BBQ Farmhouses

Some dear friends made us a bunch of homemade frozen dinners when Abigail was born. One of our favorites was their Farmhouse BBQ Muffins. Having made it several times since, I was looking for a heartier and healthier version. This is what I came up with-

BBQ Farmhouses

Pardon the cell phone picture I had to text to my husband and have him e-mail me from his smart phone.

They are no longer muffins, so that word had to go. And since I made little roofs out of the extra homemade dough on these little mini-loaf sized wonders, I just went straight to what they were- little farmhouses filled with homemade BBQ goodness.


Dough-


1 1/4 C. cake flour
3/4 C. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder 
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/4 C.. butter, cut into small chunks
3/4 C. buttermilk (Milk + 1 Tablespoon vinegar)


The variation of flours makes it less dense, otherwise I typically do 50/50 all-purpose and whole wheat.


Fluff the dry ingredients together. 
Cut butter into tiny pieces and 'kneed' it into the flour mixture. Of if you are fancy and have a pastry blender that works. Work in the milk until the dough is thick. Use lots of flour for your rolling pin and surface. Cut out the shape and size needed for whatever type of pan you desire. I had extra dough, so it became little roof tops. 


BBQ filling-
1 small onion, chopped.
1 lb ground beef
1/2 C. ketchup 
1 t. chili powder
3 T. brown sugar


Combine ketchup, chili powder and brown sugar for homemade BBQ sauce. (YES it was THAT simple to make it from scratch! And it's delish!) Cook the onion in the the homemade BBQ sauce for a few minutes then add the ground beef. Typically I cook beef then drain/ rinse it before adding sauces, however cooking it IN the sauce makes it more flavorful. Once it is cooked, Drain the excess fat/ liquid from the top. 


Fill up your little muffins/ mini loaves with this mixture, put your roof on it and pop it in the oven at 375 for 18 mins. SO yummy. 


*To add a little veggie to your meal, sprinkle some baby spinach in your pastry lined tins before topping with the BBQ mixture. 


**You can use packaged biscuits but they are expensive and full of ingredients we try to avoid. 

ENJOY!

Time + Money

I was recently talking to a friend who is considering cloth diapering. People were discouraging her saying that it is too time consuming, messy, you don't actually save money because of start up costs and the washing process.

WRONG

From my experience cloth diapering. Making food from scratch. Making laundry & dishwasher soap from scratch. Making home made cleaning products. My oh my, the money we have saved. It pays to put a little elbow grease and carve out some time to do it home-made. Most of the time anyway.


I was recently asked to share my "money saving tips" with another stay at home Mom. I wrote up my list. Several pages later... She told me that I should blog about it. I thought blogging was weird. People just write on the internet for the whole world to see? They share their thoughts and lives with people they don't even know? Weird. Maybe you think so to. Yet, here you are. And here I am. Writing a blog. I have been inspired by two blogs that I follow and have peeked at a few others via their suggestions.


So here it goes. Not my effort to blog in general. But to blog with purpose. I actually wrote up a list in my personal journal of "goals" I have with my blog. Here is a little looksie at what I hope to write about:
- Our family and ministry. (www.cwtrials.com)
- My passions (too many to list write now)
- How we choose to live intentionally (we are talking about MONEY here. Resources. Food. Clothing. Etc.)
- Recipes and ideas of what I make from scratch/ repurpose.
- And to tie it all up and the #1 reason why we do what we do- our love for Jesus and passion for sharing the Gospel by living it out in EVERY area of our lives. This is a daily, moment to moment effort. And we fail a lot of times. But this is about the hope we have found in Christ.

I am working on the whole posting pictures thing. I really would love to have a pic or two to go with what I write about. We recently got a Mac (awesome story behind that!) and I am still learning it. My camera is dying... and not just the battery here. We have poor internet connection. So, I'm working on it. Hang tight. I promise to put some serious effort into this rather difficult task for me.