Chop the onions and peppers. Add the burger, onions and peppers and garlic salt to a stockpot and brown over medium heat.

Add the remaining ingredients (rice last) and thorougly stir. Cover and simmer for approx 40 minutes. Be sure to stir this mixture ever 10 minutes or so to prevent scalding.

Upon completion, all of the tomato liquid will have been absorbed into the rice. Enjoy!

In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat eggs, one at a time into butter/sugar mixture.

Beat in the vanilla.

Using a wooden spoon or spatula, stir in the flour mixture until dry ingredients are just moistened.

If you have fresh strawberries, buzz them through the food processor. If using frozen, crush with forks.

Gently fold strawberries into cake mixture.

Pour batter into greased bundt pan. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes.. until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Transfer pan to wire rack and cool slightly.

Turn cake out onto serving platter and cool completely.

Mix glaze ingredients together until smooth. In the above picture of the cake.. you can see I used to much lemon juice (I was guesstimating).. it turned out a bit to runny. Spoon glaze over the cooled bundt cake and Enjoy

Turkey & Dumplings

Pick the bones of the turkey or chicken.. place bones in a stock pot basket (I have a basket insert that slips right into the stockpot). If you don't have the basket, place bones in the stockpot and cover wtih water. If using the basket, fill the stockpot with water. Either way, boil for 1- 1/2 hours.

Once you have made your chicken stock, pull the basket full of bones, etc. out of the stockpot. If just simply boiling bones.. strain bone, etc from stock and pour stock back into stockpot.

Add the meat and veggies to the soup stock. Cook until veggies are al dente.

While veggies and stock are simmering, prepare dumplings. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.

Pour in the milk, while gently stirring mixture.

Mix only unitl mixture is completely moistened.

Drop the dumplings by large spoon fulls into the simmer soup.

Cook slowly for 10 minutes uncovered (no lid).

Place lid on stockpost and cook another 10 minutes covered. After this last direction, remove stockpot from heat and serve. Enjoy

Crush graham crackers to fine crumbs (for ease, use food processor). Add the sugar and mix.

Pour the melted butter over crumb mixture and mix thoroughly.

Generously butter your springform pan, insuring all the nooks and crevasses are covered.

Press the crust mixture into buttered springform pan. Cover the bottom and a couple inches up the walls... patting firmly.

Bake 325 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Pull out of oven and set aside while making cheesecake mixture.

Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth.

Beat eggs into mixture one egg at a time. Beat unitl smooth.

Remove 2 cups of the batter and spread evenly over the bottom of your prepared crust.

Blend in the crushed fruit (pictured - whole cranberry sauce).. Blend until creamy.

Carefully spread the fruit mixture over the plain layer cheesecake.. Isn't it pretty!

Pop it in your preheated oven and bake for 35 - 40 minutes.. or until center is almost set. Cool on the counter until warm.. then refridgerate for 4 hours or overnight. Enjoy

Pour all ingredients into a 6 quart crockpot. Heat on high for until good and HOT, then turn the temp down to warm.

Pop and measure your popcorn.

Pour the popcorn into a large paper grocery sack. I use a papersack for mixing, for ease of clean-up.

In a medium saucepan.. bring the sugar, corn syrup, butter & salt to a boil.

As soon as the mixure starts to boil, set the timer for 3 minutes. Boil and continue stirring for the full 3 minutes.

As soon as the 3 minutes of boiling is complete, remove from heat and stir in the baking soda.

After adding the baking soda.. the mixture will 'froth'... this is totally normal

Pour the mixture over the measured popcorn that it is in the paper sack.

I use a wooden spoon to mix the carmel corn.

Using buttered hands, form the carmel corn into desired ball shape. I kind of squeeze the balls to make them firm. Caution, the mixture will be hot.

If you do not want to make the balls.. and would prefer to have a bowl of carmel corn, then I use 4 heaping qts of popcorn instead of the three. It all tastes GREAT!

Measure the sugar and orange juice into a saucepan.

Over medium heat, stir mixture unitl the sugar is dissolved.

Once the sugar has dissolved, add the cranberries and stir.

