3 Simple Homemade Family Meals You'll Want to Make on Repeat!

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to my home and my kitchen where we are going to be spending a bunch of time together this week. I was just reading through my freezers, realizing there's a lot of meat in there that I need to use up ASAP. And at the same time, our potatoes are ready for harvest in the garden. So I thought, perfect week to make good use of those things and turn them into a few simple, good homemade family meals. The ones that we come back to over and over again. Okay, so let's go outside, see what we can harvest from the potato beds just for the next few days. We're not going crazy. I don't have time for that. And I'm trying to beat the rain. Vulnerable moment, sharing how much of a jungle the garden is. You can't really even walk through a lot of the walkways. Case in point, those are cherry tomatoes. Anybody wants cherry tomatoes, come to my house. You can have them. Those aren't weeds. That's just cherry tomatoes. We're going to go over here to this bed, which we recently weeded. We're going to harvest some potatoes. Okay, I kid you not. It feels like it's 10,000 degrees out here. We've had quite a few days of storms and it'll be sunny like it is now. And then all of a sudden it is clouded over and there's a torrential downpour. So you can imagine it is incredibly humid. I'm going to do this as fast as I can. Otherwise, by the end of the day, you will see that I am all swollen. Trying to avoid that as much as possible this pregnancy. So get some potatoes going here. Sorry, I know. Cell phone shadow is not the most aesthetic, nor is my head. Hopefully you can still see what I'm doing. It's too hot, my friends. I am not fussing too much. Some beautiful purple ones. Reddish color, maybe they're all red. Okay, time to go back inside. That was about two and a half plants, which will be plenty for this week for us. And I have all those fingerlings I showed you in the last video. I just wanted some more like Yukon-ish style. These aren't Yukon. Obviously they're pink and purple, but they will work. Thank you, Jesus, for air conditioning. Okay, I'm gonna get these guys washed up and ready to use. I have so many more to harvest. Like I think I had upwards of 80 potato plants. I had, I don't know if you can hear me over that. I had three 8x10s, two 4x4s, and like two small 2x6s. So we're gonna have a lot of potato harvesting in the future. But right now I just don't have the time to do anything with them, nor do I have somewhere to go with them. My plan is as we get closer to baby that I will start harvesting and start preserving, mostly for the freezer, doing lots of mashed potatoes, lots of french fries, easy things that I can pull out while I'm postpartum. But as for now, they're fine in the ground. They're gonna stay there. I might be doing a lot of giving away as well. So on the menu for dinner tonight, I had some St. Louis style pork spare ribs. I've just had them in some lukewarm water, getting them to thaw for me. We're gonna make these on the grill. Super easy. We're just gonna do it low and slow so they are fall off the bone tender. And with this, we're gonna do some scalloped potatoes. I love scalloped potatoes and nothing beats homemade scalloped potatoes. Matt's been really craving some meat and potato meals. So we're making that happen for him this week. And we'll include some sort of veggie in there with it too. Okay, we're gonna get started on a dry rub for the spare ribs. We're gonna do some brown sugar. I have, I guess it'd be two racks of ribs that were cut in half. I'm gonna do a double batch. So about a cup of brown sugar. Half cup if you only have one rack of ribs. Now I'm adding about a quarter cup, which is pretty much my entire bottle of paprika. That is going in. We're gonna do half tablespoon to a tablespoon of black pepper to your liking. We're not like huge pepper people. So I'm keeping that kind of conservative. Again, I like making things how we like. So if you like those flavors, add some more of them. Tablespoon, maybe a little bit more than that of salt. I'm going to do two teaspoons of ground mustard. That's optional. You can leave that out if you don't love mustard. I'm gonna do probably close to two tablespoons each of garlic powder and onion powder. Tablespoon and a half of chili powder. And then if you'd like some more kick, you can do cayenne pepper, you can do red pepper flakes. I am not going to do that. So I'm just gonna mix this up. I'm gonna grab my spare ribs, wipe them down with some paper towels, get all of that moisture off. And then we're gonna rub this in front and back. Meat is seasoned and ready to go here in some aluminum pans. I have one rack in each of my pans. They're just split in half and layered on top of each other. Now, this is not my recipe or my method. I will not pretend to be some grilling expert because I am not. I will link the site that I got this from. I have used it many times before. It's absolutely delicious. Now, you're supposed to put a cup of liquid into each pan. Usually, I would use apple juice, apple cider, or orange juice, but I have none of those. So I am going to adapt, and I'm gonna use some chicken broth. We're just gonna sweeten it a little bit with some brown sugar, okay? We can make it work that way. But a cup of liquid goes into each pan, and then we are going to cover it with aluminum foil, okay? All