What's for dinner- Not beef

Oh my beef is expensive these days at the grocery store. I haven't found a really decent price on beef- ground, chuck, steaks - in a long time. 

I have started making more meals with chicken. I don't hate chicken. Its just.... not my favorite. Beef is my favorite. I love beef.

What is your favorite meat? 

What changes have you made to your meal planing with the high price for beef?

I posted on my food blog wwptcooking how we're using chicken in different ways. Check it out.

We're also using pork more. Unless it was pork chops I was always afraid of cooking pork. I didn't know what to do with it. We purchased a kitchen aid attachment meat grinder. Now we grind chicken and pork so that I have ground meats for those ground meat meals we love so much. Many of them I can straight substitute ground meats. If you season your meats while cooking the texture and taste is just like the ground beef. I have also learned to do shredded chicken and shredded pork (pulled). I am feeling good about the expansion of my culinary skills.

baking Peanut butter Bars

Made Peanut butter bars. Found the recipe through pinterest. 

calculated the calories and it was super calorie heavy.

If you want the recipe check out my cooking blog, wwptcooking.blogspot.com

I worked through the recipe and tried to lower the calories. I sort of did. It wasn't low, but it is at least better than the original. 

Fall Decorations and Cookies

I'm not a crafty or domestic person in the sense that most of my peers are. I sew- but practical things like cloths, costumes and occasionally baby gift stuff. For Super Saturday I made decorative pumpkins. They looked so good and were so easy I decided to make a set for my mother-in-law and my mother. I was so pleased with how good they turned out. You make a sleeve. Pull yarn through to sinch up the top and bottom, leave just enough space to stuff with old plastic bags (cheap and reusing), put a stick in the top for the stem, finish sinching it, hot glue leaves and ribbon on and you're done.

I love the fun shapes of sugar cookies. But I don't enjoy eating sugar cookies. They don't taste good. What is the point of making something that I'm not going to eat. I wanted to use some of the fall cookie cutters I have, so I tried to adapt a recipe for peanut butter cookies. The peanut butter made them really greasy. They worked and they tasted so yummy. On some I put a chocolate frosting.

• 2 sticks butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups peanut butter
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

The recipe only called for 2 1/2 c of flour. To try to make them more sugar cookie I tried to add a bit more flour to take away some of the greasiness. I was pleased.