Roast Chicken!!

We've been practicing our roasting skills and cooked a wonderful roast chicken the other night, complete with veggies and stuffing.


We've been pulling from a number of recipes. What we've decided works best is the following:

25 minutes per pound at 350 degrees until the breast temperature is 170 degrees
rub the chicken in butter before roasting. sometimes we squeeze lemon on it, sometimes we add herbs and spices, but always butter

Big chunks of veggies under the bird taste WONDERFUL after steeping in the chicken's juices while it cooks...


And there ya have it. delish. I've certainly made better stuffing in my life, but for a quick no-fuss meal it sufficed to pick up some ready-to-make stuffing and add some roughly chopped onion and celery. The remaining onion and celery can be thrown in the roasting pan beneath the chicken! Next I want to learn how to make some stock, a friend gave me her recipe so we'll see!

Sloppy Joes!

Sloppy Joes! I've been slacking in the crafts department, but the cold weather has been making me crave warm hearty meals. I don't believe I've ever had sloppy joes before...at least not that I can remember, but we were looking for dinner meals this week and for some odd reason I thought, yum! meaty, vegetablely, messy sloppy joes.

They were shockingly easy. We browned a pound of ground meat with a bell pepper and 1/4 onion...


...then added these lovely ingredients (the recipe had exact measurements, but I think it could be done simply by taste):


let it all simmer for about 20 minutes....


and voila! We ate about two each and then had some leftovers. They were suuuuper delicious and definitely a recipe we will make again. Most of the ingredients are everyday items we have in our kitchen which makes it a really easy last minute dish. It is especially good for using up extra hamburger buns before they go stale : )