right, I've mixed up some broth with bouillon, and I've added about two tablespoons of brown sugar to this mixture. So half will go in here, okay, and the other half in this one. Now, the method this site goes by for grilling, I have really enjoyed. It is cooking it low and slow on the grill, and you want it over indirect heat. So I have three burners on my grill. I turn on the side two, and then I put my meat in the center, okay? And you want to maintain a temperature of about 300 degrees. It might take some adjusting until you can find that. Now, pork is done and able to be eaten at 145 degrees. We're gonna push it to more like 180, 190, because we want it super tender, juicy, fall off the bone, okay? So it's gonna take anywhere from an hour and 30 minutes to two hours, maybe even a little bit beyond that, just depending on how consistent you can keep that 300 degrees. So I have my grill preheated. We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna stick these guys in the center, lower the lid, and we'll check it in about an hour just to see where we're at. So the last few days, I have been gathering some of my fall items. I don't know if anyone else can feel fall coming, but I can, and I know some of you are like, Kelsey, just let me enjoy my summer. And I totally get it, okay? I don't like rushing through seasons, but fall is my favorite, okay? You do you, but fall is my favorite. And this year with being pregnant, I am really looking forward to some cooler weather. But anyways, I have been compiling some of my fall things here, and my mom and I are gonna go out thrifting, antiquing, shopping this coming Friday. And I am super excited about it. And I just got in some fall candles. When I saw that Antique Can Loco had sent me their fall scents, I was like, yes, it is time. I just love everything about fall. I crave those cool, crisp mornings that smell in the air, the leaves changing, cozy sweaters and blankets and hot coffees, and just making home cozy and warm again. And I love doing that with candles. I love the glowing ambiance they give, and just the aroma. You know, there's just something cozy about them, and I'm all about cozy. So their scents are so, so good all the time, but I especially love their fall scents. Fall Harvest is probably my favorite. It smells like everything that fall is supposed to be. Like, so good. We've got Pumpkin and Pine. I have some Clove and Pine. Pumpkin Spice, of course. Maple Butter, this one. Divine, and Autumn Woods. That just smells like going through a walk in the woods during the fall. These are all so good, but if you are unsure of what you may want, they also have this nifty little sample box where you can get all six of these in these small little two-ounce jars to see which ones you'd like best. This also makes a great gift, and it comes with a little match book here, which I just think is super cute. I also love that these are a clean-burning candle. There's no toxins here, which I am all about. These are the only candles that don't give me a headache, and if you've never purchased from them before, they do have 100% happiness guarantee where if you purchase a candle, you don't like it, they will keep sending you one for free until you find the scent that you love. I will have all the details linked for you in the description box below. You can use my code SEEDANDSPARROW20 to get 20% off your order, and that is like my permanent affiliate code, so it is there for your use if you wanna use it at another time so that you can make your home smell amazing and feel super cozy too. Thank you so much to Antique Candle Co. for sponsoring today's video. Okay, we're going to start on one of our side dishes. We're gonna make those scalloped potatoes. You're gonna want about two pounds of potatoes. Russet or Yukon are probably preferred, but use whatever you have like I am doing. I have my little handy-dandy mandolin slicer here just to help get those thin, even slices. You can do it by hand. It can take a little bit longer, but you do what you gotta do. I love this little gadget. I am not a huge fan of having a million things in my kitchen, especially having a smaller kitchen with not a whole lot of storage space, but this is one gadget I am happy to have. It's great for chopping, slicing. It comes with some different other attachments here. Great, and I think it was like 14 bucks on Amazon. So anyways, I am going to slice all these guys up, and then we're gonna go and we're gonna make a roux. I was just thinking, I don't want this turning like a weird gray or off color, so I'm gonna peel mine since I've got some interesting colors. Peeled and sliced potatoes. Okay, I'm just gonna cover these up until I have the cheese sauce ready to go. For this cheese sauce, I am going to start by making a roux, which is just equal parts flour and butter. Now, if you want to use onions, you could slice some up and saute them in that butter first. I am not gonna do that just purely because my kids don't like onions in things, even if I mince them up. Somehow, they detect said onions. So you can do that. I am going to melt the butter. I'm gonna throw in some garlic, get that all flavorful, and then add in my flour. So over a medium heat, I have my sauce pan here, two tablespoons of butter in there. We're gonna melt that. So to the butter, I don't know, tablespoon, minced garlic. We're gonna let that go and get fragrant for about 30 seconds. Now