Meatloaf

My mom had a long day of cooking on Christmas so she did not want to make dinner on Monday so she told me I could make it. I immediately decided to make up a meatloaf recipe because I do not  like meatloaf and I wanted to see if I could turn it into something I do like.

I knew what to get because I have seen my mom make meatloaf so I knew that there are traditional ingredients: ground beef, Italian style bread crumbs, pepper, salt, 1 egg, ketchup, and milk. My twist on meatloaf was to also add bacon and tomatoes.

I combined 1 1/4 pound of ground beef,  1/2 cup bread crumbs,  1/4 cup ketchup, 1 egg, and 1/4 cup milk. For seasonings I added 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, two shakes of Italian Seasoning, two twists of the pepper grinder, and one twist of the salt grinder.

Then I chopped 5 strips of bacon, cooked it and cooled it. After it was cooled I added it to the beef mixture and put it in a loaf pan. Then I diced the tomatoes and placed them on top and cooked it at 350 for 1 hour.

It was sooooooooooo good – it did not even need ketchup, both my parents said that!

If you try it tell me what you think of it:}

Pasta Shells

It was only my mom and me last Saturday night for dinner and she asked me if I wanted to try making up a new recipe with the entire grocery store as my pantry.

Um, hello!! SURE!

Pesto, chicken, alfredo sauce, and jumbo shell noodles were the only things I needed.

First, I boiled the chicken with salt, pepper and garlic, shredded it and mixed it with 1/2 the jar of pesto sauce. Because we had shredded mozzarella leftover in the fridge, I added some of that too.

Then, I cooked the noodles and stuffed them with the chicken mixture.

Spread a little of the alfredo sauce in the bottom of a glass pan and place the stuffed noodles in. Then lightly pour the rest of the afredo sauce over the noodles, and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

They were one big giant pesto alfredo chicken and noodle ball…except it was not a ball, it was a shell.

I hope you make them sometime. In my opinion, they are very good!

Pumpkin Cookies

Last weekend I really wanted to make cookies, but my mom told me we did not have any eggs. How could I make cookies without eggs??!! Then I remembered a time the exact same thing happened. That time we made Pumpkin Cookies and they were so good!

So we looked for the same recipe online and we made them.

Pumpkin Cookie Recipe
(adapted from cooks.com)

1 c. brown sugar, packed
1 c. canned pumpkin
1/2 c. oil
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 c. nuts if you wish

1. Combine first 4 ingredients.

2. Whisk together dry ingredients and add all at once to pumpkin mixture.

3. Stir in nuts if you are using them.

4. Drop by teaspoon onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

5. Sprinkle with sugar.

6. Bake for about 10 minutes at 350.

When they were done and I ate them, they were like bite sized pieces of my Grandma’s pumpkin bread. My parents loved them too – my mom especially liked that she added chopped pecans to her half of the batter

Not only were they delicious, they were chewy and shimmered with sugar that was our own little twist, sprinkling sugar on top before we baked them.