Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Try It Tuesday!!

Here in my neck of the woods, we are inching closer and closer to that 90º mark. In our house that means finding new and creative ways to fix a meal without using the stovetop or oven.

Usually that means using the crockpot much more than I already do and eating lots of salads!

It means not baking as many cookies and making more refrigerator pies and homemade ice cream!!:o)

This Try It Tuesday!! has you going through those recipes again. This time though, you're searching for recipes that won't heat up that already hot kitchen.

This really hit me yesterday evening while I was cooking supper. I was boiling potatoes to mash, boiling green beans, boiling macaroni (when you have a pasta fanatic living with you, macaroni is a staple!!) and had the oven going for rolls. DH and DS were outside putting (more) speakers in DS's car. DS came in for a moment, looked at me and said, "Man! It's hot in here!!" (Let's remember they were out in the driveway, in the middle of the sun...in the deep south!..and it was hotter in my kitchen. Okay. Time to rethink things here.

A little planning would have had those potatoes and green beans in a crock pot earlier in the day. (I actually own 3 different size crock pots) It would have had me boiling the macaroni on the grill. The rolls only take about 15 minutes, so that wouldn't have heated up the kitchen too bad.

As important as those cooler recipes are, more importantly is to think ahead and plan a bit better!

Here is one of our new favorites in the refrigerated pie category:

Peanut Butter Pie

1 graham cracker crust
1, 8oz package of cream cheese, softened
1½ cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 8oz tub whipped topping

Beat the cream cheese, powdered sugar and peanut butter together. Fold in the whipped topping. Spread it on the crust and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. (I usually try to make this the day before) Before serving, drizzle with chocolate syrup.
Yum!!

This usually goes really fast in my household!!

How about sharing your favorite summer-time recipe!!

1 comment:

Loriann said...

yum! We like to fix things that take no stove time too. Espcially as it gets hotter. Someting the girls like, we do too, is to put chicken breast on the stove in a pan with olive oil and seasonings, cook till done. Then we take either fresh spinach leaves or lettus, chopped up chicken, shredded cheese and roll it in a flour tortilla, or a spinach tortilla and dip, ranch, honey mustard, whatever you like, and enjoy. usually we add fresh veggies with ranch dip, and fruit salad..... easy, good, and healthy.
Also at our house we try to keep fresh veggies and fruit avaliable for snacking. In the summer we also use the crock pot often. potluck crock pot is a favorite of Sarah's, we have it about once a week. It is easy too, we take any left over meat, cut it into small peices, add any left over veggies, add water, and cook in the crock pot until done. We usually let it cool and either eat with crackers, or over rice. Hannah likes it with mac n cheese in it, basically the noodles... we also like to experiment with extra veggies, Sarah loves it with squash and zukinies (?) any fresh or canned veggies are good... Hope that you keep cool !
Much Love and Prayer's, Lori and girls