Polish Sausage casserole

I was down to the bare staples in my pantry and fridge. I had cheddar cheese, polish sausage and potatoes. Three main ingredients.

Sausage Casserole
1 kielbasa sausage
3 lbs of potatoes. (boiled, peeled and mashed)
1/2 onion chopped fine
2 cups of shredded cheese

Make potatoes as you would for mashed potatoes. Boil the water, peel the potatoes, bring to a bowl until tender, drain and then add 1 stick butter and 1/2 cup milk or chicken broth. Flavor with salt and pepper.

In a skillet brown kielbasa sausage and finely cut onion. Drain excess fat and set sausage and onion on paper towel lined plate.
If I had a blend of frozen vegetables, I would have blanched them in boiling water and then set those aside also.

Get a 9x13 baking dish and layer mashed potatoes, then sausage and onion mixture, then cheese, keep alternating layers until you have last layer of potatoes and then sprinkle with cheese.

Our family likes heat so I sprinkled red pepper flakes on the top just before serving.

Ice Cream Cake

My dash wanted an ice cream cake for his birthday but at $30. I needed to be more frugal in this day. So, I set out to make him an ice cream cake and I will never pay for another cake again!!

This was my first ice cream cake attempted. I will definitely make another and fancy it up to look like one purchased at Baskin and Robins.

INGREDIENTS:
1 cake mix
1 tub of cool whip
1 carton of your favorite ice cream
1 4oz cream cheese and 2 cups confectioners sugar

The most important ingredient when making this cake is TIME! TIME and TIME

Prepare any cake mix,in a cookie sheet or two 9x13 pans.
I used a chocolate cake mix baked in a cookie sheet.

I baked it according to directions on the box. Let it cool and then cut the cake in half.

I bought a half gallon of cookies and cream ice cream, in a carton and let it sit on the counter to soften slightly.

I sliced the ice cream with a knife and layed the ice cream evenly across one layer of the cake. I used the entire carton.

I then placed the other layer of cake on top of the ice cream.

Cover with foil and freeze for 3 hours.
Remove from freezer and if the ice cream has melted down the sides take a serrated knife and cut edges so they are clean and even.

Frost with refrigerated cool whip, you can add food coloring for tint if needed.


Take 2 cups of cool whip and add cream cheese and 1/2 cup confectioners sugar. Put in decorative piping bag and pipe a scallopped edge around cake.

Freeze for an additional 2 hours and cake is ready to EAT!!! YUMMERS!!!

Elbows and tomatoes

Elbows and tomatoes

Ingredients are simple. However, My family LOVES LOVES this! It was a dinner thrown together. All the cupboards had for us that day.

Ingredients:

Box of Elbow macaroni

2 cans stewed tomatoes

parmesan cheese to flavor

1 can whole tomatoes

DIRECTIONS:

Cook macaroni according to directions on box. Empty contents of all cans onto noodles.

Cover with parmesan per preference.

Stir and chop a few of the whole tomatoes and serve hot!

It has a high flavor. Two thumbs up from my crew.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Homemade Laundry detergent

Here's what you need-1 bar of soap. I used Dove Hypoallergenic (andrew's allergic to detergent)

1-5 gallon bucket with a lid

1 3/4 cup washing soda (i found this at Kroger)

1/2 Borax

Put 4 cups of water on the stove and bring almost to a boil. As the water is warming whittle your soap into the hot water.

Stir a lot!

Add 3 gallons of hot water to the bucket. On the last gallon pour in your 4 cups of soapy water so you should have a total of 3 gallons. Add 1 3/4 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup borax to your water soap mixture. Stir for about 5 minutes.

Put the lid on and let sit over night.

The next morning you have a nice slimy laundry detergent! Can you believe it...that easy. I haven't added the cost yet but I spend approx. $7 a week on laundry detergent and This 3 gallons of detergent cost 5.26 for all the supplies so I need to do some math and figure out how many loads I will get!