Noelle likes Good Food

I hope you guys are ready for a slew of posts in the next 7 days. School starts back a week from Monday and I have been cooking up a storm and doing everything I can to get ahead for when things get crazy. That means that it is the time of year for freezer cooking!! I have done this every year for the last 3 years. You can read about freezer cooking 2012 ( Part I , II, III , IIII ) and 2013 by clicking on the links. I somehow accidentally erased the second freezer cooking post from last year. Oops.  As you can tell from those posts, normally I make a lot of sauces, some blanched veggies, and lots of chili and spaghetti. This year I am doing things a little differently.  Many times, when I am scrambling to figure out what to make for dinner, it is because I haven't defrosted any meat. Generally, with frozen and easy to prepare veggies and starches, meals are easy on the fly, except for the meat portion. Chris can only take so many eggs for dinner, so having an as...

For those of you that read this blog, you know that I get my beef from a local farmer. More specifically,  from  Indian Creek Angus  (click on the link to see their Facebook page!), based out of Carnesville. If anyone is looking for a source for pasture raised beef, theirs is wonderful!!  In one of my orders I had a few packages of beef necks and I had NO clue what to do with them. Based on cooking stew meat, I knew enough that they should be seared and simmered in liquid on medium to low heat for several hours.  It just so happens that my Mom got me a RED 6 qt enameled dutch oven for christmas! I knew that I wanted to christen my new pot by cooking up beef neck-bone stew and do a little kitchen experimenting :). Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the process. But here is what I did… I defrosted the package, which contained 3 neck bones with a good bit of meat. I seared them on a cast iron skillet (I was afraid to do the heavy searing in m...

This came to be quite accidentally, and I thought it was super tasty! So I thought I would share the recipe with you. I know Chris has been wanting potato salad lately and I had a plan to make it for dinner last night. I am not a big fan of mayo and so my thought was to substitute it with plain yogurt. However, when I was at the store the other day, it had to get cut because I was didn't want to go over budget. I have recently been taking a calculator to the store to help me stick to my budget and it has helped SOO much! Alas, I did not bring any yogurt and I refused to use mayonnaise. I wanted it to have a good flavor because I was going to mix in some sweet potatoes and I don't really like sweet potatoes. Consider this one of many recent attempts to get myself to like them. Yes, I realize that they are super good for me and a lot better than potatoes, but I can't seem to get past that they are sweet and mushy. Hmmm.. So I used some olive oil, garlic, and some dried he...