Healthified Stuffed Shells & Roasted Broccoli

This is what I had for dinner last night. 

 

Doesn’t it look delicious???  It’s one of my new healthy recipes I’ve recently pinned.  It’s actually supposed to be Sausage Stuffed shells, but I bought ground turkey and ground sirloin, so that’s what I use.  It also has hidden carrots in it, so it’s a good one for sneaking veggies into your kids or husbands who don’t get enough veggies.

Have you ever roasted broccoli?  It is one of the easiest things in the world to do.  If I can, I roast all my vegetables for dinner. They taste divine roasted!  It’s getting more expensive to buy fresh produce, but whenever I do bring home fresh peppers, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, or asparagus I roast them in the oven on my stone. 

If you’re a lazy cook mom pressed for time, you should totally try this.  Just throw the veggie on the stone/baking sheet, drizzle some olive oil on them, sprinkle as much salt and pepper as you want, and stick them in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.  Really.  It’s a Fix and Forget it type of meal.  I have been known to put chicken breasts or pork chops on the stone beside the veggies and cook them all together.  30 minutes later you have an awesome dinner with practically no energy put into it.  My kind of cooking!

This recipe is copied straight from Eat Better America, with my notes in red.  It’s a very yummy, pretty healthy dinner!

 

Healthified Sausage-Stuffed Shells

24 jumbo pasta shells (from 12-oz box)
1 lb lean Italian turkey sausage, casings removed (ground turkey/beef)
1 container (15 oz) light ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded reduced-fat Italian cheese blend (8 oz)
1 box (9 oz) Green Giant® frozen spinach, thawed, squeezed to drain
1/2 teaspoon dried basil leaves
3/4 cup finely shredded carrots (1 medium)
1 jar (25.5 oz) Muir Glen® organic Italian herb pasta sauce (Kroger brand pasta sauce)

1 Heat oven to 350°F. Spray 13x9-inch (3-quart) glass baking dish with cooking spray. Cook and drain pasta as directed on package, omitting salt.

2 In 10-inch nonstick skillet, crumble sausage. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until no longer pink; drain.

3 In medium bowl, stir ricotta cheese, 1 cup of the Italian cheese blend, the spinach and basil until well mixed. Stir in carrots and sausage.

4 Spread about 1/2 cup of the pasta sauce over bottom of baking dish. Spoon about 3 tablespoonfuls sausage mixture into each pasta shell. Arrange shells, filled sides up, on sauce in baking dish. Pour remaining pasta sauce over stuffed shells. Spray 15-inch piece of foil with cooking spray; cover shells with foil.

5 Bake 40 minutes. Uncover; sprinkle with remaining 1 cup Italian cheese blend. Bake uncovered 5 to 10 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

*serving size is 2 shells

Apple Picking & Applesauce Canning

A few weekends ago we went apple picking.  We didn’t know what to expect, since this was the first time we’d done any apple picking as a family.  BOY was it busy!!  There were so many people that we almost turned around and went home.  But I really wanted to make applesauce, and I really wanted to create a family memory, so we soldiered on. 

After driving to the correct part of the orchard (this is a BIG farm), and taking one bag from the attendant –a 20lb capacity bag – we made it to the part of apple picking that is actually picking apples. 

We were picking Melrose and Suncrisp apples this day.  Melrose apples were developed at Ohio State University, and they have become the official state apple.  They are delicious!!  They’re tart, juicy, and perfect.  Of course, when you go to pick apples, you have to try out the goods. 

When I tasted a Suncrisp apple, I have to say that I liked it just a bit better.  It’s amazingly delicious.  While the Melrose is a cross between a Johnathon and a Red Delicious, a Suncrisp is a cross between a Golden Delicious and a Cox Orange Pippin (never heard of that one).  It was a bit tarter, just as juicy, and still a great eating apple.  I have had a love affair with Honeycrisp apples for a few years now, but this one surpasses my honeycrisps in flavor for sure.

When I got home, I washed the apples and stored them in a jumbo ziplock bag in my crisper drawer.  Eventually, they were going to become applesauce.  A few will become pies, but those won’t happen until Thanksgiving.  I’m hoping they store well like they say they do.

