Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Dinner Rolls

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stir and pour rolls 1

The Stir-and-Pour Bread just keeps growing in all its amazing opportunities for easy baking.

First, we figured out that the concept of stirring together ingredients and pouring them into pans to make bread really does work.

Next, we experimented and learned that the recipe actually made a delicious variety of sandwich bread. We vowed to never knead dough again. (Well, not all of us vowed that. Maybe I’m the only one who vowed that. I guarantee that my kneading knowledge will be used less and less frequently from now on.)

Now, I am excited to share that by simply scooping the Stir-and-Pour dough into muffin cups, we can make dinner rolls!

Before

stir and pour rolls6

After

stir and pour rolls7

Voila

stir and pour rolls5

What did we ever do without this recipe?

Stir-and-Pour Dinner Rolls

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4.8 from 6 reviews
Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Dinner Rolls
 
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Serves: 20
Ingredients
  • 4 cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground hard white wheat)
  • 2 teaspoons active rise yeast
  • 2 Tablespoons sucanat or sugar or honey
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 egg (optional)
  • ¼ cup heavy cream (optional)
  • 2 cups warm water
Instructions
  1. Stir all ingredients together.
  2. Cover and allow it to sit for 30 minutes.
  3. Pour contents into buttered muffin tins or silicone muffin cups.
  4. Bake in a 350° for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned.
  5. Serve right away.

Can it get any easier?

Stir-and-Pour Dinner Roll Quick Tips

  • These Stir-and-Pour Dinner Rolls taste best fresh, right out of the oven. That means that while just about everything else on my holiday table will be made ahead of time and reheated while I put these rolls together about an hour before meal time.
  • Mix the dry ingredients the day before and set them aside for easy mixing as you prepare the rest of the meal.
  • A few hours before your meal, place a stick of butter on a plate to soften to serve with your rolls. You must butter these. It is a requirement.
  • The recipe makes 18-24 rolls, depending on how much dough you scoop into each muffin cup.

Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Dinner Rolls

If you’re interested in another real food dinner roll that I really love, you may want to check out these Whole Wheat Butterhorns. They do require kneading, but you can make them ahead and pull them out to bake right before meal time. Easy! You might also want to check out my No-Knead One Hour Dinner Rolls recipe. They are almost (but not quite) as easy as this Stir-and-Pour recipe. So many great options!

Other recipes in this series so far:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

How to Make Whipped Cream

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Of all the food I make from scratch, whipped cream is the one that tends to really surprise people who are unfamiliar with the simplicity (and deliciousness) of real food cooking.

“You can make whipped cream!?!?” they ask, incredulously. That’s when I tell them that they, too, can make this treat. Then I hand them the beaters and watch as they follow my ever so simple instructions to make whipped cream. (Stand, hold beaters in bowl of cream, move beaters around a little bit, watch fun patterns forming, stop when it’s thick.) After they’ve whipped the cream, thus creating whipped cream, they can’t believe that this is all it takes. I explain that this is how whipped cream got its name. It’s all very fascinating.

strawberry_shortcake_2

Cool Whip has us all a bit confused. I remember thinking that Cool Whip was whipped cream. As a matter of fact, Cool Whip used to be my favorite part of a holiday meal when I was a little girl. I did not even want the pie that went with it. Why would I want pie when there were tubs of Cool Whip in abundance? My cousin Rebecca and I would each get a bowl and fill it with Cool Whip. We’d sit back, giggling, licking spoonful after spoonful of Cool Whip. Our mothers and our aunts and our Nana would chuckle at us and we’d be like, “What?! This is the reason the pilgrims came over on the Mayflower.” We left the pie (and the coffee they drank with it) to the adults. Weirdos.

I’m all grown up now (she says, as she takes a sip of coffee). I’m over Cool Whip. I like the real stuff now. Real whipped cream is one of the easiest treats to make. Because it is real, it tastes absolutely amazing. Our bodies recognize it, so we don’t even have to be like “oh no, I’m eating so much fat, this is so bad for me.” On the contrary, our bodies don’t recognize and don’t know what to do with hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, sodium casienate, artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan, monostearate, sodium polyphosphate.

Those are just some of the key ingredients in Cool Whip. Please don’t think it’s healthier. Or actual food. For the love of all things real, please whip cream.

