Tonight's Easy Dinner

As you may notice from our menu plan for this week, the meal we are having tonight was not on it! Sometimes flexibility works better for me than rigid adherence to a plan, but generally we try to stick to our menu. Because we had roast in the crockpot earlier this week and had way too many leftovers to finish off in the next day's lunches, I added another meal to this week's menu: vegetable beef soup with beer bread. Whoa, what's that she said? Yes beer bread, but don't worry (hi church friends and family!;) we only have this tasty bread after stealing, ahem borrowing some when my parents (hi mom and dad!)have some gathering dust. They don't really drink either, but will occasionally have extra after entertaining or something. I got this beer bread recipe from my friend Denaye's site originally. Here is a recipe I adapted when making it this time since I am too lazy to look through her archives to find it;).

We will be using this recipe for Vegetable Beef Soup but I will be making several modifications, including cooking it in a pot and using leftover beef so I can omit that step.

Here is a quick, 5 ingredient recipe for Beer Bread. If you don't have access to a cheap (free for me!) source of beer, then you can use soda. I haven't tried it that way though;)

Beer Bread
3 cups flour (I used whole wheat because that's what I have)
5 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 (12 oz) can beer (or soda pop?)

Grease loaf pan. Combine all dry ingredients in bowl and stir. Add beer and stir. Pour into pan. If desired, (which I always do!) pour 1/4 or up to 1/2 cup melted butter/margarine over top of the batter. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven 50-60 minutes or until done.