cobble, cobble

Turkey goes with Thanksgiving.

Peach Cobbler goes with Easter.

Say what? Yes, you read that correctly. Though I guess what I really should say is that Peach Cobbler goes with Good Friday.

Always.

I eat Peach Cobbler once a year. I don't know when it started, but I'm guessing it's been my whole life (minus the occasional Good Friday that fell over spring break, though often, if we were already in the condo as opposed to in motion, it was made!). Growing up we ate our peach cobbler for dinner, with milk. There was as time when I was a bit older, my Bro and I joined the relatives for cobblering - and I came to find out that some of them ate their cobbler for dinner with ICE CREAM. I felt robbed.

If you have 'wheat bowls' - you eat your cobbler out of this vessel. They are yellow bowls, with a white circle center, with, get this, a picture of wheat. They are china, and have a gold rim - making it a BAD idea to reheat cobbler in the microwave in a wheat bowl. I do not have wheat bowls. I believe my father to be in possession of the family collection, and unfortunately, he didn't bring them for this year's consumption (which was at my house). He won't be making that mistake again.

When I met Druggy, his family wasn't all that receptive to the idea of eating just cobbler for dinner. So, when we're with them, I make the cobbler for dessert and usually manage to choke down whatever it is that my mother-in-law is serving. It's a real sacrifice for me, as she's usually serving lobster. The horror.

On with the cobbler. Here's 'my' - aka, my mother's recipe. It's never the same twice, but it's always good - perfect for GOOD Friday.

It starts with Bisquick. I make the recipe for biscuits and then I add a bit of sugar and some cinnamon (or a mixture of cinnamon and other cinnamon-y spices - like nutmeg). These series of pictures were taken at my in-laws, and thus, the background provides some interesting tidbits. The one related to this picture is the FF on the milk...meaning fat free. Such a thing does not exist in my house.

After the cobbles are mixed up, I turn to the pan and peaches. I always use canned peaches. I know my mom has sometimes mixed frozen and canned. The frozen have a much stiffer consistency, and I prefer mush, so for me, it's canned. I use about 3 of the large cans for the 9 x 13 sized pan.

It was at this point in my pictoral documentary of peach cobbler making that my MIL wanted to know why she didn't get any attention with the blog and picture taking. So here she is cutting up the lobster for the kids' plates.

Back to cobbler - though the lobster looks good doesn't it?? Okay, once the peaches are in the pan I sprinkle them with flour (this helps thicken the sauce that also went into the pan with the peaches...so um, don't drain them). And because I so love cinnamon, I sprinkle them with that, too. Lots of that.


Next comes adding the cobbles. You can be really anal-retentive and roll them out like biscuits and use a cute little cutter and then lovingly place the cobbles on top of the peaches in some cute pattern. Or, you can do what I do and treat the cobbles like drop biscuits. (The fun tidbit in the background in this picture is the butter warmers for the lobster. I'm the only one in the family that eats mine with 'plain' butter, as opposed to lemon pepper butter. So there's a two-fer on the fun fact tidbits).


And so this is what it looks like when it's headed into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.


And this is what it's gooey, warm goodness looks like when it's ready to eat. I would recommend ice cream. But milk works too. Or just plain. And always make enough for breakfast the next morning.

kid dinners vs. not

For many years, Druggy's work hours dictated our dinner time....and by our, I mean his and mine....not for the yahoos...as they were typically in bed when Druggy returned home from work. Thus was born "kid dinners" - dinners we made for the kids that are kid foods. Hot dogs, mac and cheese, chicken nuggets and ramen noodles are staples on our kid dinners menu.

With Druggy's new job, family dinners were born. The kids LOVE when I'm gone for the weekend and they are treated to Druggy's cooking - kid dinners. And sometimes, Druggy and I long for the days for kid-less dinners.

This meal is one of those meals, which we 'treat' ourselves to a couple times a month.

Spinach and Artichoke Dip and Buffalo Wings

Here's how my dip starts - and I have to say, it has never been made the same way twice, but it always tastes great (well, except the one time that I forgot the garlic - OMG - THE HORROR!)
Anyway - fresh spinach, sour cream, mayo (NOT to be confused with Miracle Whip), garlic and then the most variable items are the cheese - I shoot for both parm and mozzerlla if I have them both....if not, I use what I have!

Chop the spinach to get ready to cook. Why the fresh vs. frozen? Because. That's why.
Throw the chopped spinach into a microwave safe bowl with a tablespoon or two of water and throw (well, not literally) into the microwave for 2 -3 minutes. I use about a 1/2 pound of spinach per batch of dip.

