Hey Noreen » Foodies

Happy Halloween

Noreen — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:46:10 +0000

We always get several dozen kids ringing our doorbell on Halloween night, looking for handouts. I like to pass out the fun sized candy bars. I make sure that they are all peanut free because I know that a lot of people have allergies to peanuts. I put all of the goodies in a large bowl near the door and I let the kids reach in with one hand and grab a handful. If the kid is really little I’ll let the kid take two handfuls. By nine pm the porch lights go out and I head to bed, hoping that when we get up in the morning the mailbox will still be intact and the cars un-egged and unvandalized. So far we’ve been lucky; but some of our neighbors have not been so fortunate in years past. I guess the kids didn’t like their candy!

Mashed potatoes

Noreen — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:38:02 +0000

I love potatoes with my supper. I love them just about any way you can fix them, boiled, baked, nuked, mashed, fried. Whatever you do, don’t try to take my potatoes away from me! For several years now I’ve been relying on the instant dehydrated potato flakes to make mashed potatoes for supper. They were fine with butter and gravy. Recently I got a coupon to buy Bob Evans brand of mashed potatoes (not the instant flakes) and I gave them a try. I have to tell you that I liked them so much it will be very hard to go back to ever using the flakes again! Boy, were they yummy!

Truffles!

Noreen — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:11:56 +0000

Have you ever eaten a “real” truffle? By that I mean the fungus? I never have – I’ve just eaten the candy “truffles.” I understand the the “real” truffles are more expensive than I could ever even think of eating! So I guess that’s one of those foods I’ll probably never get to try. Oh well…..

Home made bread

Noreen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:41:55 +0000

There is almost nothing better in this world than home made bread baking in the oven. I like to buy the frozen bread dough loaves at the store, and when I have the time at home I pull them out and cook a couple of loaves.

Today is such a day. I have two loaves of bread rising in the oven, and I should have them ready to eat with supper. Home made bread makes a plain meal a lot more “comfort food”-ish. No one in my house complains about supper when there is a freshly baked loaf of home made bread on the table!

Teaching my son to cook

Noreen — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:01:41 +0000

Recently one of my sons informed me that he would like to learn how to cook some of his favorite meals. You could have knocked me over with a feather! I am thrilled to finally share some of my skills, talents, knowledge with my kids!

The first “dish” he wanted to learn how to make is my version of lasagna. So, the next time I went grocery shopping I bought all of the ingredients. The next time we had a few hours together we cooked a pan of lasagna together. Hopefully he’ll remember how to do that and I hope that he will be the “official lasagna cook” from this point forward. It would be really nice to have more help around the house in the way of people sharing the cooking duties!

Nephew is visiting for the weekend

Noreen — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:47:55 +0000

I’m so excited that my newphew is coming for a visit! I’m looking forward to showing him around town!

What to eat, what to eat

Noreen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:27:48 +0000

I have been trying so hard to be a good calorie, health conscious person who eats only the “good for you” foods. You know, fresh fruit, veggies, yogurt. that sort of thing. Well, today I went grocery shopping and for some reason the store was out of yogurt. I don’t have any idea why. Perhaps their cooler unit broke down and they all spoiled and had to be thrown out. It was weird. Well, I need SOMETHING to snack on during the day, so I decided that this “all out of yogurt” incident was a “sign” of some kind to give myself a break and buy something sinful for snacks this week. So I bought Little Debbie Nutty Bars instead. You know, the chocolate covered peanut butter wafer bars. I was surprised to see that they have the exact same number of calories as a container of yogurt! So I won’t feel quite as wicked when I eat them!

Ants

Noreen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:23:54 +0000

For the past month we’ve had an invasion of little black ants in the kitchen. I blame it primarily on the fact that there are certain people who share this space with me who are total slobs. The make a mess with food and leave it there for me to clean up. Sometimes that mess stays there for many hours before I even see it because I’m either in bed sleeping or gone to work. So the ants have a huge picnic party at my kitchen counter due to the extreme laziness of certain other people.

