Cooking Thursday

This is a recipe I made recently to bring to a family from church who had a new baby.  This is something that's kid friendly but also liked by adults.  It's easy to make, and freezes well, so when I make it for us, I split it and freeze half.

Grandma's Pasta Hot Dish

1 pound ground beef
1/2 onion, chopped
1 teaspoon dried garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 jars of your favorite marinara sauce
8 ounces cream cheese softened
1 cup sour cream
1 bag thin egg noodles, cooked as directed
12 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Dried parsley for garnish

Brown and drain the ground beef with the chopped onion. Stir in the garlic, salt and pepper. Then add the marinara sauce. Simmer for 20 minutes.
While that simmers, stir together the cream cheese and sour cream. Grease a 9x13 pan. Spread 1/2 of the cooked egg noodles into the pan, then dot with 1/2 of the sour cream/cream cheese mix.
Spread 1/2 of the meat mix over top and then 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese.
Repeat layers - noodles, cream cheese mix, meat, mozzarella. Then sprinkle the grated parmesan over top.
Bake covered for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, then remove foil and bake another 15 minutes. Sprinkle dried parsley over top to garnish.

Beautiful Fall Days

Just a few Fall photos from my area. The leaves are falling, so I'm enjoying it while I can!

This little guy was out enjoying a nice day while I was out walking.

 

Ghosts, chocolate, stamping and pizza!

Last week we had Alaina and Ruby over and as usual, we had fun together!

Our first craft was something made of air dry clay. If you've been here for a while, you probably know I'm not a fan of Halloween, and usually decorate with a Fall/Thanksgiving theme.  However, my friend Kim at Exquisitely Unremarkable did a post recently with some little ghosts that were so cute, I decided to make them with the girls.

We started with white air dry clay, took some and rolled it into a ball, then flattened it with a rolling pin. We draped that flattened circle over a ball that was resting on a jar, used a straw to make little circle eyes and left them to dry. They used the scrap clay to make pumpkins and Alaina added a braid to hers.

Here they are drying - we'll come back to them later.

We had lunch and then made some Fall candy. These were peanut butter meltaways, made by melting white chocolate, milk chocolate and peanut butter together.

The melted chocolate was put into squeeze bottles and then each of the girls filled candy molds.  Then they went into the frig to get hard.

We played our favorite marble game...

and took a little walk outside, where we got to say hi to Winston, our neighbors dog.

Another thing I had seen on Kim's blog was something about rubber stamping.  It reminded me that I had a tote of stamps, ink, glitter...  so I got it up so the girls could play with all of it.

They loved it and want to do it again.

Here's some of their work.

The chocolates had gotten hard and popped right out of the molds.

Aren't they cute?

We packaged them up in cellophane bags to take home.

Here they are with their ghosts, pumpkins and a tiny cat.

The ghosts get put over a little battery operated candle so the eyes glow.

We went out for supper to a pizza place. Our pizza was so cheesy, as the girls were demonstrating.  But it was good!  We had lots of fun - and thanks to Kim for all her inspiration!