How to Make Whipped Cream

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5.0 from 2 reviews
How to Make Whipped Cream
 
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Ingredients
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 2 Tablespoons sugar or 10 drops liquid stevia
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
Instructions
  1. Place ingredients in a high power blender. Whip on high speed for about 30 seconds or until cream has thickened. OR
  2. Put all ingredients into a large bowl. Whip with a hand mixer on high speed for 3-4 minutes or until cream thickens and forms stiff peaks.

Make it Ahead

I recommend making Whipped Cream one day in advance or the morning of a big holiday meal. Prepare as directed, cover, and place in a bowl with a lid in the refrigerator until serving time. DO NOT STIR this after it has been whipped or it may deflate and become liquidy.

Easy Blender Whipped Cream

My new favorite way to make whipped cream is to pour cream, stevia, and vanilla into my Blendtec. I turn it on and have whipped cream 15-30 seconds later. It is so easy. The Blendtec is amazing in many ways (because hello, whipped cream in seconds). But beware: leaving the cream to whip much longer will produce butter. This is not a problem (because hello, butter in minutes) unless you wanted whipped cream for your pie. Butter is not the same.

How do you make Whipped Cream?

Here are the quick links to all the recipes we covered in this series:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

Have you been a Cool Whip lover like I was in the past? Funny how now I can’t even stomach thinking about it. Now that I know the real deal is so easy and delicious, I don’t even see a comparison. Mmmm, real food how I love you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

How To Make Your Own Frozen Pies

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Last I checked, Sara Lee charges over $3 for her frozen pies. I don’t blame her. I’d charge $5. But when I make my own pies, it can cost as little as $1 and I know what ingredients I’m including. Plus I’m making mine with love and all that. (Priceless, no doubt.)

Making a frozen pie is as easy as making a not frozen pie. Not that making a pie is easy. Nor is it really hard. You just have to commit, you know? You have to be like, “Today I am going to mix together and roll out pie crusts. I’m just going to do it and get this job out of the way. Everyone will love the pie. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Let’s do this.”

Then, after you mix and roll your crusts, you add whatever filling you want (pumpkin, apple, etc). You wrap them well, and you freeze them.

This is exactly how Sara Lee does it. Only she puts hers in a box. We’ll skip that part.

This post is chuck full of pie-making tips, recipes, and instructions. Shall we begin?

How to Make a Whole Wheat Pie Crust

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1.0 from 1 reviews
How To Make Your Own Frozen Pies
 
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Serves: 1 crust
Ingredients
  • 1¼ cup whole wheat flour
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • ⅓ cup Palm Shortening (or butter)
  • 4-5 Tablespoons cold water
Instructions
  1. Place flour, salt and shortening in food processor.
  2. Blend until shortening is cut throughout the flour and the mixture resembles crumbs.
  3. Drizzle in the water while the food processor is still whirling.
  4. Continue until a ball of dough forms.
  5. Roll out your dough into a circle on a well floured surface.
  6. Fold the circle in half. Then fold it in half again.
  7. Place your dough in your pie dish with the folded corner in the center.
  8. Unfold the dough, shape it into the dish and make the edges pretty. (see tutorial video below)
  9. Poke your dough a few times with a fork to keep it from poofing up in the oven.
  10. Bake at 450° for 10-12 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Or, fill it with pie filling and bake as directed in specific pie recipe.

How to Shape a Pie Crust

You can look through a picture tutorial on this post to see the specifics of how to roll a pie crust and place it in a pie pan.

Want to watch me shaping a pie crust a few years ago? Watch the video below. (Click here if the video doesn’t show up for you.)

How to Make a Frozen Pie

How to Make Your Own Frozen Pies

To make a frozen pumpkin or fruit pie, make it according to the directions but do not bake. Wrap the unbaked pie very well in plastic wrap. You might even consider putting the wrapped pie into a freezer bag for extra freezer protection. Label the pie. Freeze for up to three months.

To bake your frozen pie, take it out of the freezer and put it directly into a cold oven. Turn on the oven and bake as directed allowing a little extra baking time if necessary. See how easy this is?!

apple pie freezer 2

If you plan to make a cream pie, bake your crust as directed, allow it to cool, then wrap and freeze. Thaw crust and add your cream filling before serving.

