Green Bean Casserole

First off, I'd like to say, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers. From what I understand I do have readers from many different countries, and I find that to be really awesome!!! If any of you, my readers have your own blogs, please, feel free to add me to your reading list, and I'll add you back. I go through and read blogs almost daily. Its always fun to see what people are doing on their farms, or with their hobbies, and what they are cooking!!!

I'm fairly certain most of you are already done with the majority of their cooking. My family isn't celebrating Thanksgiving until this Saturday when everybody can be together due to work, or other family get togethers. As we know that happens once everybody gets married, has children, and so on.

Today I'm sharing with you a traditional Holiday Casserole. Green Beans are a very common dish at every get together, but sometimes, its fun to spice it up, and do something a bit different.

This recipe makes 4-6 servings, but is easily doubled, but if your family is like mine, 4-6 servings might be more than enough because there's going to be so much food there already that everybody is only going to take a little bit of everything.

1 & 1/2 lbs. sausage
1 quart green beans, fresh or frozen
10 & 3/4 oz. can mushroom soup
5 large potatoes, cooked until tender and sliced
3 Tbsp. oil
salt to taste
pepper to taste

1. Crumble or slice sausage into large skillet and cook until browned, stirring frequently.

2. In saucepan, cook green beans until crisp tender.

3. Alternately layer sausage, green beans and mushroom soup into greased casserole dish.

4.  Pour oil into skillet where sausage browned and add sliced potatoes. Cook over high heat, stirring  them up from the bottom frequently, until all are browned and crispy, but not burned.

5. Layer over top of casserole and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until heated through.

Hope everybody has a happy and safe Thanksgiving.  Remember, Be thankful for what you have, and worry not about the things that you don't have, and that friends are just as important as family.

Cold evening

Brrrr, it's cold outside!!! We've had snow, wind, ice, and rain. It made for some very unhappy chickens, but they were out of the cold and wet inside of their nice warm house.

I did have some sadness today, a one of our chicks passed away. He hatched last night with help. The poor baby couldn't walk right, and was blind. I think that's the hardest thing I've been through with the whole chicken adventure. But we do have 5 funny healthy chicks, that are eating and drinking and chirping, and playing.

Now that my day has come to a close, I'm having a hot cup of coffee, watching Gone With The Wind, and working in crochet orders. To me that's the best way to spend a cold evening.

Baby Baby Goodbye

We had a massive chick hatching here that took place over a two day period, and is still happening right now.  I'm thinking a couple of the eggs might not hatch.

Today we are going to be delivering 20 of those chicks to their new home. Plus we now have a new home for those 11 free rooster chicks!!! Hoorah!!! I'll be a little sad to see those 11 go, but not too sad the way they eat. I believe I've been a bit overwhelmed by this massive amount of chicks we've had. Partly because it's just not something I'm used to.

I am however keeping 4 of the chicks that hatched out, 3 of them are grey, and one is yellow with black spots. If I'm lucky they will be female, and I'll be able to add them to my egg layers for the summer. If not, then well, it's soup.

Yesterday I got a happy surprise! One of my Black Copper Marans laid an egg for me. That was quite welcome since they haven't laid for about 2 maybe 3 months.

Cranberry Relish

This is a side that I've been eating at thanksgiving since I joined my husbands family. It has become such a tradition for me that I've come to love and enjoy, and have even started taking my turn in making it that I thought I should share this wonderful recipe with you all. This recipe comes from our church cookbook.  It really only takes a few minutes to prepare, you  just fix it the day before and forget about it.  This year, I'll be preparing it, and will be so happily doing it that it brings that warm feeling of love and warm family memories.

Here we are Cranberry Relish

1 small can pineapple (don't drain)
1 (3 oz) box raspberry Jell-O (small)
1 (15 oz) can whole cranberry sauce
1/2 c. chopped pecans
1/4 c. chopped celery

Dissolve Jell-O with 1 cup hot water; don't add cold water. Mix in other ingredients. Chill.

That's it, that's all there is to it!!! Simple right???? The only work that really goes into it is opening stuff, and chopping the celery, and that's got to be one of the easiest things to chop up!!! 

