Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies

See?  I promised you good cookies today!  Have you ever had Dulce de Leche?  It's a thick, milk caramel.  Before this weekend, I had not.  Did you also know that you can make your own?  Probably right now with what you have in your pantry.  Sweetened Condensed Milk.  That's all you need!  Granted, you can also buy it at the grocery store (either with the Mexican items, or possibly by the sweetened condensed milk), but that means you can't make them right now.  And trust me.  You want to make them now!

Dulce de Leche:
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1 can sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 425*
Pour milk into a glass pie plate or other shallow glass dish that can fit into a roaster pan.  Cover the pie plate tightly with foil and place inside roaster pan.  Pour hot water into roaster pan until it reaches halfway up the pie place.  Place in over and cook for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, or until dark caramel-colored.  Check a few times to be sure it's not darkening too quickly, and to refill water as necessary.

Remove from oven and let cool slightly.  Stir with whisk until smooth.  Let cool completely.

Shredded Beef Tacos

I realize my posts have been a little dinner-heavy lately.  Don't worry--we'll be back to sweets soon (get excited for cookies tomorrow)!  The reason for another recipe with chuck roast is that I bought one of those big family-sized packages of stew meat a couple of weeks ago.  I've never been one for "convenience" foods because it means paying more for something I can do myself.  Well, not this time.  At my grocery store, the family packages are automatically .20 less per pound than the regular packages.

Another trick I like to use for buying meat is looking for the orange stickers that mark packages that need to be sold that day.  There's nothing wrong with the meat; it's still good.  It simply needs to be cooked or frozen right away.  These are anywhere from 20-40% off!  And it's easy to either switch around the menu to use the certain meat that night, or divide it into the serving sizes I need and freeze it.

That means I got almost 6 lbs of chuck roast (already cubed which means most of the fat was cut away--more meat per pound!) for $12 and some change!  Now what to do with 6 lbs of cubed chuck roast???

Because I always have ingredients for tacos on hand, I decided to give it a try.  I usually use ground beef, but thought this would be a nice change, not to mention it cooks in the crockpot.  I made the meat the day before we ate it (because it needed to be cooked, and I was making stroganoff with part of it), then just reheated it on the stove before serving.  We all really enjoyed these tacos, and I will be making them again soon!

Shredded Beef:
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2 1/2-3 lbs chuck roast, cut into 2-inch chunks
1 cup chopped tomatoes or canned diced tomatoes
1 (12 oz) can chopped green chiles
1/2 cup beef broth
1/3 cup chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs lime juice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp pepper
1 cup fresh salsa
1 large bunch fresh torn cilantro (1/3-1/2 cup)

For Serving:
20-25 corn tortillas
Shredded cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese
Finely shredded lettuce
Chopped tomatoes
Low fat or fat free sour cream
Additional salsa

Combine all ingredients except salsa and cilantro in crockpot.  Set on low and cook for 6-8 hours.  Using a slotted spoon, scoop meat out into a 9x13 pan and shred with 2 forks.  Stir in salsa, cilantro, and some of the juice from the crockpot. Drain remaining juice. Place back in crockpot and heat through until ready to serve.

Beef Stroganoff

Grandma Clark's Homemade Noodles