Cook Wannabee

Welcome back!

Have you checked out the ads on the television lately?

When they show burgers, the burgers are thick and have a lot of stuff piled on them. How are you supposed to eat them? Sishkebab ( I am not sure of the spelling on that) I can understand eating one piece at a time, the skewer after all.

Burgers are best when you can get in a good bite with a little of everything that is on the bun. I have seen some burgers that look almost 2 inches thick. How do you make sure that is cooked properly? With all of the illnesses that can be found on meat, in meat, and in restaurants, thoroughly cooked food is safer than something that is partially raw in the center. I am not a cave man after all.

What is your idea about burgers?

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Yup, I am talking about breakfast here. Of course you could also use this for a church luncheon, a meal at home, almost anything. Putting it in a casserole dish makes it handy.

6 eggs beaten
8 ox thinly sliced ham, chopped up
1/2 onion grated
1/2 lb. cheese cubes broken up
5 medium potatoes thinly sliced, not quite like hash browns

Fry the potatoes, onion and ham in the same pan until done, drain. Place in a baking dish that has been greased. Mix in the cheese, pour the ggs over the mixture, stir gently.

Bake in a 350′ oven for 15 minutes. YUM

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I love the taste of stuffed peppers. I do not like all of the mess that goes with it. So, I cheat when I decide to make them.

2 bell peppers
1 1/2 lb ground meat
1 onion finely diced
1 regular jar of spaghetti sauce (any brand, though I like Ragu)
3 eggs
1 1/2 c. uncooked oatmeal

Clean and dice the bell peppers and the onion ( I like the stronger flavored yellow onion)
Mix eggs and raw ground meat, add onions and bell peppers. Add half of the spaghetti sauce, save the rest for topping.

When the meat mixture is thoroughly mixed, add the oatmeal and mix again.
Place the mixture in a pan, form it into whatever size loaf, top with the remainder of the spaghetti sauce. Place into oven
Bake at 375′ for approximately 35 minutes to 45 minutes

I know that some people would called this meatloaf, but with the amount of green peppers in it, it tastes like wonderful stuffed bell peppers. It is easy to portion out for family meals, and is very tasty.

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Do you have a crock pot? This is an important question. I have two. The first crock pot that I ever had is only 1 quart. Not much that can be done with it until you get experienced with crock pots. The second and my favorite crock pot is a 5 quart. BIG difference. I have been having fun.

The title of this blog tells it all. Wannabee means that I would like to do more, but….not just yet.

Well, I got a hold of a great piece of pork butt roast. Some fat, a little marbling, nice hunk of meat. My first thought was crock pot roast. YUM.

I started by cheating. I put a little water in the pot with one chicken bullion cube. Then I took 6/7 regular carrots, trimmed and washed. Cut the carrots into chunks and dumped them into the pot which was already getting warm on high. I got 2 beautiful yellow onions and cut them into chunks, dropped them into the pot also. Took the piece of roast (5 1/2 lbs) rinsed it off and placed it in the pot on top of the ingredients. I let the veggies ease up the sides a little, but had no room for potatoes. I added enough water to be just barely visible around the meat and veggies. Oh well, the potatoes can come later. I put the top on the crock pot and walked away for 5 hours. Later a wonderful smell was in the house.

I then got7/8 small to regular potatoes, washed them and then cut them into chunks, too. I leave the peeling on for the vitamins that are in the peelings. Put the potatoes into a separate pot with 2 beef bullion cubes. There was enough water to barely reach the top of the potatoes. Turned on the heat and let them cook until just tender. Let them cool.

I took the roast and its veggies out of the cock pot and left the juice in it. Drained the potato water into the crock pot and then made thick flour water. Stirred it all together and let it continue to cook. I added white ground pepper and a touch of salt. We have to limit our salt because of health problems. When the mixture was thick enough, the meal was served. Roast on a plate, with the veggies - carrots, mushy onions, and potatoes; then gently pour gravy oveer the entire things. EAT It was an easy meal, not at all hard to fix, and easy to clean up. We ended up with a lot of gravy left which was put into the freezer and some put into the fridge. There is a lot of roast and veggies left for more meals that only need to be heated up.

INGREDIENTS

51/2 lb pork butt roast
6/7 regular carrots - cleaned and cut into chunks
2 yellow onions - I like the flavor, white onions would be milder
6/7 white potatoes - cleaned and cut into chunks
1 chicken bullion cube
2 beef bullion cubes
water
crock pot
regular pot for potatoes
flour to thicken the gravy

It is an easy meal and leaves you time to relax and be with your family, go shopping, what ever you desire to do. When it is all done, you will have more than one meal out of it depending upon the size of your family gathering. The left overs will be easy to heat up and enjoy again.

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Egg Rolls can be used as appetizers, a side dish, or even if you like them a lot, as a main dish.