Bring the mixture to a good steady boil. After about 8-10 minutes, the cranberries will 'pop'.. Continue stirring.

Once the cranberries have popped, take a potato masher and mash down the berries several times. Continue boiling for a total of 18 minutes (I set the timer from the first sign of the mixure boiling).

Continue to stir the whole time. Once the 18 minutes is completed, remove pan from heat and set aside to cool. Once cool, place the sauce into the desired storage container and store in the refridge.

This sauce can accompany more than turkey.. it can be spread over a biscuit or used as a french toast spread, etc, etc. Enjoy

Pour milk into thick bottomed sauce pan. Place your dairy thermometer into milk.

Turn the stove top burner onto a medium heat. Sprinkle the citric acid over the top of the milk. Stir the citric acid into the milk.

While milk is heating, measure the rennet and water... add rennet to the cold water (Very important! Never add rennet directly into milk, as it won't work.. I know from experience :-/ )

Heat milk to 86 degrees. Mix in water/rennet combo thoroughly. Once you have mixed it, discontinue mixing.

In pretty short order, you will see the curds seperating from the whey. I leave them alone (no stirring). Once your temperature reaches 105 degrees, remove pan from heat.

Scoop out curds into a microwave safe dish. I use a 8 cup pyrex glass measuring bowl. Continue to scoop until ALL curds are in the bowl.

Use the spoon (I use a large slotted spoon) that you scooped the curds, to hold them back and drain the excess whey back into the pan.

Microwave the curds for about 45 seconds. The time all depends on the microwave (how hot it heats items).

After the first microwaving, the cheese should start 'stretching' allowing it to be kneaded. As I knead the cheese, I continuously drain the whey back into the pan.

I microwave mine a total of 2-3 times each batch of cheese. I knead the cheese until no more whey comes out.

Sprinkle the hot, stretched (kneaded) cheese with cheese salt. I have never measured.. just sprinkle to taste. Knead the salt into the cheese - the cheese might need to be slightly reheated.

Place the cheese into desired mold (on in a bowl). The mold pictured has holes, so I lined it with plastic wrap. Cool in refridge and use within several days or freeze. Mozzerella freezes beautifully! I notice when the cheese is not used within several days of being refridged, the flavor heads south.

I started making marinated mozzerella this past summer. I cube the cheese, pour olive oil over the top and mix in fresh basil and salt to taste. YUMMMM!

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

Cut in butter until the flour mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.

Stir in your fruit of choice. You will see in the pictures displayed in this blog.. that I have taken the pic's with differnt flavors/batches of scones.

Mix the yogurt or milk with the beaten egg and vanilla. Stir into the flour/fruit mixture until just moistened.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead briefly. Pat dough into a 1/2 inch think flattened circle. Cut into 8 wedges and place them on prepared baking sheet. (I find that when this recipe is cut into 8 pieces, it makes a very large scone.. a lot of times I cut it into 9 wedges).

Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

Place a sprig of fresh dill and a few thick slices of garlic in the bottom of the wide mouth quart jar.

Pack VERY clean (they need to be very, very clean!) cucumbers into jars. I line them up, finding the right cucumber to fit the jar perfectly. Once your jars are loaded with the cukes, place a sprig of dill and a few more chunks of garlic on top.

Once my jars are packed, I make the brine. My dill pickle recipe does NOT call for waterbathing..It is very important to make one batch of brine at a time.. to insure the brine is very HOT.

Measure the water, vinegar & salt into your medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil. This batch of brine will be enough to fill 3 of the jars.

While your brine is heating, place your canning lids into the small saucepan, cover with water and boil. They need to be good and hot (and steralized) to seal the pickles.

This is what your pickles will look like a few hours after canning them. The spots of bright green are totally normal and in a short time, all of the pickles will become the dull green color. Leave the jars alone for 24 hours. After a day, it is safe to move your jars to the shelf. MAKE SURE they are ALL sealed. If you find one not sealed, put it in the refridge. They will need to sit for approx 6 weeks to get the full 'dill pickle' flavor. I usually put a little sticker on top with two dates.. the date I canned them and the date they can be consumed