One Pot Beef Stroganoff

This is a recipe write up specially requested by my husband. At 5 pm today, he graciously ran out to the store and I tried to throw dinner together as fast as possible. I originally intended to make a French Onion Beef Casserole but I didn't want to use canned ingredients. Then I just wanted to make it in one pot and get it over with asap and, oh wait, yds and dh can't have tomato in their dinner (acid reflux trigger :/). So this was born!

One Pot Beef Stroganoff

Ingredients:

1 lb lean ground beef (92/8 or leaner)

1 cup of finely chopped yellow or sweet onion

1 cup of finely chopped baby bella mushrooms that have been thoroughly washed

1 shallot, finely chopped

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp mustard powder

2 tb flour

4 cups water

2 1/2 tb Better than Bouillon beef base

3/4s bag egg noodles

2 tb butter

4 oz sour cream

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Melt the butter in a large skillet. Add the onions and saute until soft and golden. (Sometimes I put the lid on to help the onions along)

2. Add the mushrooms. Saute together for 3-4 minutes. Add the mustard powder and nutmeg. Salt and pepper to taste (my husband's Least favorite words. I did about five twists of my salt shaker and five twists of the pepper one).
3. Sprinkle the flour over everything, mix well, and let it cook for 2-3 minutes to get rid of the raw flour taste.

4. Add the shallot.

5. Add the beef base and mix it in. QUICKLY follow with the water.

6. Add the noodles. Cover, cook per the directions on your egg noodles (mine said about 9 minutes).
7. Stir in the sour cream and serve hot.

Let me know if you have any recipe tweaks! Happy cooking and good luck feeding the tiny gremlins.

One way we got our yds to eat was with the our newly instituted marble system. Here's how it works:

Each kid gets their own jar for putting their earned marbles in. 

Every day, each kid has their own marble missions. 6 year old can sweep, help with dishes, help with his brother, and read to the cat. 3 year old gets a marble for using the potty and cleaning up toys. 

They can have bonus marble missions too, like if I need help with cooking or laundry, they can each earn a marble for helping. 

And, of course, they get random "Caught you being good" marbles (mostly for the 6 year old). One particularly awesome "Caught you being good" marble earned by the 6 year old was when he decided to do a math workbook while he waited for breakfast. 

We rarely take away marbles and only do so after one warning immediately prior (ie, "Stop jumping in the house, please. If I have to remind you again, I will take away a marble. Jump on the trampoline instead!") except in instances where they hurt each other. 

They use the marbles to buy things, like chocolate milk, treats, board game playing  toys, science experiments* (they also get free science experiments!), and even trips to Chuck E Cheese or other play places. Marbles are a free market, however, and based on supply and demand. Yds is racking up marbles from potty training so his stuff costs more than ods's (ie, the same toy cost yds 12 marbles while it only cost ods 8). They cannot spend their marbles on whatever they want but they can ask to. Ie, yds cannot buy a chocolate milk or treat before dinner nor can ods buy a science experiment when we're super busy or its time for bed. 

How does this help yds eat dinner? Well, we told him he could only buy a chocolate milk if he ate his dinner. Heck, I may even start giving him a marble if he tries 3 bites of dinner but we're not quite there yet, still in the testing phases. 

And let me tell you, this game brings out THE BEST in 6 year old. Its amazing. I'll highly recommend it! I can't take credit for this, though. His doctor told me about it because we were all frustrated because we knew he wasn't doing the best he could do, but we didn't know how to help him. We only started over summer, though, because he started floundering fast without school keeping him scheduled and engaged. And hey, the kid does chores, reading, and math BY HIS OWN CHOICE and finds it fun because he gets a reward. 

*Science experiments? That's just the fun sounding name for arts and crafts projects. We also have dreams of doing a science journal with it (see me sneaking in STEAM projects over summer break? hehehe). The other day, for a free science experiment, we explored the baking soda and vinegar interaction. We also mixed food dyed water with droppers (actually less messy than it sounds, honestly. They did it while I cooked breakfast without dumping the water on the ground.).