While the spinach is cooking, chop the artichokes. I buy a can of marniated artichoke hearts - one can makes two dip batches...so I fridge or freeze the remainder for the next batch.


Once the spinach is cooked, drain out the water and then throw in the rest of the ingredients. About 3/4 cups of sour cream and 1/2 cup of mayo, a couple cloves of the garlic, some good shakes of the parm cheese and a 1/2 cup or so of mozz cheese. One of my favorite kitchen tools, by far, is my Pampered Chef garlic press. A MUST have for any fresh garlic lover. MUST.

Mix.

Put into a baking dish. I use the Pampered Chef small oval baker - I love the size not only for the portion, but also because it fits into my toaster oven!


So toss it into the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or so - when it's nice and toasty, bubbling with a bit of brown.

Now on to the Buffalo Wings. I get the family pack of wings which makes enough for one dinner for Druggy and I together, and leftovers for Druggy later in the week (sometimes the very next day...Druggy could eat wings 5 nights a week. And, in fact, has on occasion. But I digress).

Druggy makes the buffalo wings. Always. I do not make wings. Ever.

Here's what he does (I think). Cut the wings to separate the flats from the drumettes. He cooks them on a foil covered cookie sheet that has been liberally sprayed with cooking spray (he also sprays the tops of the wings to protect them from sticking after their mid-baking flip).
They cook for 40 minutes (in 15 minute intervals for flipping - well, the last one is only 10 minutes) at 400 degrees. In the meantime, he starts the sauce, which is one stick of real butter, melted slowly on the stove with the 'right' amount of Frank's Red Hot added. As a general rule, the taste of the Red Hot concoction on the stove is always hotter/spicier than what it tastes like in combo with the wings...so when you think it's just right, add more.

Druggy lovingly dunks each flat and drumette into the sauce and places in the bowl, and then pours the remaining sauce over top. I will not describe the grotesque consumption of the half-congealed sauce from the bowl following the very diligent wing consumption. The man can pick those bones cleaner than a buzzard does a carcass.

Then dinner is served.


We don't often have the celery and ranch with the wings (neither of us care for blue cheese all that much) . We serve the dip with just about anything we have in the house - pita chips, tortilla chips, bagel chips (I'm sensing a theme), Triscuits...sometimes all of the above.


Enjoy this adult meal while watching your newly arrived Netflix selection because you're never able to escape the yahoos long enough to eat this dinner in a restaurant and enjoy a movie in a theater. Then you'll be just like us.

a new look

My previous "design", if you can call it that, was a generic template that looked very Betty Crocker...and despite the fact that this is a cooking based blog, I am about the farthest thing from Betty...and therefore, my blog needs to reflect more ME, and less Betty.

So here it is. My new look. At least for now.

meatloaf

It's not that I have any great secrets for this popular meat and potatoes meal...but there's a couple of stories that go with it:

Druggy's first meal at my parents' house - meatloaf.

Some ingredients known to be found in my dad's meatloaf recipes - carrots and/or raisins.

And here's a 'full story version' of one...

A few years ago, when Druggy and I were living close to my elderly grandparents, we gifted them meals with our family (we were aiming for 26 - every other week, but I think we maybe got to 10!). We would pack up all the ingredients and the kids and head over to their house to cook dinner with them...often on a Sunday night. I used this time to try out some new recipes and to cook things that I knew they both liked, but didn't have the ability to make for themselves anymore. One of those things was meatloaf. I was talking to my Aunt prior to that meal to get the low-down on my grandfather's preferences (cause you may not know this, but um...our family can maybe have a bit of a "we're particular - meaning obsessive compulsive" kind of streak in us). So before making the meatloaf, I needed to confer with an elder.

She told me two things. One I now abide by in all my ground meat cooking - only use ground sirloin. My grandfather would accept nothing less...and let me tell you, I now know why. I can't go back to using anything else. Second thing was to leave the leftovers so that my grandfather would be able to enjoy a cold meatloaf sandwich on a future day. The thought of this made me shudder, but who's to argue with childhood favorites.

So tonight's recipe/dinner is meat and potatoes - Meatloaf and Pierogies

Here's how I started:

Can you see all my cheaters for this meal? The Italian bread crumbs - not that making bread crumbs, or chunks for that matter, is hard...but I buy one of these tubes and can use it for loads of things and it lasts me awhile. So that's what I use. The critical element in my meatloaf, mini-meatloaves, and meatballs is the Lipton Beefy Onion seasoning. I use the meatloaf recipe on the back and we love it. Tonight's dinner also resulted in today's KQOTD from Yahoo #2:

I love meatloaf.
I want to marry it.
And then we can have babies.
And they'd be small.
And then I could EAT them!

