I Have a Confession

Dan and I are huge DDD fans. That's Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives on the Food Network. WE watch every chance we get; it's one of the few shows we agree on. Anyway, this morning we were piled up in bed, watching past episodes, and drooling like we normally do when watching this show. They did a feature on a restaurant that made the tastiest looking breakfast dishes I've seen in ages. I really must eat there and as soon as possible! They made this dish called a jumbot and it looks heavenly! Check it out!


I was thrilled when I found the recipe for this amazing looking breakfast! I am going to be making this dish really soon!

What You Need:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 ounces hot sausage link
2 tablespoons water
1 (4-ounce) stick margarine
6 cups peeled, chopped, boiled potatoes
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
1 1/2 cups chopped green peppers
1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup jalapeno peppers
9 eggs, beaten
10 ounces shredded Cheddar

What You Do:
Heat the oil in a skillet and brown the sausage over medium heat. Add about 2 tablespoons of water to the skillet, cover with a lid, and cook for about 20 minutes, turning once during the process. Roughly chop the sausage links.

Preheat a large skillet or flat grill over medium-high heat and melt margarine. Add the cooked potatoes and saute until golden brown. Add onions, green peppers, tomatoes, browned sausage, and jalapeno peppers. Saute together for 5 minutes. Mix in beaten eggs until the eggs are cooked.

Divide jumbot in half in the skillet or grill, and add 8 ounces of the cheddar cheese to 1 half of jumbot. Take the other half of jumbot and lay it on top of cheese. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.

Recipe List

You might notice that I'm trying to organize all the recipes I've posted here, as well as at Ramblings.When I'm done, hopefully I'll have one nice alphabetized list over here. This should make things easier for all of us.

Our Favorite Pot Roast Recipe

Since I scored such a great deal on dry onion soup mix today, I decided to share the recipe I use it the most in...pot roast. I originally found similar recipes online, but did a lot of tweaking to combine them into the one my family now calls the best!

What You Need:
3-4 lbs roast - we really like Boston butt pork roast

1 (10 1/2 ounce) can cream of mushroom soup

1 package dry ranch dressing mix OR 1 package dry onion soup mix

1 12 ounce can of Pepsi

1 large onion, chopped

3 or 4 large potatoes, peeled and quartered

What You Do:
Place roast in the bottom of a well oiled crock pot.

Place potatoes and onions on top of roast.

Now pour cream of mushroom soup over veggies & roast.

Sprinkle whole envelope of ranch or onion soup mix on top. Sometimes I use both ranch & onion soup mix for a little something different.

Then pour Pepsi over all of it. Sometimes I use two cans of Pepsi. I like for it to come almost half way up the roast. It makes this have a really tasty gravy. You might want to experiment with the liquid amounts to find what you like best and what is right for your crock pot.

Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, then dig in!

Fast & Frugal BBQ Sauce Recipe

I discovered this morning that I didn't have enough BBQ to properly sauce all the ribs I was making for dinner. Since I've set a pretty strict budget for groceries this year, running out to get some was out of the question. After reading dozens of recipes online, I found one that I had most of the ingredients for, so I tweaked it a bit and voila yummy, fast, cheap BBQ sauce. I really enjoyed this so much more than the store bought stuff.

What You Need:

1 medium white onion, chopped very fine

1 T. minced garlic

3 T. vegetable oil

1 2/3 cups ketchup

1/2 cup vinegar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons chili powder

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

What You Do:
Put oil in a sauce pan on medium heat and cook onion and garlic until they are soft.

Then add the vinegar, ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, chili powder, and cayenne pepper.

Let this simmer for 30 minutes, stirring often.

Now, does anyone have a good recipe for homemade mac & cheese that you make on the stove top? My old stand by recipe is MIA and the stuff I tried tonight was a disaster!

New Year, New Nessa?

Well, here we are. 2009, can you believe it? I can't. Time sure does fly. Anyway, one of my many New Year's resolutions is to be a better housekeeper. I know that probably sounds silly to a lot of you, but I bet some of you know exactly what I mean.

I'm a Messie, I read that in a book somewhere so I know the actual term. I was raised by an extreme Messie with huge hoarding issues. It sure made my childhood interesting and left me with no housekeeping skills whatsoever. I'm serious about that. When I got married I couldn't do laundry, iron, cook, nothing. Remind me to tell you the can opener story one day. I had grown up in filth and worse yet I had no clue that was abnormal. Sad but true.

So, it turns out that I married a clean freak. Funny isn't it? We spent at least the first five years of our marriage arguing about the house. He loved things tidy; I was clueless as to how to run a house. Those were very interesting years.

Now we are almost 13 years into this marriage and I've realized that a clean house is much less stressful than a dirty one. In fact, I really dig order, dusted furniture, and that yummy Pine Sol clean smell. Unfortunately, our house is not as clean as I want it to be. Now don't freak out, it's not filthy, nasty, or gross. It's just really well lived in, untidy, and somewhat chaotic. No one in the house seems to be able to pick up after themselves, so I am one frazzled mama.

So, I've been trying to work on getting everyone to pitch in and at least take care of their own stuff. I mean, I'm the Mom not the servant girl. I think the kids are getting it, maybe. As for me, I need routines and schedules and less clutter...I need FLYlady!

So, starting on Monday, I am going to start doing the FLYlady baby steps. Maybe if I can make some positive changes in me the rest of the family will get inspired and join in. Wish me luck!

What about you? Do you struggle with your house or are you a June Cleaver type? What routines work for you? I'd love to hear what does and doesn't wok for y'all.

Nessa's Chicken & Rice Soup Recipe

I made this really yummy chicken soup yesterday! It started with a quest to find a way to use up a lot of left over cooked rice. Since the weather was quite crisp yesterday, soup sounded terrific. I was quite proud because although I consider myself a good cook, I use lots of recipes and do very little on my own. This creation was all mine and it turned out really well. Very frugal, but still oh so yummy!

What You Need:
2 large boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 tablespoon minced garlic
6 cups water
1 cup chopped onions
1 tablespoon dried celery flakes
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 tsp. salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 chicken bouillon cubes
4 cups cooked white rice
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter

What You Do:
I cooked this in my 5qt. crock pot. I had not thawed the chicken breast, so I added the water, then put them in there frozen. To this I added the onions, garlic, celery flakes, parsley, pepper, and salt. I let all this cook on low for 4 hours. I then removed the chicken breast and shredded them up using two forks, then returned them to the pot. At this point I added two chicken bouillon cubes and the butter, and gave the whole pot a good stir. About an hour before dinner time, I added the milk and rice, and stirred again. I cooked the soup for about 7 hours total on low, but I'm sure you could cook it longer if you'd like. Of course you could do a shorter cooking time on high. My house smelled heavenly with this simmering away all day long. This would be awesome with warm, buttered homemade bread.

Bean Chalupa Recipe

What You Need:
1 pound dried pinto beans
1 (3 1/2-pound) pork roast, I used a boneless roast
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 (10-ounce) can Rotel tomatoes
4 cups hot water

What You Do:
Rinse and sort beans. Put beans in 6 qt. crockpot that's bean sprayed with Pam. Add roast on top of beans. Add all other ingredients, making sure water completely covers the roast. Cook on high for about 8 hours or until beans are done. Using two forks, shred the roast and mix it well into the beans. This might work better if you removed the roast to a plate to shred, then added back to the crock. Serve in bowls over Fritos with shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and any other tex mex toppings you enjoy. It is also very good served over rice.