Down Home Pinto Beans

Comfort Food means many things but one of them is Down Home Pinto Beans. I love making pinto beans in the winter. They are so good and good for you. I don't use a recipe per say as I make them as I feel each time but here is my generic recipe and how-to.

For this pot I soaked 2 lbs of pinto beans in cold water for 4 to 6 hours (I can't remember!). Make sure you sort your beans first and remove any bad ones or little rocks from the bag. After they soaked I rinsed them well. I threw them in my slow cooker along with chunks of ham. The ham had been leftover from Christmas and was in the freezer for just such a use as this. I also chopped up an onion and added that. We love onion at our house so we always use more than most people would. I added salt and pepper, a dash of cayenne, a couple of shakes of chili powder and some garlic powder. I then covered the beans up with chicken brothe and water. You see the pot of beans below right before the cooking commenced.


And here are the beans at the end of the cooking spell. You can cook them on high or low or whatever. The beans are very forgiving. I like to go low and slow. So, if it is the weekend I soak them Friday evening. Put the beans on low right before I go to bed and then they are ready for Saturday lunch. But high and fast is ok too or even less time on low than I did for these.


This gives you a better idea of the finished product. Look at those yummy beans, chunks of ham and onion. Mmmm, mmmm! You can see the bowl of beans above. I love adding raw onions to my serving. A lot of raw onions. Muah!



These may not look pretty but I guarantee you that this is southern down home cooking at its' best. These are so dadgum tasty! I am always asked for my recipe and everyone wants seconds and thirds.

Pecan Pie Muffins

I thought you might enjoy a little gem of a recipe. This came from a friend of mine whose daughter won a blue ribbon at the fair! I have played with the ingredient amounts as you will read below. The picture shown is when I was experimenting with different sized muffin tins so please excuse the un - uniformity! This recipe is great for a brunch. I prefer them best after they have had time to rest. In my opinion they just aren't as tasty right out of the oven. Enjoy!

Pecan Pie Muffins

2 c. Brown sugar, packed
1 c. Flour
2 c. Pecans, chopped (I load my batter down with more!)
1 1/3 sticks. butter, melted (original recipe called for cups)
4 lg Eggs, beaten

Combine brown sugar, flour & pecans; set aside.
Combine butter & eggs; mix well. Stir in flour mixture until moistened.
Fill mini muffin cups 2/3 full.
Bake 350º for 15-20 minutes or until done. (the best ones of mine took 17 minutes)
Remove from pans & cool on wire racks.

If you don't remove them from the pan they get cement hard once the sugar cools.

On a personal note, thank you to all of you that have written notes during my blogger leave of absence. I confess that my break away from the blogging world was longer than I thought it would be. I will be blogging now and then; as the spirit moves me so to speak.

Mama's Pecan Pie

I wanted to share a good, solid Pecan Pie recipe that will appeal to a broad range of palates. This is "Mama's Pecan Pie" from the cookbook Bon Appetit Ya'll".


Isn't this a pretty cookbook?


And here's the recipe, you can click on the picture to enlarge.

I overbaked it a tad due to a hot oven that I have to watch like a hawk. I think you will find this a safe pecan pie recipe that will be welcome in any serving situation. This throws together very, very easily and with store bought pie crusts you can be your own semi-homemade chef!

Baking Bacon Baby!

Ok, so maybe some of you already know about this but I am gonna blog about it anyway! I love baking bacon!

I have always hated the mess that frying bacon caused. I also didn't much care for the pretty constant tending that one must do when they are frying bacon. I don't like for hot splatters on my hand and ....ok, you get the idea! :)

I found out about baking bacon and my life has been a happier, more content one ever since! No more splatter screen, no more cleaning the backsplash, no more babysitting the fry pan!