Last weekend (after another trip to the farm to buy 3 more pecks – does 4 pecks equal a bushel?  That’s how many I ended up with) I set into making applesauce.  I LOVE homemade applesauce.  There is nothing like it, and it’s so stinking easy!  If you don’t take into account the time it takes to peel, core, and chop the apples before getting them into the pot. 

After 2 hours, and help from Rick, I filled to overflowing two crock pots. (Thanks, Heather for letting me borrow yours!!) I add some sugar – around a half cup, though a full cup makes it so much better – then sprinkle the top with cinnamon.  Mix it all up with about a 1/2 cup of water) and let it cook on low for about 8 hours.  My house smelled SOOOOO good!!! At the end of the 8 hours, I took a ricer to the sauce just to make sure it wasn’t too chunky. 

This was my first attempt at canning anything.  (Thanks, Heather for letting me borrow your canning equipment!) I must say, if there was a fly on my wall watching me can, it would have died of laughter.  I can’t say I’m all that good yet at judging how much water should be in the big canning pot.  The floor got a good soaking from the boiling water that was displaced by my 6 cans.  My feet were pretty soaked as well. 

You’ll notice there are no pictures of me actually canning.  It was just too big of a mess to think about grabbing my camera to document the hilarity.

I ended up with a total of 10 quarts of applesauce from about 3 pecks or 20lb bags.  I have another peck left to make sauce and enough apples pulled out from my first trip to make 2 pies (I hope).  There are a TON of apples in my house! 

This applesauce is the most divine thing I’ve ever tasted. If you ever find yourself with 8-10 apples (or 100lbs), please take the time to peel, core, and chop those apples, throw in some sugar and cinnamon if you want and make applesauce.  It’s REALLY something everyone should experience. 

Healthy Recipes

I was posting recipes here for a while, then I dropped off the recipe bandwagon.  I don’t love to blog about recipes, but I do love to share yummy food, so I’ll do a quick cheater recipe blog post. 

These are the recipes I’ve been trying out lately on our low calorie diet.  They’re pretty yummy.  (you can click on the pictures to be taken to the recipe)

This is Kraft’s Fish and Vegetable Casserole.  It was pretty tasty, though, I would never have thought about putting something like this together.  I ended up changing some basics of it, so I can’t say what the original recipe tastes like, but the skeleton of it that I used worked well with my changes.  It calls for red peppers (I used green), onions, white fish (I used Swai), tomatoes (I forgot to add these), Italian dressing, and red potatoes (I used sweet potatoes because that’s what I had on hand).  And then it’s all topped with mozzarella cheese (I used a Mexican blend because that’s what I had).  It did call for cilantro, but none of us really like cilantro, so I left it out.  I think this dish would be great with chicken or pork as well. 

This next recipe is one of our favorites now.  Honey Mustard-Glazed Pork Chops from Eat Better America is now our go-to recipe for quick and yummy dinners around here.  We’ve had it twice in the last week.  You just sear the chops real quick, then add a mixture of honey, mustard, ground cloves, onion powder, salt (or onion salt if you have it)  and pepper to the chops and let them cook for about 10 minutes.  It’s that easy.  I usually roast some broccoli or do a mixed veggie on the side.  YUM!

Beef and Bean Enchiladas.  This is our other OH MY GOSH IT’S AMAZING recipe.  We fell in love with this recipe as soon as it crossed our lips.  I haven’t made it again yet, but I will be making it as soon as ground beef goes on sale again.  That’s how I roll.  I don’t like beans, so I was a little leery of this one, but I didn’t even notice the beans in there when I was eating it.  It’s another super easy recipe.  Sauté the peppers and onions, brown the beef, add the  seasonings and beans, then wrap everything up in tortillas.  Put some salsa in a pan, lay your wraps in the pan, then cover with salsa and cheese.  Bake and enjoy!  Really.  It’s so super easy and so super yummy.  I used low carb tortillas last time, but I’m going to use my homemade ones next time.

 

That leads me to this final recipe I’ve tried recently.  I like tortillas, but I don’t love them.  They usually have a harsh taste to them that I just can’t describe.  But it leaves me reaching for the hard tacos instead of the tortillas on taco night.  I decided to try my hand at homemade tortillas and WOW are they good!  I could eat the whole batch in one sitting I’m sure!  That strange, harsh taste is not there at all. Flour, salt, baking powder, water,  & oil.  That’s all.  Now, I do have to admit that they take a lot of work to roll out super flat, and my arm muscles were given a workout when I made my batch, but they really are worth it.

