I am getting better about admitting when I was wrong, and the other day I was wrong. There I said it… and yes, that did hurt.

I came home from work and was in a foul mood, I yelled at my husband for no reason, yelled at the kids and then announced in the middle of the afternoon that I was going to go lay down for a few minutes. An hour and 20 min. later I woke up and found that my husband had cleaned the living room and vacuumed , the kids were doing their homework and dinner was going on the stove. It was AWESOME! So I feel bad, I shouldn’t have yelled at the husband for no reason ( I need to save the yelling for when he really deserves it ) or the kids, so guys I am sorry!

I am a tortilla soup connoisseur, if they have it at a restaurant that I have been to I have tried it. I LOVE it. This is the recipe that my husband found on the internet and made the other night. He even set the ingredients on the counter ( I think secretly hoping I would take a picture!) but it was soooooo good! I think the best I have ever had!

He more than doubled the recipe. Personally I think the secret ingredient is that little bottle on the left, it is Smoky chili powder, not regular. It really makes a difference.

It was super easy to make and he used canned chicken, brilliant, why do I never think of that?

If you are looking for an unbelievable tortilla soup recipe, this is it!

TORTILLA SOUP

Ingredients

• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• 1/2 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 cup chunky salsa
• 8 ounces corn tortilla chips
• 1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (optional)

Directions

1. In a large pot over medium heat, saute the chicken in the oil for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cumin and mix well. Then add the broth, corn, onion, chili powder, lemon juice and salsa. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes.
2. Break up some tortilla chips into individual bowls and pour soup over chips. Top with the Monterey Jack cheese and a little sour cream.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

1 Pork Loin

1 Bottle Bar B Que Sauce ( I use Sweet Baby Rays)

Little bit of liquid smoke

Rolls

Brown all sides of the roast in some oil in a large pan. Transfer to a crock pot and add about a cup or two of water. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook on high for 4-6 hours until you can pull it apart without effort with a fork. Drain off almost all the liquid, leave about 1 cup add about 1t. liquid smoke to it. Add an entire bottle of B-B-Q sauce, we love Sweet Baby Ray’s the best. Stir it into the meat, turn down to low on crock pot and let cook fro another hour or until you are ready to eat. Serve on hard rolls or your favorite kind!

This is a signature recipe of my Sister In Law Tonia!

Chili Verde

This is exactly how my mom gave it to me. I have never used a 3-5 lb pork, mine are usually between 1-3 pds so I only use 1 onion and 1-2 cans of green chili’s. I use about 2 tsp of garlic though and I usually skip the searing and make it in the crockpot. About 6 hours on high in a crockpot, 2 1/2-3 hours in a roasting pan, and 1 hour in a pressure cooker.

3-5 lb boneless pork roast
1-3 yellow onions (chopped)
4 cans Ortega chopped green chili’s
olive oil
1/4 tsp minced or chopped garlic
(more if you like garlic)
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbs flour
3/4 cup water

Heat oil in roasting pan and sear meat. Pour 1/2 cup water in bottom of roasting pan. Place in roast, chopped onions, garlic, salt and pepper. Cover pan and bake at 350 degrees 2 hours or until internal temp. reaches 155 (or meat shreds easily with a fork). Let meat set 1/2 hour and then shred. Set aside.
Take 2 Tbs flour and mix with 1/4 cup water thoroughly (no lumps). Add water to drippings and cook over med heat to make gravy. If desired add more water, flour and (if needed) chicken bouillon for more gravy. Salt to taste. Add green chile’s and shredded meat. Serve over rice.
My kids like it with soy sauce and rice. The next day we wrap it in burritos with cheese and sour cream. The burritos are excellent when fried in a pan on both sides, more sauce dumped on top and coated in cheese. (not healthy though). Enjoy!

This is the “fanciest” way we make pork loin!

