Daddy's Girl

As I was making supper last night, a new thought (or at least a new perspective on a thought) occurred to me. I have always given my mom the most credit for inspiring my love of cooking (and she deserves it) but I have never really considered my dad’s influence.

My parents have been divorced since I was little and I lived with my mom for the majority of my up-bringing. However, I was still a daddy’s girl. Although I don’t remember, I have been told that my dad would take me out on the tractor when I was a toddler and I would fall fast asleep on his lap while he cut hay. I do remember that as I got older, I always looked forward to “dad’s weekend” and going “bummin’” with him. To clarify, “bummin’” seemed to be driving around without a real plan, stopping at any garage sales that looked promising, visiting anyone you knew that looked like they were home, usually getting a burger somewhere, and just hanging around the family farm. I loved it! I still can’t pin-point why I loved it, but I did!

One of my biggest food memories from being a kid with my dad is that he used to take us through the drive through at the place with the secret sauce. He would order like a dozen hamburgers “plain with ketchup and pickles” for us and whichever of my cousins were around. Getting fries was a real treat and if we did get them, he would ALWAYS say “eat your burger first cause I don’t want to hear ‘Daaaaad, I’m hungrrrrry’”. My cousins and I could (and did) imitate that phrase perfectly!

When we weren’t out bummin or having drive through burgers, my dad did cook. He grew up on the farm and he prefers meat and potatoes. He’s not really big on a lot of seasoning or spices and I don’t think he tries many experiments in the kitchen, even to this day. But what he does cook, turns out pretty good and he inspired last night’s supper.

I am not even sure what we used to call this supper when I was growing up but I’m going to call it goulash now. Dad’s version was a can of tomato soup, a can of Veg-All mixed veggies, ground beef and wagon wheel pasta. I have to admit, I’m thinking the reason why I liked this so much as a kid was the wagon wheels… I loved pasta then, I love pasta now, and there are few pastas that are more fun than wagon wheels! Now, some of you who have read this blog may be thinking (as I am writing this) that this recipe calls for a lot of cans. I didn’t exactly follow dad’s recipe, I was just taking a lovely stroll down memory lane while I was preparing my own version!

I happened to have had some homemade tomato soup in the freezer that I chose for this, along with some frozen tomato puree from the end of the growing season here. I am also not a fan of the consistency of canned veggies in my food-snob adulthood so I opted for frozen peas and carrots as well as frozen corn. Last, but not least, I added a bit of bouillon for that salty, brothy, base and sadly, I did not have any wagon wheels so good ol’ elbow mac had to do. Just to round out the memory for myself, I buttered a slice of bread to eat alongside this, just like dad would have!

My kids gobbled it up, my husband had a hot meal in his thermos today, and I had a very satisfied belly and heart remembering supper with dad as a kid!

Dad’s Goulash

1 lb ground beef

15 oz tomato soup (canned or homemade)

15 oz tomato puree (canned or homemade)

1 cup water

1 cup frozen peas and carrots

1/2 cup frozen corn

2 beef bouillon cubes (start with 1 if you are using canned soup and taste-test for salt before adding 2^nd cube)

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 lb dry pasta, cooked per package instructions

In a 6-quart pot, brown ground beef over medium heat until cooked through. Add all remaining ingredients except pasta. Bring to a simmer and cook 10-15 minutes until bouillon cubes are dissolved and veggies are tender.

Stir in pasta and serve immediately.

Holiday Hustle

My apologies to any of you who have been waiting on a new post from me. I truly appreciate each of you who read this! This time of year is my absolute favorite but I have a tenancy to bury myself in projects. From decorating to handmade gifts to entertaining to cookies, I love it all! But I am finding that all of that leaves very little time for blogging.

Honestly, it doesn't leave a lot of time for cooking either. I tend to do a lot of quick and easy things or pull things out of the freezer while I run around like a crazy elf. I did try to make braised baby back ribs this past weekend. It is a recipe that I have made before and the first time I did it, the ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender and the flavor was amazing! I have tried the same recipe probably six times since then and still have not achieved the same results. I keep trying to get the best cut ribs, cooking a little longer, different varieties of white wine... I can not figure out why I'm not getting the same results. The flavor is good, my ribs are just not getting even close to as tender!

One recipe that always turns out though is my sugar cookies! This is pretty much the only kind of cookies I make at Christmas time even though I have seen (or tasted) hundreds of other delicious Christmas cookie recipes. I stick to rolling out homemade sugar cookie dough and cutting out all of our favorite shapes. Then I whip up some of my mom's buttercream frosting in a bunch of colors for decorating. Sometimes I add candies on the Christmas trees and chocolate chips on the snowmen but, for the most part, I'm completely good with straight up frosting!

What is your favorite type of Christmas cookie to make? Or eat!

