Swedish meatballs

Serves 6.

For meatballs, mix together:

1.5 pounds lean ground beef
1 cup rolled oats
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon cardamon
salt and pepper to taste
moisten with a little milk, if mixture too dry
(Optional: add 1/2 chopped white onion for zestier flavor)

Shape mixture into small balls.

Brown meatballs in large skillet.

Add 1 quart water and simmer meatballs.

To make brown gravy:

When water is reduced and meatballs cooked thoroughly, reduce heat and add 3 cups milk to skillet.

Continue cooking at low temperature. While stirring sauce, sprinkle in 3/4 cup flour as thickener.

Stir as sauce thickens.

Serve meatballs with sauce over egg noodles. (Prepare noodles according to package directions.)

Bon appetit!

***

Review:

Everyone liked this recipe.

3 forks for bland, but good

party food 1

Informal parties to celebrate small accomplishments make our daily life
incredibly rich.

Some of the items we served at this party included:

Easy sour cream vegetable dip with carrots:

• Mix one package Knorr Vegetable Soup mix with 16 ounces sour cream. Refrigerate overnight.
  

(By the way, Knorr brand is owned by Unilever, which has great recipes online!)

Pepperidge Farm Entertaining Quartet fancy crackers topped with:

• Havarti cheese,
  
• Swiss Lorraine cheese,
  
• dill pickles, and
  
• black olives.

(Pepperidge Farm was started by Margaret Rudkin during the Great Depression in response to her son's asthma and allergies. Pepperidge Farm brand is now owned by Campbell Soup.)

Pineapple slices with:

• a dab of sour cream and
  
• sprinkled with cinnamon.

For dessert, we served Happy Apples brand refrigerated caramel apples.

***
Review

5 forks

The food was great, of course! It was a party!

no crust pumpkin pie

Fresh pumpkin pie makes a great autumnal side dish . . .

One small fresh pie pumpkin makes about four cups of mashed pumpkin.

Each pie (with or without a crust) requires 1 cup of mashed pumpkin.

***

First, cook the pie pumpkin:

Prick the skin of one pie pumpkin in several places.

Cook whole pie pumpkin in 350 degree F oven for about an hour.

Remove pumpkin from oven and cool.

When pie pumpkin is about room temperature, cut into halves. Scoop seeds from pumpkin.

Scoop pumpkin flesh from the shell. Mash with a hand-held potato masher.

I small pie pumpkin makes about 4 cups mashed pumpkin. (I reserved three cups of mashed pumpkin to make "real" pumpkin pies with crusts.)


I used the Old Fashioned Pumpkin Pie recipe from Esther H Shanks' Mennonite Country-Style Recipes as the basis for no crust pumpkin pie.

Mix:
1 cup fresh, mashed pie pumpkin
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
dash of salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
2 tsp. vanilla
1 and 1/2 cups milk

Pour into greased baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees F for an hour, or until center of pie is firm. (Table knife comes out clean.)

Serve as delicious side dish for winter menu.

***

Review:

3 forks
My diners were merely tolerant of the whim to use pumpkin pie as a side dish. It was enjoyed with scepticism.

chicken with bok choy rice

Serves 4.

Slice boneless, skinless chicken breasts into long strips.

Place in large skillet.

Add water to a depth of about 2 inches.

Simmer until the chicken is cooked through. (No pink interior color. Replenish simmering water, if need be.)

While the chicken is simmering:


In a saucepan, place:
1 and 1/2 cups rice
3 cups water
1 baby bok choy, diced

Cover saucepan.

Simmer rice and bokchoy until all the water is absorbed.

Serve rice onto plates.

Arrange hot chicken strips on top.

Mandarin oranges make a good accompaniment.

***

Review:

3 forks
The diners ate and were satisfied, but menu did not elicit extraordinary enthusiasm. Maybe because bok choy is not a familiar vegetable in this setting . . . ?

wagon wheel beef soup

This was a spur-of-the-moment lunch item one recent October day . . .

Serves four.

Heat a large can Campbell's Vegetable Beef Soup, per directions on the can.

