Cleaning out the pantry

We've had some difficulty using our Bountiful Basket in the last couple weeks. Halloween, soccer practice, soccer photos, birthdays, chi omega commitments, etc, etc, etc has all taken over our lives and we've ended up having Little Ceasars $5 hot and ready on more than one night. More than one night, a week. 

Today is Veteran's Day and I got to hang out with the boys today - more on that in another post.  It was great to take advantage of a brother-nap to do some cooking today.  I always do pot roast in the crock pot and have never, ever done it in the oven so this was new.  I just didn't have enough time to wait for the crock pot.  Anyway, I had apples, carrots, potatoes and celery to get through so my goal was to use them all for dinner/dessert.

Oven Pot Roast

 

3-4 lb pork roast, mine was boneless

1 can cream of whatever you have on hand soup

3 potatoes, cubed

3 carrots, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

1 cup water

12 oz soda, whatever you have on hand is fine...i obviously used diet coke because it's amazing

 

Put roast in baking dish and spread veggies around it.  Sprinkle S&P over meat. Combine soup, soda, and water and pour it over roast and veggies. Bake for 3 hours on 350 and you're done.

 

You can really use whatever veggies you have on hand but these are my go-to pot roast veggies and just happened to be the ones i had leftover from my baseket.



 

Baked Apples

6 small apples
2 cups of diet orange, lemon-lime, or similar soda

Core apples and cut in half.  Place apples, skin up in baking dish and pour soda over apples.  Bake for an hour at 350 and wait for the amazing smells.

Your house will smell amazing when you bake this, especially if you use a sweeter apple. I have no idea the exact type of apple I used but I think they may have been baking apples.  I've done this with tart apples as well and they always turn out great.  If you want them mushier, do them for an hour. If you want them more 'sliceable' stick to around 45 minutes.  I used diet sierra mist, but anything like diet orange or diet ginger ale would be great too.

Spicy Spaghetti Squash

1 medium to large spaghetti squash
1 lb ground beef
1 packet taco seasoning
1 red onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 can green chiles
1 can corn, drained
1 can black beans, drained
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 cup cilantro, minced
3 Tbsp lime juice
1/2 Tbsp sea salt

Preheat to 325.  Cut squash in half and scoop out seeds. Place cut sides down on a baking dish and cook for 50 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes.  Use fork and scrape out strands of squash.

Brown the ground beef with taco seasoning and set aside.  Saute onions, green chilis and red pepper in a couple tsp of olive oil for 5 minutes. Add corn, beans, and chili powder and saute for another 3 minutes.  Add salt, lime, cilantro and strands of squash and saute another 3 minutes. Add meat to mixture and combine.

Scoop mixture into squash halves.

omg guys. this was so so yummy. jeffrey ate a TON of it and kept saying how amazing it was. thanks to the taco seasoning, chilis and chili powder there was some great heat so adjust that if you prefer less spice. i thought it was perfect!