Brunch Egg Casserole

What do you do with all those eggs???? I get asked this question a lot!!! Well we do give some away, right now, since its Really cold out, I'm only getting a couple of eggs a day. I guess I can't blame the poor girls, I don't care for all the cold either!!! Brrrrr

We eat a lot of eggs, fried eggs, eggs in batter, scrambled, and in casseroles.  To me there is nothing better than an egg casserole. I mean, yeah, I have to crack all of those eggs into a bowl, and since I'm a little weird, I crack them in one bowl, and pour them over into another. Mostly it has to do with my fear of there being a chick in there. It hasn't happened to me yet, maybe because for the most part we eat and give them away rather quickly.

I'm going to share with you all one of my favorite Egg Casserole recipe's.  Its called Brunch Egg Casserole, but well, the way our schedule works around here, its good for any time.

this makes 8 - 10 servings

8 slices bread, toasted and cubed
1 lb sausage, browned
8-12 oz. shredded cheddar cheese
8 eggs beaten
4 cups milk
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp prepared mustard
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/8 tsp pepper

1. Spread toasted bread cubes in greased 9 x 13 baking dish. Layer on meat, and cheese

2. Mix together eggs, milk, salt, mustard, onion powder, and pepper. pour over mixture in baking dish


3. Refrigerate overnight, or bake immediately at 325 for 45 - 50 min (bake up to 1 hour if casserole has been refrigerated)

Hope everybody enjoys!!!!

Crockpot Macaroni And Cheese

Its hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just around the corner, even though its later this year than I've ever known it to be. We spend Thanksgiving with my husbands family, so the menu is divided up between 4 of us, which means the load is lighter. I have about 4 or 5 things on my list. One of the things is Apple pie, and I'll be using the apple pie filling I made last month.

Another one of the things I'm making is crockpot macaroni and cheese. I generally make baked macaroni, but decided to change it up this year. I've tried this recipe before and its really yummy. I thought I would share it with you all, just in case your looking for something easy to make that will also sort of save some time!!!

This only makes 6 servings, but is really easy to double or triple.

8 oz. dry elbow macaroni, cooked
3-4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
13. oz can evaporated milk
1 and 1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
chopped onion to taste

1. Combine all ingredients, except 1 cup cheese, in greased slow cooker. Sprinkle reserved cup of cheese over top.

2. Cover. Cook on low 3-4 hours. Do not remove the lid or stir until the mixture has finished cooking

That's it! Simple as that, and chances are you wont have any left overs!!!

I'll be posting more recipes this week!!!
Enjoy!!!

Chicks, Chicks, and more chicks

Its so hard to believe we've only been raising Chickens since June, we've really grown with this. We put up a house for them, built a giant roost, got an incubator, heater, hatched out our first chicks, ordered chicks, and are about to hatch out some more chicks.

This Sunday, our incubator goes into lock down, which means that those eggs will be hatching out on Tuesday or Wednesday.  If everything goes right, all 32 of those eggs are going to hatch out. No, we don't plan on keeping all of those chicks, I'm only planning to keep about 3 maybe 4 of them at the most. It looks like we have a buyer for the others. 

The first 7 chicks that we hatched out will be 5 weeks old tomorrow, and are still growing quickly. They are doing great out there in the Coop in the chicken house. They seem to be happy. The little black Star chicks are taking after their daddy it looks like, and are starting to turn brown around the neck and chest. Its kind of hard to get pictures of them right now, but as soon as I can, I will.  The big chickens don't seem to mind them at all. They look in there, and talk to them some. Our big Rooster seems to be a bit more protective of the Chickens right now, but he's not being aggressive to us.

So far, we seem to have some kind of magical luck with our chickens. We haven't had any of those many issues that people talk about with the health of chickens. Our rooster is a good guy, he's not aggressive, he's actually kind of funny, and has good control over the gals.  Our Chicks have all been healthy, we haven't had problems with splay leg, or sticky bottoms, and they have all survived. (this is where I knock on wood)