So I follow the recipe on the Lipton seasoning. Sometimes I make one loaf. Sometimes I make mini-loaves, or meatballs. Tonight was mini-loaves, which I bake in my Pampered Chef mini-loaf stoneware. Very convenient for making mini-loaves. Mash all the ingredients together and cook it at 350 degrees until it's done...my meatballs take about 20 minutes, the mini-loaves about 30-35 and the 'whole loaf' would take about 50 minutes.

Next comes the pierogies. I fell in love with pierogies in college. In my now post-college life, I had to find a way to satisfy that craving. I've found that this frozen-food section brand is my favorite - oh, and look at that nice graphic on the box - PERFECT!

Now, it has been mentioned to me that I probably shouldn't label any of these meals as healthy - because really, I am still using a quite a bit of processed food. Then, when I went to prepare tonight's pierogies, I realized that I should probably second that motion - as I flopped the four pats of real butter down in the pan to saute these puppies up in.

I think the pierogies make a great potato side dish alternative, instead of the usual mashed (from a box, of course) or any one of the variety of 'frozen potatoes' we indulge in - fries, tater tots, mini-tater tots, crispy crowns, zesties, crunchies, crinkle...well, you get the point. I serve these with a dollop of sour cream.

I threw some steamed broccoli on the plate for tonight's veggie. Voila, another fast and easy dinner. And at least the reduced fat content in the ground sirloin balances sauteing the pierogies in butter, right?

as 'homemade' as it gets around here

Soup is one of my favorite foods. My mom makes all kinds of soups, and I eat all kinds of soups (with the exception of Split Pea). My yahoos have also, consequently, learned to love soup as well. My soups are about the most 'homemade' foods I make around here, and I only make two kinds - Chicken 'Noodle' Soup and Taco Soup. Maybe I'll venture into the realm of Beef Vegetable sometime, but I wouldn't count on it.

Okay, so this weekend I made the famous Chicken 'Noodle' Soup. I include those little 'marks' because it doesn't always involve noodles, though usually some type of pasta. Although, there was a time (all too recently, in fact) that I set out to make my famous NOODLE soup...without NOODLES. Thus, I now have to label with those marks, because it was the same soup, just, um...no noodles, or pasta for that matter (which is almost too much to believe, but is true nonetheless).
Here's my ingredients...onion, a few carrots from the bulk veggie section (if I buy a whole bag they go bad before I find a way to use them all), a bag of celery (this the yahoos and I eat with dip, so it's okay to buy a whole bag!).

Then comes my cheaters for this meal. First, the chicken. Here's my philosophy on chicken - why buy a whole roaster chicken when you can buy one ALREADY ROASTED for the same price?? Quite frankly, I think the rotisserie chickens are a 'million dollar idea' for the grocery stores (I'm still working on my 'million dollar idea'). Now, my friend Big T thinks it's silly that I just won't boil, roast, bake my own whole raw chicken. She does it. She's even done it at my house. And that way, she also gets makings for gravy and/or broth, etc. But, as with everything related to my cooking, why do it yourself is someone else has already done it - and done it well! So that's where my solution for the broth comes in as well - in my new 6 quart crockpot I can fit two of the large cans of Swanson Chicken Broth - which I buy in bulk at Sams. Love it.

With the rotisserie chicken, I usually save the breast meat for use in other recipes. Sometimes I freeze the already cooked breasts, or if it's in the menu plan for the week, I just cut them off, bag em, and fridge them until later. Then I use all the rest of the meat (minus the wings which are useless on those things) for the soup. Legs, thighs and every other nook and cranny in that chicken...I strip it clean. So, that's what's in that container - my stripped chicken. I did, in fact, use the breasts for another great recipe that week, but you'll have to wait until the next time I make it because I hadn't started this blog yet.

Okay, back making the soup. First, I created my veggie parfait (well, actually, I stripped the chicken first, but that was a few days before...on EATING day the first thing I did was create the veggie parfait).

I was, apparently, feeling extra creative, cause I cut the carrots with my crinkle cutter instead of a regular knife. Go me. Then, I took everything and dumped it into the crockpot (onions, carrots, celery, chicken and broth) and then I sprinkled some of this on top:

Once again, I could use a variety of seasonings, but do I...no. Why, cause they all come, conveniently, in this one bottle. Okay, wait - I did also add some parsley flakes. Must have been feeling adventurous.