Holiday Pie Recipes

Pumpkin Pie Recipe

2 cups canned or frozen pumpkin
2/3 cup brown sugar or sucanat
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon nutmeg
3 eggs
1 ¼ cup heavy cream

Whisk together all ingredients. Pour into unbaked pie crust. Freeze if desired. Bake at 350° for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the pie comes out clean.

pumpkin_pies

Apple Pie Recipe

5-6 apples (any variety)
1/4 cup sucanat or brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Wash and slice apples. Stir in sucanat and cinnamon. Make a double pie crust recipe. Place one crust on the bottom of a pie pan. Spread apple pie filling into the unbaked crust. Place the second pie crust on top. Seal and shape as shown in the video above. Freeze if desired. Bake at 350° for 50-60 minutes.

I usually have prepared Apple Pie Filling in my freezer, making this super simple.

Dutch Apple Pie Recipe

Make as directed above, only make a single pie crust. Top apples with crumb topping recipe found here.

apple_pie_palm_shortening_sm

If you’re hoping to Get Ahead for the Holidays, I highly recommend making your pies soon and putting them into the freezer to pull out for easy baking the day before your meal!

Here are the quick links to all the recipes we covered in this series:

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Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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Real Food Green Bean Casserole (a Make-Ahead Dish)

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gb_casserole_2

If I had to choose a favorite holiday dish, it would have to be Green Bean Casserole. It’s not something I remember eating when I was growing up. I discovered it sometime after Matt and I got married. So yum.

The recipe I learned to make? It was the one with canned cream of mushroom and french fried onions. Man, I loved that stuff.

Once I learned more about cooking with real food ingredients, I knew that the canned cream of mushroom soup and French fried onions didn’t make the cut. But this casserollllllle! How to make a real food version?

gb_casserole

I learned long ago how to make cream soups. French fried onions had me stumped though – mostly because of the time I felt it would take to create them. Then all my plans to keep my real food kitchen simple would be out the window.

Finally I figured out how I could make this casserole without mushroom soup or French fried onions. It goes without saying, then, that this casserole is very easy to make. Just wait until you see how easy!

Green Bean Casserole

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5.0 from 1 reviews
Real Food Green Bean Casserole (a Make-Ahead Dish)
 
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Serves: 6-8 servings
Ingredients
  • 3 cups fresh or frozen green beans
  • 2 Tablespoons minced onion
  • 3 Tablespoons butter (if needed)
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch or whole wheat flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • Sea salt
  • 2 cups grated cheddar cheese
Instructions
  1. Steam green beans until tender. Set aside.
  2. In a large saucepan, saute onion and butter together until the minced onion is lightly toasted.
  3. Turn heat down to low.
  4. Stir in cornstarch, then add milk.
  5. Turn heat up to thicken cream sauce, stirring constantly until sauce is thick and bubbly.
  6. Stir in cooked green beans, salting liberally.
  7. Pour the mixture into a 9x13 inch casserole dish.
  8. Top with grated cheese.
  9. Cover and bake in a 350° oven for 30 minutes.
  10. Uncover and bake for 10 minutes more.
  11. Serve.

To Freeze Green Bean Casserole:

Make the casserole as directed in the recipe above. All it to cool completely. Cover and freeze for up to three months.

To bake and serve, thaw casserole in the refrigerator and bake as directed. OR, cover the frozen dish with foil. Place it in a cold oven*. Turn the oven on to 250° and bake for 2 hours. Turn the oven up to 350° to continue baking to heat through.

*Be sure your oven is cold when you put in the frozen dish! Otherwise, the pan will crack because of the extreme temperature change.

Real Food Green Bean Casserole ~ a Make-Ahead Dish!

There is a One-Dish Meal version of this casserole in my Oh, For Real Cookbook called Hearty Green Bean Casserole. It includes hamburger and it is awesome.

Note that if you use corn starch instead of wheat flour to make the sauce for this recipe, it will be completely gluten free.

I think this will soon become one of your favorite holiday dishes! Then, of course, you will find yourself making it many times all year round. No need to wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas for this one!

Here are the quick links to all the recipes we covered in this series:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Easy Make-Ahead Stuffing Muffins

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Of all the dishes that must be included in a holiday meal, stuffing is the one I always try to avoid making if possible. If I’m hosting the meal, when people ask what they can bring, I almost always ask them to bring the stuffing so I don’t have to make it. (Nice, huh?)

