Family favorites {recipes}

'Tis the season for amazing food! Seems like lately the most simple recipes I've tried have been my favorite, and I'm excited to try and share more recipes with you during the holidays. Lately we've been trying to have real Sunday dinners, so last week we had roast, potatoes, asparagus, and homemade biscuits with homemade strawberry jam. I'm sharing two adored family favorites: roast beef and baking powder biscuits. My mom makes the best roast, and my sister Stacey makes the best biscuits (so light and fluffy- amazing!), so even though it wasn't the best we've ever had, the Mister was pretty thrilled by this meal and so was I.

Roast Beef: this one is so easy and so incredible. Make sure to sear your roast (see videos HERE, or simply cover completely with flour and then brown in shortening over medium heat), then just put it in the crock pot and cover with a packet of au jus and cook on low. The guideline is approximately 1/2 hour of cook time per pound, but I generally just leave the crock pot on low and let it cook until it falls apart. Amazing.



Baking Powder Biscuits:
1/3 cup shortening
1 3/4 cup flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk

Cut shortening into flour mixture with a pastry cutter or a fork. Combine until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Then stir in only enough milk to make the dough pull away from the sides of the bowl (not too much!) then knead lightly for 2 minutes. Roll dough until 1/2 inch thick and cut with biscuit cutter. Bake on a ungreased cookie sheet at 450 for 10-12 minutes. For extra soft biscuits, place biscuits next to one another on the cookie sheet (see pics above), if you want the sides to be a bit crunchy, place them one inch apart.



and while we're on the topic of making meals special, I really need a gravy boat. Maybe I'll ask for one of THESE gravy boats for Christmas so I won't have to be so embarrassing with my pyrex ghetto-ness