Meal Planning with Connie

Rainbow Cupcakes I came across these cute Rainbow Cupscakes on Lindsey Mendenhall’s blog, The Bakery Box . Lindsey has established a little tradition of baking these delightful cupcakes for her children for St. Patrick’s Day. Every “little leprechaun” I know would certainly feel like they had found a pot of gold, if they were served one of these colorful treats. How clever to tie in the rainbow theme for this celebration! On a table filled with treats of only shades of green, these pretty, multicolored cupcakes would surely stand out! They sound yummy too! Not only are these perfect for celebrating St. Paddy’s Day, I think they’d be wonderful for birthdays and school parties! Sugaree’s , a local bakery, makes a rainbow cake, which puts me in mind of Lindsey’s cupcakes. Lindsey’s recipe would work well for this. Just divide the cake batter evenly into five bowls and add desired shade of food coloring. (You might need to use 2 boxes of cake mix to create this many layers.) Bake and ice...

Miniature Bacon Cheddar Muffins Miniature muffins are a great way to have “just a bite” of something tasty. I love mini muffins, but I used to hate filling all those little holes with batter. Finally, I discovered that my smallest cookie dough scoop is the perfect size for filling the cups of my mini muffin tins. Using the scoop is quick, easy and produces uniform-sized muffins! Guess what?! Large cookie dough/ice cream scoops are great for scooping batter into standard size muffin tins! As much as I like the ease using a scoop to fill tins brings, what I really like best is the uniformity that is produced! Using a cookie dough scoop makes quick and easy work of filling muffin tins. A nice uniformity is also achieved! My scoop made quick work of making a batch of my Bacon Cheddar Muffins for Sunday school this past week!

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. —Galatians 5:22-23 There was a great segment on The Early Show this morning! Erica Hill spoke with Sarah Humphreys, of Real Simple magazine, about out-of-the-box uses for lemons. My favorite use was using a lemon as a party pick disposer. Watch the segment here,  New Uses for Lemons ,  for clever ideas on using lemons for everything from a non-toxic strain remover for cutting boards and laundry to helping keep your brown sugar soft. Lemons are one of the four fruits that we keep on hand at our house, along with grapes, apples, and bananas. Grapes, apples and lemons have great “staying power” and keep in the fridge a good, long while! Most of the time I buy apples and lemons by the bag, as they are usually less expensive this way. Generally, we eat most of the bag of fruit before it ruins. However, it seems we never q...

Elijah and the Widow at Zarephath  Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the LORD came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”  “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”  Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yoursel...

He says to the snow, 'Fall on the earth,' and to the rain shower, 'Be a mighty downpour.'  Job 37:6  Although we rarely get to build the "real" thing, we ingenious Southerners won't go without! We still manage to find ways to have snowmen in our yards!  This is our "Frosty the  Bird Feeder," with real snow on the ground!  Here in the sunny South, we rarely get the kind of snow we received on Sunday. Because our snows are "here today and gone tomorrow," we are all crazy about a good snow down here! We know Northerners laugh at us for the way we take on over a few flakes, and that people who live in the snowy regions get just as tired of the snow by winter's end as we do of summer's heat and humidity here. But honestly, we just can't help ourselves! We're crazy for a bit of snow! Christmas was made extra special this year in our neck of the woods, because we woke to thin blanket of beautiful, white powder. According to...

With the close of the holidays, cranberries can be had for a song right now! It is a great time to buy a few bags and freeze them. Freezing cranberries is super easy and allows us to enjoy our cranberry recipes throughout the year! Not many (if any!) of our small grocery stores here in the rural South have the freezer space available to stock frozen cranberries. Luckily, dried cranberries are readily available, but they don’t work well for all recipes. Frozen cranberries can be easily substituted for fresh cranberries in many, if not most, instances. Here’s an easy, convenient way to keep some on hand:  Dump cranberries in a colander and wash well, removing any damaged or blemished berries. Pour washed cranberries onto trays lined with paper towels and allow to dry completely. Roll them around from time to time and change the paper toweling, if necessary. It is important that the berries be dry before freezing. Water on the berries will crystallize when frozen and damage the ber...

This version is a bit lighter than some. We really like it!! To make it more decadent, just add more butter and more cheese!! Ro*tel Cheese Grits Ro*tel Cheese Grits 3 -4 green onions, thinly sliced 1 - 2 clove of garlic, minced, or a bit of jarred minced garlic 2 - 3 tablespoons butter 2 cups water 1 1/4 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup quick cooking grits ½ stick of butter, cut into pats (This is good, but optional.) 1 cup shredded 2% Velveeta 1 (10-ounce) can Ro*tel tomatoes Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sauté onions in butter for about 3 minutes. Add garlic. Sauté a minute or two longer. Set aside. Bring the water, milk and salt to a boil in saucepan. Slowly add the grits. Return to a boil; stir constantly for 1 minute. Reduce the heat to low; cover. Cook for about 8 minutes stirring occasionally. When grits are thick and creamy, remove from heat and set aside. Add butter, Velveeta and onion/garlic mixture to grits; stir until the cheese is melted. Add ...

