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Archives for November 2017

Holiday Cornbread Apple Sausage Stuffing (Caroline’s Favorite)

It honestly isn’t a holiday at our house without this incredible holiday apple sausage stuffing.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas.  If you’re planning to serve turkey – you’ve gotta try this!

 

The week before Thanksgiving my daughter always says,  “You’re going to make your stuffing again this year… right Mom?”  Well, I don’t know.  Hmmm…of course;)   My family knows this recipe is a little time consuming and holidays are always hectic, so they make sure to tell me how much they love it every year so I won’t leave it off the menu.  (I think they love it so much one of them would probably learn to make it if I didn’t.)

This recipe is actually very simple.  It’s honestly just making the corn bread the day before, (I use a “Honey Corn Bread” mix by Krusteaz so it’s super easy) and chopping up the breads and vegetables that takes a little extra time.    The way the apples, sausage, herbs and butter flavor the breads in this recipe is nothing short of amazing!  I hope you’ll give it a try and let me know what you think.

 

Caroline's Favorite Stuffing
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Dinner
Serves: 12-14
Ingredients
  • 16 Tablespoons butter - (2 sticks)
  • 2 Large Yellow Onions - peeled and diced small
  • 2 Green Apples - cored and chopped into 1 inch cubes
  • 2 Honey Crisp Apples - cored and chopped into 1 inch cubes
  • 1 1lb of Jimmy Dean Sage Sausage
  • 3 cups of wheat bread - cut into ½-1 inch cubes
  • 3 cups of French bread - cut into ½-1 inch cubes
  • 3 cups of Honey Corn Bread - cut into ½-1 inch cubes
  • 2 teaspoons of Herbs de Provence
  • 2 teaspoons dried rubbed sage
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • ½ teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 Cup of chicken broth
  • ½ cup of chopped italian parsley for serving
Instructions
  1. Make one box of Krusteze Honey Corn Bread the day before and let it cool.
  2. Cut up the corn bread, wheat bread and French bread the night before you plan to make the stuffing and leave it in a bowl uncovered. (You can also do this in the morning if you will be making it at night.)
  3. Chop up onions and apples as indicated above and put in separate bowls.
  4. Melt 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) of butter in a large skillet over medium heat.
  5. Add onions to skillet and stir. Put cover on and cook for 15-20 minutes. Stirring every few minutes. Do not brown onions, just cook them until they are translucent, and butter is absorbed. Transfer the onions back to their bowl.
  6. Melt the second 8 Tablespoons of butter into the same skillet. Place apples in skillet and cook for approximately 5 minutes. Do not over cook apples. They will become mushy. Transfer apples back to their bowl.
  7. Put the Jimmy Dean Sage sausage into skillet and cook over medium heat. Mashing and stirring with a potato masher makes it easy to cook the sausage into small crumbles - which is what you want. Once the sausage is cooked turn off the heat.
  8. Put the cooked onions and butter, the cooked apples and butter and the cooked sausage into a large serving dish that is oven safe. Toss them together until they are well combined.
  9. Now put the French bread cubes, the whole wheat bread cubes and the corn bread cubes into the large dish with the onions, apples and sausage. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, 2 teaspoons of dried rubbed sage and 2 teaspoons of herbs de provence.
  10. Combine all ingredients by tossing gently - you want some of the corn bread to stay in chunks. Don't worry if it starts to crumble. That's supposed to happen.
  11. Slowly drizzle 1 cup of chicken or turkey broth over the stuffing, making sure to get a little over all evenly. It should not be very wet. The broth will provide moisture so that when you put it in the oven it will steam just a bit.
  12. Cover with oven safe dish with all the stuffing with tin foil and place in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

 

Food and Recipes

Welcome to the Food and Recipes section of Managed By Mom.

My first memories of cooking are with my grandmother.  I remember being 4 or 5 years old, in our tiny kitchen in Massachuestts, watching her make crusts for apple pies.  We had one apple tree in our back yard.  Yes, exactly one.  And one pear and one peach tree – a fruit trifecta;)  (I have no idea how they got there and, apparently, I never thought to ask.)