Tuscan Pork Loin

Ingredients

• 1 3-pound pork loin, trimmed of fat
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
• 3/4 cup dry vermouth or white wine
• 2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar

Directions

Tie kitchen string around pork in three places so it doesn’t flatten while roasting. Place salt and garlic in a small bowl and mash with the back of a spoon to form a paste. Stir in oil, rosemary and lemon zest; rub the mixture into the pork. Refrigerate, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the pork in a roasting pan. Roast, turning once or twice, until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part registers 145 degrees F, 40 to 50 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board; let rest for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, add vermouth (or wine) and vinegar to the roasting pan and place over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and cook, scraping up any browned bits, until the sauce is reduced by half, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the string and slice the roast. Add any accumulated juices to the sauce and serve with the pork.

A little while ago a friend forwarded a email from All Recipes to me asking if there were any other Tiffany Ivanovsky’s out there?! My recipe was the featured recipe on the All Recipes site!

I freaked out for a few hours! I LOVE that site!

Here is my recipe, actually my Grandma’s, she made it for me all the time when I lived with her. She clipped it out of the local paper during World War II and has been making it since.

Lemon Barbeque Meatloaf

INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)

1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup water
1 egg, beaten
4 slices day-old bread, torn into small pieces
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 teaspoons seasoning salt
1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 dash ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
6 slices lemon

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 inch baking dish or a dish of similar size.

In a large bowl, mix together the ground beef, lemon juice, water, egg, bread, onion and seasoning salt until well blended. Shape into 6 individual loaves – I like to make large balls. Place them in the prepared baking dish.

Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven while you prepare the topping. In a small bowl, stir together the ketchup, brown sugar, mustard powder, allspice and cloves. Spoon the sauce over the loaves, then top each one with a slice of lemon. Return to the oven, and bake for an additional 30 minutes, or until cooked through.

I made these the other night for the coupon class. I thought they were really good!

Thanks, Katie D. and Snbjork for the comment and the recipe!

Pumpkin Gooey Bars

Ingredients

Cake:

• 1 (18 1/4-ounce) package yellow cake mix
• 1 egg
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted

Filling:

• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 (16-ounce) box powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the cake mix, egg, and butter and mix well with an electric mixer. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased 13 by 9-inch baking pan.

To make the filling: In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and pumpkin until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter, and beat together. Next, add the powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mix well. Spread pumpkin mixture over cake batter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Make sure not to overbake as the center should be a little gooey.

Serve with fresh whipped cream.

Variations: For a Pineapple Gooey Cake: Instead of the pumpkin, add a drained 20-ounce can of crushed pineapple to the cream cheese filling. Proceed as directed above.

For a Banana Gooey Cake: Prepare cream cheese filling as directed, beating in 2 ripe bananas instead of the pumpkin. Proceed as directed above.

For a Peanut Butter Gooey Cake: Use a chocolate cake mix. Add 1 cup creamy peanut butter to the cream cheese filling instead of the pumpkin. Proceed as directed above.

Turned it on high for 2 hours than backed it down to low for 4 more. After 6 hours I pour ALL the liquid off the ribs, and dump a jar of Bar-B-Que over them, so they get glazed. Sweet Baby Ray’s is my favorite. Now this is where life took over and I forgot to take a picture of the final product. It was serve the children dinner or get my arm chewed off by one of them.

But this is what they looked like….

This is how my husband ended up eating his because the rolls were so stinking AWESOME! It was good, none left for today, darn, I have to cook again!

For dessert tonight I am making Toll House Pie. It is my husbands favorite. We ordered take out from a restaurant a few weeks ago and splurged and bought a slice for dessert. It was horrible, the crust was burnt and it tasted nasty. I still feel bad, so when I saw it on Bakarella’s site I knew I had to make some!

Someone will have to revive me from my sugar coma!

Oh BABY! But look how these bad boy’s turned out! I am a rock star at my house right now!

They are awesome! If I can make them anyone can. I also made a slow cooker ribs recipe that I will also post to go with these. My husband actually just made a sandwich out the ribs ( that were falling off the bone) and these rolls. He is still singing my praises! So give them a try! I followed her directions exactly!