I have always asked the other people to make sure they clean up their messes, and they all swear that they do clean up their own messes, so obviously someone is breaking into the house while I’m sleeping or working and making food messes in the kitchen to benefit the ants. Thankfully, no valuables like jewelry or computers or televisions have been stolen yet; only food items. I do think it’s very gutsy of the culprits to fix their food to eat and then eat it here and leave their dirty dishes in the sink instead of putting them in the diswasher. Maybe I should put a big sign on all of the doors and windows asking the perpetrator(s) nicely to clean up after themselves.

I bought some ant traps about two weeks ago. At first I didn’t think that they were helping because it looked to me as if the ants were avoiding them. Maybe ant season has simply stopped (though I doubt it.) But the past two days I haven’t seen any ants, so that’s a good thing.

Cooked oven-fried Bisquick chicken for supper tonight

Noreen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:23:38 +0000

Well I thought it was going to be a simple dinner, but it turned out to be a better than average one tonight. I had some chicken thighs in the refrigerator that needed to be cooked up. So they went into the oven with the Bisquick oven-fried chicken recipe. While that was cooking I put some refrigerator biscuits in to cook in the toaster oven, and some Bob Evans mashed potatoes went into the microwave, along with fat free chicken gravy and some peas. Turned out to be having a Sunday dinner on a Tuesday night! No one complained though!

I didn’t feel like cooking tonight

Noreen — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:40:56 +0000

I didn’t feel like cooking tonight so I fixed a DiGiorno’s frozen rising crust three meat pizza. I never used to like frozen pizzas, but I have to say that this particular pizza is pretty close to pizza parlor fresh dough pizza, which is my favorite. I like to have this instead of pizza parlor pizza because it is only about half of the price and it is convenient to cook. The pizza parlor doesn’t deliver to my place anyway, so by the time I drove to the parlor to get the pizza, I can have it cooked right here at home, and while it’s cooking I can be relaxing or doing something productive other than wasting gas on a drive to the pizza parlor!

Do they EVER grow up????

Noreen — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:26:09 +0000

I would never have expected in a million years for tonight’s scene to happen. My significant other came home from work and announced that he had an Elks meeting tonight and he needed to take a nap until about 6pm.

Much to my surprise, as he was walking out the door to go to the meeting he said to me “Oh, by the way, I’m supposed to bring several dozen home made cookies to tonight’s meeting!”

Well, you know what? I haven’t made home made cookies in years, and I don’t have any just lying around the house, either! When my kids were in elementary school, they used to spring that kind of thing on me, but it was at least the night before we needed the cookies, not as we were walking out the door!

So, I ask you, do they EVER grow up?

More unsafe food!

Noreen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:00:56 +0000

Good grief, it is getting to the point where I have to get up and ask “what’s the unsafe food of the month?” Is all of this unsafe food a result of laziness, corporate greed, sabotage, what is it? Thank goodness there are mechanisms in place for recalls, but really people, we shouldn’t HAVE to be recalling all of this stuff! What a horrible shame that someone has dropped the ball, making so many people fall ill because of unsafe food making it to the grocery store. I’m starting to be ashamed of the human race. We OUGHT to be better than this!

Chinese food for supper tonight

Noreen — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:05:28 +0000

I didn’t feel like cooking tonight, since it has been so hot out, so I sent my kids out for Chinese food to bring home to eat. My favorite Chinese food is sweet and sour chicken; my kids order other foods but they eat about half of my order, so I’ve learned to order an extra large size serving of the sweet and sour chicken or I end up getting only two pieces of chicken!

What’s cooking tonight!

Noreen — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:47:19 +0000

Well I was the first one home from work tonight, so it’s up to me to cook supper. I wonder if everyone else stayed late at work just to avoid cooking? Hmmmm…… Probably!

Oh well, I found a package of cheese tortellini in the pantry, some fruit salad in the freezer (I’m thawing it fast!) and some garlic/cheese texas toast in the freezer.