I have made bacon in the oven a variety of ways and all of them have their great points. You can heavily pepper the bacon for a peppered bacon (the grocery store charges big bucks for peppered bacon, you can do it for pennies!), you can also rub the bacon down with brown sugar (I love this!) and have your own instant brown sugar bacon. You can also rub liquid smoke on the bacon for hickory smoke flavor. One of the things I like to do is bake bacon en masse and then crumble it (and refrigerate!) to be used through the week for salads, baked potato toppers, etc. This is so much cheaper than buying those packaged bacon pieces and is probably healthier too! If you don't use it up just freeze it!

So, what I do is line a bottom pan (cookie pan) with aluminum foil. This will catch the grease and can be easily tossed afterwards for a speedy clean-up! Then I place the rack on top of the pan. I place as many slices of bacon as I want or will fit. Usually going crosswise on the rack is preferable. On my pictures above my husband placed the slices :) I preheat the oven to 350 and bake the bacon for approximately 20 minutes. Thickness of bacon, temp of your oven, etc. will have times vary. Until you get comfortable with your situation check at 10 min, 15 min, 20 min, etc. When the bacon is done you can place it on paper towels to drain any remaining fat; however, there is not near as much fat as what you find in the fried variety. Some folks have said that this makes your oven dirty. I have never experienced that and I am fortunate enough to have a self cleaning oven that takes care of it. Also, if I want crispier bacon I go to 375 degrees.

I've talked more than any one person should about baking bacon. Thanks for indulging me!

PS. Sorry about the pre-cook picture. Lighting is a problem for me but I hope to resolve my issues soon!

Beef in Red Wine with Noodles

It is so hard to take a good picture of this dish. I can assure you that it tastes much, much better than it looks.

As I mentioned in my post below I do a lot of cooking with my slow cooker. This is one of the easy dishes that is so flavorful that I would not hesitate to serve it to company. I love that this has a "grown-up" taste but yet it is made in a slow cooker. One usually doesn't think of those together. It is still comfort food so that makes for a happy and warm tummy.

I am one of those cooks that is not very good about measuring; a little of this, a splash of that. My recipes are rarely specific and certainly allow for personalization.

For this dish I tossed the beef cubes in a flour/pepper/salt/seasoning mix concoction and then browned in butter. However, this recipe does just fine if you toss the untouched beef cubes in the slow cooker without those steps. I am not sure that you can go wrong with any approach. Here is the recipe:

1.5 to 2 pounds of beef stew cubes
1 large onion, chopped in fairly large pieces
1 envelope of dry onion soup
mushrooms to suit your taste ( I had some sauteed in butter in the freezer and tossed those in)
1.5 cups of a good red wine (merlot, etc.)

Egg Noodles or Rice

I placed the beef cubes in the bottom of the slow cooker. Then I topped with the contents on the onion soup packet, added the onions and mushrooms on top. I then took the wine and poured it all over everything. I set the slow cooker for 6 hours on high. (You can do 8 or 10 hours on low if you wish). The house smelled absolutely heavenly while this was cooking. I ended up taking it out at the 5 hour mark and it was more than done. I served over hot noodles (I forgot to butter them!). We had a side of broccoli and french bread. The au jus that this makes is so wonderful that you might want to consider a side of mashed potatoes. Just don't forget the bread to sop up the juice. Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Liners

I love to use my Slow Cooker! With busy lives it is not only a time saver it helps prevent us from eating out, grabbing take out, etc.

One of the most helpful products invented is the Slow Cooker Liner. If you haven't seen or used these I urge you to give them a try. They have made cleanup on slow cooker nights a complete breeze.

These are plastic liners that withstand heat. Being that they are plastic I have friends that tell me that they won't use them. I respect that decision; however, they are made with "friendly to food" plastic. I figure one thing or another will get us eventually and if it is my once a week use of a plastic liner then at least I will die a happy death from not having scrubbed all of those caked on bowls.

Why blog about this? Well, I thought since I do a lot of slow cooking, and I will be blogging quite a bit about that, you might as well get used to the tools I use :)

I don't work for the Slow Cooker liner company but I proudly hawk their product. Have you tried these? I would love to hear your opinions on them.