In the fall my grandmother would gather the ripe apples she could reach, and have me pick up those that had just fallen, and we’d make apple pies and apple tarts so the fruit wouldn’t go to waste.  Well, she would really make them and I would be her helper. Even now I can smell the mingling of butter, apples and cinnamon that would waft from the oven as we baked.  It was heavenly!  We spent many afternoons together over the years baking pies, cookies, and cakes.  She taught me most of what I know about cooking, and the wonderful memories I have from being in the kitchen with her probably explain why I enjoy it so much.

I’ve spent many hours baking and cooking with my own kids over the years.  Cookies were defintely their favorite – especially chocolate chip – and not cookie bars – they had to be individually cookies;)  Cakes with dump trucks and ballerinas on them, and muffins and cupcakes of every flavor!  Sometimes they had more frosting on their faces than made it to the cupcakes;) I hope they look back on those times as fondly as I do.

Birthday cakes are still home made at our house, and if you ask my kids what the secret ingredient is they will wink and say “love”;)   We’ve had lots of great times, and at least a few mishaps – like the time I put too much chocolate mousse between the cake layers – and the top layer slid off- and landed the floor next to the table.  The shock on all our faces must have been priceless!  Maybe VISA will make a commercial.

I hope you’ll find some recipes here you’ll want to try.  Scroll through this site or click on any of the links below.  I only post recipes I have personally made, so there aren’t any on this site that haven’t been “test driven”.  I try to post at least one new recipe each week. So please check back from time to time to see what’s new.

Feel free to contact me and share what you liked or how you tweaked a recipe to make it your own.  I’d love to hear about it!

XO

Kate

Food and Recipes

BREAKFAST:

The Perfect Cup of Coffee

Easy and Delicious Bran Muffins

 

LUNCH:

Peach Asiago Flat Bread Pizza

Easy Thai Chicken Noodle Bowls

Italian Salad

 

DINNER:

Holiday Apple Sausage Stuffing

Peach Asiago Flat Bread Pizza

Easy Thai Chicken Noodle Bowls

Italian Salad

Beef Stroganoff

Andrew’s Favorite Potato Soup

Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines for Under $20 2017-2018

DESSERTS:

Rosie’s Bakery Brownie Shortbread

Caramel, Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal, Pecan Cookies

Italian Lemon Cookies

Too Faced Foundation – Review

Health and Beauty Tips

The whole point of this post is to share the love.  I love my new Born This Way Too Faced foundation…and I am honestly a pretty picky customer.  (I am also not compensated, in any way, for my opinions or anything you link to from this site.)

I love makeup;)  What girl doesn’t?  But I don’t like to look overly made up – no cakey makeup, super bright colors, just not me.   I like to look natural, classic – I call it “me but better”;) I’ve tried LOTS of brands over the years, and have even sold some.  But over time you buy enough/try enough, and make enough mistakes, that you stop searching for the “best” item and use something you think works well enough.  Stop.  Well enough doesn’t cut it ladies!  Good makeup is expensive…so it needs to be GREAT!

I had never tried the Too Faced brand before last summer.  I wanted to get my daughter some makeup for her birthday and I was shopping around for a few things to make a little gift basket for her.  One of the places I popped into was Ulta.  There was a college aged girl working in the makeup section who had very light skin, much like my daughter, and her makeup was  f-l-a-w-l-e-s-s.  Her skin looked perfect, even coverage, with a nice glow.  She honestly could have been in a magazine;)  So, I waited for her to finish with a customer and asked if she could tell me what she was wearing because I thought it would look great on my daughter.  She was SO sweet!

She took me over to the Too Faced display and picked the second to lightest shade they had….and they have a ton…28 different shades now!  I tried it on the back of my hand to see what the consistency was.  Although college aged girls have very little to hide on their skin, except blemishes, this makeup had great coverage!

She then took me over to their display of brushes, which could be slightly overwhelming, if you didn’t know what you were looking for.  She showed me a “blurring brush” she applied her makeup with.