Got everything started, set the table, and have a few minutes to sit at the computer, so here I am! I AM wondering why people are not starting to arrive, they are not usually this late!

Oh well, it will be ready in about five minutes, I’ll keep it warm a little while and then I’m going to dig in and eat! I’m hungry!

Muffins

Noreen — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:47:50 +0000

I like Little Debbie snacks. Not all of them, but most of them. OK, now that I think about it, I can’t remember ever trying one I DIDN’T like! Just recently I saw a package of Little Debbie cranberry & orange flavored muffins. I really can’t remember ever seeing Little Debbie muffins before, but to be honest I’ve avoided that aisle in the store a lot, trying to lose weight!

Anyway, I was looking for some of those “healthy” snack types of things, you know, those “100 calorie” packages of snacks, and I found these cranberry & orange muffins. Well, that happens to be my favorite muffin flavor, and I have not eaten one of those in about a year or so, I just HAD to buy it!

The muffins were small, but that is a good thing because I found that I was satisfied eating only one. They were individually wrapped, which made it convenient for me to grab and toss in my bag to take to work.

I probably would have felt guilty eating a larger one because of the calories and fat, etc in any kind of muffin! It tasted very good, it was moist and just about perfect for a late morning snack. I’ll be buying more of those!

I just went to their website and found that they were promoting these exact muffins, with a printable 75 cent coupon!

My favorite dessert

Noreen — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:36:13 +0000

My favorite dessert in the whole world is Bryer’s vanilla ice cream! You can’t go wrong with Bryer’s!

Mother’s Day

Noreen — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:45:12 +0000

Well, today is Mother’s Day! I managed to sleep in late and avoid cooking and doing dishes all day! How could it get any better than that? Got some nice Mother’s Day cards from my kids, and some Godiva chocolates from my honey!

We went out to eat breakfast at IHOP. I love the stuffed french toast with strawberries! And then for supper, we went out to eat at Applebee’s – I had the riblets, my favorite! I wish Mother’s Day was every Sunday!

Veal

Noreen — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:12:53 +0000

When I was a kid I enjoyed eating veal when my mother cooked it, and I would order it at a restaurant as a teenager on a date from time to time. Then I found out how veal made its way from baby cow to the table and I was mortified! I haven’t eaten veal in probably 40 years now! Recently I’ve been driving in a rural area and noticed all of the cattle grazing in their pastures and realized that I could not see any of the veal crates that used to be so prevalent. I wondered if the farmers had simply moved them from easy view! I just was doing some “google” research on veal and found out that many farmers have changed their evil ways and now let the veal calves stay out in the pastures with the other cattle instead of confining them in crates. I think that is a much more humane approach to treating calves! I don’t know if I’ll ever eat veal again, but I am glad to learn that more farmers are treating their calves more humanely – at least until they are slaughtered!

I bought a bread machine from a thrift store

Noreen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:10:09 +0000

A few years ago I gave away my bread machine. It was old and did not have a window in it to see if the bread was rising and baking properly. I had several occasions where the bread did not rise and I was disappointed; I had no way of knowing it didn’t rise until it was dinnertime! So I gave it away.

I found a bread machine in a thrift store that has a window in it. It only cost $2 so I bought it. I hope it works! I like fresh bread!

Cupcakes for the office

Noreen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:19:19 +0000

I love to make cupcakes. Especially for birthdays because then everyone can have their own cake without fussing about getting too big or too small of a piece of cake. They get a cupcake. Period! I like to take cupcakes to the office but have not had a good cupcake holder to transport them. I’ve found one now at w ww.vat19.com! This website is a great place to go to look for unique gifts!

These cupcake holders that I’ve found on their site are individual cupcake holders; each holder holds one cupcake and prevents it from being squished. These would be perfect to use to pack one in a lunch, or transport to a party! I’m going to buy a dozen to use to take cupcakes to the office!