Hippie Chow

I stole this super yummy recipe from this blog which I love.


I didn’t make it for kids, but my husband eats like a 6 year old and he loved it.

This recipe is really flexible, so I’ll tell you what I used last night and you can do your own thing.

HIPPIE CHOW

2c. water (or a rice cooker and whatever it requires)

1c. quinoa

Olive oil

3 smallish beets

2 carrots

1 regular brown potato

3 cloves garlic

1/8th of an onion

1 zucchini

1 yellow squash



1. Cook the quinoa. You can just put it in a rice cooker and cook it exactly the same way you would rice. If you don’t have a rice cooker, bring 2c. water to boil in a saucepan, add quinoa, bring back to a boil, cover, turn temp to medium-low and cook for 15-20 mins.

2. Heat oven to 400. Chop beets, carrots, and potatoes. Toss with olive oil and roast on cookie sheet until tender. (I threw some SeasonAll on as well since I was being lazy.) When they get close to being done, go to step 3.

3. Saute garlic & onion in olive oil. Meanwhile, chop zucchini and squash. Add zucchini and squash to onion/garlic and cook until tender (or just a couple minutes if you like them crunchy). Season w/ salt and pepper.

4. Throw some of everything in a bowl and top with a poached egg.

You can also put ketchup or hot sauce on it, but it tastes really good and doesn’t need extra flavoring; plus I hate ketchup.

Danish Puff

The holiday tradition in my family is that we eat Danish Puff for breakfast on Christmas morning. Here is our puff this year.



My mom makes them with the red and green marchino cherries for a bit of festive color but I am not a fan. Instead, I sprinkled mine with some holiday sprinkles.

Base layer
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 tablespoons water

Topping
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup water
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup flour
3 eggs

Creamy Vanilla Glaze
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 2 tablespoons warm water or milk

Chopped nuts

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Place 1 cup flour in medium bowl. Cut in 1/2 cup softened butter, using pastry blender or knives until there are coarse crumbs. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons water over mixture; toss with fork.

2. Shape into a ball and divide in half. Pat each half into 12x3-inch rectangle, about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Mixture will be sticky. You can also make it into a wreath shape.

3. Filling layer- In a pan, heat 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup water to rolling boil; remove from heat. Quickly stir in almond extract and 1 cup flour. Stir vigorously over low heat about 1 minute or until mixture forms a ball; remove from heat. Add eggs; beat until smooth. It will seem like mixture won't take the eggs but keep stirring until it takes. Spread half of the topping over each rectangle.

4. Bake about 1 hour or until topping is crisp and brown; remove from pan to cooling rack. Cool completely.

5. In medium bowl, mix all glaze ingredients except nuts until smooth and spreadable. Spread over top of pastry; sprinkle with nuts.

Festive Pretzels

Here is a quick, fun, EASY holiday treat. We ended up making a TON of these and giving them away in cute little bags to our neighbors.

One bag of pretzels (squares or knots)
Two bags of kisses
Two bags of hugs
One bag M&M's

Directions:
Turn your oven on warm.
Place the pretzels on the cookie sheet.
Place the kisses and hugs on the pretzels.



Put in the oven for about 5-7 minutes (The kisses will look sort of watery).
Place an M&M in the middle of the kiss and press it gently down.
Allow to cool completely before removing from the cookie sheet.



Tips

You can use different combos of hugs and kisses- we used dark chocolate kisses (they took a little bit longer to melt).

We used candy cane kisses to get the red and white effect.

Hugs melt faster than the hugs do so if you are doing both, either do them at seperate times or do them on seperate pans.

Crock Pot Roast

Here is my crock pot Roast experience. I have tried several ways to make them and doing it this way creates the most tender, fall-apart pot roast you have ever had. You can buy any cut of meat too- even the cheap chuck roast and it will tenderize cooking it this way. I don't exactly have a recipe for it, but here's the method.

First, take about 1/4 C flour and season it- I used about 2 teaspoons garlic salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Mix it together and then rub it on the roast. I sauted 2 cloves of garlic in about 3 Tablespoons of oil. Then you fry the roast on each side for about 4-5 minutes until its nice and brown.

Quarter one large onion and place the quarters in the bottom of your crockpot. After you brown the roast, place it on top of the onions. Add about 1 cup of water. I also put about 8 carrots and 3 chopped potatoes on the top. Cut them into larger pieces so they talk longer to cook. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste over the top of the roast and cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Mmm.....