we need two tablespoons all-purpose flour. Okay, give that a stir. Now this needs to cook for about a minute. Now, slowly add in a half cup of broth. This is just water. I am going to add in some chicken bouillon in a second here. For some more liquid, one cup of milk. Now I'm keeping this over a medium heat. No need to bring this to a boil. In fact, if it gets there, turn the heat down. A bit of better than bouillon. Now for some cheese, freshly grated Parmesan. I probably have three-quarter cup here. I'm gonna add a pinch of pepper, some salt, probably a half teaspoon to a teaspoon, okay, and some rosemary, or you could use thyme or neither. Just gonna add a little bit of dried rosemary. Oh, and some dried onion powder, since I didn't use any raw onions. Give that an old stir. Leave it go for about a minute or two until the cheese is melted and everything is fairly smooth, and it is ready to go. Now I have just a nine-inch pie plate here. That's what I'm gonna use to bake the scalloped potatoes in. You can use any sort of baking dish, probably on the smaller side, like a nine-by-nine. Okay, so lots of butter on the bottom. Okay, we layer some potatoes. We're gonna do three layers, so take a third of them now. Kind of overlap them like so. One-third of our cheese sauce. It's gonna get ladled over the top. Then we're gonna shred some cheese on top. I am using some Kerrygold Dubliner. You can use a cheddar, you can use a Gouda, you could use Swiss, do a combo, whatever floats your boat. But probably a half cup for each layer. All right, 375, covered for 30 minutes. Then we're going to remove the foil, bake another 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender and you have a nice golden brown top. It's been about an hour and a half on the grill, and my ribs have reached about 185 degrees Fahrenheit, so I have removed them from the grill. They're just sitting on the sides right now. I'm keeping the grill on because we're gonna put them directly onto the grill grates here in a moment. We're gonna make a little glaze for them first. Her recipe calls for orange marmalade, which I don't have, but I do have some peach jam, which is just what I'm gonna use. I think it's gonna be great. So I have, this is about a cup of peach jam, and I have a scant half cup of apple cider vinegar in my saucepan here. We're just gonna whisk these together until they make somewhat of a glaze, just a couple minutes on medium heat. I didn't really leave much space on here for our third item. We took about, we're going with some homemade applesauce, delicious with pork and potatoes. But this, my friends, is what's for dinner. I don't want it to fall off the plate, so that's what you get. Another day, another dinner, and tonight we're gonna make use of some of the chicken legs that I have in my freezer. I have quite a few packs, so we raise our own birds here for meat. Prior to that, though, I'd really only ever purchase and cook with chicken breast. It's just what I was used to. I've always been more of a white meat girl than a dark meat. Matt likes both, so I just always went with the chicken breast, just knew how to use it and knew how to cook it in a way that always tasted good. So after we started raising our own birds, of course you have to use the entire bird. So after some trial and error, I did find a method that we all enjoyed the result of the chicken leg. Sometimes if it's not done right, at least for me, I find them to be kind of chewy and rubbery because there's a lot of connective tissue. And so I have found the best method is cooking them low and slow. So that's what we're gonna do tonight. We're gonna braise some chicken legs. I'm gonna do a lemon Dijon sauce with them. We're gonna get some nice and crispy, make the sauce, and then we're gonna cook them low and slow so we get that fall off the bone, super juicy, super tender meat. So I'm gonna get an oven safe pan, heating up over a medium heat. My burner here, and I'm gonna grab my chicken. Okay, I have three chicken legs I'm working with here. That works for our family of four. The kids will usually split one and then Matt has one and I have one. I am patting it completely dry. If it is still pretty wet, you're not gonna get that nice searing in the pan like we want. And we want a really nice brown, crispy skin. I wanna generously salt each of the chicken legs using my red Monreal salt always. And I have their organic lemon pepper seasoning. So I'm gonna put that on here as well. After this has heated up, I have added some olive oil, just a little bit in the bottom, maybe about a tablespoon. Once the oil is nice and hot, we want it super hot so we get a nice searing of the skin. I'm gonna put these in skin side down. Okay, you wanna hear that sizzle. And now I am not gonna touch them at all for at least three minutes. If you touch them, you disturb the whole searing process, which we don't want. So three minutes on skin side down, flip them about another three minutes. We're not looking to cook them. We're just building flavor. So after about three to four minutes, each side, we're moving to a plate. We're gonna make our sauce. I can't get them out of the pan. About two tablespoons of butter. About three cloves of garlic. Give that 30 seconds or so. Tablespoon of flour. This is just gonna help the sauce thicken up a little bit later. We're not making a roux. About a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Juice of