Why had stuffing always been such a hard one for me? I just hadn’t found a stuffing recipe I love. I look at stuffing recipes and get completely overwhelmed. After all, there are usually no fewer than 28 steps to take to go from bread to stuffing.

Until now.

stuffing2

Oh look. We made toasted bread.
It wasn’t even hard.

Homemade Stuffing Made Easy

Once I finally wrapped my brain around all the instructions in all the recipes I looked at, I realized that I didn’t need to perform 28 steps. I could simplify everything and cut it down to four:

1. Cube and toast bread.
2. Brown sausage with onion and sage.
3. Stir everything together with a few other ingredients.
4. Bake.

What? That’s it? Yes.

Some may prefer their stuffing with additional spices. Many like celery. But this turned out plenty flavorful for us with very few ingredients. Plus, not one of the six of us likes celery. So I skipped it.

This recipe can be made ahead of time. You can make this stuffing spread into a dish or as scooped into muffin tins. I may actually make this more than twice a year for holiday meals. After all, when I was was testing driving this recipe to make it as easy as possible, my family dug in and kept going back for more. Even if I did burn the first batch.

stuffing muffins4

Indeed, my pictures feature over-baked Stuffing Muffins. It’s because I was baking them while having unfortunate cat drama. It was day 2 of baby kitties and Wiggams wasn’t sure she was cut out for the mama business. (WHAT?!) I told her she didn’t have a choice, that sometimes we all have hard days, and that she needed to get over it at go try to keep her last baby alive (yes, we’re down to only one). She ignored me. So I was trying to keep the last kitten alive by holding it to warm it up and by giving it milk from a dropper. This is when my muffins burned. I am not cut out to be the mother of a kitten.

Other bloggers would have started over in an effort to take better pictures. Me? I just took pictures of my burned muffins. There just are not enough hours in the day, okay? I get overwhelmed easily. It was either burned pictures or no pictures. At least we saved the kitten.

Easy Stuffing Muffins

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5.0 from 1 reviews
Easy Make-Ahead Stuffing Muffins
 
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Serves: 18 muffins
Ingredients
  • 6-8 slices of whole wheat bread
  • 1 pound ground sausage
  • 2 Tablespoons butter or oil
  • ½ cup yellow onion, chopped or 3 Tablespoons dried minced onion
  • 1 teaspoon ground sage
  • ¾ cup chicken broth
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ cup Parmesan cheese (optional)
  • 2 eggs
Instructions
  1. Cut bread into ½ inch cubes.
  2. Lay cubes on a cookie sheet and bake in a 300° oven for 10 minutes to toast.
  3. In the meantime, brown sausage with onion and sage.
  4. In a large bowl, stir toasted bread cubes, cooked sausage mixture, and the remaining ingredients together.
  5. Scoop mixture into 18 muffin tins or spread it into a 9x13 inch baking dish.
  6. Bake in a 400° oven for 25-40 minutes or until golden brown.

Recipe links you might find helpful:

To Freeze Stuffing Muffins

Allow muffins to cool completely. Place them in a freezer bag and seal, air tight. Freeze for up to one month.

To reheat: Thaw and warm muffins in a 250° oven in a covered dish for 10-15 minutes.

Easy Stuffing Muffins

You should know that saying Stuffing Muffins most often comes out of my mouth as Muffing Stuffers or Stuffern Muffings. It can’t be helped.

And now for some adorable cat pictures. I mean, if I’m going to show you burned muffins, I should at least show you the reasons they burned:

With assistance from our neighbor, some much needed help from a friend, and now some persistent work with Wiggams, I think we’ll be able to keep one little kitten alive. Wiggams seems to be getting the mama thing figured out, finally. If this isn’t the sweetest…

lionel2

Look at this little one’s face. See why we named it Lionel? (I mean, besides the fact that we named it after Lionel Messi. He just looks like a Lionel.) Look at his little lion cub face. We are in love.

lionel1
And that is why my muffins burned. 

Holiday Make-Ahead Tip:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

If you are in charge of stuffing for this year’s holiday festivities, I suggest you make these Stuffing Muffins at least two weeks in advance. Freeze them until the night before your meal. Thaw in the fridge. Rewarm just before serving. These are great drenched in turkey gravy (recipe coming up during this series).

