Drinky Drink: Strawberries and Creme

Hey, its Friday. Time for drinky-drinks!
This tastes like a strawberrys and cream popsicle with booze.

4 oz Amarula creme liqueur (or Bailey's works too)
1-2 tablespoons c macerated strawberries
1 large ice cube

To make the strawberries - chop about 4 berries into small pieces and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Cover and refrigerate about an hour or so, until it makes its own sauce.

Pour liqueur into small glass, spoon in berries and drop in ice.

Berries soak up the alcohol over time, sip slowly :)

Pumpkin and Apple Butters

I know it's about as far from fall as you can get. But with the seasons unable to make up their minds of late, going from hot to cold every few days, its good to have something warm every now and again.
A friend gave me some pumpkin she'd canned last fall and also some yummy home made apple sauce, so I decided to make a nice butter.
These are basically compound butters, which is a fancy way of saying its butter with flavorings mixed in.

So easy... even a caveman.. yeah.

Pumpkin Butter

1/2 c pumpkin puree
1/2 c sugar or honey
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 stick of butter, room temperature

In a pan, heat the pumpkin, sugar and spices on low heat for about 5 minutes, until everything is soft and combined. Let cool until its warm but not too hot to touch.
Stir in the softened butter.
Cover and keep refrigerated.


Apple Butter
The apple was already spiced so I just stirred in a stick of softened butter.
But you can make your own from a cinnamon-flavor applesauce:

1/2 c cinnamon apple sauce
1 stick softened butter

Stir together until combined. Cover and keep refrigerated.


There are all sorts of uses for flavored butters. Stir them into your morning oatmeal. Pour over ice cream. Stir it into cookie mix.
My favorite is simply spreading on toast:

Home Made Granola Protien Bars and Cinnamon Citrus Banana Chips

Make granola from cereal instead of buying all the ingredients individually. This box of granola cereal cost me about 3.50 and will yeild you about a dozen granola bars (or more if you cut them smaller). The same price might get you 4-6 bars in a box. This is pretty quick and easy, why not give it a try?
These are delicious and have all sorts of protein in them: whole grains, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and more.

Home Made Granola Protein Bars

1 box  Post Great Grains cereal 

1 cup honey

2 tablespoons natural peanut butter

1 bar of dark chocolate , melted

Spread cereal thinly on a large cookie sheet, bake at 350 for about 10 minutes, until toasted. 

Put honey and peanut butter in a bowl and microwave 15 seconds or until warm enough to mix. 

Dump toasted cereal in a big bowl, mix in honey mixture until incorporated into all the cereal.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment and spread mixture into the pan. Cook at 350 for about 10 more minutes, then take it out and let cool for about 30 minutes. 

Cut, brush with melted chocolate (optional). 

Banana chips! SO CHEAP! SO YUMMY! I made about a cup of banana chips from one banana.

These guys are pretty expensive in the store, but cost practically nothing to make at home.

Lemon juice keeps them from getting brown and the cinnamon makes a great flavor with banana (leave it out if you dont like it though). 

From: Momables Recipe 

Cinnamon Citrus Banana Chips

1 Banana

1 tsp cinnamon

Small Pinch of salt

1-2 tablespoons Lemon Juice

Slice banana thinly, about 1/8", not thick, but not see-through-thin.

Lay out each piece on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Mix lemon juice, salt and cinnamon and brush on each banana slice. 

Bake in a 200 degree oven for 2 hours or until they're hard. Let cool and store in a container.

Slow-Cooker Black Bean Soup

This spring can't decide if it wants to be Spring or Winter. Last week it was 80 degrees and today its 40 with a chance of snow. Go home, Winter, you're drunk.
So its cold, time to bring back something nice and warm - soup! This is an easy, dump-and-go, slow-cooker recipe.


Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup

1 15oz can black beans
2 c broth (i used turkey)
2/3 c uncooked rice
1 onion, sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1-2 chipotles in adobo, chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp Goya Sazonador Total mixed seasoning

Dump everything in the pot and turn on low for 4 hours.
Eat this with crusty bread or tortilla chips.

Tip: 

• Use less chipotles if you want less heat. I'd say 1 is good for mild, 2 for medium, 3 for hot. 
• Use 1 cup of broth to make thicker, spoon into tortilla shells for quick taco dinner. Top with avocado and sour cream.
• Vegetable broth makes this 100% vegetarian. 
• Add 1 chicken breast. At the end of cooking, take the chicken out, shred it with two forks and stir meat back into pot. 
• Dump in a can of corn or 1 cup chopped carrots.

