No, not the board game. I’m talking about the party mix! If you’ve never heard of Scrabble, you are seriously missing out. It’s like Chex Mix on steroids. If you make this, you’ll never go back to that bland stuff in a bag again. (Now, I’m not knocking ALL Chex Mix– I still love me some of the Cheddar kind, but the boring plain variety in the blue bag? No thanks.)

This recipe is pretty synonymous with Christmas for me… maybe because that’s when we usually make it. Probably because Christmas is when there are a lot of unsuspecting people to foist goodies off on. You’ll want those people around because this recipe makes a LOT of party mix, and it’s thoroughly addicting. After you make it through an entire batch by yourself, you’ll be begging people to take it off your hands so that you can still fit into your fat pants next week. This would be great to make for any party, like say, the Superbowl? So you have something to do with your hands between all the excitement (read: the new and funny commercials!).

For a change in scenery, you’ll notice different counter tops and hands. I made this at my mother’s house, and I confess, for a whole lot of the process, SHE made it while I took pictures and offered a running commentary. I’ll also say, it feels a whole lot more absurd to take pictures of every step of the process when someone else is waiting for you. But moving on! This recipe is time intensive enough as it is without you having to listen to me blathering on.

You’ll need: Rice chex, corn chex, wheat chex, cheerios, pretzels, mixed nuts, canola oil, seasoned salt, garlic powder, worcestershire sauce and optional: rye chips.

You’ll also need two large roaster pans.

You’ll start by splitting your cereal up between the two pans. We started with the corn chex

Followed by the wheat chex…

And the rice chex. It’s not terribly important how much goes in each pan, just try and put about half the box in each pan.

Split the cheerios between the two pans.

Same with the pretzels.

There was only 1 bag in the ingredients picture, but I had two bags of rye chips, so we poured one bag in each pan.

Finally, open all of your nuts, and pour them on top of everything else. A word to the wise: you can not put too many nuts in this. It’s impossible to do. Of course, the nuts is exactly what makes this kind of expensive to make. We used six cans of nuts, and it seemed like a lot at the time, but we were still picking through the mix wishing there were more. Don’t SKIMP!

Get your hands in there and get everything mixed up so we can move on to the seasoning.

This is where I apologize. My mother does not believe in measurements. I’m pretty sure it’s just to torture me. Anyways, pour some oil in a bowl. My mom used a canola blend.

Shake in some season salt. Just some. Mom says, “I don’t measure…”

Add some garlic powder. Mom says, “I don’t measure…”

Pour in some Worcestershire sauce. Mom says, well, you know. Give it a good stir.

Ladle the seasoning mixture over the cereal mix.

Keep ladling until you’ve used up your bowl of seasoned oil.

Give everything a good stir

And put the pans in the oven at 255 for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, you’ll take the pans out of the oven, and stir up the scrabble mix.

Mix up another batch of seasoning to pour over the cereal.

Give it a quick stir, and then the pans go back in the oven for another 15 minutes. We ended up adding a third round of seasoning to the Scrabble because there was still a lot of cereal that didn’t seem to have a coating on them. When you’re satisfied with the seasoning, you’re going to continue baking the mix in 15 minute increments. Keep in mind that the flavor will be stronger as it cooks.

Every 15 minutes or so, take the scrabble out of the oven and give it a quick stir. It will be done when it no longer looks shiny. The whole process takes a couple of hours, but trust me when I tell you that it’s worth it!

When it cools, portion it out into air tight containers to keep it fresh, and enjoy!! I used a few large Ziploc containers, and a couple plastic bags. Total yield… I had 2 large round ziploc containers, 2 large rectangular ziploc containers and 2 gallon sized plastic bags. And that’s not including the large container I managed to dump on the kitchen floor before I got the lid on it. Yes, I did think about crying.

Seriously. Look at this… I just want to crawl through the screen and eat that! Or make another batch, and I’ve already eaten enough Scrabble to hold me over for a year.

I can’t recall exactly why now, but a couple months ago, I was googling Chop Suey. What I discovered was that Chop Suey is in fact, not Chinese food at all (kind of a no brainer since they don’t eat most of the things we call Chinese food in China) but is a wholly American dish of questionable origins. But that’s okay because this questionable AmericanChinese dish is one of my absolute favorites from when I was growing up. I just finally made it myself for the first time.

This makes a HUGE amount of food. Growing up, there were four of us, including my dad and my brother who can put away astonishing amounts of chop suey, and there was always plenty left over to eat on for the next several days. I should have taken this into account when cooking for myself because I ate chop suey until I was sick to death of it, and probably barely made it halfway through this batch. So if you make it exactly as written, be prepared for a lot of food. If I make it again for just me, I’ll probably use one can of vegetables and go from there.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Chop Suey meat, 3 cans of chop suey vegetables, 1 can of sliced water chestnuts, can of mushrooms, bead molasses, soy sauce, flour, milk, rice and a little bit of oil. Also optional, chow mein noodles.

To begin with, put a little bit of whatever oil you’re using in the bottom of a large stock pot. You can use whatever you’d like. I used olive oil, the original “recipe” called for shortening.

Roll your chop suey meat in flour. I have two notes about the meat:
1) We have a supermarket locally that actually sells a package labeled Chop Suey Meat. If yours doesn’t, go for pork for stir fry. My dad has also made this with a combination of beef and pork and that’s turned out well.
2) When I bought the meat, I thought one package looked too small, and bought two packages. When I went to actually make this, I second guessed myself and only used one of them. I should have stuck with my first instincts– I would have been much happier if there had been more pork in my chop suey.

Okay, moving on.

Imagine a picture of me putting the flour coated pork into the pan with the oil, and cooking until the meat is browned. I forgot to take a picture of that step. When that’s done…

Open your chop suey vegetables and pour one can into the pan.