I used to wonder how they were made and how hard they could be to do. My Texas sister showed me one day. We had some canned meat (pork, chicken, turkey, shrimp seem to work best) that we shredded. She had me shred a head of regular cabbage (we didn’t want to get fancy and use Chinese cabbage). She also had some Chinese veggies in a can and bean sprouts in a can.

The shredded cabbage was slowly cooked in a pan with a little oil and seasoned with soy sauce when mostly done. The Chinese veggies and bean sprouts were also drained and then added when the cabbage was almost done. Mix it thoroughly to get all of the juices mixed. Fold in the shredded meat, add more soy sauce to taste. You could also add finely ground pepper if you want. When the cabbage is fully cooked, set the pot aside to slightly cool. When you get used to making these, you can vary the veggies used, and the flavorings used to have fun. Imagine chicken, bell peppers, onions. They would almost be like fajitas. You could add shredded cheese when rolling them up. YUM

Then get the packages of egg roll wrappers out of the fridge make a paste of flour and water for sealing the egg rolls them selves.

Sit all of this on the table and prepare to make egg rolls, and a mess.
Place a wrapper on a plate, place a spoonful of the mix on it. Slightly fold over two opposite corners on top of the spoonful of mix. Tuck a third corner over and around the mix, then roll up the egg roll until the wrapper has completely gone around. If it won’t go around, you have used too much stuffing mix, and might have to remove some in order to shape the egg roll. Use a dab of the flour paste to seal the last end onto the roll, set aside the completed roll and start on the next one.

Heat up some oil in a frying pan until it is hot. Gently place egg rolls into the pan to fry. Turning occasionally to avoid burning. When they are golden brown, they are done. Remember that the stuffing is already cooked, you are just cooking the wrapper.

These egg rolls can be frozen when cooked completely and microwaved later to heat them up. Each batch of egg rolls will make quite a few, if you have a big family, they can help with the preparation, and will probably have fun doing so. Imagination would be the only limit. Left overs could also be used when making these. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, left over turkey is handy.

I wonder if this can be done with fruit, too? Good thought…..

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I imagine that we all have made mistakes when cooking for the first few times. I know that I did. I’ve written about a couple so far. Well, here is another one.

When mom decided to help me learn about cooking we lived in St. Louis, Mo. The St. Louis Post Dispatch had a cooking section where kids could learn how to cook by following recipes. It was mostly fun. I remember one recipe for Mulligan stew. I remember potatoes put on to boil.

I also remember not stirring them. They burned on the bottom and the rest of the potatoes picked up the flavor of the burn. I hadn’t realized this until the complete stew was made. Yuk. To this day I remember to stir what ever I am cooking, and if not stirring, I get it iff the heat or the stove. Burned Mulligan stew is not nice. What an understatement.

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Many people will write about their recipes. My sister has taught me that disasters also teach.

Well, I learned a hard lesson one day back in the 80’s. I wanted to make some soup. I had peeled some potatoes (didn’t learn until later that the peelings have a lot of taste and vitamins in them), diced up some yellow onions, cut up some celery, gathered some seasonings, diced up some turkey I had leftover from a previous meal, and some broccoli.

Most of that would have been great. I learned and my family learned , painfully, that the broccoli was a very bad choice to add to the soup. As it cooked, it smelled wonderful. It looked good, too. Well, I served it …….I was told that I was trying to poison my family. My husband and my niece definitely protested. I hadn’t tasted it yet and did so. They were right of course. The broccoli did NOT want to blend in at all. It tasted horrible.

Well, macaroni and cheese that night. I poured out the ’soup’ for the dog next door to eat, he would et almost anything. Guess what? He turned up his nose after sniffing it, then went and rolled in a nearby spot where a neighbor’s septic tank was leaking. The ultimate dog insult. I do not believe that I will ever forget it.

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I bet everybody has their own recipes for meat loaf. I love it and like to eat it often. However, I do worry about the cholesterol that can come with it. So, I’ve made some changes to what mom first taught me.

Meat Loaf

1 1/2 lbs ground meat (beef, pork, turkey, sausage)
3 eggs
1/2 c BBQ sauce
1 Tbs garlic powder or onion powder
2 c oatmeal (any type)

Mix all of the above together thoroughly.

All of the above can be put into one pan to bake in the oven, or you could divide it into two separate amounts and wrap it with foil to make cleanup easier.
Bake in the oven 350′ for 1 hour.

If you desire you can substitute ketchup for the BBQ sauce, or add Worcestershire sauce into the mix. It can be topped with BBQ sauce, ketchup, mushroom gravy,or even brown gravy if you desire, or served without any topping on it at all. Meatloaf is very flexible so it can be made to vary with each meal.

Other choices to vary could be: diced onion, diced green pepper (it will taste like stuffed peppers this way without all of the trouble) diced tomato, diced celery, shredded carrots. Your imagination is the only limit. Even cheese chunks can be added to the mixture for a surprise when eating it.

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