half a lemon. And slowly pour in one and a half cups of chicken broth. Right now it's just water, but I'll add some chicken bouillon to it in a moment. Totally optional, but you could add some rosemary or thyme. I'm just gonna do a little sprinkling of rosemary. A little sprinkling of salt. All right, I've lowered the heat. Now we're gonna add some heavy cream. About a half cup. Give that a stir, and then we're gonna taste it. If it needs some more brightness, I'll add a little bit more lemon juice, salt and pepper as needed, or anything else. Maybe some more Dijon. I'm gonna stick my chicken legs back in here. Skin side up. Okay. I have my oven preheated to 325 degrees. I'm gonna get this guy covered, stick it in the oven. I'm gonna let it go for about 60 to 75 minutes, then we're gonna check on it. To go with the chicken, I'm using some of those fingerlings I showed you, I think it was last video, that we had harvested while we were waiting. I love fingerlings, and I especially love them crispy and roasted. So that's what we're gonna do, just a very simple side dish. I already had a little bit of work with the chicken. I try not to have three different components to a meal be a lot of work. Not that the chicken was a lot of work, but it's a little bit more hands-on. This is just very simple. So I'm cutting these guys in half. They're all fairly small. And I want to lay them here on a towel just to try and get all of the moisture off of them. So I just washed them. You need dry potatoes if you want crispy potatoes, okay? It has been about an hour since we put the chicken legs in, and I'm going to just check their temperature. Chicken is edible at 165, but we're aiming more for like 190 or closer to 200. That is going to be fall-off-the-bone tender. And you should see the meat starting to pull away, which I can here. And we're registering 185-ish. So I'm gonna leave the lid off, and I'm gonna turn on the broiler. I'm gonna stick them under there for two to three minutes. Just get them a little bit more crispy on top, and then we'll call them done. I like to douse my potatoes in olive oil, some salt and pepper, and I threw in some garlic powder. And these roast at 425 to 450 for about 20 minutes untouched, cut side down. And then after about those 20 minutes, I will flip them, let them go for another five to 10, or until they are done to my liking. I need something else to go with dinner, and I want something light and still summery. I don't want anything to feel too heavy. So I think we're gonna go out to the Weedy Garden and grab some of the cherry tomatoes that are now growing in the walkways. I didn't bring out a tripod, so you are resting in some people's view. We're gonna fall over. There are plenty of cherry tomatoes here to gather. Got some yellow and some red. One of my favorite summertime snacks and something I will add to our meals for dinner if I am in a pinch, just need something quick, want something bright and refreshing, is a tomato and mozzarella salad. I love using cherry tomatoes, but any tomato will do just fine. And I personally like using the mozzarella pearls. I will douse it with a little bit of balsamic vinegar, some salt and pepper, and call it good. I needed to take the meat off of one for the kids anyways, so I wanted to show you just how tender and fall-off-the-bone this meat is. The next meal I made on another rainy day, and it just so happened to be a little bit cooler, and it really felt like fall was in the air. We're supposed to have quite a few days right around 70, 75 in the next 10-day forecast, and I'm so excited. So I love this meal during the cooler months, but it's also not too heavy, so it makes a great transition into those fall months. We're gonna make some cheesy garlic mashed potatoes and some beef tips and gravy. I'm combining some brown sugar, some black pepper, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and some chili powder to coat my beef tips. Then a light coating of some flour, and then to sear them in a hot skillet with some olive oil, just roughly 60 seconds per side. We're not looking to cook them, just to sear them to make sure they stay nice and tender and juicy. After all the beef has been cooked, remove, and we're gonna make our gravy now. I'm gonna reduce some red wine. If you don't wanna use red wine, you can just use some more beef broth. I'm gonna add some butter. Now I will add in some beef broth. Again, I just added some water, and I added some beef bouillon after. Then went in some seasoning, some rosemary, garlic and onion powder, some Worcestershire, some salt and pepper, and then I made a cornstarch slurry and slowly added that into the simmering broth mixture. Add the beef and the juices back in, cook over a simmer until it's done to your liking. For my mashed potatoes, I add a whole bunch of melted butter, a little splash of heavy cream, cheese, some garlic powder, and salt and pepper. I finished this meal off with some candied carrots. They are my kids' favorites. Just some carrots cooked until tender with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter until it gets nice and syrupy. And that's everything for today. I hope this gave you a little inspiration for your own kitchen and maybe a few new ideas for making the most of these last weeks of summer and the transition into fall. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Many blessings, my friend. Until next time, you take care.