Freshly ground pepper makes House Seasoning even more delicious.
Carey, my fellow blogger here at The Inspired Budget, has inspired me to try a more homemade/less fast food lifestyle.
I’ve already dabbled with things like homemade syrups, and I have big plans for cooking and baking more from scratch.
One foods-from-scratch trend I already love and use often is homemade mixes. They’re so versatile and inexpensive to make that I seldom buy any kind of pre-made mix anymore. Yesterday, for example, I found a mix for Mediterranean flatbread. I was tempted to buy it because it was priced on clearance at $3.99, but essentially it was flour and spices. Why buy a mix when I’ve already got those ingredients at home in my cupboards?
My very favorite mixes to make are specialty spice blends, such taco mix, enchilada sauce mix, and other seasoning blends. My all-time favorite homemade spice blend comes from Paula Deen. Her recipe for what she calls “House Seasoning” is just salt, pepper and garlic powder. It’s so simple, and so good. I have used it all kinds of main dishes, breakfast casseroles and my infamous black bean salsa.
You can find the recipe for Deen’s wonderful Baked Spaghetti and her House Seasoning here at The Food Network. Try both (serve the spaghetti with Carey’s wonderful breadsticks), and enjoy a wonderful dinner.
I feel like I struck gold with the discovery of the hot chocolate recipe. I always assumed homemade hot chocolate mix would just contain cocoa powder and sugar- dumb I know. But this has milk powder in it (which I luckily had on hand as it’s a Milk Bar secret ingredient) and you actualy grind up chunks of dark chocolate into a powder! So the finished product has teeny granules of actual chocolate bits which turn into the creamiest, dreamiest hot chocolate when mixed with milk.
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