Roll recipe from Taylor Clan a.k.a A Musing Mother I’ll play a game and you see if you can follow along. It’s called “If I Really Had to Use a Recipe and Instructions.” Here it goes. Dump in a scant T of yeast into large bowl Decide how sugary you want it. Yeast eats sugar so it rises better. I usually add between 2 -6 T. How many rolls do you want? Let’s go for about 15. Add 2 and 1/2 cups of water. Watch it “proof.” It will form bubbles for about 5 to 10 minutes. Add a cup or two of flour and mix in with a wooden spoon. Mix the crap out of it. Now add about a teaspoon of salt and another cup or two of flour. Mix the crap out of it again. If it’s looking sticky but like you can almost handle it (but not quite), add about a little oil to it. Eyeball it. I usually pour in between 2 T. to 1/4 cup. For every cup of water, plan on adding about 2 and 1/4 cups of flour. If you’re using a bread mixer, if it’s a little sticky, no biggie. If you you aren’t, get your hands in there and start pushing it, away from you, rolling it, rolling it back, adding flour, getting all floury. Make sure it’s still tacky but not sticking to your hands with vigor. Mine is still pretty sticky but it’s not necessary. If your dough is looking stringy and web-like, the yeast and gluten are working. Technique time: Clean out your bowl, spray with Pam, put your blob of dough into bowl and cover with sprayed plastic wrap. Let rise until it’s 2 and half times its original size.. Punch it down. Second rise is optional. The way Julia describes the rolling is interesting. I’ve tried it and it works and comes out pretty. I usually squeeze off a piece of roll dough like you’d choke a chicken (if you are so inclined), then set it on my other hand and scoop the underside towards me until I have a nice little ball. Then I roll it out until it’s oblong and put it on sprayed pan. Slice the top about a quarter inch across. This gives the roll room to grow without splitting the bottom sides. Let rise until almost double. Turn on oven 450 degrees. Spray your rolls with water. Put old gross pan on bottom rack and let it heat up at the same time. Once it’s heated, throw in a bowl full of ice cubes into the gross pan and put in rolls. The ice cubes add steam and make the rolls crisp on the outside. I also spray the rolls every three minutes for the first 9 minutes. After 15-18 minutes, the rolls will be dark gold color. Let them cool for a half hour and you have very chewy rolls on the inside and crisp on the outside. Plan B – Follow Betty Crocker’s cookbook recipe….

This is one of our children’s favorite meal. Well, kinda a meal, but hey it counts right? What gets added always depends on what is left over in the fridge as far as protein goes…. maybe bacon, leftover steak, sautéed sausage, chorizo, or even scrambled eggs.

This is the base of the dish,

Potatoes. They are good for growing kids and my growing waist line.

Slice them real thin, I like to use a mandolin. I have even used left over baked potatoes from the night before. Nice, because they take less time to cook that way.
While you are slicing, melt an entire stick of butter in a very large pan, cast iron is the best. Then add an entire sliced onion. If you cook the onions down until they are clear the kids will eat them.

Then, add the potatoes and any protein you like. Or leave out the protein and just eat it like this for a side dish. I have added eggs at the end, cooked them in and eaten this in a tortilla. AWESOME!

Keep the heat rather high and add more oil or butter if you need to so that the potatoes brown really nice.
Oh my gosh! They get amazing and really crispy! The potatoes break down a little and get all crispy and wonderful! Season it a bit with seasoning salt and pepper. Keep it simple, sometimes I add a little garlic salt, but just a little.

Like I said you can eat it just like this as a side dish with some ketchup, or add some meat to it and make it a meal or even eat it in a tortilla as you are running out the door to baseball practice. Not that we do that almost every day…

Do you have a family “staple” dish?

When cool, frost with cool whip and (if you are not lazy) chop up Heath or Skor bars to put on top. If you don’t have time dump a bag of Heath toffee bits on.

I can’ t even describe how good this cake is. Have you seen the Diner scene in When Harry Met Sally? That about says it all!

Have you had this cake before? What do you call it?

Paul took the bigger kids to the Astro’s game, I had the little kids and 10 pounds of strawberries that I found for .99 cents a pound. 

