Have you ever had one of those days when you aren’t sure how you are going to get home after a crazy day of work/kids/carpool/life and make something your family will eat?  While I have kids who will eat about anything, there are plenty of nights I wonder how I’m going to feed my family before they have to be asleep!

I have the perfect meal for you!  And in this case, I didn’t even make it!  My 14 year old daughter had supper prepared for the family while I was trying to get home after a crazy day of work.

Enter Crock Pot Tater Tot Casserole.  It may not be a gourmet meal.  Or maybe it reminds you of your college days when you couldn’t afford to buy expensive groceries, but it’s a meal everyone in your family will eat!  It’s also a meal you could make on a nice fall afternoon, while watching your favorite family member play youth football, run a giant cross country meet that takes all day, or plays in a volleyball tournament that last for hours!  Tailgating isn’t just done at college sports, it’s at plenty of youth events as well!

Alexandra was thrilled to make this completely on her own.  In fact, I was still at work when I called her, rattled off the recipe, and she assembled it in my favorite Colts Crock Pot.  By the time the kids got done with their cross country and football practices, supper was done and I didn’t lift a finger.  Thank goodness for kids who jump in and help!

This meal reminds me so much of something my roommates and I ate in college!  Brings back fun memories!

This fall, when my Farmer is in the field during long hours of corn and soybean harvest, this is one easy meal I can take to him or quickly feed my kids.  What’s your favorite meal to take to your kids sporting events?  I’d love to hear about it!

I just made the best soup of my entire life.  Seriously people.  I almost ate three bowls of this fantastic yumminess!  Mexican Pork Pozole Soup that is hearty, easy and so, so delicious!

Let me back up and explain why I wanted to make this soup.  A few weeks ago, Rusty and I had the chance to go to Mexico.  We’ve been to the sun and sand of our southern neighbors on a few occassions.  But anytime we get to sit on a beach as a couple is a great time!  With a farm full of livestock, it is nearly impossible to get away.  The animals need cared for 24 hours a day.  If we just had crops, it would be easier to escape for a few days.  But with hogs, it takes a bit of planning to be gone.  Thankfully, we have great employees who tend to the animals when we are gone!

And thank goodness we could escape for a few days.  We needed it!  21 years of marriage and we still make each other laugh.  I’m fairly certain he was goosing my rearend as we were trying to take this picture!

See my sunburnt nose?  See my handsome hubby?  I love him so!

The best food we ate was this just caught, grilled on the beach, giant yellow tuna!  Served with freshly cracked coconuts!  Coconut water isn’t exactly tasty, in my opinion, until you add some flavored vodka to it.  Then it starts to taste better!  And I should be embarrassed that I attacked that coconut with my plastic knife and fork to get the meat out of the inside!  It was so tasty!

This was so good.  I wish I could lick the computer screen!  I ate this meal sitting on my beach chair, watching Rusty play beach volleyball, visiting with great friends and enjoying the ocean in front of me.  It was heaven!

I love to eat as “local” as possible when travelling.  Sometimes resort/hotel food doesn’t quite fit that bill.  When I’ve been in Mexico, I sometimes find they tone down the spices, “Americanize” the flavors and serve too many burgers!  So I was very excited to find a soup at breakfast one morning.

I loved this soup.  Pork Pozole Soup with hominy and pulled pork.  The broth was fairly mild.  I ate two bowls for breakfast that morning, and each subsequent day we were there!  And I wanted to recreate it when we got home.

I made my soup a bit spicier.  I like a little heat.  My kids like some spice as well.  And my Farmer thinks jalapeno’s are mild.  So spice doesn’t bother him!

The first step was to chop up an onion and brown it in some olive oil with garlic.  I rarely crush garlic cloves.  I always have garlic paste on hand.  And this one I found on clearance!  A little squeeze of this goes a long way.

After browning the garlic and onion, I added the spices for a few minutes.  Be sure to stir so it doesn’t burn.

I made this recipe with both a pork loin and a pork shoulder roast.  Despite having both of these items in the freezer from when we butchered over Christmas, I did purchase them at the grocery.  I recommend buying whichever cut is on sale.  This picture is of a pork loin.  I cooked, submerged in water, on medium for 8 hours in my crockpot.  The water becomes my pork stock for the soup.

Add the pork stock, hominy and enchilada sauce to the onion mix.  Bring to a boil.  Then add the shredded pork and heat until warm.

Serve with sour cream, a squeeze of fresh lime juice and salt and pepper to taste.