Hmmm…honestly I was super skeptical.  I’ve always found applying with fingers to be best.  I’ve tried several sponges folks have raved about, and wasn’t happy with the amount of product they soaked up or the fact that they sometimes wiped off too much, or left too much.  I also tried a brush a long time ago but the bristles were too long and it felt more like painting than putting on makeup.  I didn’t think I wanted to pay $25 for another lesson.  But this did look different, round, lots of hairs on the brush…I mean LOTS! And they were short.   And my tour guide said she used it every day and my daughter could bring it back if she wasn’t happy with it as long as I kept the receipt.  Ok.  The nerdy mom in me was satisfied. And it was her birthday.

My daughter loved her gift!  I added a new mascara and a lip gloss to the foundation and brush and put it in a little basket.  And she loved the foundation!  It was so much fun watching her put it on to see how it looked;).  Who knew makeup is like getting a gift twice;) We did go back to Ulta the next day to get my daughter one shade darker in the foundation, which they happily exchanged. (Love no hassle!)  But the combination of the foundation and the brush are really what made the difference.  The coverage looks like it was put on with an airbrush.  Now, I understand you may not always want your skin to have that kind of coverage, but when you do, this is the combination that you should try! (I’ll do a post on my favorite tinted moisturizer another day.)

I liked the way this makeup looked so much I went and bought myself some of the foundation and a blurring brush this fall when she went to college…and took all of her stuff…and half of mine;)  My advice for moms – or women with – ahem- older skin -is to wash your face and apply a good moisturizer first.  Let it dry and then apply your foundation with a blurring brush.   The foundation may look a little dry at first, but let it settle… by the time you get where you’re going… it will look GREAT! I’ve received a number of compliments on my “skin” and I have to say, it’s not my skin, it’s my new foundation…but THANK YOU;)   I am very happy with this foundation and with the brand so far.  I will definitely try some other products of Too Faced!

Here is a link to the Born This Way Too Faced Foundation at Ulta.  Here is the link to the blurring brush I bought at Ulta.   I do not receive any compensation for my opinions or anything you purchase. 

If you try it I hope you like it!!

Rosie’s Bakery – Brownie Shortbread

 

Rosie's Bakery - Brownie Shortbread
 
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I first had these bars at Rosie's Bakery in Cambridge, Massachusetts in my early 20s. I swooned at the first bite! This is THE BEST brownie shortbread ever! I've copied this recipe to share with you from the "Rosie's Bakery All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book" by Judy Rosenberg owner of Rosie's Bakery. There are lots more GREAT dessert recipes in this baking book. You can get the book online through Amazon.
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • BASE
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature cut into 8 pieces
  • TOPPING
  • 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
  • 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease an 11X7 inch baking pan with butter
  2. For the base, process the flour and sugar in a food processor about 15 seconds. Add the butter and process until the dough comes together, 20- 30 seconds.
  3. Pat the dough gently over the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake on the center oven rack until it is lightly golden, about 20 minutes. Place the base in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to cool completely. Keep the oven on.
  4. Meanwhile prepare the topping: Melt the chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler over simmering water. Cool slightly.
  5. Beat the eggs, sugar and baking powder together in a medium sized bowl with a whisk. Add the chocolate mixture and stir vigorously with the whisk until the batter is blended. Spread the chocolate mixture evenly over the base.
  6. Bake the bars until the top rises and forms a very thin crust, about 20 minutes. The center will drop as it cools. (a tester inserted in the middle may come out with a fudge, crumbly batter on it, but it should not be liquidy.) Cool completely on a rack. Cut the shortbread with a thin knife.
  7. Makes 12 bars.

Before you make the AMAZING Brownie Shortbread from Rosie’s Bakery below, I want to share my gadget-saving and time- saving hacks from making these for too many years to count;)

First – You do not need a food processor to make the base. A bowl, a spoon, and little effort is all you need.

Second – You do not need to use a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter for the topping.

My hack: Put the butter and chocolate for the topping in a microwave safe bowl and microwave it on high power for 30 seconds.  Open the microwave and stir the mixture for 30 seconds.  Put the bowl with the mixture back into the microwave for another 30 seconds.  Now, take it out, set it on the counter and stir the mixture until the chocolate is completely melted – about one minute. (Note: Don’t overheat the chocolate.  It will seize up on you into a stiff wad of yuck.)