Followed by a second can…

… and a third.

There’s already water chestnuts in the chop suey vegetables, but we really like them so we add an additional can of them. Feel free to leave them out if water chestnuts aren’t exactly your cup of tea. Otherwise, go ahead and dump those on top.

Then add in a can of mushrooms.

And shake in some soy sauce. I don’t have an amount here. My mother is the queen of refusing to give me measurements. I know, I hate it too. She did caution me against adding too much soy sauce at this point, so just shake a little in, you’ll supplement your plate with more soy sauce later so no harm if you don’t get a lot in now.

Next, you’re going to add your bead molasses. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons. My mom said that she usually just pours enough in to fill her wooden spoon, and then stirs it in. So that’s what I did… obviously that’s much easier than trying to measure out something with molasses in the name into a measuring spoon and then trying to get it back out and into your dish. No thanks.

Give it all a good stir, and then let the whole thing simmer on the stove for several hours, stirring occasionally. That part’s not in the original recipe, but I can’t leave anything alone, so I do a lot of stirring.

This is what mine looked like after it cooked for a few hours. It’s looking good already, but before you serve the chop suey it still needs to be thickened. I don’t have one of those highfalutin’ fancy shakers, so I improvise with an empty peanut butter jar.

Put some flour in the jar… I think I used 1/2 cup of a gluten free flour.

Add in milk, but leave enough room in the jar for things to mix around once you put the lid on!

Then shake for all you’re worth! And kindly ignore how badly I am in need of a manicure. Unless you’d like to buy me one because I hate to admit it, but my poor cuticles look much worse than that now! This weather is killing me!

Anyways, when you’re done shaking up your flour and milk mixture and you have it as combined as you can get it, and you’re done admiring your manicure, go ahead and pour it into your pot.

Give it a good stir, and this part of the meal is done!! You’ll still need to make some rice. I used minute rice, cooked it in the microwave according to the package directions.

So put some rice on your plate.

Spoon some of the chop suey mixture on top. This is the last picture that I took, but I also put more soy sauce on top of my plate. Normally I’d also serve this with a handful of chow mein noodles, but I was trying to make this dish gluten free, and chow mein noodles are certainly NOT gluten free! I didn’t miss them as much as I thought I would though!

Chop Suey

Chop Suey Meat
3 cans of chop suey vegetables
1 can mushrooms
1 can sliced water chesnuts
2 T. bead molasses
Soy Sauce

Roll chop suey meat in flour and brown in shortening. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer for several hours. Before serving, add milk and flour mixture (1/2 – 3/4 cup flour w/ milk in shaker). Serve with rice and chow mein noodles.

Sometime before Christmas, I decided to take advantage of all the sales out there and buy myself a crock pot. Technically a slow cooker, since mine was not made by Rival, but you know what I mean. I immediately had to find a bunch of recipes to try out, and this is the first of them. Expect plenty more crock pot recipes coming up in the relatively near future. I love tacos, taco salads, nachos, that sort of thing, so Taco Soup jumped right out at me.

I found this recipe at Slow and Simple. I thought it sounded promising, but there are a lot of taco soup recipes available out there and I have to say this one is not going to be my favorite. Part of that could be my fault as I think I added too much water, but even though this was good, it just didn’t have quite what I was looking for. That’s why it’s Taco Soup, Take One. I fully intend to try a different recipe soon! But let’s get started with this one, maybe you’ll like it better than I did.

You’ll need 1 lb ground beef, 2 pkg taco seasoning mix, 1 can corn, 1 can black beans, 1 can tomatoes with green chiles, 1 onion, 1 green pepper (The original recipe also called for black olives, which I don’t like, and tomatillos as an optional ingredient. I left both out.) Don’t worry, my meat’s not bad, it’s just still frozen.

Gratuitous picture just to show off my new crockpot. Woohoo!

Brown and drain your ground beef on the stove top, then add it to the bottom of your crock pot.

Add in your two packets of taco seasoning mix. I kind of stirred it in before moving on to the next step, but I don’t think that’s a requirement.

Throw in your chopped green pepper…

And your chopped up onion.

Followed by the 16 oz can of tomatoes with green chiles, undrained. (Sidenote- this may have also contributed to why I wasn’t thrilled with this soup. I got the hot can of tomatoes, but I don’t like spicy AT ALL. It was too much for me, I may have liked this better with a milder can of tomatoes.)

Add your can of black beans, undrained. This is where I started to worry about this recipe… have you SEEN what canned beans are floating in?? Still, I poured it into the crock pot.

Finally, add the can of whole kernel corn, also undrained.

I gave it a quick stir to make sure all the goodies were distributed.

Then I added two cans of water to fill the crock pot. If I were going to make this soup again, I’d cut it back to one can of water, and just keep an eye on it. I felt like this soup was not thick enough, and this is probably why.

Cover the crock pot, and cook on low for 5 or more hours.

This is what the final product looked like, dished up into a bowl.

I added a handful of cheese and sour cream to the bowl. Not pictured, the handful of Fritos I also added to help “thicken” it up.

If you make this, let me know how it turns out. I wasn’t impressed, but maybe it will float your boat!

1 lb lean ground beef, browned and drained
2 pkg. taco seasoning mix
1 16 oz can tomatoes with green chilies, undrained.
1 16 oz can black beans, undrained.
1 16 oz can corn, undrained
1 can black olives, chopped or sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
4 tomatillos, chopped (optional)

Place everything in a large crockpot, add water, if necessary to fill. Cook on low for 5 or more hours until flavors are blended. Top each bowl with a handful of shredded cheddar cheese. Serve with sour cream, taco chips, and salsa on the side.