Tradition Addition

What a wonderfully busy weekend! It seems that every weekend from now until New Years is always wonderfully busy. This is my absolute favorite time of the year! My husband works crazy hours during the holidays and then I fill basically every one of his non-working hours with Christmas traditions (new and old)!

Yesterday we upheld an old tradition; we went Christmas tree hunting with some really great friends of ours. This tradition started as “Sunday, Funday” before we had children and was an entire day of mimosas (and other concoctions), Christmas trees, snacks and hot soup when we got home with the tree. The first year, we got home with our tree and added tortellini to the soup we had in the slow cooker. We figured we would play a round of cards while the pasta cooked so we all sat down at the dining room table. The next thing we knew, there was a slow soup waterfall flowing out of the slow cooker, down the cabinet and forming a lovely pond on the floor. Tortellini in the slow cooker must me supervised at all times…

These days we do things almost the same way but with our children and without mimosas. This year, our soup was even the same flavor as that first year. But what I wanted to share with you today was the meatball appetizer we dug into this time.

I believe I made mention in a previous post that I was popping some leftover sage stuffing in the freezer. If I had to guess (because I didn’t measure of course), I would say I had 3 cups of stuffing or so. As it turns out, that is enough stuffing to mix with 3 pounds of ground beef and 1 pound of pork sausage to make enough meatballs to feed an army… I’m thankful my friend offered to roll meatballs with me or I might still be doing it! Lucky for us, they turned out delicious and almost a dozen of them were eaten before I even got the sauce together!

For the sauce, I wanted to keep playing off of the Thanksgiving flavors of the stuffing. I decided to add cranberries to my store-bought honey barbeque sauce. I can remember my mom adding grape jelly to barbeque sauce when she made cocktail wieners for holidays and parties when I was a kid. They were ALWAYS a hit. My thoughts went like this; cranberry sauce is a little like grape jelly in sweetness and jelly consistency, cranberry sauce is as much of a Thanksgiving staple as stuffing is, cranberry barbeque sauce and sage stuffing meatballs makes complete sense!

I think these meatballs were good enough to be added to the annual tradition roster. The cranberries gave the sauce just the right about of tartness but didn’t over power the tender, savory meatballs! We all ate so many meatballs and cheesy bean dip that we barely had room for the soup in the slow cooker (and tortellini that we cooked separately on the stove top this time).

 Holiday Cocktail Meatballs

For the Meatballs

3 lbs ground beef

1 lb pork sausage

About 3 cups cooked sage stuffing

3 eggs

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

2 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 4 baking sheets.

In the largest bowl you can find, combine all ingredients. Scoop roughly 2 Tbsp for each meatball and roll into balls. Place meatballs on baking sheets about 1 inch apart so they have a chance to brown in the oven.

Bake for 30-40 minutes. Allow meatballs to cool on pan at least 10 minutes before transferring to vessel with sauce.

For the Sauce

3 cups honey barbeque sauce

3 cup fresh cranberries

1 1/2 cup apple juice

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth. Pour over cooked meatballs and simmer until sauce thickens slightly (about 5-7 minutes). Serve warm.

*Meatballs freeze well in case you are not trying to feed an army. And sauce can easily be reduce to 1/3 of the amount written.

Rolling Up the Leftovers

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday last week! And I hope you all got a hold of some great deals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

The holiday here was lovely! The only thing that burnt was the French fried onion topping on the green bean casserole. Overall, a lovely success! One of my favorite things about making all of this food for one day is the leftovers! Especially Thanksgiving leftovers! Everything seems to reheat well, making dinner for the next 2 days a breeze! This is good, because I needed those 2 days to put my kitchen back together!

As you may have guessed, I also love turning leftovers into new dishes. I enjoy the real simple ones like turkey noodle soup with turkey stock from the bones and cold turkey salad on sandwiches. Then I also like to come up with something a little bit different or new. This year, I popped my baked beans in the freezer with the intention of making cheesy bean dip for guests this coming weekend. I also threw some leftover stuffing in the freezer. I plan to use that to make meatballs.

The new use for leftovers I am most excited about this year is Cranberry Rolls! Now, in previous years, I have taken leftover cranberry sauce and used it to fill crescent roll dough that you get out of the can. I roll the crescent dough around a teaspoon of cranberry sauce, bake until the rolls are done, and top with simple powdered sugar and milk glaze. This year, I decided to take the same idea and step it up by making cinnamon roll dough instead.

I was also thinking that I wanted to add a little texture and just a little more jazz to these things so in my dough recipe, I substituted about a cup and a half of flour for ground up quick oats. I contemplated a cream cheese frosting for this but I decided to stick with the simple glaze to make sure you could really taste the cranberry sauce. Now, I make a very simple cranberry sauce to start with; just sugar, orange juice and fresh cranberries. So to spruce that up a little bit, I tossed in a bit of cinnamon and butter. There’s got to be some rule somewhere that you can’t make rolls like this unless you use butter.