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:6 I saw my momma use this trick many times over the years: If you accidentally add too much salt to a cooking pot, add a peeled potato and continue to cook a bit. Discard potato and serve dish as usual. Potatoes are salt-sponges. They will absorb most, if not all, of the excess salt. Do you ever have trouble getting your mashed potatoes salty enough? Add the salt to the water when your boiling the potatoes. Again, the potatoes will absorb the salt. No more having to “test taste” and add salt while mashing your potatoes! Hmmm? Is that good, or not?!

Rubber bands securing opened packages Instead of clips, use rubber bands for securing opened plastic bags. These are cheap and usually don't break or come apart like clips can. If you buy the big multi-pack of rubber bands, there's a size for every need. As you can see from the photo, they work great for securing everything from tiny packages of nuts to medium-sized packages of toffee or chocolate chips to larger things like baking mix and cereal. I usually just slip the baking mix back into its original box with the rubber band securing it. For cereal, I usually just toss the box and store the cereal in its plastic bag with the rubber band around it to save cabinet space. I have been doing this for years. I think I just got tired of looking for clip or having the clips break.

Mini-loaf Have you ever been baking bread or a cake and had too much batter for your pan? I just hate to throw good food like that away! I used to try to force the excess batter into the pan anyway. Of course, this made a mess, if it ran-over in the oven. Then one day I had an idea. I'd make a single mini-loaf of bread or cake from that dab of batter. It works great, and there are a number of fun things to do with the mini-loaf: 1. We have several friends who are older and live alone. This size is perfect for sharing with them! 2. If I'm making a new recipe and am sharing the big cake/loaf, the mini-loaf allows me to "taste test" the new recipe! 3. These loaves can be wrapped, frozen and used for a quick breakfast! What do I use for a pan for the mini-loaf? I use the little Pyrex dish in the photo. As I am writing this, I am shocked to realize that I've had this tiny piece for 40 years!! When I was six, my cousin, who was a young wife and mot...

Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:11-12 Friends, neighbors, relations and orchards all have blueberries coming in right now! They are beautiful and delicious! Sue's Blueberry Bars On her way to work yesterday morning, our sweet neighbor, Sue, brought us a container of yummy blueberry squares. They had a nice little crust and a little zip of lemon flavor to them. Sue said said they were low-fat, too! Yummy and healthy!! I'll have to get the recipe! Sue's husband, Mr. Elmer, planted some blueberry bushes in their yard when they moved to Pontotoc. He was a sweet, sweet man and was always so kind to share with all us neighbors. Aunt Jean...

When I was growing up, there was never really the question of whether our supper would include legumes. The only question was as to which legume we'd have that night. Peas, or butter beans? Well, it wasn't really quite that simple. Once we had decided between the two bean families, we then had to decide on the variety. For peas, there were the choices of crowders, English, black-eyed or purple hull. Then, the next choice was - did we want some we'd prepared for the freezer, or a jar Momma had canned. The freezing verses the canning of the same vegetable can truly result in almost a separate variety of the same bean. There is a difference! Both are delicious! Butter beans were a bit simpler choice. We usually only preserved two varieties, and both in the freezer. Everyone else in my family preferred white lima beans, but I preferred the speckled variety. We usually had two or three rows of the white limas in our garden, but my sweet momma always planted a row of speckled b...

The Pampered Chef Mix and Chop I have new gadget for the kitchen that I have to tell you guys about! I discovered it a couple of months back in Susan’s Pampered Chef catalog. It is a new item from Pampered Chef called Mix and Chop. The Mix and Chop looked like it would work great for all my ground meat cooking! Since my birthday was just around the corner when I first found out about it, I “casually” showed it to Larry in the catalog and said, “Doesn’t this look neat?!" Any man who has been married to a woman for almost twenty-five years knows that “Doesn’t this look neat?!” is really code for - “I want one of these!” I fully expected him to add a Mix and Chop to my b-d list! Well, my birthday came and went. I received lots of nice treats and gifts, but no Mix and Chop. I believed that either my “coy communication skills” or his “read-between-the-line skills” must be slipping. I didn’t mention the absence of the Mix and Chop from his presents to me, but I vowed to mys...

How I pre-cook and freeze ground beef, sausage and chicken: I pre-cook almost all of our ground beef, ground sausage and boiled chicken. Having these meats precooked, and in the freezer, is the best way I have found to put together a quick meal. I usually brown around 6 pounds of ground beef or sausage at one time. I put the meat into a soup pot and stir with a long-handled wooden spoon. While meat is cooking, I line a large metal colander with several layers of paper towels.  When the meat is done, I dump it into the colander with paper towels.  I let the meat sit in the colander for few minutes, allowing the paper towel to absorb most of the fat. I then ease the paper towels from under the meat. Don’t leave meat draining on paper towels too long, or you won’t be able to slip the paper towels from under the meat. Once I’ve removed the paper towels, I run very hot water over the meat in the colander. I then allow meat to drain. After the meat is drained, I run ve...