Sicilian Casserole

I am working on getting back online to write more. I have a lot of great ideas for entries. I have just been a little busy!

Don't ask me where I found this. I found it somewhere online it is amazing, freezes well, and tastes excellent! I made it last night for the first time, and already found myself changing it up, so I am going to give you the Brittainy version of it.

1 lb. ground beef
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
3/4 cup water
Italian seasoning-to taste
Garlic Powder-to taste
2 cups elbow macaroni
8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, cubed
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Also optional veggies such as onion, mushroom, greenpeppers. But I don't like them (I bet George would have been shouting my glory if I did use it though he loves them!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Brown ground beef heavy saucepan, stirring to break up ground beef (If you want onions I would brown them at the same time. Drain well.

Add tomato paste, tomato sauce, water, Garlic and Italian seasoning and stir well to blend. (add your other veggies if you want them) Let simmer for 10 minutes to blend flavors.

Meanwhile, cook elbow macaroni as directed on package.

While macaroni is cooking, combine cream cheese and milk in medium bowl. Cook in microwave on medium power for 2-3 minutes, stirring once halfway through cooking. Remove from microwave and stir with wire whisk until sauce thickens and blends to form a smooth sauce.

Drain noodles and add to cream cheese sauce along with sour cream and 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese; stir to combine.

In a square baking dish, place all of cream cheese mixture. Top with all of the ground beef mixture Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
Add Mozerella and Parmesan cheese to taste
Bake another 5-10 minutes until Bubbly

If you wish to freeze this dish, add 1T of cornstarch into your cream cheese and milk (Before you mix it with the noodles)

What I'm Learning about Strawberry Pie and Parenting

I love children! I'm not just saying this because I have the cutest Toddler. Before I continue, I have to tell you a Real Life Will Story (I like the way that sounds.)

My Almost 3 year old was highly upset at me. You see I had the audacity of limiting the amount of TV he watches! Yes I cut off my Toddler's TV time! He was in the middle of basically telling me I was going to turn on the TV. I was trying to get him to play. Well His yelling and my finally ignoring him, led to his throat starting to hurt him. He wanted a drink. Well at this same time I noticed a stink. SO I told him to go get a diaper while I got his drink. My wonderful Toddler informed me that He was NOT getting a diaper. He did not need a diaper. And put his hands over his chest and turned around to walk away and walked right into the corner of the computer desk. He's got a pretty good mark to show it. After crying a minute, he brought me his diaper. We changed it and I asked him if he still wanted a drink. Well he is still upset with me, so he informs me that No, He does not want a drink. That he can't drink. And turns back around and marches off. He nearly hit the same corner. He marched straight to his bedroom and got his blankets. He sat down with them in the walkway behind the couch. He sat there for 10 minutes with his arms folded (While I essentially ignored him) until he fell asleep on the floor. He showed me alright.

Back to the start. I really do love children. I am in Early Childhood, I want to work with children, but I don't know how yet. (I have got to get moving on that I am not far from graduating) Something has been heavy on my heart lately though. That is foster parenting. We'll have our spare bedroom back soon. I want to set it up as a foster room. I requested information on it and I was really surprised at how quickly the lady at DSS got back to me! Very Pleasantly Surprised. She is mailing me information today so that G and I can look at the information and decide if it is what we are truly ready to do.


The only thing he asks is that we don't take any serious cases. He deals with a lot of runaways. Certain homes specialize in therapeutic care or something and he is constantly on calls to those homes. He says its always the same couple of houses and always different children. I understand he deals enough with it at work, not wanting to bring it home. I told him that sadly, all the children entering the foster system will have some baggage. But I still want to look into it.

I just feel that since G and I won't be having more children for a few years, and that I have so much in my heart to offer, I want to put it to good use. We'll have a spare room, even though he wants to convert it into his Xbox room.

Right now we are just getting information and praying. I can never cease praying on it.


Speaking of praying. Not too long ago I had no clue how to pray with my Toddler. I knew that I wanted to raise my child to know about God, Jesus, the Bible and everything they have to offer. I want my son to be strong in faith and inspiration to others. So I did what I always do when I am clueless. I ask others, and I research. I want to share with you what I found.

This article, Praying with your Toddler, Is an inspirational article about one parents journey introducing prayer to her children. It really touched me and gave me an idea of how to start. I have to say that since my son and I started to pray he really enjoys it. Now he even starts his own prayers when playing. He is also much better behaved during prayer at church. A few times he has caught others not closing their eyes and called them out on it. We've been praying together maybe a month.

