Beef and Bean Burritos This burrito recipe can be made in advance without garnishes and frozen, then heated in the microwave to serve. I freeze the burritos on a cookie sheet then wrap in foil and store in food storage bags. List of 13 items • 1 pound lean ground beef • 1/2 cup chopped onion • 1 clove garlic, minced • 2 teaspoons chili powder • 1 teaspoon dried whole oregano • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin • 1/2 teaspoon salt • 1/4 teaspoon pepper • 1 can (16 ounces) refried beans • 1 can (10 ounces) enchilada sauce, divided • 6 flour tortillas, 8-inch size • shredded lettuce • Optional garnishes: shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, sour cream, salsa, sliced ripe olives, shredded cheese list end
In a large skillet cook ground beef, onion, and garlic until ground beef is no longer pink, stirring to break up meat. Drain well.
Add chili powder, oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper; simmer for 5 minutes. Add refried beans and 1/2 cup of the enchilada sauce. Cook until heated through; keep warm.
Wrap tortillas in foil; bake at 350° for 10 minutes, or until thoroughly heated. Spoon about 1/2 cup ground beef mixture on each warm tortilla. Roll tightly and place seam-side down on a shredded lettuce-lined serving platter. When all burritos are made, spoon remaining enchilada sauce over the burritos. Garnish with your choice of toppings.
This blog post was sponsored by Divine Desserts Publishing LLC. If you like stories featuring food and recipes then you must read Loving Luke by Cecelia Dowdy. Loving Luke is about a reunion between Luke and Kim, two childhood sweethearts. It’s a Christmas novel full of love, regrets, and second chances. There’s also a bakery and plenty of delicious desserts wrapped within this amazing story. Can Luke and Kim find the courage to overcome their hang-ups and learn to love again? Loving Luke has been an Amazon bestselling novel with several 5-star reviews! Purchase today and tell your friends by sharing this blog post! The purchase link for Loving Luke is ceceliadowdy.com/loving-luke. The purchase link is also at the end of this blog post.
Do you know of a cornbread recipe that tastes better than cornbread mix?
This blog post is about cornbread. Recently, I decided to make some cornbread from scratch. I normally use a mix, but since I didn’t have one on hand, I used the recipe on the back of the Indian Head Yellow Corn Meal. (The only reason I keep cornmeal on hand is because I use it to dust my pizza peel when making my homemade sourdough pizza.)
Anyhow, when I made the Indian Head recipe, I was highly disappointed. The cornbread was crumbly, not fluffy at all, and it was so bland!
Determined to make a good pan of cornbread from scratch, I decided to try a recipe from one of my cookbooks.
The cookbook recipe differed from the Indian Head recipe – the major difference was that flour was not used. Instead of a cup of flour & a cup of corn meal, this recipe called for 2 ¼ cups of cornmeal. I found the texture for this recipe to be crumbly, as well. It was also bland!
My experimenting with cornbread recipes caused me to think about my childhood. We ate cornbread quite often. Since we had cornbread so much, I never gave it much thought when I was a child. I do recall that we’d crumble up the leftover cornbread and eat it in cold milk – kind of like a cornbread cereal. As I think about it, it’s possible that the cornbread that I ate as a child may have been bland. Since we mostly ate it with chili, or with a pot of beans, the taste and texture may not have bothered me.
If my mom were still living, I’d ask her how she made our cornbread. I don’t recall watching her make it. I was thinking about it, and wondered if cornbread has somehow evolved into the moist, fluffy, sometimes sweet concoction that we enjoy today. In other words, I wonder if cornbread has changed over the years, just as muffins have changed.
Decades ago, my sister was visiting me for the weekend at my apartment. She had a taste for some blueberry muffins. We had some fresh blueberries on hand. So, she cracked open my Betty Crocker cookbook and made the muffins. She was so disappointed. We agreed that the muffins were bland, and they weren’t sweet at all. I looked at some other muffin recipes in old cookbooks. I noticed that long ago, muffins were not the sweet, fluffy concoctions that we enjoy nowadays. Muffins were a quickbread that you ate along with your eggs and bacon – sort of like a substitute for toast – so they weren’t overloaded with sugar. The muffins we enjoy nowadays are just a few steps away from being a cupcake, in my opinion. I’ve actually seen muffin recipes that use cake mix as a base, which emphasizes my point.
Regarding cornbread morphing into a dessert-like concoction – I remember eating at a café with my family about ten years ago while visiting a museum. One of my sisters mentioned that the café served cornbread that was sweet and that it had a glaze. I don’t recall trying this cornbread. I thought that the glazed cornbread sound too dessert-like to eat with my meal. I would have rather eaten it afterwards – as if it were a piece of cake!
Regarding cornbread mixes, this is one of my favorites.
I love this cornbread mix! It tastes so much better than the recipes mentioned earlier.
Coincidentally, my sister texted me about Dolly Parton’s Cornbread Mix the other day. I decided to purchase a box. I haven’t tried it yet – so I don’t know how it compares to Krusteaz’s mix.
