Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Hamburger - ham meatloaf - Very Good!

Today I was gone all day and came home really worn out. I walked in the kitchen and couldn't see a thing going on, so sighed - thinking that my husband must have decided it was my turn to cook.

Must have been that I was so tired my nose wasn't working - or maybe it was all the dust I'd been breathing outside in the wind all day. No matter - a new creation awaited my hunger.

Carl had made meatloaf of ground beef, little chunks of leftover potato, and a good portion of tiny ham cubes, along with some crumbled bread and a couple of eggs. The little ham cubes were left over from making homemade pizza on Sunday - the little tiny ones that I usually toss into a homemade soup.

Goes to show what good things can come out of a refrigerator full of leftovers!

Here's to tasty creativity!

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Ever try a carrot sandwich?

Today I volunteered to help out at a ladies' fashion show and tea fundraiser, and I came home with a new recipe.

All the members of this group brought tea sandwiches and/or treats to serve to an audience of about 60 ladies. I've never before seen so many calorie-laden goodies get eaten so fast! From tiny cherry tarts to cream cheese stuffed strawberries with chocolate, to old fashioned brownies and cornflake/peanut butter balls - the goodies were abundant.

But what was more interesting to me (because too many sweets make me queasy) was the variety of sandwiches - including one I'd never seen before. It wasn't very pretty, but talk about good! Served on whole wheat bread, the filling consisted of nothing more than cream cheese filled with finely shredded raw carrots.

We don't serve tea sandwiches around home, but my bet is this would make a great spread on crackers.

Thinking about goodies prompted me to add a new page to our "Carl Cooks" website - so as of now you can find the banana bread recipe that's been used in my family since a friend shared it with my mom some time in the 1940's. You know it's good, or we'd have found a new one by now!

So you can enjoy it too, here's the direct link to Mrs. Lydia Falk's Banana Bread recipe.

Wishing you a happy Memorial Day week-end...

Marte

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Off the hook with Papa's Pizza

Papa Murphy's that is... Carl got off the hook for cooking last night when our neighbor came by with a gift for me - a pizza all ready to go in the oven.

I love them, and Carl doesn't. He swears pizza gives him a stomach ache. Does that stop him from helping me eat them? Heck no. That pizza got him out of cooking. Funny how fast he learned that cooking every night gets to be a bore - and a challenge of some magnitude.

So my next challenge is to find him a good recipe for home-made pizza sauce. I think perhaps it's the preservatives they use in commercially made pizza that gives him a bad time. But as much as he likes baking bread, I think he'll enjoy making the crust. And God only knows what he'll come up with for toppings. As long as there's plenty of good cheese, I'll be happy.

Anyone have a pizza sauce recipe? If so, share please!

Yours for good eating,
Marte

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Adventures with pork ribs

Carl and I have different ideas about pork ribs. He likes the country style - with lots of meat on the bones - soaked all day in barbecue sauce and then cooked slowly in the big iron dutch oven. Sometimes he browns them on the barbecue grill just before serving, sometimes not. (That depends on the ambition factor, you know.)

I, on the other hand, prefer the less meaty ribs, cooked with no sauce. I like to take the lid off before they're completely done so they can get crispy. Yes - they're greasy and salty and ... I love them.

So, this week I bought some of "my" kind of ribs. And Carl cooked them the way he does a beef roast, sort of.

He left them all in one piece instead of cutting them apart like I do. Then he wrapped the meat around the outside of the dutch oven and put potatoes and carrots and onions in the middle. However, knowing that I liked them crispy, he didn't add any water or broth. He did put the lid on the dutch oven, however.

After an hour and a half in a 350 degree oven he thought dinner should be cooked, but it was still a push to stick a fork in those carrots! We left them another 20 minutes and ate slightly hard carrots and almost done potatoes. The meat was cooked, but in spite of taking the lid off for almost an hour, they were not crispy. (We put aluminum foil over the veggies in the middle when we removed the lid, by the way.)

So what went wrong? I think the ribs need to be cut apart and laid down in the pan so they sizzle in that lovely grease. And, it appears to me that the carrots need moisture while they're cooking.

Just a few days earlier he cooked his favorite chuck roast, and it all turned out just right. You can see the chuck roast recipe at our Carl Cooks website.

