Oh Hey Friday // Field Meals

Hello again!  Since I have only been around on Fridays lately (ashamed face) you must be getting used to the drill for these Friday link-ups. As you know, the lovely ladies I am linking up with are The Farmer's Wife and September FARM.

This week, I am going to tell you all about my staples for harvest meals.  As a disclaimer, I am literally making a field supper as I write this, so forgive me if things seem a little scattered.

This is the second year that I have really been helping my mother in law with field suppers.  She is wonderful and lets me just do them whenever I have time, and picks up whenever I don't.  So that has been a huge help for getting me used to the routine of taking out supper.  Here are five other things that I find myself going back to again and again:

This looks like a good place for supper!

1.  Pie.  It may seem old fashioned and traditional, but I always get the best response when I bring a pie out to the field.  They aren't as fussy to make as you might think (especially if you use store bought pie crust).  But with practice, they are pretty easy to whip up in a relatively short amount of time.  You can find my blueberry pie recipe here or my lemon meringue pie recipe here along with a pie crust tutorial here.

This isn't pie related... But it is our swather

2.  Casseroles!  Easily the most useful dish for taking out to the field (or to a pot luck for that matter) is the casserole.  They are so versatile, basically you can throw whatever you have in your fridge into one (a little meat, a carb and some veggies) - add in some canned cream of mushroom soup and you're golden.  Speaking of cream of mushroom soup, that leads me to #3....

Brett is enjoying this Biscuit Topped Chicken Pot Pie Casserole - tune in Monday for the recipe!

3.  Canned cream of mushroom soup.  Canned cream of mushroom soup is truly God's gift to farm wives (oh and our husbands of course...).  You can put in on anything and it makes it better; from fish to chicken to beef to meatballs, you name it and a farm wife has put cream of mushroom soup on it.  As an aside, if someone in your crew happens to be lactose intolerant, I recently discovered Campbell's golden mushroom soup which tastes similar to cream of mushroom (with a hint of tomato) but doesn't have dairy in it. 

It is right back to work for the boys after supper.

4.  Slow cooker.  This goes without saying.  There are some days that you just don't have two hours to spend standing around the kitchen.  I loved this beef vegetable soup recipe that I made recently in the slow cooker - plus it makes enough to feed an army of hungry men.

5.  An insulated casserole dish carrier (I like this one from Walmart).  I don't know if these are well known or not. I got two for my bridal shower and I think they were one of my favorite gifts.  They come with a casserole dish, lid, hot/cold pack and obviously the carrier (with handles).  I use it to take all kinds of stuff out to the field and it is worth its weight in gold.

Yep, that is how our night ended.  Yes that is rain running down the swather windshield.  What the heck mother nature??

Farm wives (or ladies who do a lot of pot lucks), what are your favorite tricks for field meals?  I would love to hear about them in the comments!