Simple Slow Cooker Beef Soup

What is better on a rainy day than a hot bowl of soup? Nothing really! It was a looking ahead at what I was going to make and decided beef soup was probably the best option. It was a Friday, and I was going to be in a workshop all afternoon. Who wants to come home on a Friday at 5 and cook, I don't. So beef soup it is.

Here's what you need

5 eye of round steaks

4 carrots

1 onions

4 medium sized potatoes

1 box of beef stock

1 bottle of beer

1/4 cup of flour

a couple sprigs of thyme

salt and pepper

2.5 tbsp olive oil

Cut your steak into 1inch ish cubes, not need to be exact. Toss them in flour. Cut up the carrot and potato to be about equal size as the beef. Slice the onion thin. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan. Brown the beef . I did it in two batches so I used 1 tbsp of oil per batch.Transfer to a slow cooker. Put 1/2 tbsp of oil in the pan, cook the onion until it gets some colour. Pour a bit of stock in with the onion once they are a bit brown to deglaze the pan. Pour it all in the slow cooker. Pour the rest of the stock and beer in the slow cooker. Season with salt and pepper and add a couple sprigs of thyme. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Canning and Preserving

So it's been quite a while since I've written anything. I have been spending so much time canning and preserving over the past month I haven't had time to do much else.

This is my first year canning and I have to say, I think it may be a new addiction. Here is how it all started. I picked some strawberries in the summer and made a small batch of delicious strawberry jam. That was in July. At the beginning of September, a friend of mine posted a picture of salsa she made on Facebook. Then I wanted to make salsa. So I went out and bought what I needed. Then she continued to post pictures of jam that she made. So naturally I went out and bought 25lbs each of pears and peaches, a bushel of pickling cucumbers, beets, tomatoes and green beans. I spent the entire weekend canning. I was exhausted. Two weeks later, I went out to buy more beets, because they were so delicious. I also bought hot peppers, a giant bag of onions and more pickling cucumbers.

I have a Pinterest board just for everything I've made and one for what I want to make.

Here they are

What I want to make

What I made

I have been sharing and trading and looking forward to making so much more.

Here's my canned stuff, there is quite a bit missing from here!

Slow cooked BBQ Pork Ribs

I love ribs, I could eat them almost everyday. Unfortunately they take hours to cook. So they aren't really a doable meal on weekdays right? Wrong! You can make them any day of the week. Slow cooking them while you are at work or doing whatever else you need to do is all it takes. It melts so much of the fat off as well. I don't like having them slow cooking for too long though. Then they fall apart and you cant take them out of the slow cooker without shredding the meat, that's not what we want. After you take them out you can either BBQ or broil them in the oven. They are so easy! 

Ingredients

2 racks of ribs (or how ever many you want to make, as long as they fit in the slow cooker)

1 tbsp dried onion flakes

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black peppercorns

BBQ sauce of your choice

Place your ribs in your slow cooker standing up. Fill your slow cooker with water just until it reaches the top of the ribs. Add all the remaining ingredients. 

You could add any other spices you want here too. Set the slow cooker to low for 6 hours. Mine switches to keep warm after the 6 hours is done. 

When you get home, carefully take them out of the slow cooker. Cover them with BBQ sauce and either grill them just until you get some grill marks or broil until they get a bit of colour. 

They will fall right apart when your eating them.

What I Ate Wednesday #17

I haven't participated in What I Ate Wednesday in quite a while. But it's September...the kids are now back to school and life is starting to get back into more of a routine. I forgot to take a picture of two things I ate and took a bad cell phone picture of another meal, but hey, something is better than nothing! Here it goes

Breakfast

See bad cellphone photo!

2 eggs over easy, with 1/4 cup egg whites, 4 oz of BBQ eye of round (I will post this recipe another day), a whole wheat English muffing with my homemade strawberry jam and a coffee

Lunch

I didn't eat all of this! These pictures are from my food prep on Monday. I forgot to take a picture so I had a bit of the pasta and 1 patty.

Sun dried Tomato and Pesto Chicken Pasta

2 cups whole wheat penne (uncooked)
1/4 cup julienned sun dried tomatoes (not in oil)

1/4 pesto

8 oz of grilled chicken breast

Corn cut from 2 cobs of corn

Cook the penne. Put the sun dried tomatoes in the pasta while it's cooking for the last 2 minutes or so. Mix everything together.

Greek Turkey Burger

1/4 cup goat's feta

1 lb ground turkey

1 tsp oregano

juice and zest from 1/2 lemon

Mix all the ingredients, grill until cooked through.

