Homemade Sloppy Joes

Sloppy joes are one of my all time favorite meals. In the past I have always just bought canned manwich or whatever was on sale. I have been cooking a lot more lately and thought I would like to make my own homemade mix. I looked online at about four different websites for inspiration and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef or turkey
• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped
• 1 small white onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 celery stalk, finely chopped
• 1 t minced garlic
• 1-6oz canned tomato sauce
• 1/2 t kosher salt
• 1/2 t ground pepper
• 1/2 t ground cumin
• 1 t chili powder
• 1 t low sodium worcestershire sauce
• 1 T yellow mustard
• 1 T brown sugar

1. Brown ground beef/turkey.
2. Combine olive oil, minced garlic, onion, red pepper and celery in medium sauce pan. Cook on low to medium heat until it becomes fragrant (about 3 minutes).
3. Drain ground beef/turkey and set aside.
4. Add remaining ingredients to vegetable mixture. Simmer for about 2 minutes.
5. Add ground beef/turkey and enjoy! 

I served mine on hamburger buns. You could also do them open faced with sliced cheese. I also think it would be really good on a baked potato with cheese and sour cream! Yum.

I am so pleased with the results! These sandwiches were so good I will never buy the canned mix again!

Introducing: Maggie and Lucy aka Mags and Lou

These two beautiful girls Mags and Lou (hence the name of the blog) have us absolutely wrapped around there little......um paws. Maggie and Lucy are our adorable little dogs. We adopted Maggie about 5 years ago from the human society in Columbus, OH (where we are both from originally).  And Lucy sort of just found us approximately 2 years ago. Lucy was a stray and we never found her family so now we are her family. We love our dogs so much and I like to think we make them just as happy as they make us. =)

 Hope you enjoyed meeting the girls! They are a lot more fun to meet in person. ;-)

Yummy Zucchini Spice Bread

I have a lot of favorite things about summertime but all of the wonderful fresh veggies is probably my favorite. I made this Zucchini bread the other day and sent a loaf to work with hubs. It was a HUGE hit and I am making it again today! This is the recipe I use:

  Zucchini Spice Bread

Ingredients

• Nonstick cooking spray
• 1 large zucchini
• 2 C packed light-brown sugar
• 4 T granulated sugar
• 1 1/3 C vegetable oil
• 4 t or (1 T and 1 t)vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs
• 3 C all-purpose flour
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 t ground nutmeg
• 1/2 t ground ginger
• 1/4 t ground cloves
• 1 1/2 t salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly coat two 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan with cooking spray, and set aside. Grate zucchini on the large holes of a box grater (when grated mine fills my 2 cup measuring cup a little over the edge); set aside. In a large bowl (or stand mixer), whisk together sugars, oil, vanilla, and eggs.
   
2. Into a small bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and salt (I am too impatient for sifting so I just whisk all of the dry ingredients together really well. You want the mixture to look really smooth. No big clumps!) Add flour mixture to egg mixture (I use my stand mixer & add about 1 cup of flour mixture at a time), and stir to combine well. Stir in grated zucchini.
   
3. Pour batter into prepared pan, spreading evenly (Pan should be about 3/4 of the way full. It will rise quite a bit when baking). Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean, 45 to 55 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes; invert onto a wire rack, then reinvert, top side up. Cool completely before slicing. And ENJOY!!!
   
   
   WARNING!!! If you send this to work with your husband you WILL start getting requests to make it again, and again and AGAIN! But I think this is a good thing. It's so nice when people enjoy your hard work so much! =)
   
   
   HAPPY BAKING!
   
   
   

Knock Off: Ballard Mirrors

 Just finished making these fantastic mirrors following a great tutorial from Thrifty and Chic. The mirrors turned out really great. I will be posting pictures of the final product soon. I am still working on the decor around them. Now that they are hanging on the wall I feel like I need to put a console table under them. Possibly my next DIY project...I am thinking this project plan by Ana White.