Sweet Potato Biscuits

Sweet Potato Biscuits
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Oh, Pinterest, How do I love thee. It's such an awesome website to view. Go check it out because that's where I get several of my recipes like this one! When my family and I lived in NC, there was this tiny bakery in the city of Camden that made THE BEST sweet potato biscuits. It's the only place I've had them but it's the best piece of bread I've ever eaten. This recipe was close, but no cigar compared to Camden, NC!

This is where I got the recipe.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon fine salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup whole milk

1 cup baked, mashed sweet potato (about 1 medium potato)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), frozen

Heavy cream for brushing the tops (I did not use heavy cream)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and set aside. In a separate large bowl, mix together milk and mashed sweet potato until evenly combined.

Grate frozen butter through the large holes of a box grater and toss with dry ingredients until butter is coated. Add milk mixture and mix lightly until dough forms a shaggy mass. (Shaggy mass? Uhm, okay! haha)

Turn out mixture onto a floured surface and knead just until it comes together. (The dough will not be smooth.)

Pat into a circle and use a floured rolling pin to roll dough to a thickness of about 3/4 inch. Using a 3-inch biscuit cutter, cookie cutter, or glass, cut the dough into rounds. Gather leftover dough into a circle, reroll, and cut until you have 8 large biscuits.

Place biscuits on a baking sheet, brush tops with heavy cream, and bake until the bottoms are golden brown, about 12 to 15 minutes.

Serve with lots of butter inside or make your own honey butter and heap it on top! These are good for breakfast sandwiches, eggs and bacon or ham and cheese.

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Serve and Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Flank Steak

Slow Cooker Flank Steak
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I've never tried flank steak but darn that Rachael Ray for cooking it the other day on her show. Her and Bobby Flay seem to use it a lot so I figured I'd give it a go. It's a tougher protein so low and slow is the way I'm approaching it today. When I make new dishes, I try to find a recipe online with a lot of positive reviews and tweak it to what my family would like and that's what I did today. It was so moist and juicy and fell apart like a roast does when it's cooked just right. I had my sister and her kids over for dinner and it was a hit!

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds flank steak, a.k.a. London Broil

2Tbsp cooking oil of choice, I used olive oil but you can use coconut oil too

1 large onion, I used yellow

1.25tsp chili powder

1tsp garlic powder

1/2tsp salt

1/4tsp pepper

1/3cup water

2Tbsp white vinegar

Handful mushrooms of choice, I had buttons on hand

The recipe here shows adding sugar and peppers.. Two things I didn't do. I chose not to add sugar and didn't have peppers on hand.

Directions:

Remove silver skin and excess fat from the meat. In a skillet set to medium-high heat, heat oil to almost smoking. Make sure the pan and oil are nice and hot and brown both sides of the meat. I cut mine in half and browned separately since my pan was too small. I placed it into my slow cooker so that it would have all the juices instead of adding to another pan or plate. Think ahead, think smart!

Once it's browned one both sides, move it to the slow cookers and add the sliced onion to the pan. Add more oil if needed. Directions said to cook about 1 minute but I cooked it 3-4 minutes while I was gathering my spices. Add the water, vinegar and spices and bring to boil then cover the flank steak with this mixture. At this point, I added the mushrooms.

You'll cover without removing the lid on your slow cooker. Trust me, don't peek inside! It needs the moisture especially with a tough cut of protein like flank steak.

The instructions given in the link says to cook 7 hours but all the reviews say 4 hours and it comes out perfect so I set mine to 4 hours, which is a high setting on my cooker and it did come out perfect!

Get up and make something healthy to eat today! This is a great recipe to start with.

Oh, my pound-and-a-half was about $13.00 but it's a lot of meat and will feed me and the two kids several meals. This would be enough for several adults with enough delicious veggies on the side.

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Menu Planning - Week 1

Menu Planning.

I'll admit I never thought this idea would be a good idea until I actually tried it. I did it while I was working and it helped a ton, and then I had the baby, went on trips to FL/MI and basically quit doing it.

I started off by making columns with these headings: Meat, Bread, Veggies, Pasta. I realized once I broke it down that way and wrote down what was in my fridge/freezer/pantry, I could make an easy menu.

Here's how our food week will go, in no certain order:

~Chicken with rice-a-roni + a salad
~Shimp stir-fry with fried rice
~Stuffed shells + salad + bread
~BBQ pork tenderloin sandwiches + corn + green beans
~Chuck roast + red potatoes + carrots
~Leg of lamb + butter/garlic noodles + asparagus

Out of all of these dinners, the only things I need to purchase is asparagus and ricotta cheese. Can't wait to share my meals with you!

I am going to try to make artisan bread and hope it's as good as this pictures looks.

Do you do any type of menu planning?