Successfully Strawberry

So I like ice cream. And by like I mean LOVE. I was tickled to death when Nick bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday last year. I immediately began making ice cream and searching for recipes. The recipes are hard to find. I don't like the ones that call for eggs. Something about it just doesn't sit well with me so I avoid those. Which leaves me very few choices. Of course the instruction manual that came with my ice cream maker had several recipes in it. I did find a mint chocolate chip that I absolutely adore! Nick wanted me to make him blueberry ice cream. He said when he was little he had gotten a blueberry milkshake from somewhere and he says it was to die for. He suggested I make a vanilla ice cream and add a can of blueberry pie filling. I did. He LOVED it. SCORE!!! I like strawberry ice cream and figured I could do the same thing and just add strawberry pie filling. I did. I HATED it. FAIL!!! So I made a peanut butter and a chocolate and a chocolate chip with red food coloring (that one was for Alyssa's birthday)  but I really wanted a strawberry. So I started with the vanilla ice cream base and instead of pie filling I added strawberries and strawberry syrup (same dang thing). Genius!! I used frozen strawberries instead of fresh because I'm lazy lol. Anywho, it turned out delicious. I am so pleased. So here is what it looks like:

Strawberry Ice Cream

1/4 granulated sugar
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup fresh/frozen chopped strawberries (I used my little veggie chopper)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup Hershey's Strawberry syrup

Pretty much just mix everything together in a bowl, stir really good then pour it into an ice cream maker. Voila!!!!

Victory In Spaghetti!!

I love spaghetti. I love making spaghetti. My kids love spaghetti. My hubby DOES NOT. Pasta is not even in his vocabulary. So since we have been married (almost 4 years) I have not been able to make spaghetti as much as I would have liked. And I like to make it A LOT. When I make spaghetti I like to saute onions and green peppers and then add it to the meat and jar of sauce. I found out last night that apparently this is where I have been going wrong. Using jarred sauce (I stopped using the sauteed veggies cause the kids complained too much). Why was I using jarred sauce? Because I have a lazy tendency and popping open a jar of sauce and pouring it over the meat is soooo easy. Well last night I decided to try a recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce that I found on Pinterest. I tweaked it some of course :) And you will never guess what happened!! My beloved hubby ate a bowl of my spaghetti..... You're shocked, I know, me too!! Not only did he eat a bowl of my delicious spaghetti but he begged me to make it again exactly the way I made it last night. And he said next time he would even put onions and green peppers in the food processor so the kids wouldn't complain so much about the texture. I was in wife heaven. Spaghetti is one of my favorite foods and now I do not have to suffer any longer by making it only once in a blue moon. The reason I decided to make homemade sauce is that our finances have been a little tight lately (cold weather has slowed hubby's business) and I thought about saving money on our groceries by trying to make as much homemade stuff as I possibly could. I was already making homemade ice cream ever since my hubby bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday. I haven't bought store bought ice cream since. I figured since I am a SAHM and have a decent amount of time on my hands, why not spend a little extra time in the kitchen (and less time on Facebook and playing games on my phone lol) So I have now begun to make more homemade foods and am excited to share them with ya'll! So first up my spaghetti sauce:


Ingredients
1 and 1/2 (29-oz) cans tomato sauce (probably could get away with 1)
1 (8-oz) can tomato paste
2 Tbsp minced garlic (mine comes in a jar lol)
1½ Tbsp oregano
2 Tbsp basil 
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
3 dashes red pepper flakes or crushed red pepper
¼ tsp cayenne
1½ Tbsp sugar 
A few dashes of onion powder (since I didn't do the sauteed veggies)

I added all the ingredients into a big pot, stirred it and brought it to a boil then added my 2 pounds of ground beef that I had already cooked and let the whole thing simmer for 30 minutes.....Ta Da- Perfection!!!