Third –  I use an 8X8 inch baking pan for this recipe.  We like the thickness this pan makes.  I will bake them for a few extra minutes if it looks like I need to.  Go by Rosie’s directions for doneness.  I have tried making these in a 9X11 baking dish (standard) and they come out too thin in my opinion.  If you want to make them in a 9X11 pan simply double the recipe below.  You may want to double them anyway…cuz they are going to go…FAST!!!

Andrew’s Favorite Potato Soup

 

 

 

Andrew, here is the recipe is for your favorite soup;)  I’ve posted it here so you can have the directions to refer to when you make it tonight.  I hope it comes out great…and tastes like home.  Love and miss you tons!!

XO

Mom

Click here for some other recipes you might like!

Andrew's Favorite Potato Soup
 
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Andrew, this is the recipe for your favorite potato soup:) I have listed the ingredients in the order in which they are added. Let me know if you have trouble with the instructions!
Author:
Recipe type: Soup
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 3 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
  • 1 Large yellow onion diced very small
  • 1 teaspoon of minced garlic from a jar or 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
  • Approximately ½ small jar of Low Fat Bacon Pieces
  • ¼ cup white flour
  • 32 oz of Low Fat/Low Sodium Chicken Broth
  • 3 large or 4 medium yukon gold potatoes - peeled and diced
  • 1 Cup of Frozen Corn
  • 4 Tablespoons of 2% Velveeta - cut into pieces
  • 1 cup of ½ and ½ or whole milk
  • Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. Peel and cut a large yellow onion in half. Dice the onion into very small pieces.
  2. Peel the Yukon gold potatoes and dice them into small pieces about ½ to 1 inch each and put them in a bowl until you're ready to use them. (They will cook faster if they are cut small - time saver.)
  3. Put 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and turn heat on to medium.
  4. Add the diced onions and sauté until they are soft - almost translucent - but do not brown them. This should only take about 5 minutes.
  5. Add the ½ jar of low fat bacon pieces and sauté them with the onions for about 2 minutes. (This will give bacon flavor without the added fat.)
  6. Once the onions and bacon are cooked, sprinkle the ¼ cup of flour over the ingredients in the pan. Don't just dump it it into the pan. It needs to coat the vegetables and bacon. Stir the flour, onion and bacon until it looks dry - about 1- 2 minutes.
  7. S-L-O-W-L-Y add the chicken broth to the pan. Pour about ½-1 cup while stirring. You will see that the flour starts to make a thick white sauce. Keep stirring and pouring. Once all the chicken broth is in the pan you shouldn't have any clumps of flour...just a thickened chicken broth.
  8. Now add the potatoes that you diced, stir them around and then turn the heat up to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Do not leave it unattended. This should only take a few minutes.
  9. Once the mixture has come to a boil turn it down to low or simmer, give it a stir, and put a cover on it. (Covering it will keep all the moisture in the pan so you won't have to add liquid and it will cook faster.)
  10. Allow the mixture to simmer for about 15 minutes - stirring it about every five minutes to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan.
  11. Once they mixture has simmered for 15 minutes use a fork to test the potatoes and see if they fall apart easily. If they do, add one cup of frozen corn the mixture, stir and put the cover on for a few minutes until the corn is hot.
  12. Now shut off the heat and add the 4Tablespoons of 2% Velveeta cheese to the mixture and stir until it is fully melted.
  13. Add the 1 cup of ½ and ½ or milk and stir until combined
  14. Add approximately 1 teaspoon of salt and about ½ teaspoon of black pepper.
  15. Taste your soup. Add additional salt and pepper, and maybe a few tablespoons of additional Velveeta if you think it needs to be a little cheesier;) You can also sprinkle a little more garlic powder in at this point if you want a little more garlic flavor.
  16. Serve your soup in a bowl with a few extra pieces of bacon on top and maybe a sprinkling of hot sauce and have some fresh french bread or some garlic toast with it.
  17. ENJOY!

 

       

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