Here are the quick links to all the recipes we covered in this series:

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Simple Meals is here! It’s saving my brain (and many of yours too!). If you haven’t joined yet, now’s the time. Get all the details here!

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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Getting Ahead for the Holidays – Join Us!

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There is oodles of info out there about how to have a simple season and how to relax and enjoy the holidays. I am all for it. Why go overboard and make life complicated? Pinterest can keep its 14-step recipes and perfect looking hand-crafted gifts. I’ve gotta stick with the basics.

But still. Making a holiday special means that I’m going to do extra work on top of all my normal work. There’s no way around it. No matter how simple I keep our holiday festivities, the cookies don’t bake themselves. Packages don’t arrive if I don’t order them. The turkey stays frozen when not baked. I could go on.

Now, I can keep things simpler if I buy pre-made food and gift packages. Sometimes I do. Sometimes in the name of saving my sanity, I feel that it’s worth the extra money and the gross ingredients (don’t read the label, don’t real the label, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, do not turn that package over!). But overall, I want to save money and put delicious real food on the table. While keeping life simple. Is it even possible?

Thus, we begin a fun two-week series here called:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

This is the best way I know to keep life simple during the holiday season. If I do everything last minute, I enjoy nothing. But if I do a little each day in advance, prepping food and gifts and decorations – I can actually enjoy myself. What a lovely idea. Food can be put on the table (the good kind) without me standing on my feet for hours at a time. I can save dozens (or maybe even hundreds?) of dollars. Food tastes better. Gifts are more meaningful. I can actually look at the people around me and maybe I can even smile.

Getting ahead saves my holiday. Want to join me?

Getting Ahead for the Holidays Invitation

Most of the posts I’ll share will involve food prep suggestions and recipes. This doesn’t surprise you, I’m sure. Decorating is not my gift. Food though? I  love it! Nothing will be fancy; everything will be tasty. It’s all real food.

Would you like a peek at the menu we’ll be working through?

holiday menu plan

All of this (with the exception of the Stir-and-Pour Dinner Rolls) can be made in advance. Some can be made many days in advance. Some should be made the day before. All of the recipes are simple. I’ll walk you through the entire process of methods I use to make these foods efficiently so I can enjoy time with family and guests!

Make plans to join us here. If you want, subscribe so you won’t miss a post:

Daily Newsletter

Weekly Newsletter

There will be recipes, printables…and I’m thinking there should be prizes. What do you think? Should there be prizes? Yes. Let there be prizes.

Every time you see this banner on a post:

Getting Ahead for the Holidays

Leave a comment on that post.

There will be many posts in the coming days where you’ll spot that banner. The more you comment, the more chances you have to win! What will you win?

How about we give away three $25 Gift Certificates good toward any of our eCourses or downloadable items in the Heavenly Homemakers Shop? Three! Sound good?

Let’s get the comments rolling with this question:

Which of the recipes in the Holiday Menu above are you most excited to see first?

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Sick Kid, God’s Care, and Last Day for Real Food eCourse Sale

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I’ve got some fun posts in the works for you, but I have been running and running and running…

Yes, definitely picture me actually running. Like, in tennis shoes, across miles of terrain, with a pink head band catching my sweat, while I look adorable and perky in a cute athletic outfit. Picture that. That is definitely what I mean by running. I just can’t stop running. I am such a runner.

Now, if you’re realistically thinking, “Yeah right, Laura” then you can instead picture a more accurate description of my running which involves barely being home during the past few days and if I was home, I had guests. I have posts in my head that have not yet come out of my fingers and onto this screen. Now that I’m finally sitting here at my keyboard, I’m too tired to write actual words. Therefore, I’m going to take a couple of days off to rest and find some complete sentences. I know they’re in there somewhere.

Before I sign off, I wanted to share a little Gratituesday with you, and also offer you a “last day of sale” reminder.

First, Gratituesday.

gratituesday[2]

Part of my running recently has been in the form of caring for a very sick boy. Most of us had a stomach bug a couple of weeks ago, which is no fun at all, of course. But one of our sons got a seemingly weird version that has been hanging on for way too long. When a teenage boy doesn’t feel like eating day after day after day, you know something is wrong.

