Manwich Pie

I saw a picture of a recipe in one of those Pillsbury cookbooks that you pick up as impulse buys in the checkout line for a recipe that I then adapted into this one. It was SUPER EASY and SO YUMMY!!!

Manwich Pie:

1ish lbs. ground beef (or other ground meat of your choosing)
1 can Manwich (I used the bold flavor)
2 cans of that new Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations (basically sheets of crescent roll dough that are not perforated, so you don't have to piece them together)
2 cups cheese (of your choice)

Brown ground beef and stir in Manwich. Heat through. Lay one sheet of crescent dough in a 13X9 pan. Top with beef mixture. Top with 2 cups cheese. Top with remaining crescent dough. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until top is golden brown. Serves 6-8 people.

SO GOOD!

Basic Baked Spaghetti

Another recipe from allrecipes.com, this time followed faithfully.

Basic Baked Spaghetti

3/4 lb. ground beef (Oh, wait. I lie. I used a little more than a pound.)
1 16 oz. jar spaghetti sauce (I used Francesco Rinaldi.)
1 pound spaghetti
1 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to350 degrees F. In a large skillet, cook hamburger until brown.
2. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Mix in pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente. Drain. (I cooked it for 9 minutes.)
3. Mix together spaghetti and meat mixture and pour into 9X13 pan. Top with cheese and bake for 30 minutes, or until heated through and cheese is bubbly.

Enjoy!

We had wind chills in the teens today, and this was a nice, comforting, warming meal. We will definitely be having this again...and the time from starting to brown the beef to taking it out of the oven was only about an hour...30 minutes of which was oven time!

Slow Cooker Mac and Cheese with Ham and Peas

Wow, I haven't posted here since October 6, 2007, which happened to be my husband's birthday...but not this year. Last year. Whoops!

Quite honestly, I have not been doing a ton of cooking. However, my New Year's resolution is going to be to cook at least four meals per week. And as a precursor to that, I am trying to get a little cooking under my belt now so I can get used to it.

This morning, when I got home from work, I put into my slow cooker the ingredients for macaroni and cheese. I created this using a recipe I adapted from allrecipes.com. Here is the recipe, with my edits in italics:

Slow Cooker Macaroni and Cheese (with Ham and Peas)

1/2 pound elbow macaroni
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
1 can evaporated milk
4 cups cheese (divided)
1 t. salt
1/2 t. black pepper
2 ham steaks
1 box frozen peas

Coat crock of slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray (I used a slow cooker bag...I love them, even though they are totally unnecessary.) Combine milks and eggs in a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Add 3 cups of cheese and mix together. Add salt and pepper (I didn't measure this...just threw in some salt and did some twists of the pepper mill.).

It was at this point that I mixed in the ham and peas.

Sprinkle remaining cheese on top. Cook on low for 5 to 6 hours. Avoid stirring or removing the lid during cooking time.

My slow cooker cooks very hot, I think. It has a "keep warm" setting that I use almost like a low setting. I worked last night, so I was sleeping for about eight hours today and didn't want to have to worry about checking on it. Therefore, after heating the slow cooker up on high, I switched to the keep warm setting and let it go for eight hours.

This was a really good recipe! The flavor of the sauce was really good, and the ham and peas added a nice touch. The only change I would make from what I did is that I would add an entire pound of the pasta. The sauce was more than enough to handle it, and when I was eating, I had a lot of fork fulls with no pasta at all.

A keeper!