Bacon and Egg Thingies

Thanks to my facebook friends who posted this article, my fiance and I had a lovely brunch today.
You may have seen these Bacon and Egg Cups on pinterest or elsewise on the internet. If you havn't made them yet, here they are, super simple.
Note: I've seen these without the bread, but I prefer with the bread. It soaks up the juice from the bacon and the egg and keeps everything together in one piece. 



Step 1: Bread Disks
I cut these out using a baby food jar. I got two circles out of each slice of bread, then mushed up the scraps to cut with my jar too. It doesn't really matter what  it looks like, the bread is there for stability, so you can just you can just mush up pieces of bread to fit.
For 10 cups, I only used 2 slices of bread.






Step 2: Bacon
Wind bacon around the bread, along the wall of the cup. 1 slice of bacon per cup.
















Step 3: Egg and Season
Crack an egg in the middle of each bacon-cup, sprinkle on a dash of seasoning. I like to use Goya All Purpose seasoning. Garlic salt is great or just salt and pepper, whatever you like.

Step 4: Bake and Eat

Bake at 400 degrees (F) for about 20 minutes. 

 Variations:

• Add in veggies before you crack in the egg.
• Fry the bacon about 1/2 way before putting in the cups, for crispier bacon.

Cold Brew Iced Coffee - Simple.

Now that it's finally starting to get warm out, its time for iced coffee! I live on this stuff most of the year actually.

This stuff is wonderful for iced coffee because you don't get the bitterness of hot-brew, plus you don't have to use a lot of it so its super thrifty!

There's as many ways to make iced coffee as there are people who make it. This is my way. Its easy and it tastes amazing.

Once you dump everything into the container, it has to brew at least 8 hours. I leave mine over night. But if you make a large batch once a week, its quick to just throw together a glass of coffee when you want it. In that sense, it can be faster than waiting for coffee to brew in the pot. 

What you get is basically a concentrated coffee. Drinking it straight is a bit like sipping espresso. 

And did I mention it tastes amazing? It does.

Step one: 

Get a French Press. 

Believe me when I say I am not into useless, one-job, gadgets. Waste of money. Waste of space.

But the way I drink coffee, this thing actually has come in very handy. 

They are not expensive, probably less than you'll pay for a coffee pot. Definitely less than you'll pay for a week or two's worth of Starbucks.  

I paid $40 for this guy on Amazon. But that is really a lot, I kind of splurged on mine. Starbucks sells them for less than $20 and you can find them at other coffee shops as well as big stores like Target, Bed Bath & Beyond and even Walmart.

The point of a french press is that its a container with a mesh-lined plunger, so it separates liquid and whatever you are brewing easily. No electricity. No buttons or whistles. 

Step two: 

Dump in Coffee and Water. 

My press is 32 ounces, so I'll dump in about 1/2 pound of coffee (that's 1/2 of a bag) and fill it up the rest of the way with water. Put the lid on and leave it on the counter over night. 

In the morning, push the plunger down to separate the grounds and liquid. That liquid is glorious coffee concentrate. Strain that into another container and refrigerate. Probably keeps at least two weeks but mine never last more than a few days.
The great thing about cold brew is that it doesn't get stale after a few hours, like coffee brewed with hot water. 

Step three:

Brew 8+ hours, Make coffee.

Fill glass with ice.
Fill halfway with coffee.
Fill the rest of the way with half-and-half + a pump of flavor syrup. 

Variations: Treat it like you would espresso or make your favorite iced coffee beverages: 

Iced Caramel Macchiato:

One Pump caramel syrup + Drizzle Caramel Sauce + Fill glass with ice +  Fill 1/2 glass with coffee + Fill the rest of the way with milk or half-and-half + Top with caramel sauce.

Vietnamese Iced Coffee:
Fill glass with ice + Pour about 1 cup (8oz) coffee over top + stir in 1-2 tablespoons Sweetened Condensed Milk

Check out this easy Cinnamon Dulce Syrup from My Frugal Adventures. 

Deconstructed Sandwich Lunch

• Day-old German whole wheat baguette, toasted with olive oil, salt and pepper.
• Mushrooms cooked in butter with salt and pepper.
• Greek olives, pitted and quartered.
• Fresh tomato, diced.
• A bit of fresh Parsley.

Spoon veggies onto bread and eat. A bit of swiss or mild cheese might be nice, too.

