Poor Man's Stroganoff

It seems more and more, during the week, I do not have a whole lot of time to cook dinner.  As in virtually none.  So I end up cooking a lot of meals that are quick and easy and I'm always searching for the 30 minutes or less and 5 ingredients or less menus for the week days.  I also do a lot of cooking on the weekend and saving up those lefts and reinventing them into something else through the week. (See yesterday's post where I talk about the fajitas.)

Well, last night was no different from any other night.  I had little time, and I'd searched all day long for a quick easy recipe and just couldn't find anything that suited my taste buds.  I knew I needed to cook up the ground beef that was in the fridge though. So that was my main ingredient.  After much thought I decided that Poor Man's Stroganoff would do the job quite nicely.

I knew the ingredients I had on hand, and some of those needed cooking up as well. So bonus.

There are several recipes out there on the net for a Poor Man's Stroganoff.  And now, here I am about to add one more.  This is my version of Poor Man's Stroganoff.

Poor Man's Stroganoff

Ingredients:

1.5 Pd Ground Beef

1 Pd Mushrooms
½ Small Onion (I’m not a big onion eater so I use just enough as flavoring but not so much that it’s overwhelming. If you like onions by all means pour them on.)
1 tsp - minced garlic
¼ cup - butter
1 can - Cream of Mushroom
1 tbs - cream cheese
1 8oz container - low fat sour cream
Salt , Pepper, Paprika - All to taste
Egg Noodles

Saute the onion and garlic in a little bit of butter added ground beef, salt, pepper, and paprika to taste. In separate pan saute mushrooms with butter. Once done, add Cream of Mushroom soup, cream cheese, and sour cream. Cook until heated through and well combined. Pour mushroom mixture over the beef mixture and simmer on low for ten to fifteen minutes.

While beef is cooking, cook your noodles. Serve beef mixture over noodles with side of bread.

Another ingredient for me would have been to add a little bit of a hearty red wine to the mushrooms while they were sauteing. But since I did not have any, I left it out.  If you like a runnier sauce you might want to add a little milk or more butter.  Careful with adding more sour cream though; you can make the dish very bland that way.

If you try it let me know how it goes for you.

I took the picture using my iPhone camera so it's not the greatest. Oh and that's slices of loaf bread you see on the plate also.  Hey, I was honest and told you it was Poor Man's Stroganoff...

Faults or No, I Like It!

Before I dive right into what I was going to blog about today, I wanted to mention that the other night we grilled steaks for dinner. They were so good. But we had two huge steaks left over. I told C$ that we should make steak fajitas. So that's what we did. And oh my... what a great way to jazz up them there leftovers. They were soo yummy!

Anywho, that's not really what I was going to post about today, but I had to just go ahead and toss it out there.

What I'd planned to talk about today was one of my latest projects. See, I bought a sewing machine awhile back, when I found out I was pregnant. I had this crazy notion that I would make my own maternity clothes. Maternity clothes wasn't the only thing I was going to make, naturally. I was going to sew baby clothes andlearn to quilt and just do all kinds of super cool things.

And believe it or not, over the last year I have made a few things that have been kind of cool. But there is always a learning curve. And I am pretty much teaching myself to sew on a trail by error basis. That's why when something turns out pretty cool, I'm pretty darn pleased.

So today, I'm going to share with you one of those pretty darn pleased moments. Even with all it's faults, it pleases me.

To give some background, my adventure started out with the purchasing of a pattern for a cute summer outfit that I am in the process of working up. My goal with this outfit was to try and create something that could be used both for home and work. While I was out shopping for the materials needed to make the new outfit, I stumbled on some scrape cloth on clearance. I loved the color and so I bought it too. It wasn't that much and I thought, surely there is something I can make with this.

It's a very light green, with swirls of white throughout. After thinking about it, I decided that it would make a really cool contrast to the cranberry material I picked out for the outfit. So the idea to make a scarf was born.

I didn't have a pattern pattern, but I remembered seeing one I liked by Amy Butler that I thought was really cute. I had to make a few modifications from the original pattern. First I didn't have beads. So I just did a straight angled finish on the ends.

Also my cloth was not long enough to make the sash/scarf in one long solid piece. To remedy this, I measured out enough of the material to make two strips the same length, then halved each. Combining one half of one strip to the middle of the halved primary strip gave me just enough length to make the sash.

My thought, even with the now three pieces sewn together, it will still be cool.

So on with my sewing I went.

This is where my story starts to show just how newbie I am when it comes to sewing. First, I didn't seem to match up the sides just so. As you can see by the pictures below. The seems were off when I attached that middle strip of fabric (First photo). This caused a pucker on one side of the sash (Second photo). (Yes, I used pink thread to sew the seams. I loved the look against the green fabric).

Still, even with the faults, the sash is super cute and I think it will work and the pucker will be easily disguised. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Now I'm thinking about making another one. One with a beaded fringe.

Shutter Island

Sorry it's taken me a little while to jump back out here on the blog with an update. But getting the family settled back into the daily routine has kept me busy. Especially with my husband going out of town for business. It's tough to get it all done and by the end of the day I'm pooped. But hopefully things are going to start settling back into place and I'll be able to post more regularly.

But for today's post, I thought I'd give a movie review. We Netflixed Shutter Island the other day (weeks ago) and just got around to watching it. I remembered the previews for this one and thought it looked interesting. I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed.

First, here is Netflix's run down on the movie.


Shutter Island (Ashecliffe)

2010 : Rated R : 138 Minutes

World War II soldier turned U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by his own troubling visions and by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley). Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer and Max von Sydow co-star in Martin Scorsese's plot twist-filled psychological thriller set in Massachusetts island in 1954.


The movie sucks you in from the start with U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) on a boat crossing to Shutter Island. The first five minutes draws in with it's ominious, forebodding feel and the soundtrack (a little anticlimatic at times) really drives home the fact that something big is about to happen. The movie progresses from there leading the viewer through a maze of plot twists and turns.

I admit, I figured out the big plot twist early on, but Scorsese did a good job making me second guess myself.

And I loved loved loved the cinematograpy in this movie. Some of the shoots were out this world wicked cool.

Leonardo DiCaprio has really impressed of late with his choice of roles. He's turned into an amazing actor over the course of years and roles. Part of that is the roles he's choosen and the other is his ability to become that character. Very impressed with him. And he doesn't disappoint in this one.

The bottomline: I give it a 4 out of 5, two thumbs up!! I highly recommend this movie is you like dark, emotional thrillers.