Thrifty Thursday

I got on kind of a cooking kick this morning and ended up utilizing a lot of things that have been hanging out in my pantry, fridge and freezer for awhile. None of these are my own original creations... Just recipes I came across and thought would be worth sharing.

The first thing I made was a hot dish. (Talk about a good way to clear out your pantry!) I'm not going to go into details about it because, while it was fairly good, I didn't think it was anything to write home about. However, I will say this... Where I come from, farm country, hot dish is a big deal. It's the staple of farm wives across the country. It shows up at potlucks like nobody's business, it adorns the pages of many a church cook book, wives bring it to their husbands working in the fields (or vice versa, to all you farming women)... It has become an art form of the American farm wife. I'm hoping down the line I can wrangle up some of these veteran farm wives to share with me their most prized hot dish recipes to share with all of you. This I promise you: hot dish will have its place on this blog.

But not today.

Do I sound like a politician?

Anyhow, I also made the following: Cheese Muffins, Bran Muffins, and Molasses Pecan Cookies.

Let's start with the cheese muffins...

I came across these on Pioneer Woman's blog a few months back and think they are pretty tasty. PW came across them by way of a gal named Fig, who entered them in PW's dairy contest. To check them out over at Pioneer Woman, click here. To see Fig's site, click here. 

They are tasty and easy and cheesy. SUPER cheesy. Gotta love that.

Next I whipped up some bran muffins...

...because I already had my muffin pan out and working, so I figured, why not? And because I've been craving bran muffins. I know... Weird thing to crave. But I was, so I made some.

Again, not an original Farmer Gal creation. We can thank the nice folks over at Hodgson Mill for these. They have a nice website, by the way, with more recipes... Check it out.

Unfortunately for me, the recipe on the back of the wheat bran box that I used does not appear to be listed on their website, so I'll go ahead and give it to you here...

Hodgson Mill Oven-Ready Bran Muffins

• 3 Cups Hodgson Mill Unprocessed Wheat Bran
• 1 Cup Boiling Water
• 1 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Butter
• 2 1/2 Cups White Flour
• 2 tsp. Baking Soda
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 2 Eggs, Beaten
• 2 Cups Buttermilk

Mix 1 cup of wheat bran with 1 cup boiling water; stir and let water absorb into bran. In a separate bowl blend sugar and butter. Measure and combine flour, baking soda and salt. Combine the moist bran with beaten eggs, the remaining 2 cups of bran, buttermilk, blended sugar-butter mixture, and flour, soda and salt mixture. Stir until well blended.

Place in the refrigerator for future use, or bake at once. When preparing to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Stir batter well and spoon into prepared muffin tins. Bake 15 minutes. Keep remaining mixture in airtight container for 2 to 4 weeks. Yield: 2 dozen.

Last but not least, I made some molasses pecan cookies...

These were my take on a recipe I found over at Kayotic Kitchen. Kay used bits of chocolate and orange zest in her version. I was a little burned out on that combination as I made a chocolate-orange coffee cake awhile back, so I changed it up a bit and omitted those two, and instead added to her recipe one cup of pecans, 1/4 cup of flax seed meal, used brown sugar instead of white, and dipped them in a bit of turbinado sugar to give them a little crunch. I also learned to be careful not to overbake these... I left my first batch in the oven too long, but I promptly removed my second batch on time and they were just super.

Thanks to all for these yummy recipes! My belly and my family thank you.