It was beginning to get scary for us and for him. I am grateful to share, though, that today we got some answers. I was able to get him into our natural doctor in Lincoln who discovered the root of the problem and provided treatment solutions. He’ll likely still be weak for a few days, but I’m confident now that nothing is seriously wrong with him and that he is on his way to recovery. I don’t think any of us knew how worried we were until we got home from Lincoln and his brothers met us anxiously at the door asking for answers about what we learned from the doctor. (This is significant because these are boys who would normally say, “Oh were you gone? I didn’t realize. What’s for lunch?”)

I am so thankful for God’s provision in this. It is extremely difficult to get an appointment with this doctor right now as she just had a baby and is only back for very limited hours. In fact, I’ve had my next appointment scheduled months in advance. The fact that I called at 8:01 and got in because “there was a last minute cancellation” is amazing to me. Praise God for opening a slot that worked perfectly for us on the very day we needed it, and for providing answers that will put our son back on the road to good health.

Soooo after I got my sickie settled back at home in the recliner with food and drink and remedies, I got into the van again and headed south to a ranch with Malachi for a horse class he’s taking right now with some fellow homeschoolers. This class has been so fun and fascinating!

As you can see, I’m very gifted at photography with my phone camera. Also, you can see that as much as Malachi enjoys horses, he likes dogs even more.

horses1

horses2
Praise God for Make-Ahead Meals. Wearily, I slid a prepared casserole into the oven when I got home from the ranch (which we will eat with a salad consisting of whatever greens and veggies we pull out of the fridge). Then I plopped onto my computer chair to try to find some words (which I obviously found, thank you).

Thanks for letting me share. It’s great to reflect on God and His work and to be able to share it with people I care about (you!).

More fun posts coming back after I take a short Sabbath rest. :)

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Getting Started on a Healthy Eating Path – Here’s Step-by-Step Help.

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Of all the questions I get from readers, the one I hear the most is:

How do I get started eating healthy?

It can be overwhelming! Conflicting information is everywhere! There are too many things to change at once! What does healthy even mean anyway? And on it goes.

I want to tell you this basic truth I’ve learned on our healthy eating journey:

There is no one-size-fits-all plan. There is no perfect formula. There is not one right way or wrong way to do this.

What if you just did healthy the way that makes sense for your family right now?

What if?

Even as I look back on our healthy eating journey of the past 10 years, I see changes and shifts and different focus points. What used to work doesn’t work now. Some of what I used to prioritize, I no longer do. What my family needs now that our boys are teens is different than what we needed when they were little.

We keep making changes. We keep making improvements. I relax more instead of feeling like we have to do it all perfectly. I now go by these basic principles:

  • Food is nourishment. Let’s eat to nourish, not just to fill a hole.
  • Real food is simple and uncomplicated. Let’s just keep it simple.
  • Drink plenty of water.
  • Go easy on the sugar.
  • Stick with healthy, real fats (coconut oil, butter, olive oil, palm shortening)
  • Let God be God. Trust Him in this.

To give you a visual on this, here are some pictures sharing sample meals my family eats.

multitasking6

Garlic Cheese Biscuits

alfredo leftovers 2

What are some simple changes you’ve made through the years to make a healthy lifestyle easier?

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Bacon Ranch Hashbrown Casserole

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Bacon Hashbrown Casserole

Yum

A friend had just stopped by when I was pulling this dish out of the oven for lunch earlier this week. It smelled quite amazing. She asked what it was, so I went down the list of ingredients our lunch included, “bacon, ranch dressing, sour cream, cheese…” Then this is when she said,

“Bacon? Ranch? Cheese? With all that in it, you know it’s going to be good!”

Yep, pretty much. What’s not to love?

You might also love knowing how easy this is to make. Cook the bacon, stir in the other ingredients, spread it all in a cooking dish, put it into the oven. Easy. It does help if you have premade frozen hashbrowns and a jar of homemade ranch dressing mix ready to go. Just please put the lid on your ranch dressing before you shake it up. Please. I’m only here to help.

A big thanks to Plain Chicken for the idea for this recipe! I’m excited to think about possibilities of ways to continue tweaking this. Maybe add some cooked chicken to the mix? What else can you think of to add to this dish?