The way I roll when it comes to cinnamon rolls, or cranberry rolls in this case, is I make one batch and split it in two, one for the morning and one for the freezer. These things are best fresh from the oven. The best method I have found so far is to let the rolls go through their second rise, bake them until they are just set and starting to get just a touch of color, then take them out to cool. At this point, I refrigerate one for the next morning and I pop the other in the freezer. When it is time to serve, I put them back in a 350°F oven for about 15-20 minutes until they heat though and turn beautifully golden brown. For me, this works because I don’t have to get up at a ridiculous time in order to serve these puppies for breakfast but they still come out piping hot and fresh!

As my little girl put it, “my belly likes these cranberry rolls”. I baked a pan of 8 rolls this morning, there are 2 adults and 2 children under the age of 4, and there are no leftovers… ‘Tis the season to indulge right?

Cranberry Rolls

Dough

1 cup warm milk (110°-125°F)

1/3 cup butter, melted

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 packet active dry yeast

2 eggs

3 cups flour

2 cups quick oats

Filling

1 cup, or so, leftover cranberry sauce

1/2 heaping tsp cinnamon

4 Tbsp butter, softened

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

1-2 Tbsp milk

½ tsp vanilla extract

Add 2 cups of oats to blender. Pulse until the oats have broken up and resemble coarse flour. Set aside.

To stand mixer bowl, add milk, butter, salt, sugar and yeast. Mix on low 30 seconds to allow the yeast to activate.

With the mixer on low, add blended oats. Then add flour 1/2 to 1 cup at a time until soft dough forms and begins to leave the side of the bowl. Turn the mixer up to begin kneading dough. (At this point, I like to remove the dough to a floured surface and knead by hand for 5-8 minutes)

After dough has been kneaded, place in greased bowl, cover loosely and set in warm area of kitchen to rise until double (about an hour).

While dough is rising, mix cranberry sauce, cinnamon and softened butter. If your cranberries are in large chunks, consider doing this step in the blender or with a potato masher to create a relatively smooth filling. Set aside.

When dough has doubled, turn out on a floured surface. Use rolling pin to roll dough into a rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Spread filling evenly across rolled out dough.

Begin rolling the dough the long way to make a long log. You will have to roll some-what loosely to avoid squishing out all of your filling. When dough is rolled into a log, use a serrated blade to slice into 16 rolls. Place rolls in greased baking dish, cover loosely, and allow to rise for about another hour.

Bake rolls at 375°F for about 20 minutes. If you plan to refrigerate or freeze rolls, remove from oven when rolls are just set and barely starting to show color*. If you are serving immediately, continue baking until rolls are golden brown.

While rolls are cooling, mix together powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. Poor over rolls and serve warm.

*To finish rolls that have been refrigerated or frozen – thaw frozen rolls over night in the fridge. Preheat oven to 350°F and bake rolls for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Mix glaze and poor over rolls as usual.

Turkey Talk

I tried that theory of going to my favorite wholesaler last week to avoid the rush before the holiday this coming week… Turns out that even last Thursday at 2:30 in the afternoon, the place was packed!

Despite the crowd, it was a necessary trip and turned out to be well worth it. They had fresh turkeys on sale for almost half the price of my local grocery store! Unfortunately, because of the crowd, the turkey sizes went directly from 13 pounds to 22 pounds. I plan to brine my turkey so I need a bird small enough to fit in my brining vessel, which happens to be my pressure canning pot. That means I have a very adorably sized 13-pound turkey chillin’ in my freezer. Still more than enough to feed the 4 adults and 2 small children gathering at my house this year.

After making our rounds through the store, my kids and I picked a checkout line and began our wait. An older gentleman got in line behind us and started chatting; talking about how busy they are for a week day and so on. He listened to my three-year-old as she shared random information and made small talk, seemed friendly and nothing odd. Then I started unloading my cart onto the belt and when I got to the turkey and this guy goes, “That’s not a very big turkey, lady”. Now how exactly do you respond to such a comment? Was I just judged on the size of my turkey? I think I might develop a turkey complex.

Nah, the size of the bird doesn’t matter as long as it is juicy and delicious! I have my plan all set to help me accomplish said juicy and delicious bird. Although, I already pushed my Sunday plans back to Monday… not really the best way to start the to-do list. Oh well, game on tomorrow!

It Pays to Have a Plan

The count-down is on! Thanksgiving is next week! Arguably the biggest food day of the year, I spare no expense when setting out our Thanksgiving feast!

My husband works in an industry that gets stupid busy for the holidays. And yes, I meant stupid. We also live far enough from family that it takes us longer to get there than it does to have dinner. The result, new tradition!

