Jan 09 2009
Warm Meals for Cold Winter Nights
A home cooked meal is wonderful any time, but nothing tastes as great as a warm, home-made meal on a cold winter night. The trick is to find recipes that are easy to prepare, preferably in one pot, with some staple ingredients.
Add some home-made bread, tasty snack crackers, or a salad, and you have a wonderful complete meal.
A good meal to make on a cold night is a pot of economy stew. The name comes from the cheap price to make the meal, not the quality of the taste. The main ingredients are ground beef, so if you find a sale on this, stock up. The recipe for economy stew is easy to follow and relies heavily on seasoning the stew to taste. It make take a few times of preparing this to get the seasoning amounts right for you and your family, but even the trial runs will taste great.
Another great meal to make on a cold night winter night is a large pot of jambalaya. This is a bit more labor intensive and requires more than one pot, but it tastes amazing, makes enough to eat for two or three meals or to share with friends, and you can clean up the kitchen while the jambalaya finishes cooking. The recipe for jambalaya has several ingredients, and some of these, such as the shrimp and ham, can be omitted. The rice in the recipe makes it filling. Be sure to serve it warm!
To accompany your pot of economy stew or jambalaya, try some tasty snack crackers. You have to plan your menu in advance when you want to have these tasty snack crackers because the directions call for these to sit overnight. Again, the recipe for tasty snack crackers is easy to follow with ingredients that you are likely to have at home.
If you want something spicier, try stuffed jalapeno peppers for an appetizer with your jambalaya, but be prepared for a spicy, hot meal. These stuffed jalapeno peppers are also called armadillo eggs because of their shape, and this recipe can also be tailored to fit your taste by leaving in the jalapeno seeds or taking these out when preparing the peppers.
A wonderful treat to include with your economy stew is a loaf of Irish Soda Bread. Again, the ingredients can probably be found in your pantry without making a trip to the grocery store. The recipe for Irish Soda bread is easy to follow and results in a great loaf of home-made, fresh, warm bread to accompany your stew.
If you want a warm drink to end your evening, consider trying Hot Spiced Tea or Homemade Hot Chocolate. The recipes for these make large amounts, but you can easily store the prepared mixes or give some away as great “pick me up” treats during the cold winter months.
Any of these warm meals and the accompanying appetizers, breads, snacks and drinks will provide a little comfort and a nice break from the cold of winter.