There ya go!  I hope you try something listed here.  They really are yummy.  Let me know what you try – I love to hear other’s reactions to what I think is yummy.  Oh, and if you’re looking for more healthy recipes, you can check out my ever growing Healthy Recipe Pinboard.  If you need an invite to join Pintrest, let me know and I’ll get you started.  it’s addicting, but oh so helpful when you want to find really great ideas. 

Start Your Day With a Rainbow

The other day I decided to make rainbow pancakes.  I can’t say what possessed me to do such a thing, but I’d seen it before and I thought Jack might enjoy it.  Plus, he was asking me for blue pancakes, which I thought was weird and would look gross, so I turned it into a rainbow of pancakes.  He loved it, and it didn’t take much effort to make them. 

It wasn’t hard to dollop out my batter into 5 small bowls, then add about 5 drops of food coloring to each.  The orange was the only one I had to mix. I think it’s a 2-3 ratio of yellow to red. Or a “mix until you like the color” ratio.

I have to admit, it was kind of freaky seeing colored pancakes cooking on the griddle.  Fun, but freaky.

In the end, I was impressed with how colorful they turned out.  I really enjoyed making these, and I see them happening in my future.  Not often of course, but I’ll do this again for a rare treat I’m sure.

Have you ever tried Rainbow pancakes?  They will start your day off with a smile.

Recipe Boxes Prettified…sorta

Do you remember these? (click on the picture to see how I organized my recipes)

I LOVE having my recipes organized. I knew that I would cover them someday, but I wanted to wait until I found just the right paper.  I found this at JoAnne’s the other day, and it was 50% off – LOVE! 

Now, before you look too closely, I want to remind you that I’m not a paper crafter.  I’ve never done this before. I’m pretty sure that if you want to cover a box with paper and Mod Podge, you should use something other than scrapbook paper.  It’s pretty thick, and these boxes are pretty irregularly shaped.  (irregular meaning they’re not flat and prefect rectangles).  I have no clue how to do this correctly, but I covered each box with 2 different pages that I thought were kitchen appropriate.  To finish it up, I put a layer of Mod Podge on the entire box as a sealant.

While they’ll never win any awards for being perfect or even beautiful, they’re much nicer to have in my kitchen than the plain gray boxes.  I hope they last for years to come, and that they don’t start peeling any time soon.

Pizza Crust Recipe and Review (sort of)

Have you ever heard of America's Test Kitchen?  When we had a working TV a long time ago, I used to watch this half hour show on Saturday afternoons on PBS.  It was one of my favorite cooking shows ever.  They also have a magazine that they put out called Cooks Illustrated.  I have never subscribed, but I bet I’d love it.  I’m too cheap.  Speaking of too cheap, the one thing I HATE about this company is that you have to pay to get any of their recipes.  A subscription for one year to their website –with unlimited access to all of their recipes- is $15.  I have never purchased a subscription, but I think I may eventually.  If there’s any place that I trust ALL the recipes that come from, it’s this place.

I  have two big cookbooks from them.  One was a gift from my step mother that includes hundreds of baking recipes. 

The other was a gift to myself that includes 10 years worth of recipes from their TV program.  I figured, if I’m going to buy a cookbook of theirs (they’re pretty expensive), it might as well be one that includes everything I’ve ever seen them cook!

The fun thing about these cookbooks and their show is that they have taken hours and hours to try out these recipes to find out what works the best.  They switch things up (like oven temperature, ingredients, and cooking time) to see what makes the recipe work the best.  They include all the science behind the recipes in their cookbooks, which I love to read.  I like that they not only tell you, “salted butter works best for this…” but they tell you why salted butter works better. 

The reason I am sharing about America’s Test Kitchen is not because I’m getting paid or compensated in any way. They’ve never heard of me and have never sent me anything for free. Wouldn’t that be great if they did!?  I just happen to love their recipes, and this pizza crust recipe comes from their cookbook. I highly recommend their cookbooks if you ever come across them on sale.  They are pretty expensive, but they have so much more in them than just recipes.  And anything I’ve ever tried from them has tasted wonderful.

Okay, on with the recipe!   This pizza dough recipe is my adaptation of their pizza dough.  There really isn’t anything adapted except that I decided to add Italian Seasoning mix.  It takes a bit of time to let it rise and some muscle to spread out the dough, but in my opinion, it’s well worth it. 