I have been preparing Thanksgiving dinner every year since we bought our first house. That particular year, I thought it would be an awesome idea to grill a whole turkey breast. Yeah, not an awesome idea in Wisconsin in November. It took FOREVER for that little turkey breast to cook through. I had invited my mom and younger siblings to dinner that year and to spend the night… They have not been back for Thanksgiving since. Sorry mom…

No picking on my handwriting, scribbles or miss spellings!

The following year, I discovered turkey brining (thank you Good Eats!) and also decided I needed a plan. Every year since, I make a plan and I start as much prep as I can on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I also grocery shop in two parts so I don’t spend an entire day at the store. Tonight’s project was menu plan (which is basically the same every year) and the grocery list. Tomorrow I can head to my local grocery store and stock up on dry and canned goods, lightening the load for early next week. I can also head to my favorite wholesaler at the end of this week instead of trying to fight the crowds there next week.

Still to be done this week, list all the tasks and give them time slots for next week. Thanksgiving is a labor of love! Plan and prep and then I spend the entire day in my pj’s, going in and out of the kitchen. So much to be thankful for!

Piping Hot Freezer Pie

I love freezer cooking! It is a life saver! I have found everything people say about how it saves time and money while being far healthier than fast food to be true! It’s like having a safety net if the day gets away from me or if the weather is terrible and I don’t have any groceries or if someone is sick, etc. I can still serve a yummy meal without dishing out extra cash for delivery.

Before we moved, I was able to be a part of a freezer cooking event at the church my family belonged to. In the days leading up to cooking day, the congregation signed up to bring the ingredients needed and then dropped them off to the church kitchen. The morning of cooking day, a group of a dozen or so women came together in the church kitchen and turned out a couple dozen meals. All the meals were stored in the church freezer and when someone was ill or had a new baby or some other immediate need, the pastoral team would take them a meal. I love this ministry. It is so simple but such a powerful way to help another person and I was blessed to be a part of it.

I have given away freezer meals to friends of mine who could use a little dinner time relief and I have also given them as gifts! People love food! And if you can feed them something delicious that they don’t have to fuss over, what a fabulous gift!

I have done the one day freezer cooking marathon before and it was good. I made the meals I had planned and ended up with three additional meals from the leftover ingredients. The result was something like 22 meals; lasting roughly three months at my house. That is just about perfect as you don’t typically want to keep meals frozen longer than three months. However, my favorite way to do freezer cooking is just to double something I’m already making and pop one in the freezer. This gives me a wide variety in the freezer and I don’t have to dedicate hours to the cause; just the amount of time I was already going to spend on dinner.

Today’s doubled-up recipe is Shepherd’s Pie. Yet again, I am not claiming authenticity… it just tastes good! I have had shepherd’s pie at an Irish pub but I found it a bit bland. I’ve been playing with my recipe for a little while and this is my family likes it best! My method for making this might be a bit odd. I like to make my meat base and divide it into two pans and freeze it. Then I make my mashed potatoes, cool them, and spread them over the frozen base. Two reasons I do this, 1) It’s really easy to spread the potatoes over the frozen base, 2) It allows me to break up the process on the days I have less time in the kitchen.

Shepherd’s Pie comes out of the oven piping hot and full of comfort! The meat and veggies are coated in savory gravy and the potatoes are just barely starting to crisp. It’s not fancy but it just feels like home.

Shepherd’s Pie

(makes 2 casseroles)

2 lbs ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

3 Tbsp butter

1/4 cup flour

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

1 bag frozen mixed vegetables (1 lb), thawed

4 lbs potatoes

1/3 cup whole milk

1/2 cup butter

Salt & Pepper to taste

Over medium-high heat, brown ground beef and onions. When beef is cooked through, add 3 Tbsp butter and 1/4 cup flour. Stir and allow flour to cook 1-2 minutes. Gradually add beef broth and stir to avoid lumps. Season with garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, black pepper and Worcestershire sauce.

Add mixed vegetable and allow to simmer about 10 minutes.

Transfer meat mixture to two greased baking dishes (8”x10” or similar). Allow to cool and then freeze until solid.

For mashed potatoes:

Peal and boil potatoes. When potatoes are fork-tender, drain and set aside. Melt butter in pan potatoes were boiled in over medium heat. Add milk and let it warm for 2-3 minutes. Add potatoes back into butter and milk mix and mash. Season with salt and pepper.

When potatoes are cooled, remove meat mixture from freezer and top with potatoes. Smooth potatoes with spoon or spatula so entire meat base is covered and potatoes reach edges of pan.

Immediately return pan to freezer if you are not eating it on the same day. To serve on the same day, place in the refrigerator to thaw meat base.

To heat Shepherd’s pie for serving, preheat oven to 350°. Cover and bake approximately 30 minutes. Remove cover and bake additional 15-20 or until heated through and potatoes are just starting to brown.