Supper

Homemade chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese

 After supper I had a piece of vanilla cheesecake with more of my strawberry jam on top with a coffee

That's it!

 Head on over to Peas and Crayons to check out what others are eating!

Beercan Chicken

It is so hot here and it has been for the past week. I had a couple of chickens in the freezer that needed to be cooked, so I thought beer can chicken was perfect. I have only made it once before, last year and we loved it. Why haven't I made it since? Anyways, it turned out great. The kids loved it too. I didn't have a can of beer so I poured 1/2 bottle of Rickard's Red into an empty Pepsi can and it worked just fine. 

I use a stand for the chicken, I bought in on clearance last year, but I have seen recipes that don't, they just use the can. I also set mine into a pan to collect the juices, you can pour them over at the end if you want.

Ingredients

Rub

1 tbsp dried sage leaves

1 tsp lemon pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp paprika

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt free barbecue chicken powder

3 lb chicken

1/2 can beer (do whatever you want with the other half)

Remove any giblets and/or pieces that don't belong in your chicken and rinse out the chicken. Rub the cavity with some of the rub. Lift the skin on the breasts to put some of the rub under the skin. Rub the rest of the the seasoning all over the chicken.

Put the chicken over top of the can that is opened with 1/2 can of beer left. Preheat the grill. You want to put the chicken over indirect heat. I lit two of my burners and left the third off. Put the chicken in the pan and put it over the burner that isn't lit. 

You can do this with charcoal too. Just put charcoals on one side and the chicken on the other.

Leave it on the BBQ for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a meat thermometer reads 180. I checked on it every 10 minutes or so after 1 hour.Let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting. 

Enjoy!

Freezer Egg and Sausage Muffins

I have been buying boxes of frozen sausage and egg mcmuffins for a while. My son loves them for breakfast, he would rather these than anything else really. I would buy a box maybe twice a month. I often wondered why I didn't just make them and freeze them myself, so I finally did!

12 English muffins

12 sausage rounds (you could also use bacon, ham or whatever meat you like, you could also have no meat)

12 eggs

12 slices of cheese ( I ran out and cut up marbled cheese, 3 slices per muffin)

Preheat oven to 425F.  Place the sausage rounds on a rack, I used a flat  vegetable grill pan. Put a baking sheet under the rack. Bake for 10 minutes, flip, bake another 10 minutes. Mine were cooked from frozen, if yours are fresh you can cut the time down. You could also pan fry then. 

Toast 12 English muffins while the sausage is cooking.

Place the cheese on top of the English muffin. Followed by the sausage when it's cooked.

Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray. Crack 12 eggs into the muffin tins. Scramble them or leave them as is. My son wanted half of them scrambled and half not.

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Place the eggs over top. 

Let them cool. Wrap in foil and freeze. 

Warm them up in the microwave for 1-2 minutes from frozen.

Update
According to my oldest, the sliced processed cheese is better than marbled and the eggs were better scrambled

What I Ate Wednesday #16

  Click the link above to check out what other people have been eating over the past week.   Thanks to Peas and Crayons for hosting again!   It's been  a few weeks since I've posted anything on here, so I thought it was time that I started again.    I was posting some of my workouts, however, now I am doing the James Wilson 12 week program and haven't been doing any of my own. I am on week 3 of the program and I am loving it! I am super sweaty by the end of it and I feel like I have worked hard the next day!   I have also been  in a bit of a food rut. I've been cooking things that I have already posted, I just haven't wanted to make anything new. I have also been trying to eat cleaner since staring this new program. I'm doing pretty good with it, I'd say I'm eating about 80% clean.    So here's what I ate yesterday!   Breakfast

 Non fat plain Greek yogurt with blueberries, strawberries and unsweetened granola 1 piece of whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter coffee
Snack Protein shake
Lunch

This doesn't look very good but it was actually pretty tasty 1/2 zucchini, 1/2 cup eggplant, broccoli slaw and coleslaw mix all stir fried together with 2 poached eggs on top
Snack

Celery, carrot and hummus
Supper

This was supposed to be supper. I do not like curry but I thought I would try it again to see if I liked it this time. It's still a no. I ate the kebabs, they were great! So I was starving. I let the kids have whatever they wanted for supper, my daughter picked a can a alphagetties, I finished off the other can. And then because alphagetties are garbage, I was still hungry, so I had a piece of my sons KFC, more bad stuff. Links to the recipes Kebabs  Coconut Curry Soup, if you like curry you need to check this out!
Snack

2 rice cakes, no fat cottage cheese and a blueberry tea