I haven’t played Four Foods on Friday in several weeks.  I guess I have just been so busy getting everything ready for Christmas that I haven’t had time.  Anyhoo, every Friday Val from Fun, Crafts and Recipes gives us four questions to answer.

Here are this week’s four questions.

#1. What’s your favorite crunchy food?
For some reason the only crunchy food I can think of is Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I love the crunchy ones.

#2. How often do you try new recipes?
I try to do it a couple of times each month- to keep things from getting boring.  That doesn’t always happen, but it is my goal.

#3. Name a food that you almost always have in the house.
Definitely cereal.  We love cereal so we always have some of it.

#4. What kind of food do you leave out for Santa on Christmas Eve?
We leave decorated sugar cookies with eggnog if we have it, or milk.  This year Santa told Hailey to leave some carrots for the reindeer- and she’s insisting that we need to do that too.

Stop by Fun, Crafts and Recipes if you’d like to play along.

Since I didn’t have any crafts to post last week I’ve decided to share a recipe.  This would be a perfect addition for your Thanksgiving meal- it’s yummy!!

Baked Corn Pudding Ingredients:

Directions: In a large bowl, combine sugar and flour. Whisk in the eggs, milk, butter, salt and pepper. Stir in the corn and cream-style corn. Pour into a greased 1-1/2-qt. baking dish. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Yield: 10 servings.

(Picture taken from Taste of Home.)

Val at Fun, Crafts and Recipes hosts Four Foods on Friday every week.  Here are the questions she gave us this week:

#1. Name a food you like that uses a red sauce or anything red in it.
I love pizza- and since I guess pizza sauce is kind of red, I’ll go with pizza.

#2. Name a food you like with whipped cream in it or on it.
I love to have whipped cream on my hot chocolate.

#3. Name a food you like with blueberry in it.
My mom makes this amazing blueberry salad that I love.

#4. Share a recipe for pasta or dessert or a beverage.
I’m going to use this as a chance to post about my recipe that is a part of the Velveeta Casserole Challenge.  It’s called Meat Lovers Pizza Casserole (there are ziti noodles in it, so I think it qualifies as pasta, right?)

Meat Lovers Pizza Casserole

The ingredients

Cook about 10 oz of the Ziti noodles

Chop up 1 cup of green pepper

Chop up 1 small onion.

Cook 1/2 pound of ground beef, green pepper and onion until meat is no longer pink. Drain it and then set it aside in a medium bowl (which will be called the “meat bowl” for the rest of this post).

Brown 1/2 pound of sausage and add it to the “meat bowl.”

Cook 8oz of bacon, drain and add to the “meat bowl.”

Cut up 1 cup of fully cooked ham- and you guessed it- add it to the “meat bowl.” Stir everything in the “meat bowl” until it is well mixed.

Add 12 oz of Spaghetti sauce to the meat mixture and mix well.

By now your Ziti noodles should be done cooking so you will need to drain them.

Cut 4 oz of Velveeta Cheese into little cubes and mix it with the ziti noodles. Be sure to do this while the noodles are nice and warm and the cheese will melt very easily.

Now add the other 12 oz of Spaghetti sauce to the noodles and cheese. Spread that mixture into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Then spread the meat mixture on top of that.

Then grate 8 oz of Velveeta cheese (I didn’t know you could grate Velveeta cheese, but I tried it and it actually grated pretty easily). Sprinkle that on top of your casserole.

Then add pepperoni to the top of your casserole. Add as much or as little as you like. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes or until cooked through.

Yummy Meat Lovers Pizza Casserole.

And again from a different angle.

And now in case you just want the recipe in regular format:

Meat Lovers Pizza Casserole

Ingredients:
½ pound ground beef
½ pound sausage
8 oz bacon
1 cup fully cooked ham
Sliced pepperoni (use as much or as little as you prefer)
10 oz Ziti noodles, cooked and drained
1 (24 ounce) jar Spaghetti sauce, divided
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup chopped green pepper
12 oz Velveeta Cheese, divided

Directions:

In a skillet cook ground beef, onion and green pepper until meat is no longer pink, drain and set aside in a medium sized bowl.
In a skillet cook sausage until meat is no longer pink, drain and add to bowl with beef in it.
In a skillet cook bacon, drain and add to bowl with other meats.
Add 1 cup of fully cooked ham cut into bite size pieces to the other meats and stir everything until well mixed. Then add half of the jar of Spaghetti sauce to the meat mixture, mix well.
After you have cooked and drained your ziti noodles- add 4 oz of Velveeta cheese that has been cut into small cubes. Be sure to add the Velveeta cheese while the noodles are warm so that the cheese will melt. Then add the other half of the jar of Spaghetti sauce to the noodles and cheese. Spread the noodles into a greased 9×13 inch dish.
Add the meat mixture on top of the noodles. Cover with 8oz of grated Velveeta Cheese and top with pepperoni slices.
Cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until cooked through.

If that looks yummy to you (and I PROMISE, it is YUMMY!) then please stop by and vote for me at the Velveeta Casserole Challenge.  I’m the one all the way on the right- Livin’ With Me and Meat Lovers Pizza Casserole.

You can also check out some fun giveaways I have going on at my Livin’ With Me blog- if you vote for me you can have a chance to win some great prizes.

With Christmas time coming I have started thinking about one of my favorite treats to eat and so I had to share it with you.

Peppermint Bark

2 (1 lb) White Chocolate Mint bags
1 1/2 rows of Oreo cookies.

(And that is all the ingredients!)

Now, put the chocolate in the microwave:
Microwave for 1 minute, then stir
Microwave for 1 minute, then stir
Microwave for 1 minute, then stir (or, if your microwave is like mine- you may not need to do a full minute for this last one)

While the chocolate is melting- break up Oreos into little pieces.

Once the chocolate is melted- put the broken Oreos into the chocolate and mix quickly.

Spread onto a cookie sheet and put in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.

Take out of freezer and break into small pieces.

Pass it out to your friends and neighbors, but don’t tell them that it only has 2 ingredients!

I have no idea if this is weird or not.  Maybe I am a little crazy.  But maybe there are others out there who are the same way as me.

When we get our Sunday fliers in the paper one of my favorite things to do is to look through all of the ads.  I have certain ads that are my favorites that I always look for and have to check out.  One of the things I must always look for are the appliances.  Not necessarily the big appliances (although I need a new dishwasher, so I sometimes check those out).  But I really love to look at the small kitchen appliances- things like mixers, blenders, deep fryers, vacuum sealers- you know things like that.

I’m not a fabulous cook, I do my best.  But, these appliances are just fascinating to me.  Like maybe if I had that special blender I could make awesome food.  So naturally I often set the Sears ad so I can look closely at all of the fun appliances.

Well, right now there is an exciting Cookware and Bakeware Sale going on that you are going to want to check out.  Even if you aren’t as excited about appliances as I am, I’ll bet you’d be excited about a deal like this one:

You can get a basic essentials 8 piece roster set for $4.99 (after a $10 mail-in rebate).   This is only available from 11/5-11/8 so you’re going to want to hurry and check it out.