Vegetable Soup . . .

from a facebook friend, Thanks Jody.

One pound of Smoked sausage, cut it into chunks and brown them in a big kettle. (can also use beef chunks)
Add a chopped onion and two 29oz cans of stewed tomatoes.

Add 1 bag each of frozen corn, greenbeans, carrots, and peas. Add 2 cans of chick peas and 1 large can of V8 juice and 1 large can of beef broth.

Last, peel and chunk up 4 large potatoes.

Bring to a boil, turn it down on low put a lid on it and let it simmer 6 hours or more.

Now you can either do it that way or adjust the amount of items to fit whatever size crockpot you have. Put it all in and let it do it's thing. It is amazing. Even better the next day.

Corn Dog Muffins . . .

2 packages (8 1/2 ounces each) corn bread or muffin mix
2 T brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 can whole kernel corn
5 hot dogs slice (or cocktail weinies)

Combine corn bread mix and brown wugar. Combine eggs and milk and then stir into dry ingredients. Stir in kernel corn and hot dogs. (Batter will seem thin)

Fill paper muffin cups 3/4 full.

Bake at 400° for 14-18 minutes or until golden brown

The Coop Keeper's Bread . . .

Jayme runs a fabulous blog here. I made her bread for the first time last week. Since then, I have made it four more times! It rocks, and I hate to bake. I asked before I pretty much stole her entire post . . .

It's a recipe that I adapted from the Mother Earth News magazine for No Knead Bread. I don't follow it exactly as they do, and my results are fantastic. I now have about six ziploc bags made up with the 'bread mix' and all I have to do is add water and I'm done.

The recipe:

3 cups of flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of salt

1/4 teaspoon of yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

Mix the yeast and water in a large bowl and set aside. Mix the flour and salt together. Add to the water. Stir it around until it forms a shaggy ball. Cover it with plastic wrap tightly. Let it sit for 10, preferably 18 hours, at room temperature.

Now comes the fun part....punch the dough down (it will be VERY wet) and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Take a few more handfuls of flour and mix it into the dough, making it just where you can get ahold of it and it feels sorta like a water balloon. It will be a very soft, loose dough. I like to rub flour all over it at this point and slash it a couple of times on the top. Sit it on top of a hunk of parchment paper and cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour or so.

Heat your oven to 500. Put your dutch oven in the oven while it's preheating.

Don't let the following step freak you out. After the oven is preheated, you have to lift that bread with the parchment paper and put it in the pot. I've never successfully done it without the bread deflating. It doesn't seem to matter!

Lower the oven temp to 425.

Cover the pot, and bake for 30 minutes.

Uncover, and bake about another 20 minutes, or until your bread looks brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

Try to let it cool for an hour before you cut it. Try hard.

Jayme also bakes bread in cans . . . check her out here.