The good, the bad and the best

I have four dishes this time and a bonus. And what goodies have I made.  I'll start out with Red Beans & Rice with cornbread, then Italian-Style Pepper Steak, followed by Chocolate Chip-Banana Bread and brownies, and ending with Cheese-And-Tofu-Stuffed Shells.

Two and a half hours of simmering of the ham bone. Made the house smell great.

While the ham bone was cooking, I made some corn bread.  I added a little cheese and picante sauce to spice it up.

After the ham bone simmered, I let it cool a bit and then took the meat off and threw it back in the pot.

Then I added the smoked sausage, beans and spices.  Next I'm using Andouille sausage.

This simmers for another half hour

I'm running low on hot sauce, but I of course needed some. We had a guest eating with us, so I didn't want to make it too spicy...yet.

I served over rice

Don't forget to take the bay leafs out! Don't want to mess with removing a bay leaf? You can use Thyme instead. I've not tried it, I just fish out the leaf.  And sometimes have to write down how many I used.

The completed dish.  It was really good for my first attempt.  I only have a few other things I will do next time to spice it up.  

The Itallan-Style Pepper Steak, I didn't like as much.  It was okay, just not as flavorful.

I had to do a lot of chopping and dicing, which I do like to do.

Even the beef was sliced.

 Seems like a lot, but it really wasn't at all.

Saute the peppers, onions and garlic a little.

Diced up a couple tomatoes.

 Cook the beef up until it's heat through, as it will still do some more cooking.

 Set the beef and peppers a side and add the spices and broth.

I kept the dripping and all in the pan and cooked up the broth a bit.

And that was it.  On a little rice it steak and peppers.  As I side at the begging, it was good.  I needed something else.  I will have to play with it again.


I made a couple special treats also.  Brownies, box mix, and homemade chocolate chip banana bread. I made Rachael Ray's recipe. Its easy and made a great bread!

Step 1, preheat oven and get loaf pan read.

 Step 2.  mix dry ingredients.

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 Step 3. Blend the wet stuff; eggs, mashed banana, you get it.

 Then add the wet and dry.  Also add the chocolate chips.  I used 1 cup.

Put into the pan and bake!

 The brownies were perfect.  I ate one, as I am not a big brownie person.  Lets just say, they didn't last long in the house.  :)

 The bread turned out amazingly.  Most and rich.  I even made french toast with it one day.  That rocked!

Cheese-and-Tofu-Stuffed Shells!  Mmmm pasta.

 It might seam like a lot of ingredients add work, but it wasn't.  A lot can be done ahead of time and thrown together to heat in the oven later.

I shredded my carrots and diced the green onions.  Then rinsed them again.

 Mixed up tofu, ricotta cheese, cheddar and mozzarella.  Separated an egg and added the egg white. Mixed well and put it in the fridge for later.

 I also mixed up the tomato sauce to have it ready.

I boiled the shells up when I was fixing the meal.  I just cooked the whole box.

 

 When the shells were just at the al dente stage, I rinsed them and began to assemble.

 To stuff the shells, I use my small cookie scoop.  It's around a tablespoon and made it more uniform in the shells.  The reciepe said 12, but I make a lot more than than.  I just lined a 9x13 pan with them.

 Then added the sauce on top of that, along with the remaining mozzarella cheese. Let it bake until the cheese was melted and sauce looked nice and bubbly





The end result was spectacular.  I think a little sausage in the sauce would be great also.  It was pretty filling without sausage.  And a vegetarian meal.

 Coming soon, Pork Chop Suey, Fettuccine alla Carbonara and Spicy Halibut.