High Fiber Taco Filling

This recipe makes a lot. You can freeze up part of it to use later saving you a lot of time on a night you may be rushed to get dinner on the table. Both the beans and the brown rice are full of fiber and other nutrients making this a tasty and nutritious meal.

1 lb ground beef or turkey
1 can or 1 1/2 to 2 cups cooked red beans (drain but retain the liquid, add water to make 1 1/2 cups)
1 cup cooked brown rice
1 small onion diced
1 or 2 stalks of celery diced
diced peppers, you can use a hotter pepper but I usually just use some bell peppers I have frozen
2 packets taco seasoning
water

Saute the veggies until onions are tranparent, brown the beef or turkey and drain off fat (a great tip, and it doesn't affect the taste, is to rinse under running water to get rid of excess fat). Add liquid, rice, beans and seasoning packets. Heat until thickened. Use as you would regular taco filling.

My Favorite Leftover Ham Recipe

There's a contest for a free ham and to enter you have to link to your ham recipe, so here's my favorite:

1 cup of cubed ham
2 cups whole wheat elbow pasta, cooked (any shape works but I like the elbow best)
1 can cheddar soup (you can use other cream soups but add about a cup of shredded cheese)
1 small package frozen broccoli (I like lima beans too)
Seasoned bread crumbs for topping

Mix first four ingredients together, sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake at 350 for approximately 45 minutes.

Deb's Mexican Pasta w/ Veggies

I was going to make myself some Penne today in the more or less Italian style (translate that to Ragu). I had pulled out a roll of ground turkey that I THOUGHT was Italian seasoned. It turned out to be taco seasoned so I decided to experiment and here it is.

Mexican Pasta w/ Veggies

Box of whole wheat pasta - I used Penne but any whole wheat pasta should work
1 lb Taco seasoned ground turkey or 1 lb ground turkey and 1 packet taco seasoning
1 can Nacho Cheese soup (non-negotiable)
1 can tomato soup or small can tomato sauce
1-2 cups cooked beans or 1 can beans (I used pinto)
Veggies which can be a combination of any frozen veggie that suits your mood, celery, peppers, onion or any leftover veggies. How much you use is up to you, I usually use a total of a cup or two of veggies in this type of dish.(I used frozen broccoli, celery and onion)

Cook the pasta as directed and drain
Saute the onions, peppers and celery if being used then brown ground turkey in same pan
Cook frozen veggies in your preferred method, heat beans and any leftovers your adding
Put all this and the two cans of soup back in the pot you cooked your pasta in heat together then serve.

I live alone and this makes a lot. I freeze things like this in small plastic containers and it's perfect for when I don't feel like cooking.

Tired of Boring Green Beans?

One of the things that seems really popular among my clients is to pour bacon grease and crumbled bacon over their green beans. This makes the health conscious part of me cringe. However, bacon bits or crumbles without the bacon grease works very nicely. Here's some other quick and easy ideas to add some interest to your beans.
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Add some mushrooms, peppers, water chestnuts, green onions and/or chopped onion.
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Add some salsa
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Toss cooked beans with a tablespoon or two of Parmesan cheese
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Saute with onions, mushrooms, celery and/or peppers
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Simmer in cream with mushrooms and/or onions
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Toss with a little bit of sour cream and chives
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Toss with sauteed or toasted almonds
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Cook with a crushed clove of garlic
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Add fresh thyme, basil or parsley
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Add a dash or two of Worcestershire or soy sauce
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Saute with one or two seeded and chopped tomatoes
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Cook with a small can of diced or stewed tomatoes
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Sprinkle with lemon juice
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Sprinkle with crushed red peppers
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Here's an Idea

One of my readers, Molly, sent in this idea I haven't tried it, I don't cook at home enough but this is basically how it goes:

Deb , a Mennonite friend introduced me to Mennonite stew what we do is we take a butter dish and put it in the freezer when we have left overs just a small amount we put them into the dish in the freezer when the dish is full i defrost it put it in a casserole dish and bake at the end i cover the top with shredded cheese. Most things will work in this as long as it isn't too soupie. The casserole is always different and I haven't had a bad one yet. The dish might have several different types of meat and veggies in it and it eliminates almost all waste of food.Molly : O )

Mom's Garden Goulash

My father was a farmer stuck in the suburbs. Every year he would dig up over half the backyard and plant a garden. This garden was always very prolific and we ate a lot of fresh garden veggies in the summer. Certain vegetables would all start ripening at the same time and it became a race to freeze or use all of them up. Many of the neighbors would hide when they would see my dad or mom coming with yet more zucchini, tomatoes, peppers or eggplant. So my mom would chop them all up, fry them all together and called it goulash. I have since learned that it has a more fancy french name, ratatouille. This is my version which probably can't be called ratatouille because of the changes I made so I'll stick to mom's original name and give her credit. Here's my version.

1 large potato, quartered lengthwise and sliced
1 zucchini or yellow squash halved lengthwise and sliced
1/2 green pepper, coarsely chopped
1/2 red pepper, coarsely chopped
1 or 2 med. tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 med onion coarsely chopped
1 or 2 stalks of celery sliced
2 Tbs chopped fresh parsley

In a microwave safe dish cover the potatoes with water and microwave for about 5 minutes and drain. You want them not quite done. Spray large frying pan with cooking spray, add onions, pepper and celery and saute until tender. Add potatoes and zucchini and continue until both are almost done. Add tomatoes and parsley. Saute another two minutes or so.

Changes:
Use a small eggplant instead of, or as well as the zucchini

You can add oregano and/or basil as well as the parsley

You can also add leftover veggies at the end just long enough to heat them.

This and a slice of buttered bread would be all we had for dinner but it can also be a side sish.

Jenny's Pasta Sauce

My daughter, Jenny, hates spaghetti. It goes back to a childhood... ummm... incident that we won't go into right now, ok???
Anyway, her husband and sons love spaghetti so she had to compromise. According to her, as long as there's a lot of "stuff" in the sauce she can somehow manage to eat it. Although the ingredients vary (she is her mothers daughter you know) this is the basic recipe:

Jenny's Pasta Sauce

1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 lb ground beef or bulk Italian Sausage or 1/2 lb of each
1 medium onion chopped
1 medium pepper (color doesn't matter) seeded and chopped
2 or 3 stalks celery, chopped
1 small zucchini or yellow squash halved and sliced
1 small can mushrooms or equivilent fresh
1 or 2 small cloves of garlic, chopped
1 can stewed tomatoes

Saute onions, garlic, pepper and celery until onions are almost clear, brown meat, add squash, mushrooms, stewed tomatoes and jar of spaghetti sauce. Sometimes she doubles or even triples the recipe and freezes it. This way it's ready whenever the family wants spaghetti.

She tells me my youngest grandson picks out the squash so sometimes she chops it up very small so he won't know whats in there. She also sometimes uses mashed up cooked carrots to add an extra shot of veggies to it. She says she just uses whatever she has at the time so like many of my recipes this one can be very flexible. (She also says she doesn't use celery but I like it so I'm leaving it in there)