Put crockpot on low for however long you need (I'd recommend at least a few hours - well, more like 4 - but according to my new crockpot instructions, you can't really overcook veggies in a crockpot, so it's okay if it goes as long as 8 hours, too).

Now for the noodles (or sometimes the lack thereof!). Do NOT add the noodles to your crockpot right away - or you will end up with a mass of noodles. Most often, if I'm just using regular wide egg noodles, I boil them up when the soup is ready, scoop a wad (that's a cooking term) into the bottom of a bowl and then ladle the soup on top. This particular round of soup had alphabet noodles, which I did add to the crockpot about a 1/2 hour before we were going to eat it. I've heard rumor you can use rice, too. Haven't tried that. I'm a fan of pasta. Boil when ready to eat, or toss into the crockpot a little before you're ready to eat.

The end result is happy yahoos, who apparently are so happy they forego utensils in favor of direct to mouth eating in this instance.

meat and gravy...yum!

In the early years of my marriage, when I only had ONE child (and I don't even remember what THAT was like!), we lived just under a half an hour away from my parents. My mom retired right before Yahoo #1 was born and so she capitalized on our proximity by having weekly "Grammie Days". It saved me a day of running a Yahoo to day care, and gave Grammie and Yahoo a great opportunity to run around town. Often their trips included the breakfast buffet at Big Boy and then a trip to the local library for story time. It was during these Grammie days that #1 Yahoo grew to love sausage gravy. She loves it so much she eats a bowl of it for 'dessert' after breakfast. So, what loving mother wouldn't try to learn to duplicate said gravy? I tried, once, to make sausage gravy from scratch. It's not that it was too hard, it was that the amount of work didn't result in the flavor I wanted...had it been spectular, I would have made it again. Alas, it was not.

Then we spent a weekend at my parents house and the secret was revealed. My mom found the easy way to make it.

Here's my recipe for "As Good as Big Boy's Sausage Gravy"

Pick up this bag of gravy mix from GFS Marketplace (that's Gordon's Food Service).
Follow the directions on the bag.


I add browned Bob Evans breakfast sausage to this. Thus the SAUSAGE gravy. I usually buy one tube and cut it in half and save one half for future use in the freezer. I also do this with their Mild Italian Sausage which I use in my calzones and pasta bakes.


Now, are biscuits hard to make? No.
If you make them with Bisquick are they even easier? Yes.
What's the easiest way to make biscuits? Open a tube. One tube of 8 Grands biscuits is more than enough for one breakfast with our Yahoos, with a few left over for um...leftovers.

There you have it. It was consumed so rapidly that I don't have a glorious, tantalizing picture of the finished product. Suffice it to say, however, that Yahoo said it was as good as Big Boy's.

What the?

I'm sure that will be my mother's reaction to this blog. Especially since I decided that I should actually type with capital letters over here.

Anyway...I am not my mother's daughter in one big way - cooking. SHE can cook. I can mix things and heat them up. She can make 10 meals out of the leftovers from one meal. I lack total creativity and usually forget the leftovers are there until they are covered with mold and sliming up my refrigerator.

However, with Druggy's new job (my new nickname for the husband on this blog), he's home for dinner every night with me and the yahoos (aka - the children). In fact, it's now me that's often gone at dinner time more than he is!

My point being that I actually COOK now. We try to have family dinner every night and I TRY to plan our meals for a week and get all my shopping done at once and be the perfect Susy Homemaker (Okay, that made even ME laugh out loud). But this blog is not like other cooking blogs - if there is a faster way to make or do something, that's what I do. I was inspired to start this blog because of Pioneer Woman Cooks. I love reading her blogs, but most of the time when I read recipes on her site, or anyone else's, I usually determine that they require too much energy or too many ingredients. I guarantee that MY recipes will not have that affect on you. And if they do, please know that I only include them because if they are worth the effort for ME to make, they are worth the effort for YOU to make. Honest.

I'm sure I'll be including tips and recipes from my friends sometimes, too. My friend Big T relies heavily on her crockpot, so I know she's got lots of good ones up her apron strings. I do have tricks from my mom, too. I'm also a HUGE supporter/believer/follower of Pampered Chef - so I live by their cookbooks, and you'll be seeing quite a few of their recipes too, only with my tweaking and adjustments. So I'll be sure to offer credit where credit is due, because, quite frankly, I have very few original thoughts.

I hope you'll join me over here!