Cast Iron Saturdays Featuring One Dish Meals

   Welcome to another weekly post-sharing recipes baked or cooked in cast iron pieces. and you are most welcome to share a post or recipe and share the link in comments.

   Last weekend I decided to make up a cast iron pan full of stuffed sweet peppers-I always make too much filling so I just spread some all over on the bottom of the pan and on top over the filled peppers. These were really good-I browned up sausage, a little ground pork and also hamburger, spiced it up and used a Classico pasta  sauce. (when we retired I no longer grew a huge garden for canning, freezing, and drying- I used put up about 500 jars a year-this brand is my favorite sauce since I no longer can my own)   Cooked up a little rice to mix in-we don't eat much in carbs any more but for the rice I use a brown rice that has been sprouted and then dried, so it is higher in nutrition that way. I had bought a creamy spicy cheese from the Amish market so I grated about 1/2 cup and blended that in the mixture as well.

  Last winter when the lake totally froze over, we were asked to really conserve electric as much as possible for a couple of weeks. Lake in the Ozarks was created to control floods and produce electricity  One thing they suggested was to Not use appliances like crock pots, slow cookers etc because they use more electricity than an electric oven does. That was news to me, so since then I have been using my cast iron more and using the electric oven instead of my slow cooker.

Checking for recipe ideas on the internet for One Dish Meals in Cast Iron, I found a few that looked pretty good.

Double Crust Chicken Pot Pie

   This recipe has a store bought crust-I would change that to your own homemade pie crusts. Or eliminate the two crusts-bake the filling and in a seperate cast iron skillet bake up some cornbread to go with this

Skillet Vegetarian Lasagna

   I thought this recipe sounded really delicious. Even when I was a vegetarian for many years in the 70's and 80's I never ate vegetarian substitutions that tasted like meat-so for this recipe I would not use that but use a real protein or leave it out.  This does have allot of cheeses and for gluten free just choose gluten free pasta

  (I am always changing up recipes to my own liking-do you like to do that too?

Skillet Mac and Cheese

and to close, we need a dessert-they bake up so well and delicious in cast iron

Chocolate Skillet brownies

  Happy Cast Iron Saturdays

   (I decided to post this one a little early as I will be going to town in the morning for a few errands, and then making up foods for us and our workers-still trying to get the dock mostly finished before Memorial Day)

and a look out the window about an hour ago

Larry has watched this woodpecker in the mornings-he enjoys sitting on the deck eating his breakfast and enjoying the views. So far he is drinking the nectar and not destroying the feeders.  (they would do that at the woods house-poke holes in the sides and watch all the nectar run out lol)