A fellow HG distributor's blog post....

Tomato Basil Bread and "Mommy you have to blog about this."

So do you have a quick and easy meal ready to throw together on those nights when you have NO IDEA what to cook? Let me share mine with you:

I was in a hurry and not sure what to make for dinner. So I grabbed the Homemade Gourmet Minestrone Soup Mix from my cupboard. I looked at the ingredients to see if it was Vegetarian friendly and it is. (-; I am starting to pay attention to that since my really good friend Carmen is a Vegetarian. The soup was a breeze to make. The only ingredients to add to the mix was a can of green beans, water, diced tomatoes, and some frozen potato cubes from the freezer (cubed hashbrowns). I also had Homemade Gourmet Tomato Basil Bread muffins in the freezer. I made a double batch of the muffins last time I made them so they would be easy to reheat and serve with a soup. Within 30 minutes dinner was DONE! My hubby was skeptical that a "Vegetarian" dinner would be yummy and he figured leftover muffins would be tolerable at best. Boy was he wrong! Everyone (including the 2 year old) LOVED the soup served with some freshly grated Parmesan Cheese on top. It was like fancy restaurant or Olive Garden good for a lot less $$. The Tomato Basil Bread was toasty and delicious. My husband is now convinced that this bread is even better the second time (make sure it's toasty with a crunch for best results). Josh (who just turned 6) was so excited about the bread that he stood up during kids church this morning and shared about the best "five minute" bread ever. He calls it five minute bread because that's how long I had to toast it in the broiler. His words..."It was SOOOO yummy." Josh asked for the Tomato Basil Bread again tonight but I was out of the mix. I made the Homemade Gourmet World Vision Basic Bread instead. It only needs milk and butter added to it. But of course I was out of butter and almost out of milk! My little boy wanted yummy bread so I made it work somehow. I used the little milk I had left, a bit of water to compensate and a bit of sour cream. It was an experiment! I topped it with olive oil since I had no butter. The mix calls for melted butter on top of the bread prior to baking, but the oil worked fine. I also put a lot of grated Parmesan cheese on top. The verdict to the experimental bread? "MOMMY you really need to blog about your breads, they are really good. I love this!" My little guy is really easy to cook for! Especially with Homemade Gourmet food, it's hard to mess up their recipes even when I experiment! I think it's funny that our dinner conversations now include what is or isn't blog worthy!

The Homemade Gourmet mixes and groceries for this meal probably added up to $16. It fed 4 of us twice (had lots leftover) so the cost per serving was less than $2 each. Cheaper than eating out my friends, which is EXACTLY what we would have done before I learned to cook with Homemade Gourmet.

Thanks for sharing Gina....you can see her blog at: http://mealsandmemories.blogspot.com/