I wonder if there’s a cornbread recipe that tastes better than cornbread mix?
If you know of such a recipe, be sure to let me know! I’d love to try it!
This blog post was sponsored by Divine Desserts Publishing LLC. If you like stories featuring food and recipes then you must read Loving Luke by Cecelia Dowdy. Loving Luke is about a reunion between Luke and Kim, two childhood sweethearts. It’s a Christmas novel full of love, regrets, and second chances. There’s also a bakery and plenty of delicious desserts wrapped within this amazing story. Can Luke and Kim find the courage to overcome their hang-ups and learn to love again? Loving Luke has been an Amazon bestselling novel with several 5-star reviews! Purchase today and tell your friends by sharing this blog post! The purchase link for Loving Luke is ceceliadowdy.com/loving-luke. The purchase link is also at the end of this blog post.
Make at your own risk! I don’t heat the mixture! I just dump it in a blender! In other words, I use raw eggs!To be safe, you might want to use pasteurized eggs in this recipe.
Ingredients 2 cups heavy cream (or milk, or half and half – use lowfat milk to cut calories) recipe calls for heavy cream – but found it to be too filling.
1/4 cup sugar -recipe calls for a 1/2 cup, but that made it a bit too sweet.
Cinnamon – recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, but I sprinkle cinnamon instead
4 large eggs
1 cup brandy – recipe calls for 3/4 cup, which was not strong enough for me
***if doubling this recipe, it’s best to make it in two batches. The blender can’t hold double the amount of this recipe, it spills and makes a mess.
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Put into a container and place into the freezer to get ice cold. Shake thoroughly before serving.
You can also place this into the refrigerator until it is thoroughly chilled. Serve over ice! Delicious dessert drink for the holidays!
I’ve been researching how bread was baked in ancient and historical times. From what I gathered, all bread baked back then was sourdough, using a sourdough starter. Apparently, it took the bread a long time to rise, too. I decided to bake a loaf of bread just using my sourdough starter (without using any commercial yeast to help it along).
Well, the bread had a great texture, and it was sour, highly sour, but edible! Not sure when I’m doing that again without commercial yeast. Reason being, it took a LONG TIME to rise. I have a new oven and it has a bread proof setting. So, I left it in my warm environment for about 24 hours! I kneaded it and added more flour to it a few times too.
To make my bread I used:
King Arthur Bread Flour
King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour
Water
An entire cup of sourdough starter!
Olive Oil
Salt
Sugar
When I make it again, I might add a couple of eggs. It wasn’t hard, just time-consuming!
So, are you a bread baker? What kind(s) of bread to you like to bake?
Don’t these cookies look delicious?Have you ever eaten these before? I was browsing through my King Arthur flour catalog and saw these advertised. I did a little research about these cookies and discovered the following:
It’s a shortcrust-type cookie made with different spices.
Speculaas are eaten on Saint Nicolas Day (December 6th) in the Netherlands and Belgium. They are eaten in Germany around Christmas time.
They usually have some image or figure stamped on the front and the back is flat.
The dough can be stored overnight so that the spices can permeate the dough, giving it a richer spicy flavor.
Sometimes speculaas contain slivered almonds.
I must admit, I’ve never made these before. However, I believe I’ve eaten a store-bought version of this cookie. Perhaps I will make some this Christmas! If I do, I’ll be sure to post a mouth-watering picture!
So, have you ever eaten these cookies? If so, do you enjoy them?
If you like cookies, then you should try my Christmas novella Loving Luke! It’s only 99 cents and mentions lots of sweet Christmas treats for your palate!
This was the easiest chocolate cake I’ve ever made. The frosting tastes sour, but, when you put it on the cake, it tastes good! You can always use another chocolate (or vanilla) frosting recipe instead of this one. What I liked most about this recipe? I loved that all I had to do was dump all the ingredients into a bowl and mix it up! For most scratch recipes, you have to mix most of the dry ingredients first, and then mix the other ingredients, and then mix both mixtures together. This recipe is not like that! So easy! When I melted the chocolate, I used the microwave. I also added a bit of water to the chocolate before melting – to help ensure that it didn’t burn. If you melt the chocolate in the microwave, be sure to check it every ten seconds.
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 c. shortening
4 oz. melted unsweetened chocolate (cooled)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 c. dairy sour cream
1/4 tsp. soda
Sour Cream Frosting
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour pans. Measure
all ingredients except icing in a large mixing bowl. Mix 1/2
minute on low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3
minutes high speed, scraping bowl occasionally.
Pour into pan(s). Bake layers 30-35 minutes or until top
springs back when touched lightly with finger. Bake 40-45 minutes if using a rectangular pan. Cool. Frost
with Sour Cream Frosting.
SOUR CREAM FROSTING:
1/3 c. butter, softened
3 oz. melted unsweetened chocolate (cooled)
3 c. confectioners sugar
1/2 c. dairy sour cream
2 tsp. vanilla
Mix butter and cooled chocolate thoroughly. Blend in sugar.
Stir in sour cream and vanilla. Beat until frosting is
smooth and of spreading consistency.
