
I used a roma tomato because they were the perfect size when sliced. Also, you can really use any hamburger recipe you want to... it doesn't really make a difference, I just happen to like mine with lots of garlic flavor.

Taco Cornbread Casserole

Ingredients-
- 2 boxes of Jiffy Cornbread
- 2 eggs
- 2/3 C Milk
- 1-2 Lbs ground meat (burger or turkey)
- 1 pkg taco seasoning
*1 Can corn (drained)
*1 can Black Beans (rinsed & drained)
*1 can Diced Tomato (drained)
*Sour cream (on the side)
*Salsa (on the side)

(* items are all optional)

Directions-

• Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees
• Brown meat and drain
• Add taco seasoning and mix
• Add corn, beans & tomato to the meat mix (you can add any or none of these if you don't like them)
• Put meat into bottonm of 8x10 dish
• Mix the jiffy mix with eggs and milk and pour batter evenly over top of meat.
• Bake or 20-30 minutes @ 400 degrees or until cornbread is golden AND cooked through.
• This will make 8 large portions

***Review:

This is one of my kids (and our) favorites! They don't like it when I add tomato... but I did today and they just picked them out. We top it with sour cream and salsa and mash it all up in the bowl. It's an easy quick meal. I think it took about 40 minutes total...

** Tips:

Sometimes I keep frozen taco meat in the freezer and use that and it cuts out a step.

One problem I run across is that sometimes after 20 minutes, the cornbread is golden, but not totally done in the center... next time I may try covering it near the end. Also, if you don't drain the veggies & meat well, the dish will be watery when you cut into it.

You could also try this in the crockpot, but I personally think it would be more work than it's worth to do it that way. I figure if I'm already using the stove to cook the meat I may as well put it in the oven for 20 minutes.

One last thing... if you don't have a large family, you can cut the recipe in half and use an 8x8 dish.

Thanks to my friend Allison who gave me this recipe years ago in a frantic Dinner Drama moment!