We just this week started adding Bedtime Bible stories to our routine. We have an older version without many pictures. Each story takes 2 minutes to read. Perfect for that squirrelly Little one in your life. We are 4 stories into it and he is starting to stay still and listen. We will start asking simple questions soon. I am glad that someone blessed me with the book. It is an excellent way to teach him appropriate lessons from the Bible!


Now to move on. My In Laws have been layed on my heart lately. They have a lot on thier plates lately. I wanted to do something to cheer them up. That's when Christy posted her Strawberry Pie recipe. It looked perfect. I headed over to Food Lion and Strawberries were on sale! So I got to work making two of them. Well as it turned out no one in my house wanted any. (They don't know what they are missing.) However, the Pies were very much appreciated at my In Laws. It was Devine! I suggest you head over there and check it out. Thank you so much Christy, you have no idea how much you helped make someone's night! It really is the little things that make the biggest blessing.

What I am learning about Organization/Freezer Cooking

Southern Plate is having a save money week and there are two posts about Major Freezer Cooking that have me inspired. I realized the biggest key to all of this is planning.

So I went to work. First I had to think back at what my typical dinners were so I could make a 2 week meal plan
Before I share this information, please remember that I am just learning about real cooking and I have 0 creativity when it comes to food.
Here are some foods that my family typically ate before I discovered Southern Plate

• Hamburger Helper 2-3 times a cycle
• Spaghetti-weekly sometimes Biweekly
• Hamburgers/Gravy 1-2 cycle
• Frozen Salisbury Steaks
• Frozen Turkey Slices
• Frozen Cheesy Chicken Skillet Meal
• Pizza
• Chicken Nuggets and Mac/Cheese
• Slop (Awesomely Cheap Meal I will never give up)
• Ravioli
• Italian Chicken (1 a month)
• Taco Night
• BLT Night

As you can see, life was pretty dull...

Here are some meals I have added since my search to spice things up

• Buffalo Chicken Wraps
• Beanie Weenies (BBQ Pork and Beans with Hot Dogs)

Meals from Southern Plate

• Taco Pizza
• Taco Casserole (Its the meal I will be trying this week)
• Pizza Subs (She calls them rolls)
• Mac and Cheese Bake
• Melt In Your Mouth Doughnuts (Saturday Morning)

italics are really fast meals (20 minutes or so)

I only try 1 new recipe each cycle... So As you can see I have been dramatically building our Meal List. DH is so happy to be seeing Hamburger Helper *almost* eliminated from the cubboard. Now Will, He's a different story... The kid could live on nothing but Peanut Butter Sandwiches. But hey he's almost three!

So I decided what I wanted to eat for the next two weeks (Goodness this is becoming harder and harder to do!)

I Planned which of my recipes can be cooked in large quantities at the same amount of time and frozen. Looking At my Meal Plan for the next two weeks (Starting Tuesday) I learned

• the Taco Pizza Recipe (SP) can make two pizzas and I can freeze one with very little extra work (Just spreading the ingredients on an extra pizza)
• I am going to be trying out a Taco Casserole Recipe (SP) This seems to make a lot... I should be able to get three meals out of it and it looks and sounds absolutely Fabulous!
• I already make a good Beanie Weenie recipe... I am going to double it (No extra work) and try to freeze half.

My crew doesn't like to repeat meals a lot in the two week period, so I will be using half of this on the next pay period.

I made a complete meal list for this cycle and then I made a Shopping List.

The easiest way to do this is to have an electronic Cookbook. You can use any word processor or access works great. When you find a recipe you like add it to your cook book. But really any cook book will work, you just will hand copy ingredients.

When you are ready to make your grocery list you can copy all of the ingredients into excel.
I am pretty good at excel so I was able to chart everything and get it to total up my quantities. If you are not comfortable with it, You can do the same thing by hand making a graph.

I'll include a picture tomorrow.

I like using this list because I am less likely to forget anything (As I always do) With the list being on Excel I can just keep adding to it. When I total up my quantities, I will just ignore any item that have a 0 next to it. I also added other things I use that I don't use for dinner such as bread, milk, breakfast/lunch foods.

The great part about using a computerized list is that you can change it with little work!

I am hoping that by freezing meals that I can cook in bulk easily I will start to have a small stock pile of meals ready to go. As I keep doing this I will start to cut my grocery bill down because I will have enough that I can focus on buying things I use when it is on sale rather than biweekly. I also will spend less time cooking daily!

Tips to take this further

• Look in your circulars/Coupons and check for sales. You can make a note of these on your grocery list next to the items.
• If you use Excel, include what store you will purchase at. You can sort your list by store when you are finished.