My teaching Carl to cook is really pretty funny. I've never been a cook, never wanted to cook, and don't know many tricks of the trade. The only time I really enjoy it is when it is the job of the day - like for Christmas and Thanksgiving when I start in the morning and keep going until all the dishes are done.

I have a feeling that with his experimentation and love of good food, meals might begin to be more interesting around here.

If you've got a favorite you'd like to share - send it on. And with your permission, I might even put it on the Carl Cooks website!

Happy meals,
Marte

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Healthy dog treats equal happy canines

Anyone else have spoiled dogs? Ours have now decided to turn their noses up at any treats that don't come from our kitchen.

The easiest treats of all are liver - just bake or pan fry the stuff until it firms up enough to cut easily, then cut it into small pieces and leave it in an oven at about 200 degrees until the pieces turn crunchy. Our dogs will practically fight each other for one of those, and it makes us feel good to know they aren't getting any preservatives. If you get it good and dry, it will keep, but just to be on the safe side I store it in the freezer.

But do keep an eye on your work - or your dogs - or both.

One night I had baked about 4 pounds of liver and had cut it into the small pieces I mentioned. Not wanting to take the couple hours necessary to dry it right then, I left it on the kitchen counter and forgot to put it away when I went to bed. In the morning there was about a cup full of liver scattered across the floor, next to the empty baking pan.

You know a Border Collie standing on her hind legs can reach pretty far across the counter when there's something really wonderful to steal.

I don't know if the other two helped her eat it or not, but I kind of doubt it, because she was the only one who stunk for the next 3 days. Whew! I couldn't stand to have her in the room!

Knowing how much they love liver, and feeling lazy, last week I was in a pet store and bought a bag of "liver treats." Good thing for me the bag said I could return them if I wasn't satisfied. I didn't taste them, but you know when the dogs spit them out and look at you with that old "What was THAT?" look, they must not have tasted very good.

Our mainstay treats are beef and cheese - I buy inexpensive cuts of roast beef when it's on sale. Then cook it and pulverize the cooked meat in the food processor. After that I cut some chunks of cheese, add some flour so it won't stick together, and pulverize that. Then, a little olive oil and the juice from the roast. After I dump in some whole wheat flour and about a tablespoon of yeast I add water (or beef or chicken) broth to make a mix about the consistency of bread dough.

You can be fancy and roll this out and cut it like cookie dough, but the fast and easy way is to roll chunks into long "ropes" and lay them side by side on a cookie sheet. After the sheet is full, take a long knife and score the tops so the pieces will break apart easily. I usually let the dough raise before baking.

Once I did try just patting the whole mix into the bottom of a cake pan, but it was harder to break the pieces apart after it was baked. I like small pieces so they can have more treats.

Unless your dogs prefer chewie cookies, bake this for an hour or so at about 300 and then turn the oven down to 200 and bake it for a couple more hours - so you get crunchy biscuits without burning them. I like to play it safe, so I also store these in the freezer.

By the way... When we first started making these biscuits I used a recipe - measured ingredients and everything. But you don't need to. The dogs like them just as well if there's more or less cheese, and they like them fine if you toss in some left over pork or hamburger (or steak!) when you're pulverizing the roast. You can even add some veggies if you want. The main thing is to get all the ingredients processed down so you don't have big lumps.

Go bake a biscuit - your dogs will love you for it!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Homemade bread, less an ingredient

Yesterday this old "carpenter turned cook" made a batch of homemade bread. In fact, I made two batches, because I forgot to put everything in the first time.

The recipe I'm using calls for cooking oil, and I left it out. I thought I'd mention it, because it wasn't half bad. Anyone trying to cut calories or cut fats might want to consider making that mistake on purpose.

Meanwhile, I'm finally understanding why my wife used to get so annoyed when she'd ask what I wanted for dinner and I'd say "I don't know." It really is hard to cook "I don't know!"

The worst of it is, I can see she's getting even. There's something in that smile when she says it that looks just a little malicious. I think the woman is having fun watching me try to do what she's been doing for the past 40 years. I KNOW she's having fun when she sits down with a book and waits for me to put it on the table.

Do you think she'd like to have her job back? No? I didn't think so either.

Any of you guys (or gals) have some ideas for fast and easy dinners, shoot them over.