I have this idea that this is the rustic way people used to eat in the olden days. Now its Fancy, isnt that ironic? <3

Ribeye Stroganoff with Beer Sauce

Stroganov is a Russian dish of meat (typically beef) in a sour cream and mustard sauce. Here known as Stroganoff, it's now one of those Americanized dishes born  from our multi-cultured population.
My mom used to make stroganoff with ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, and egg noodles; so I have no idea how authentic this actually is (do Russians eat this?), these days. But its delicious!

This is my updated version, from scratch, with beer. I've seen lots of folk use wine in this, which is nice too. But I got beer in my 'fridge, and I think beer and steak are a great combo.

My Lovely Mise en Place.

Slice Steak.
Slice thinly, about 1/8" or so.

It's much easier to cut when the steak is cold. This one is mostly frozen, though right from the 'fridge works too, as cold meat is firmer than room-temperature meat. 
You still have to thaw it completely before cooking. 

Season with salt and sprinkle on about 1 tablespoon of the flour. Toss to coat.

Cook Rice.
I had about 1 1/4 cups of this lovely wild rice left over from Pork Chops I made earlier in the week. You can certainly feel free to use egg noodles or white rice or what-have-you.
Since I'm using leftovers, its a weird amount, so I just filled a small cup with the rice, and used that cup to measure the water into the rice cooker. Much easier than trying to do the math in your head.
The ratio of wild rice to water is 1:2 (so 1 small cup of rice, 2 small cups of water).
I also seasoned the rice with my favorite Goya all purpose seasoning (about two teaspoons ish).

Chop Garlic and Onions.
There are lots of fancy ways to cut that probably look nicer, but this is how I like to do it when nobody's looking. Slice long ways into strips, then turn the whole thing about 1/4 turn (so the strips face parallel to you), and chop end-to-end into little pieces.
Slice Mushrooms
Use whatever mushrooms you like for these. Baby Bellas and Cirimini are good choices. These are Button Mushrooms. Slice into little lovely mushroom pieces.
Saute. 
Add about 1 tablespoon of oil and saute meat and veggies in pan until meat is browned and onions are translucent. Remove mixture and put aside. Wipe out pan for the sauce, reduce heat to medium. 


Make the Sauce
Drop in 1-2 tablespoons of butter into pan. Let it sizzle and mostly melt, add in 2 tablespoons (or remaining) flour. Whisk constantly until flour dissolves into butter. 
Pour in about 1/4 bottle of beer. (Depending on the darkness of your beer, you can use more or less. Taste as you go. And Drink Up. Don't let that other 3/4 of the beer go to waste!)
Whisk to combine. Sauce should have a nice nutty brown colour at this point.
Whisk in sour cream until combined. Sauce should become beige. Add in spices and a touch of olive oil.

Stir meat and veggies into the sauce and serve over rice.

Tips: 

Save yourself some time/effort and throw halved or quartered frozen meatballs into the sauce, instead of using the steak.

Ribeye Stroganoff with Beer Sauce

YIELD: 4 servingsPREP TIME: 15 minutesCOOK TIME: 25 minutes
TOTAL TIME: 40 minutes -ish

INGREDIENTS:

1-1/2 pounds of thinly sliced Steak {skirt, flank or ribeye to name a few}

4 tablespoons All Purpose Flour, divided

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1 tablespoon Olive Oil

1 cup sliced Mushrooms

1/4 cup finely diced Yellow Onion

1 teaspoon chopped Fresh Garlic {about 2 small cloves}

2 tablespoons Butter

1/4 bottle of Beer

2 cups of chicken broth

1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard

3/4 cup Sour Cream

Salt and Black Pepper, to taste

1 1/2 cups Wild Rice 

Chopped Fresh Parsley, for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Slice up the frozen steak into thin strips. Toss it in a bowl with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and 1 heaping tablespoon of all purpose flour. Set it off to the side so it comes up to room temperature.

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Once hot add in the steak strips and let them cook undisturbed for 5 minutes so a brown crust forms.

After the time is up stir the steak strips and add in the sliced mushrooms, diced onions and chopped garlic. Stir and cook until the mushrooms and onions are soft. About 4 minutes.

Remove the beef and onion mixture to a clean bowl and set it off to the side.

Reduce the heat under the pan to medium and give it a chance to cool down before adding two tablespoons of butter. Once melted add in the 3 tablespoons of all purpose flour. Whisk until smooth and flour dissolves into butter, making a roux, for 2 minutes.

Pour in the beer and whisk in sour cream and mustard. Cook a few minutes until thickened. Add in the beef and mushroom mixture, season with salt and pepper, Goya seasoning and parsley. 

Heat through and serve over cooked rice.