It's A Keeper!

I found this recipe on Pinterest. It came from some woman's blog; she stated it looked like dog food, but tasted delicious...LOL! I'm not so sure it looks like dog food, but I will say it was very tasty. I'll definitely be making this again. And you can easily get away with just making a salad with it. The meat, potatoes and vegetable are all in the casserole :)

'Cowboy Casserole'

1.5 lbs ground beef (I used 2 lbs)

1 medium onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped (I used the stuff in the jar)

1 can whole kernel corn, drained

1 can cream of mushroom soup

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 cup milk

4 tablespoons sour cream

1- 30 oz bag frozen tater tots (I used Ore-Ida Crispy Crowns)

In large skillet, cook the onion until tender and translucent.  Add the chopped garlic and cook for 1 minute more.  Add the beef and cook over medium heat until no longer pink.  Drain the mixture and place into a large bowl and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine the soup, milk and sour cream.  Whisk until smooth.  Add to the hamburger mixture and stir to combine.  Add corn and 1 cup cheddar cheese.  Gently mix to combine.

Grease a 9x13 baking dish.  Layer half of the crispy crowns on the bottom, pour the hamburger mixture over the top and then layer with the other half of the crispy crowns.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake uncovered at 350 for 25-30 minutes., or until golden brown and crunchy.

Delish :)

Easter 2013

I think they always say better late than never!  Here's some pics from Easter!

 Adam brought his buddy Nate home for the weekend.  Adam and Nate'll be rooming together next year ;-)

 Some Josh Early non-pareils for Katrina from the Geigers:

I had several requests for the Pineapple Stuffing recipe.  This particular one happens to be my sister-in-law, 'Martha's', recipe, but I actually have a couple of recipes for it and they are basically all the same.

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Pineapple Stuffing

7 slices bread, cubed (6 cups)

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/3 cup sugar

4 eggs

1  20 ounce can crushed pineapple, undrained

Cream butter, sugar, add eggs, pineapple and bread.  Bake at 350 degrees in greased 2 quart casserole dish for 50 minutes.

**The above picture is in a 9x13 pan and the recipe is doubled.  (And was baked a bit too long and the bottom is a very dark brown!  It still tasted fine, but didn't look so pretty.....)

Woo Hoo!!

Emmanuel's is celebrating their 290th anniversary this year.  In a previous post I told you how Alyssa and Sam's 7th & 8th grade Sunday School class was collecting empty water bottles to distribute to the congregation.  They asked members to fill the water bottles during the month of March with coins or cash and then return them by the end of March or beginning of April.

As March ended and April began, we just watched these bottles being returned...some of them stuffed full with coins, others 1/3-1/2 full with coins.  Some bottles had a single check in them....others had a $10 or $20 bill in them.  I myself kept my bottle in my car; I stop every morning on my way to work and get myself an iced tea at a drive through.  All my loose change from the drive through's went in my bottle.

They collected 107 water bottles and all the money collected will be given to the Easton Children's Home.  Won't they be surprised!?!?

Yesterday, Alyssa and I took the change (and believe me, there was a TON of it...or at least it FELT like there was a ton of it...LOL!!) to her bank.  There were:
12,643 pennies
2,593 nickels
3,675 dimes
2,945 quarters
12 fifty cent pieces
4 dollar pieces

1 silver dollar

several checks

many $1's, 5's, 10's and 20's!

about 30 foreign coins ;-)

 The start of the change going in:

 And more:

Wow!  And that's just all the loose change.  (I was curious how much $$ I had collected in my water bottle, thus we did mine separately.  I was pretty surprised to see that my water bottle, which was only 2/3 full, had $28.33 in it!!):

 These are all the foreign coins that the machine spit back out at us:

And this was this morning, when Sam and Alyssa brought the kids over to reveal the total amount collected.  Can you tell that one of the teachers is a Penn State graduate?  She copied Thon's manner of revealing their totals ;-)

(The 5th & 6th grade classes are currently in charge of the month of April and have decided to collect a minimum of 290 minutes to put towards calling cards for our men and women serving overseas.  As of this morning, even though we are only 1/2 way into the month of April, they had already reached their goal!!)

Spring Break!

I've been remiss in posting recently. I finally decided to borrow  some pics from Katrina's facebook (it's OK, she told me I'm allowed to do that!).  There's no particular order to these.

The group from DiscipleMakers spent a week at Windy Gap Camp in North Carolina where they did odd jobs over the course of their Spring Break.