Main Dishes - Home-Ec 101

Budget-Friendly Ground Beef Stroganoff Recipe

A roll with poppy seeds on a white plate, a plate of ground beef stroganoff over egg noodles with a dollop of sour cream, roasted carrots, and pan seared green beans with multi-colored grape tomatoes, a water glass and a blue napkin

This budget-friendly recipe for stroganoff made with ground beef, mushrooms simmered in a gravy made with paprika, red wine, beef stock and sour cream is excellent for weeknights!

Pot Roast with Balsamic Gravy

This recipe is a riff on Wicked Noodle’s Chuck Roast with Balsamic and Dijon. It was originally posted on this site back in 2015, but has been updated in 2022. I’m not a super huge thyme fan so I went with garlic, but you can do whatever makes you happy. I know I said three …

chicken, pita bread, mixed vegetables, and green salad

I had a hard time coming up with the name for this shawarma-inspired chicken dish. Why? I don’t want to be culturally appropriative as this is not at all authentic. The flavors, however, remind me of chicken shawarma I have had in the past and hope to have again someday. (I miss traveling so much.) …

What’s your favorite comfort food? Our family’s recent go-to is baked spaghetti, I belong to a group on Facebook for food lovers that also enjoy True Crime. It has the absolute best name (it’s for fans of My Favorite Murder) Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Crime. Isn’t that just the best? Anyhow, one of the more …

First of all, everyone hates a meandering recipe introduction, even for pot roast. I know this. This is not an introduction. This is the methodology, not a story about how I met the cow, named Gertrude, and harvested the carrots from organic compost. The recipe card is shorter to keep it to one printed page. …

My kids call biscuits and gravy their favorite struggle meal. For me, sausage gravy is my favorite I-don’t-have-enough-energy-to-deal-with-anything-recipe. All of my teenagers now know how to make sausage gravy themselves, and I keep a few cans of biscuit dough in the fridge for the nights of no energy or time. Yes, homemade no-knead biscuits are …

Heather says: Of all the recipes in all the world, never did I think the kids would like this one for tuna cakes. Crab is a bit on the spendy side for a herd of finicky kids, so I figured I’d give budget-friendly tuna a try. I expected turned up noses and arguing about at …

Heather says: Eating locally and seasonally is a popular trend, with good reason. Choosing foods grown locally and in season reduces the amount of energy that is needed to bring the food from the farm to your table. In colder climates, it isn’t always convenient or practical as late winter can mean nothing is actually …

Disclaimer: If you’re teaching a young child to cook, these are intended to be a good starting point, but children will still need supervision as knives are sharp and stoves are hot. Capiche? Heather says: ♫ Let’s start at the very beginning A very good place to start When you read you begin with A-B-C …

Heather says: The butcher shop I love had a special on riblets and leg quarters this week. If you’ve never worked with riblets before, they are the trimmed ends of back or spare ribs. As they aren’t the world’s most attractive cut, they are often significantly cheaper than back or spare ribs. As I didn’t have …