In a separate saucepan, prepare 1 package wagon wheel pasta according to the directions on the package. (We tried the mini wagon wheels by Barilla. The pasta size matched the soup very well.)

When the pasta is cooked, drain thoroughly.

Add to the hot Vegetable Beef soup and stir thoroughly.

Top with generous sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

Serve and enjoy!

***

Review:

Rating: 4 forks
My diners loved the recipe.

sour cream

Have you wondered why it is hard to find sour cream unadulterated with other ingredients? I have shopped at refrigerator sections where the list of extra ingredients in sour cream grosses me out. So I pick up brand after brand of sour cream, read the labels, and put them back. Only one brand at our local grocery has sour cream made from cream (only): Daisy Brand.

Daisy Brand, a fourth-generation, family-owned business, is the largest sour cream manufacturer in the USA. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has a huge distribution facility at Garland, Texas. It uses Alien Technology brand, up-to-date, radio-frequency identification (RFID) inventory control devices in its distribution centers.

taco pie

This pumpkin face is happy because today's surprise entree came out great!
It is another of the,
"Oh my gosh, I thought we had all the ingredients (when we didn't)" successes.

My intent was to make soft-shell tacos. Bought the ground beef, onion, diced tomates, taco seasoning, cheddar cheese. (We had flour tortillas in the refrigerator.)

Recipe:
4 Servings:

Taco filling

• Heat 2 Tablespoons sunflower seed oil (or your favorite vegetable oil) in a large skillet.


• Add 1 pound low-fat ground beef and 1/2 diced white onion.


• Cook until meat completely browned.


• Add 1 can diced tomatoes.


• Add 1 package Taco Seasoning and 2/3 cup water.


• Simmer.
  
  

(Now would have been the time to pull out the flour tortillas and get ready to assemble soft-shell tacos. As it turned out, I had only 2 tortillas in my refrigerator, not enough to feed our hungry crew. And I didn't have the patience to wait for pasta or rice to cook.

So I reverted to plan B:

Grits --

• Boil 3 cups water in a saucepan.


• Add 3/4 cup grits, stirring constantly.


• Cook grits about 5 minutes, or until thickened.


• Pour grits into 4 bowls.


• Top each bowl of grits with several ladles of the simmering taco filling.


• Melt slices of cheddar cheese on top of the taco filling.
  
  Tastes great with lemonade!
  

***

Review

4 forks -- Everyone wanted seconds

Ham and eggs and grits

Sometimes we just have to fix comfort food -- days when:

• the dogs won't quit barking,
• the children won't stop fussing,
• the refrigerator's leaking,
• the phone's ringing
• unexpected guests stop by
  

Nothing but nothing beats ham and grits with water gravy, and a side of scrambled eggs for restoring harmony to the universe.

We tested out this menu last night with good effect:

Serves 4

Grits:

• Boil 3 cups water in a saucepan for grits.
• Add 3/4 cups grits to boiling water, stirring constantly.
• Let grits cook for a few minutes, until thickened. Stir occasionally so they don't burn.
  

Ham and water gravy:

While grits are cooking:

• Heat skillet.
• Place four fully-cooked, prepackaged ham steaks in hot skillet and cook for 3 minutes on each side. (It will blacken the steaks slightly.)
• Add 2 cups water to skillet with ham steaks and simmer. This makes the water gravy.
  

Returning to the grits:

• When the grits are thickened enough, add several slices cheddar cheese.
• Stir melting cheese into grits.
• Move saucepan with cheese grits to cool burner and cover.

Scrambled eggs and sausage:

• Get out another saucepan.
• Cover bottom of saucepan with sunflower oil (or your favorite vegetable oil).
• Break 4 eggs into skillet.
  
• Stir eggs in skillet with wooden spatula, scrambling them.
• Throw in a handful of sliced, fully cooked, little Smokeys sausage.
• Stir until sausage slices are heated through and eggs are cooked.

Serve:
Serve ham steaks on plates with cheese grits. Cover both with water gravy.

Pile scrambled eggs and sausage on the side.


Enjoy!

***

Review:

5 forks for pleasing the appetite and restoring good humor