Our family has Pizza Night every Friday night.  When I started menu planning two years ago, I decided that I needed something to make my workload easier.  I instated a weekly Pizza Night, and when no on complained about it, it stuck.  Here is my favorite dough recipe.  I hope you try it!

Pizza Dough (enough for 3 dough balls)

1/2 c warm water

2 1/4 tsp yeast (one packet)

1 1/4 c water, room temp

2 Tbs olive oil

4 c bread flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbs Italian seasoning mix (optional)

Add yeast to 1/2 c warm water in at least a 2 cup measuring bowl/cup. let sit for 5-10 min to allow yeast to 'bloom'. Mix dry ingredients in a stand mixer with a dough hook. Add remaining water and oil to yeast/water mix. Slowly pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Allow dough to knead in mixer for 2-5 minutes. Take out dough, spray the bowl with "pam", and return dough to bowl. Cover with a towel and let sit for 2-2.5 hours. After it has at least doubled in size, take it out and split into two or three dough balls. Store them in the freezer until ready to use.  No need to pre-bake - just spread, top with your favorite toppings, and bake for about 25 minutes @ 425-250.

 
*My notes*

I have used all purpose flour before, many times actually, and I find the taste isn't much different, but the texture is. It's a much stickier dough, and I think, if I remember correctly, it's a crisper crust. I do know that I always use bread flour now, since I like the texture better. 

If your yeast is stored in the fridge, use really warm water. If it's stored in the pantry/room temp, just follow directions as normal.

I put some olive oil on the pizza stone before spreading out the dough.  It makes it easier to spread.

ATK recommends pushing the dough out with your fingertips, not rolling or stretching it.  So that’s what I do.

Lasagna Recipe

I don’t know what has gotten into me lately, but I feel like sharing my favorite recipes.  Boy, I wasn’t kidding when I described my blog as me “rambling my way through life…”  I really do ramble about random things.  But that keeps you coming back for more, right?  To see what amazing randomness I can come up with next.  Or maybe it’s just that my blog is like a train wreck, and you can’t look away.  I can live with that. Sometimes I feel the same way.

Anyway, this recipe is an old family favorite.  Oh, and if you’re Italian, or an Italian food  or Lasagna purist, you may want to skip this one.  If you’re an Italian food lover, and you love easy, yummy recipes, you may proceed.

I’m not sure where my mother got this recipe, but it’s the only lasagna I ever remember being served growing up.  It is called lasagna, but some of you purists may want to force me to call it noodle lasagna.  I can live with that.  As long as you let me call it YUMMY. 

I think so highly of this recipe that I even posted it on Ree Drummond’s (aka The Pioneer Woman) Tasty Kitchen site.  I’m pretty sure not one person has looked at it or saved it to their recipe box, but that doesn’t deter me from thinking it’s a great recipe.  If you’re a member of Tasty Kitchen, feel free to go save my recipe to your box, rate it as 5 oven mitts, and comment about how amazing this recipe is.  Or not.  Whatever.

Look past the jarred sauce, noodles, and cottage cheese, and enjoy this recipe!  Oh, and if you want to make it even easier than it already is, you can swap out all the seasonings with a good Italian Seasoning mix.  I use Pampered Chef’s because I fell in love with it a while back. 

Mama’s Lasagna

1 jar spaghetti sauce, at least 3 cups

1-2lbs ground beef

2 1/2 cups water

1 (12oz) box mafalda noodles (I use extra wide dumpling noodles)

1 (24oz) tub cottage cheese

1 tsp salt

dash pepper

1 Tbs parsley

1/2 tsp oregano

dash garlic powder

1 egg slightly beaten

1 large package shredded mozzarella cheese

grated parmesan cheese

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Brown ground beef.  Pour spaghetti sauce and water into a large pot.  Bring to a full boil, stir in noodles; cover and cook 7 minutes, stirring occasionally until noodles are barely tender.  Add beef.  In a separate bowl, combine cottage cheese with seasonings and egg.  In a greased high sided 9x13” pan, alternate layers of noodles/sauce with cheese mixture and mozzarella cheese, ending with noodles and sauce for top layer.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  Let stand at least 5-10 minutes before serving.  (Great re-heated)

Pink Fluff

Isn’t that just the prettiest bowl of pink fluff you ever done seen?  Okay, so it’s actually kinda gross looking when you see it like this, but let me tell you, this dessert slash side dish slash snack is the most wonderful bowl of fluffiness you’ll ever taste.  I bring it to every family gathering we ever have, and it’s usually received with big smiles and big spoons. 