Park the little kids at the table with coloring books and get busy!
This is the easiest yummiest most satisfying thing that you can preserve. Take the tops off your strawberries. Toss them into your food processor or a large bowl. Pulse them slowly until they are in small chunks, or mash with a potato masher until smashed.
Don’t over smash them or esp. in the food processor, don’t kill them! Just small pieces will work!
For every 2 pounds of strawberries mashed, I used 1 1/2 cups sugar and one packet freezer jam fruit pectin.
I got all the supplies from Wal-mart. I love the nifty little freezer jars they had. Are these new? I have not seen them before and thought they were really cool. I had to try them out and was in LOVE!
This is super quick to make, abut 40 minutes and 9 pounds of strawberries later I had this stash to throw into the freezer. Enough to last us for the next few weeks…. just kidding the  next month or so It last up to a year in the freezer or a month or so in the fridge. 

If you have not had freezer jam on a bagel with cream cheese, do yourself a favor and make some this summer!

How do you use a large amount of fruit in the summer? Do you can? Make freezer jam? Share some good recipes or a link to your site if you have canned or put up something!

Then press it into a pizza pan, mine is about 18″. The kids like to help with this part…
Bake at 300 degrees, 20 -25 min. until lightly browned. 
Now you need your sauce, or vanilla filling. Did I mention this is really low calorie??? Melt the vanilla chips with the whipping cream and beat in the cream cheese.
Spread onto the COOLED crust. I throw it into the fridge at this point while I do everything else. Yummmm, now I just have to keep the kids fingers out!
Cut up your favorite fruit (usually whats on sale!) Pineapple is a must, and so are strawberries! Can you believe I had to buy blueberries from the store…. Try to use as many different colors as possible.
Start spreading them out on the cold crust. This is the kids job. 
Isn’t it pretty?! Throw it back in the fridge or put it somewhere safe so no one can snatch any fruit off the top.
Now it is time to make the glaze. You might be tempted to skip this part because it is so pretty already, but this will keep the fruit on the pizza, and keep anything from getting brown, like if you used banana’s. I also double this part. Combine in a small sauce pan until thick and pour over pizza.
I try and pour quick and then use a small spatula to spread it out thinly and evenly…
Here it is!!! I keep mine in the fridge. You will NOT have any leftovers I promise! I really need to get a better camera, this does not do it justice! People will think you bought it from a store, it is so pretty! 

Zucchini Bread

Banana Pudding

Broiled Tilapia Parmesan

Pink Lemonade Pie

Deep Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake

Oreo Truffles

Acorn Squash

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ice Cream Cake

Pampered Chef Braid

Breakfast Crescents

Zucchini Bread

Banana Pudding

Broiled Tilapia Parmesan

Pink Lemonade Pie

Deep Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake

Oreo Truffles

Acorn Squash

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ice Cream Cake

Fruit Pizza

Taco Salad

Strawberry Freezer Jam

I am literally going to chew my arm off, I am on a stupid diet and seriously hungry! I know, I know, you aren’t supposed to get this hungry but to save a long story I just am!

The kids are pulling some beautiful produce out of the garden every day and if I serve them sautéed squash one more time for dinner there is going to be mutiny!
So I thought I would torture myself and make zucchini bread and muffins, which aren’t allowed on my diet right now, no matter how ‘healthy’ I make them! I can’t tell you how good my kitchen smells right now… I am slobbering on my key board.

I took an o.k. recipe and made it fantastic ( if you ask me!) the kids gobble these up like cupcakes! The following recipe makes 1 loaf, 8 mini loaves, and 24 muffins. 
Tiff’s Zucchini Bread and Muffins:

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when we went camping. We got rained out one night and went into town for dinner. The men got banana pudding for dessert for themselves in honor of my birthday It was INCREDIBLY good! They used sugar cookies instead of vanilla wafers and it was the perfect ratio of cookies, pudding and banana’s. Since them my husband has been begging me to make it. So I looked at tons of recipes on the web and ended up making it this way. First I made huge soft sugar cookies, just cutting them out in random circles. It didn’t matter if they were pretty. I made up my own recipe:

Next I made the banana pudding recipe…