This recipe is really good and simple. I used fresh blueberries (instead of blackberries), and it was still good. I’d imagine that you could use just about any fresh, pie-type fruit (apples, berries, etc.) and it would still taste good!
Have you ever made a recipe that’s similar (or the same) as this one? If you make this, leave me a comment and let me know if you liked it.
2 cups fresh blackberries (or blueberries)
2/3 cup brown sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup flour
2/3 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
5 tablespoons butter softened
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (optional)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In 8×8 inch baking pan, combine blackberries and lemon juice together. In a separate bowl blend, flour, oats, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter. Mix until crumbly. Sprinkle over berries. Bake for 30 minutes or until crisp. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.
Enjoy! 🙂
Let me know what you think about this recipe!
***My e-book, Milk Money, is only 99 cents! Download it now before the price goes up!
How do you describe taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound in your writing?
I attended a local writers’ meeting. We did a free write before we started the meeting. We wrote things that used the five senses. I think it’s important to make your reader feel what you’re writing through taste, touch, smell, etc. It was fun doing the exercise and if you are familiar with my writing, you may guess that I chose to write about food. I described the following three desserts (some of my favorites) in such vivid detail that the other members wanted some: chocolate cake, lemon pound cake, and chocolate chip cookies.
When you write, think about how things feel, smell, taste. If you have a garden with flowers, sit in the garden and sniff – describe the smell. Be sure to sit out there with your laptop or pen and paper so that you can record your smell descriptions. You can do the same exercise with taste. The next time you enjoy your favorite meal or dessert, eat it slowly, think, describe it so that when others read it, they’ll be salivating, wanting some of the food which you’ve described.
Do you have any tips to share about writing about how to tap into our five senses? Leave a comment!
When I write my stories, I notice that I habitually tap into the senses of smell and taste – especially taste! I’ve had a number of readers to say that they get hungry while reading my stories. I love writing about different foods, but I’m very passionate about sweets. I love eating them, describing them, making others crave a nice piece of buttery pound cake, or a dense slice of cherry-coated cheesecake with a graham cracker crust. I thought I’d share one of my favorite recipes with you today. I’ve had at least two people tell me that this is the best pound cake they’ve ever eaten. It’s simple and it’s oh-so-good! When you bite into this pound cake, the tart lemon glaze is a stark contrast to the buttery lemony pound cake, and it’ll just make you close your eyes and enjoy bite after bite! 🙂
If you try this pound cake, let me know if you enjoyed it. I know I shared this recipe with one of my former co-workers and she said when she made it, it didn’t taste as good as mine…not sure why?
So, what’s your favorite dessert? Leave a comment and feel free to share the recipe with us!
1 ½ cups butter (3 sticks) 3 cups sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon lemon extract Fresh lemon juice from one lemon (I use one of those bulb-shaped, cheap plastic juicers that people use for orange juice in order to juice my lemon. You get more juice that way. Be sure to remove any seeds. ) Grated lemon rind from one lemon 6 large eggs 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt ½ cup evaporated milk
Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 10-inch tube pan. Beat butter in large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add sugar ½ cup at a time, creaming well after each addition. Stir in vanilla, lemon extract, juice and rind. Add eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Stir thoroughly after each addition. Pour into prepared pan. Bake until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 70 to 80 minutes. If cake is not done after 70-80 minutes, bake longer, until wooden pick comes out clean. Cool for 20 minutes; remove from pan.
GLAZE: Sift one cup of confectioners’ sugar into a bowl. Squeeze juice (or use a a juicer – mentioned above) of one lemon into a separate bowl. Remove seeds from the lemon juice. Mix lemon juice with confectioners’ sugar and drizzle over cooled cake.
I discovered this recipe yesterday and thought it was WONDERFUL! We had some ripe bananas and I wanted to bake some banana bread for my family for breakfast. I was tired, and didn’t feel like measuring out all of the ingredients. Recalling the yellow cake mix I had in the cupboard, I wondered if I could use the cake mix to make banana bread, and I could! Using Google, I found the following recipe.
Cake Mix Banana Bread
1 (18 1/4 ounce) box yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup oil
3 -5 mashed bananas
1 cup chopped pecans (I eliminated the pecans because I didn’t have any on hand, but, the bread was still delicious!)
Directions:
1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2 Grease and flour 1 loaf pan or 1 large Bundt pan.
3 Mix all ingredients together until well blended and pour into pan(s).
4 Bake for 30-35 minutes (45 minutes, approximately for the Bundt pan) or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (I had to bake my loaves for MUCH LONGER than 35 minutes!)
5 Remove from oven to cooling rack for 10 minutes before removing from pan.
6 Cool completely on wire rack.
I discovered this recipe yesterday and thought it was WONDERFUL! We had some ripe bananas and I wanted to bake some banana bread for my family for breakfast. I was tired, and didn’t feel like measuring out all of the ingredients. Recalling the yellow cake mix I had in the cupboard, I wondered if I could use the cake mix to make banana bread, and I could! Using Google, I found the following recipe.