Bacon Ranch Hashbrown Casserole
 
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Serves: 10 servings
Ingredients
  • 1 pound bacon
  • 2 cups shredded cheddar or Colby jack cheese
  • 3 cups sour cream
  • 3 Tablespoons Ranch Dressing Mix
  • 1 bag of frozen shredded hashbrowns (about 8 potatoes worth of homemade)
Instructions
  1. Cut bacon into bite-sized pieces and cook.
  2. Drain grease.
  3. In a large bowl, stir together cooked bacon, shredded cheese, sour cream, and ranch dressing mix.
  4. Fold in frozen hashbrowns until all ingredients are well combined.
  5. Bake uncovered in a 350° oven for 45-60 minutes or until casserole is lightly browned and bubbly.

Some recipes you’ll need to go along with this one:

Homemade Ranch Dressing Mix

Homemade Hashbrowns

Lately I’ve been finding really great deals on packaged hashbrowns at the store, so I’ve picked up a few to save me some time. I much prefer homemade, but busyness doesn’t always allow me the luxury. It’s good to be relaxed and flexible about healthy eating, right? Right.

So far I’ve only served this casserole for lunch or dinner. But I also think it would be great for breakfast or brunch!

Want to make Bacon Ranch Hashbrown Casserole ahead and freeze it for later? Here’s how:

Make the casserole as directed. Before baking, cover well and freeze for up to three months. To cook and serve – thaw and bake as directed. Or, cover frozen casserole and place it into a cold oven. Turn the oven on to 225° and bake for 2-3 hours or until casserole has thawed, baked, and is heated through.

Bacon Ranch Hashbrown Casserole - Easy!

Note: This recipe is naturally gluten free. Hold onto this one if you have to avoid gluten – or so that you can bless friends who eat gluten free!

I’ll definitely be making this casserole often! Since it’s freezer-friendly, I’ll likely be making two or three at once so I can have no-brainer meals on hand for busy nights. After all, why dirty up more dishes tomorrow when tomorrow will have enough dirty dishes of its own? Right??

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Homemade Applesauce Cups To-Go ~ For Just a Few Cents

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Brace yourself for the cuteness. 

Homemade Applesauce Cups

Typically I make a boat load of canned applesauce each year. Still, there are always times I end up buying the little packaged applesauce cups to take on the road with us to soccer or basketball games. It feels so silly to spend money on the pre-made applesauce cups when I have home-canned applesauce in the pantry. Still, I do it. We need food for the road, after all.

This year, I got a brilliant idea. (My one and only of 2015. We’ve been waiting ten months for this.)

I checked online for little cups with lids to fill with applesauce to take on the road.

Small jars with lids work great for to-go applesauce, but those make our cooler weigh 380 pounds. Plus, I wanted to give some to Asa for his dorm fridge but didn’t want him to have to mess with saving all the jars to bring home. The cups with lids are a great solution!

~~Let us all pause here to say nice things about avoiding plastic and disposables in general. Plastic disposables are not our friend. I agree and I know there are strong opinions about this. Right now I’m the mother of many teenage boys who are active, hungry, and on-the-go frequently. It was either compromise and buy these plastic cups in an effort to save us money and help us eat well on the road – or spend more to buy them pre-made – or buy junk from concessions or McDonalds. I chose the plastic disposables and I am excited about what this provides for my family right now. Now, back to the cute applesauce cups.~~

Organic 100% fruit applesauce cups cost around 74¢ each. Non-organic are around 33¢ each. My homemade organic applesauce cups just cost me 15¢ each. This makes me very excited. Plus if it’s okay that I say so, my homemade applesauce tastes better than store-bought. :)

Applesauce Cups

This batch of applesauce turned out such a pretty shade of pink because I used a variety of dark red apples with very white flesh (Empire, I believe). No one who eats this can believe I didn’t add sugar. No need for sugar, my friends. Not when God made apples this good and sweet.

The cups with lids I chose are a perfect 5.5 ounce size. I filled them about 3/4 full, put the lids on top, then froze them. (I tested one to see if it froze/thawed well. It did. Now I have a freezer full!)

Next time we need travel food, we’ll grab several homemade applesauce cups from the freezer. I am so excited about this!

Homemade Applesauce Cups To-Go ~ For Just a Few Cents

Have any other good ideas to share for fun travel foods?

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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!