Making a House a Home

Pancakes

4 cups all purpose flour
4 T sugar
8 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4 eggs, beaten
4 cups milk
8 T cooking oil (I use light olive oil)

Combine all ingredients until combined. Onto your hot, lightly greased griddle, pour about 1/3 cup of batter. Cook about 2 minutes on each side until golden brown.

This recipe makes a lot of pancakes. We make extra and freeze them.






Homemade Syrup

3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups water
2 T molasses
2 t butter flavoring
1 t maple flavoring
1 t vanilla flavoring

Combine all ingredients EXCEPT vanilla in a sauce pan. Bring ingredients to a rolling boil, remove from heat and cool completely. Once cooled, stir in vanilla.

My family prefers this syrup over any store-bought syrup.

Puff Pancakes are definitely one of our easiest and tastiest breakfasts.  You simply mix up all the ingredients and wait for the oven to heat up.  As the oven is heating, I put the pan in the oven with the butter in it.  The butter melts as the oven heats and, usually, by the time the oven is to the correct temperature, the butter is all melted and ready for the batter to be poured in.  Super simple. 




And here's what it looks like after just a few minutes!!  The pretty puff is gone (so don't wonder "what did I do wrong??" when yours does this!!!), but the yumminess is left behind.  



And here it is all served up and ready to be devoured.  So tasty.  

We've been making this for at least 10 years.  Hope y'all love it as much as we do!!

My dear in-real-life friend, Melissa, is a newlywed and in need of weekly meal planning help. If any of you dear ladies have time, would you mind visiting with her on her blog and helping her out?

I told her that I am no help with weekly menus because I do things differently. I grocery shop twice a month after Mr. U gets paid. Yesterday was one of my grocery shopping days. I LOVE having a houseful of groceries, knowing that I will be able to make meals for my family.

Before I grocery shop, I always make a menu. After I make the menu, I make a list of every single thing I will need for the each recipe. I then head to my pantry, refrigerator and freezer to see what ingredients I already have on hand. I will then mark off the ingredients I do not need to purchase on that shopping trip.

Also, whenever I run out of something, I will quickly put it on my grocery list for the next shopping trip. For example, we just ran out of Vitamin E today. I wrote it down on my grocery list for the next shopping trip (in about 2 weeks). There are some items that cannot wait for the next shopping trip (toilet paper, milk, etc.) but if something can wait, then wait it will. :)

This is what our menu looks like for the next two weeks:
-Chicken sate over pasta with salad
-Picnic Chicken with couscous and green beans
-New Year's Pasta with French bread and creme brulee
-Pancakes and Bacon (breakfast for supper!! FUN!)
-Pumpkin Sausage Pasta with salad
-Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans
-Italian Wedding Soup with some kind of bread
-Grilled Lemon Chicken and roasted broccoli
-Grilled burgers with carmelized onions and roasted tomatoes
-Pizza and salad
-2 days we will eat out (on Saturdays)
-each Monday we have lunch with some friends that have all adopted or are going to adopt

So, there's 14 days of meals!! Yesterday we had pizza and today we are having chicken sate. So, I will cross those off my menu so that I know that I have already used those ingredients.

I do not assign certain meals to certain days. It has never worked for me that way. Also, I decide the night before what we will have the next day. If any meat needs to thaw, I will take it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator the night before.

If we find out we will have people over to eat, I will make extra bread, make more salad or green beans and make sure to serve dessert.

This is what works for me and for our family. Often, Mr. U or Joshua will ask for a certain meal that we haven't had in a while or one that they particularly like and I try to make sure that I make it. I love cooking for my family and making sure that they all enjoy what they eat and that it is relatively healthy (notice, I said "relatively" HA!! Homemade IS healthier than eating in a restaurant or eating a frozen meal, though, isn't it?).

So, y'all please share with Melissa how you handle weekly menus. As a new bride, I am sure she will appreciate any and all advice!!

(Yes, the picture is Melissa. The picture is a tad bit overexposed on purpose- to really bring out her pretty blue eyes!! What a lovely bride she was!!)

I am sadly aware that there are many people in this world that do not love (or even like!!!) oatmeal.  I can't understand why.  I mean there's oatmeal cookies, granola, baked oatmeal, chocolattes, strawberry oatmeal bars, oatmeal pancakes, many different flavored oatmeals and MORE!!!!  (and I just SADLY discovered I NEED TO GET SOME OF THESE RECIPES ON MY BLOG!!!!!).  Oats, in all different forms, are DELICIOUS to me!!!!

So, when I discovered I could use leftover oatmeal in a cake, I WAS EXCITED!!!!!! Have y'all ever made a potful of old fashioned oats for breakfast only to realize you made too much?  Well, I found a use for them in case you have ever done that.  Allow me to introduce Oatmeal Snack Cake!!!!!

It's moist because I use oil, but mostly because of the cooked oatmeal in it.  Slightly sweet, easy to mix together, and really, really good with a cup of coffee morning, noon, night, late at night... you get the picture.

So grab your ingredients and get baking!!



Oatmeal Snack Cake

• ½ cup oil 
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups cooked, plain oatmeal
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla and oatmeal. (Oatmeal can be kind of lumpy mixing it together, but keep at it!!  It all comes together.) Then gently stir in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and mix well.  Pour into greased and floured 9 x 13 cake pan and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.  




Good luck keeping this around long.  This is DELICIOUS and disappears quickly!!!

Happy cooking!!

Oh dear. I was making syrup today to go with our pancakes and, sigh, the syrup boiled over a bit. I was able to clean most of it up, but there are still a few places that I CAN NOT get clean. I have one of those glass top stoves, too. PLEASE tell me there is something I can do to clean this off!!! Do you have any ideas?

We prefer to serve this with heavy cream drizzled on top.  Super tasty.  Super easy.   

I LOVE having quick breakfasts ready for my family.  A nice stash of homemade biscuits, pancakes, muffins, all make quick and tasty breakfast choices for a busy family.

This is just one of the many muffins I like to have frozen in the freezer so we can quickly warm it up in the morning before we start school (and often the girls like them for snacks, too!!!).

Chocolate and peanut butter? YUM!! For breakfast? Even better!!!


Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins
1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg
¾ cup milk
2/3 cup peanut butter
¼ cup oil
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
2/3 cup chocolate chips

Mix all together and bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 18 minutes. Makes 12 regular sized muffins.