I liked this soup so much, that I just made my Farmwife friends their own soup!  Eight of us just got together and did a big freezer cooking session.  I made 8 batches of this soup, one for each of us, and froze them in gallon size freezer bags.  All my friends will have to do it thaw it, heat in a crockpot until warm, and serve!  My friend Cheri, who blogs at Queen of Free, has a great post about how to do a successful freezer meal day.

I hope you love this!  I miss this view, but so glad I brought the soup idea home with me!

I am so glad fall has arrived in my cornfield.  The trees are beautiful, the fields are being harvested, and our pace is a little more relaxed around the farmhouse.  The kids are in-between school sports, just doing some travel basketball right now.  There is time for crafts, kicking a soccer ball in the yard, competitive games of Uno and Monopoly, rides in the combine and just enjoying each other.

I was able to take a week off of work during the kids Fall Break.  The Farmer was busy with harvest, so he wasn’t as lucky to hang out with us.  Instead, I spent the week with great friends and their kids at a local state park campground.  The kids rode their bikes, decorated pumpkins, painted rocks and sticks, and just goofed off.  The grownups enjoyed adult conversations, a few adult beverages and a lot of food!!

We also got to trick or treat.  For an easy costume idea, I recommend going as Smores!  I donned the graham cracker costume, simply cardboard front and back.  Lauryn was the Hershey Bar and Levi was a marshmallow!  Alexandra didn’t want to play along with our family-theme so she went as a Holy Cow!  We simply decorate white pants and shirt with black spots and added angel wings and a halo.  She looked so cute!

I love Elephant Ears.  For those not from the Midwest, they are also called Mouse Ears, funnel cakes, beaver tails and funnel clouds.  In the midwest, these are popular at county fairs and local festivals.  They are basically dough fried in oil, brushed with butter and then dipped in cinnamon sugar.  And they are delicious!

Since we were camping and doing much of our food over the firepit, I decided to try my own campfire version of elephant ears.  I didn’t have a recipe and had no idea if this would work.  However, based on how fast they were consumed by the kids and their friends and the adults, I think they were a hit!

All I did for these Campfire Elephant Ears was to buy 3 cans of canned biscuits.  I placed a cast iron skillet over the firepit.  The fire was pretty hot, but the flames weren’t high above the skillet.  I poured about 2 inches of oil in the pan.  I have no idea how many cups this was.  Just enough to give room for the dough to cook.

Then you’ll need to find extra kids to help flatten the biscuits.  This was easy as we had kids in and out of our campsite all week.  So the kids were put to work, by lantern light, trying to flatten and stretch the dough.  I learned, after ruining the first one I cooked, that it’s important the dough be thin!  Otherwise you will have a burnt outside and a doughy, raw inside.

Once the dough is thin and your oil is boiling, carefully put the dough in the oil.  Use tongs to turn it and cook on the other side.  There is no real timing method to this.  It is fast!  I kept turning it over and over until I decided both sides were brown.  It maybe took 90 seconds to 2 minutes per elephant ear.

Once you take it out of the oil, blot with paper towel and add the cinnamon sugar.  I didn’t use butter, but you could brush it with butter then add the sugar topping.

That’s it!  These are so good!  If you are used to the giant treats at your county fair, these aren’t going to be exactly the same.  But if you are camping with an open fire, friends, your kids and some dance music in the background, you’ll love these and the memories that come along with making them!

Have you ever made a treat over the fire?  I’d love to hear about it.  We love camping and finding new things to cook over the fire.  And most importantly, making memories that we hope last a lifetime!

For this recipe, I used a cast iron skillet much like this one.  I love the Lodge brand for newer cast iron.  I have a bunch of old cast iron but I buy Lodge when I need new items too!

I am hooked up with some of my favorite bloggers this week!  Check out Meal Plan Monday for recipe inspirations!

Are you ever grocery shopping and find produce on clearance and buy all of it?  I do!

A few months ago, I found a 3-pack of red, orange and yellow peppers on sale at my local grocery store.  I love peppers.  But they can be expensive!  So when I found these three peppers for $2 on clearance, I bought all the marked-down peppers!

After bringing all of those peppers home, I needed recipe inspiration for them.  I have always loved eating stuffed peppers in restaurants, but hadn’t made them at home.  So a quick recipe book search and some of my own changes let me to make Easy Crockpot Beef Stuffed Peppers!

Don’t be intimated by thinking these may be hard to make.  They are so easy and SO delicious!  Since we are hog farmers and often have more ground pork in the freezer than ground beef, I also make these with ground pork and think they are just as good!

Let me know how you and your family like them!  I’ll be eating them again soon as well!