Most of us are home for the holidays, and that means that we are at home cooking.
If you are looking for some new recipes to tempt your taste buds, here are a few of our family’s favorite holiday recipes:
casserole
New Recipe: Baked Tortellini
This recipe is dead simple. Make it as complicated as you want. Use jarred sauce, make your own from scratch, or take a jar of sauce and church it up yourself. Whatever.
Frozen pasta, fresh pasta, heck, you can even use the shell stable/dried tortellini. You could use ravioli if you wanted.
You can make this Vegetarian, Vegan, Chock Full o’ Meat, Gluten-Free, it’s up to you.
This is one of those recipes that’s a big hit at potlucks too. It’s pretty inexpensive, and we always have the ingredients in one form or another to make a batch.
Baked Tortellini
Ingredients:
- 6-8 cups of Red Pasta Sauce. I usually make a big batch of this sauce and portion some out just for this recipe. If you use jarred sauce, I recommend you add 3-4 cups of veggies (carrots, onions, celery, bell peppers, zucchini, chopped/diced tomatoes, etc.)
- 22-30 ounces of Tortellini/Ravioli, cooked per the package directions (this will probably take a couple packages)
- 2 Cups Italian Cheese blend
Directions:
- Cook the pasta per the package directions. Drain.
- Pour pasta sauce into a baking dish (I use a 9×13), toss cooked pasta in sauce.
- Sprinkle cheese on top.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 30-ish minutes until food is bubbly, and cheese is brown and delicious looking.
- Serve with hot French Bread or Garlic Bread and a green salad.
This serves 8-10 people as a main.
If you are vegan, substitute in filled pasta and cheese that works for you.
Family Favorite Recipe: Mountain Man Breakfast Casserole
This is a great old Boy Scout/backpacking recipe. We eat it when we go camping, cooked in a dutch oven. You can cook it at home in a baking dish in the oven if you aren’t out cooking in a field.
Ingredients
- 1 bag O’Brien Potatoes, approx 28 ounces- defrosted
- 1 dozen eggs
- 1/4 cup whole milk
- 1 lb. bulk breakfast sausage (like Jimmy Dean) cooked, crumbled and patted to absorb the excess oil
- 2 cups cheddar cheese, divided
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Sour Cream and Salsa (for a topping)
Directions
- Mix the sausage, 1 cup of the cheese, and potatoes in a bowl
- Pour sausage/egg/cheese mixture into a 9×11 baking dish
- Scramble eggs and milk and pour over sausage/egg/cheese mixture
- Top the dish with the remaining 1 c. cheese.
- Bake at 350 for 20-35 minutes until the eggs have set and the dish is brown, bubbly and delicious.
- Serve with Sour Cream and Salsa.
- Serves 8-10 at home 4-6 when camping (fresh air makes you hungry).
If you have any leftovers, it’s great in a warmed tortilla the next morning as a burrito! I’ve also been informed that this is really good with avocado slices on top.
Modifications for special dietary concerns:
- You can make this vegetarian by using soy sausage crumbles.
- This recipe is naturally gluten-free.
- This recipe cannot be made vegan.
Meal Plan Monday!!
I need to go to the grocery store this week, so this is what I’ve planned based on what we have on-hand and what’s on sale.
I’m just posting dinners for our meal plan. The kiddos usually have a small toasted bagel with cream cheese for breakfast along with fruit. Hubs likes Oatmeal (my recipe for an easy almost instant oatmeal mix can be found here) if he’s got time, otherwise he and I have protein shakes with frozen bananas and PB2.
Lunches for Lil’ Man are usually Peanut butter and crackers, fruit, milk, a protein muffin (aka a kid cupcake), and applesauce cup. He takes his lunch every day! Hubs usually has a protein shake or I pack him leftovers or a frozen entree.
Bitty Bird and I usually have leftovers from the night before, or soup, sandwiches, quesadillas. She eats almost anything!
Monday:
- D: Quesadillas and marinated salad
Tuesday:
- D: Waffles and fruit
Weds:
Thursday:
Friday:
- D: Pizza (I’m making a batch of dough to stash in the freezer, so we’ll bake a few up and have pizza!)
Saturday:
- D: Date Night! (we go out)
Sunday:
- D: Leftover buffet
The menu may change, as I pull stuff out of the pantry to rotate what we’ve got (I am trying to cut down on waste, and put the older stuff up front to get eaten first).
Hewes Family Fun 