If you’re my husband, you won’t like this dessert.  If you don’t like pineapple or cherries, you won’t like this side dish.  If you don’t like pink, you may not want to make this snack.  But I won’t hold any of those against you.  If you want to get to know me, get to know this Pink Fluff and you’ll know a little more about who I am.  Fluffy, sweet, and….pink?  Let’s move on to the recipe.

Pink Fluff

1 can cherry pie filling

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 can crushed pineapple, drained (I’ve made it with chunks too)

8oz sour cream

1 T lemon juice

1 16 oz tub (large) Cool Whip. 

Mix pie filling, sweetened condensed milk, pineapple, sour cream and lemon juice in a very large bowl.  Fold in Cool Whip.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

I see a theme with my two recipes I’ve posted this week.  Do you?  I must really like Cool Whip, and I REALLY like easy ‘mix and serve’ recipes.  I think you’ll like this one.  Let me know if you try it!

Triple Date Night & Recipe

Way back in January, Rick and I started something new.  We started dating again.  Each other of course.  I gave Rick some date night tickets for Christmas last year.  There was one ticket for each month.  We started off pretty well, but that lasted only about three months.  We haven’t been on a date since March! 

This past Friday, we made up for our lack of dating by doing a triple date with my two best friends from elementary school and their menfolk.  We met at Heather’s mansion home, ate lots of food, talked and laughed a LOT,  and played some xbox Kinect. 

This spread was for 6 adults.  We had a lot of leftovers!  Heather and Greg made burgers the size of my head that were stuffed with cheese.  They were delicious!  Beth and I were to bring a side and a dessert.  We each brought a couple sides and a couple desserts.  Perhaps it was overkill, but it was a yummy overkill.

Since we were all together, we decided to celebrate Mark’s birthday (it was Saturday).  We put candles in my famous Peanut Butter Pie.  It’s super yummy! Mark is Beth’s beau.  Remember Beth?  She has now met someone WONDERFUL.  We’re all excited for her and think this one is a keeper!

If you’re going to play xbox Kinect, (or any game on any game system really) the best way to play is with a projector screen.  Boy, was this fun!  We did a sports tournament game –girls against the guys – and I’ve never laughed so hard running in place or flailing my arms.  It was such a fun time.  Oh, and the girls won EVERY round.  Just sayin’.

My friends Heather and Beth have been in my life for 26 years.  We all met in elementary school and went through high school together.  Beth and I shared lockers every single year of middle school and high school and dyed her hair every color that Kool-Aid comes in.  Heather and I used to sing in my basement to Debbie Gibson using Lincoln Logs as microphones.  We also sang  in her room with her real microphone to any song we could find.   These two ladies have been and will always be a part of my life and I couldn’t be luckier to call them friends.  And at this point, I can’t de-friend them because they know too much!

Thank you, Heather, for hosting us and being such a warm and welcoming host.  I love your blond moments and all the laughter that comes out when we’re together.

Thank you, Beth, for bringing your Mr. Wonderful to meet your wacky friends.  He’s wonderful, and I hope we didn’t scare him away.  After all the laughing, how are your cheeks?

Honey, thank you for coming with me on this loud and crazy date.  It means a lot to me that you were willing to hang out with my crazy, loud friends. And thanks for snuggling with me on the couch during the games.  I loved that most of all!

I’m hoping that we’ll be able to make this Triple Date Night happen at least once a year for all of our years to come.  I love you guys!!

I hope you have friends like this in your life.  Friends like these are rare treasures. 

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Now, for the recipe for my mom’s SUPER YUMMY Peanut Butter Pie.  Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Pie 

8 oz cream cheese

1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth if you’re me, crunchy if you’re my mom)

2Tb milk

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tub (8oz) Cool Whip

1 graham cracker pie crust (chocolate in you’re me, regular if you’re Beth)

Mix cream cheese, pb, milk and sugar until smooth.  Fold in Cool Whip.  Put in pie crust.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Delightfully Inspiring–Organized Recipes

(Today’s post will be linked up to Delightful Order.  Go see other inspiring posts at her site today!)

I have a lot of recipes.  I mean a LOT of recipes.  I have a bunch of cookbooks, and few years (maybe 8?) worth of Quick Cooking magazines (which, evidently they stopped making years ago), a ton of favorites saved online *oh wait!  No I don’t. I lost those when the computer crashed* and a full large index card box.  I also have my grandmother’s two small index card boxes that are packed with recipes that I’ve only gone through once or twice in the past 5 years.

I’ve tried a lot of different ways to organize my recipes.  I tried to organize them in a nice neat binder, but that took too much work for me.  At least the way I was doing it took too much work.  So, I have pretty much stuck with and like having a big index card box on my kitchen counter.  My problem is that I have too many recipes now and my box is ready to explode.  And I only have 5 dividers for all of my recipes and that, for some reason, drives me crazy!

I recently started going through my Quick Cooking magazines with scissors and glue stick in hand.  I want to get rid of the magazines for space issues, but I don’t want to lose any of the good recipes I know have to be in there. Every good recipe I find, I cut it out with it’s picture if it has one, and glue it to an index card.  It’s working great.  (I’m still not done with this process yet)

A few weekends back, on my Girls Trip, I brought along my exploding recipe box along with a second box (given to me by my teacher friend turned SAHM, Justy who just happened to have a baby last week), a packet of alphabet dividers, and some brightly colored labels.  I spent about an hour or so bringing out every.single.recipe that I have and laying them out on the table in neat little piles.  I then labeled and categorized  each pile, then put them back into the two boxes. 

It was so much fun!  But I have to admit.  I was a little overwhelmed, so I had to have my good friend Heather sit by me and walk me through my categorizing process.  I got a little stuck with a few recipes.  She was so patient with me.  Every time I asked Heather what she thought about where a certain recipe should go, she’d say the same thing, “Where would you go to look for it when you want to cook it?" I can’t tell you how many times she said that line, but it helped each time.  I must have had a brain block or something going on.

The end result was two beautifully organized recipe file boxes that now reside on my kitchen counter.  I used 25 out of my 26 dividers.  I mean business when I set out to divide (and conquer).  Maybe one day I’ll get really crafty and mod podge them so they’re all cutsie, but for now, they’re as plain as my kitchen walls and counters. So sad.

I used the different colors to create 4 main categories and labeled the outside of my boxes with those colors so I would know which box held which recipes.

*It’s Desserts.  Not Pesserts*

You can all laugh at me now because of how crazy I am about organizing my recipes.  But I have to admit that having them color coded and organized makes me a little giddy.  I love that some areas of my life are neat and orderly.  Have you seen my junk drawer recently?? 

Foto Friday: Old

Today’s challenge at Foto Friday is OLD.  While I originally was going to post a self portrait, I decided I’m not THAT old, and I should post a picture of my dear husband instead.  (He just had a big birthday this month and is feeling really old)

Then I got my act together and figured out what I can take a picture of that is actually old and also has sentimental meaning to me.

These are my grandmother’s old recipe file boxes.  She died just 9 days after my wedding almost 6 years ago.  She was the sweetest little *really little* woman. I’ve ever met.  It still makes me a bit weepy to think that she’s not here anymore, but I’m looking forward to the day that I get to see her *and Granddad* again in Heaven. What a great celebration that will be!

Speaking of celebration…Whenever we would all get together as a family, Grandma would bring her famous Grandma Brownies.  They were Chocolate Marshmallow Brownies, and she was the only one who even tried to make them. They are pretty hard to master. She would fill a tin full of these brownies (two layers if it was the right size tin!) and give each family a tin to take home.  The understanding was that if you don’t return the tin the next time you saw Grandma, you don’t get any more brownies.  Needless to say, we always returned our tins!

When we were going through her house after she died, I was allowed to take home her recipe tins. You know, I’ve gone through these tins a few times and I think I’ve found 7 recipe cards for those brownies! She knew when she had a good thing going.   I am now making it my mission to be the maker of ‘Grandma Brownies’ in our family.  It takes a lot of practice.  I don’t think anyone’s complaining about that though.

Go check out other photos that are “OLD” today at Mom Tried It.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE Kim’s photo today.  It’s a beautiful old barn and she’s done an amazing job editing it.  Go see it!!