$1 Million Pillsbury Bakeoff

I think Phil might have a recipe to enter!! Pillsbury Bake Off

Even if you don't have your own recipe to share, there are some great ones on there for you to try at home. The Breakfast Quiches look yummy. Click here to view the past Bake Off Winning Recipes.

Menu Plan Monday--April 6

Starting March 2nd, We're going to give this a shot. I used to be so good at planning meals and something happened--and then I found out by way of a food journal, my system doesn't tolerate MSG--so I'm making thing from scratch to avoid the nasty stuff!

And since we're moving soon, I also would like to need to empty out the abundance from my freezer and pantry. I'm going to try to GOING to spend less than $15 a week for my grocery budget in April and probably the first two weeks of May. WISH ME LUCK! LOL

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Last week was a success as far as the budget goes! This week, I planned, shopped, spent $14 ($1 under budget!!) Then realized we were out of dog food and spent $17 more. :(

When you do a grocery budget--do you do an entire "everything needed for the household" budget or just a grocery budget and everything else like toilet paper, light bubs, dog food, etc goes on a different budget?

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We didn't eat a couple of meals I had planned last week for various reasons. We're not eating the same things two weeks in a row, I've just moved them.

Monday--Round Steak and gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans.

Tuesday--Ravioli, garlic bread

Wednesday--Tuna Noodle Casserole (no mushrooms!) Recipe below

Thursday--Stuffed Peppers (Large--Once a Month Cooking-type Recipe), mashed potatoes, green beans

Friday and Saturday--leftover days.

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Tuna Noodle Casserole

1 bag egg noodles
1 can of tuna
1 can of (choose one) either cream of mushroom, cream of chicken or cream of celery soup**
1 1/3 cup milk
2 sticks butter (I hate margarine)
2 row of saltine crackers
salt
pepper

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cook egg noodles as directed on package. Drain.

3. In a large bowl (large enough to fit all of the noodles as well as other ingredients) mix the can of soup, the milk and some salt and pepper. Mix well.

4. Add the noodles to the mixture and mix well.

5. Put noodle mixture in a 9x11 pan.

4. Melt the stick of butter in a medium sized microwavable bowl (I do it in the microwave--30 seconds at a time until it is fully melted)

5. Crush the crackers in their sleeve. Be careful the sleeve doesn't pop!

6. Mix the crackers with the melted butter.

7. Place cracker and butter mixture on top of noodle mixture and spread evenly. Make sure all the noodles are covered, if they're not they'll get hard when they're baking (and I don't like that)

8. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour.



**Since I cook MSG free, I either have to look for soup cans that say No MSG or I make my own. To make a tasty substitute for a cream of celery soup: melt 2 tablespoons of butter (I hate margarine!) in a saucepan. Chop up some celery and onions and saute them until the onions are clear. Wisk in a cup and a half milk. You can add salt and pepper if you'd like. That's it!

Copy Stovetop Recipe

I cannot tolerate MSG. I've not blogged about it because I feared people would think I jumped on the "allergy" bandwagon but after months and months of journaling my food and after speaking with my doctor, it's official. I can't eat MSG. I'll be blogging more about it soon.

For now, I'm trying to find food without MSG. Do you know how hard that is? So I usually opt to make my own.

Here's my Stovetop Copy recipe.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups cubed bread
• 3 tsp. vegetable, chicken or beef bouillon granules or 3 cubes (Make sure you buy it with no MSG, otherwise nearly every bouillon has it)
• 1/4 cup dried minced onion
• 1/2 cup dried minced celery
• 1 tsp. thyme
• 1 tsp. pepper
• 1-1/2 tsp. sage

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*F. Bake bread cubes for 8 to 10 minutes or until dry. In a large bowl, toss bread with remaining ingredients until evenly coated. Store in airtight container.

It will keep for 1 to 4 months or 12 months frozen.

To prepare, boil 1/2 cup water and 2 tablespoons butter. Combine 2 cups stuffing mix, remove from heat then fluff with fork.

Yields about 7 cups




I used some Panera Sourdough ends I threw in the freezer along with a half a loaf of french bread. I made the whole batch using 1-1/2 cups of water and 6 tablespoons of butter. That should feed a family of 4 or 5.

Recipe Award-Post Your Favorite

Thank you Maddy for awarding my Snowballs!


To see ~mich cooks snowballs click here.

Guidelines:-

1. If you have time you may wish to link to the originator: Maddy

2. Whizz it off to seven other blogs that you like, ideally to a perfect and specific recipe.

3. Tell the awardee that you have awarded them [because lots of people will never know otherwise because they have no way of knowing unless you tell them, unless they're higher up the blogging learning curve than I am!]

4. Sit back and enjoy the glow.

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Post a link to your favorite recipe and I'll award my seven favorites with the Bon Appétit Blog Award!

Homemade Old Bay, Dips, and Tuna Cakes

I thought I blogged about this? I searched the blog and couldn't find it so I guess I intended to, but didn't.

Some time ago, in a land far, far away. Oh. Wait. Let me start again.

Sometime in the recent past, I can't remember when--I keep reading that's part of this thyroid nonsense I'm dealing with, Phil made Tuna Cakes. It started like this. Remember when I went to see Jill? On the way home, I stopped at my friend Lisa's house and her fabulous husband Will made tuna cakes, homemade dip and buttered noodles. I came home raving and not to be outdone, Phil had to prove that he could do it better. (Don't tell him I like it when he does that.)

So I emailed Lisa for the herbs and we set to re-creating the meal my gracious hosts served.

So now here's where I share what we learned. Phil made fish cakes and here are the dips and the recipe for homemade Old Bay Seasoning.

Our local health food store sells bulk spices and we've found they're much more flavorful and a heck of a lot cheaper.

The dips we made for the tuna and crab cakes:

1. Basil, cracked pepper, mayonnaise
2. Tarragon, Dijon mustard, mayonnaise
3. Old Bay, mayonnaise



Here's the Homemade Old Bay:

1	tablespoon ground bay leaves
2 1/2	teaspoons celery salt
1 1/2	teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2	teaspoons black pepper
3/4	teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2	teaspoon ground cloves
1/2	teaspoon ground ginger
1/2	teaspoon paprika
1/2	teaspoon red pepper flakes, ground
1/4	teaspoon mace
1/4	teaspoon cardamom

Combine well and store in an airtight container.

Sliced Tomatoes

To make your tomatoes taste like they were fresh picked from your backyard vine do this:

Sprinkle on some rice vinegar. I've used seasoned rice vinegar as well.

Lightly salt and pepper.

Sprinkle a little sugar on top.

Delicious!!


Photo Credit

Leftover Stew

Don't forget to Name That Picture!


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Leftover Garlic Chuck Roast Stew

Leftover garlic chuck roast (including the onions)
3   Beef bouillon cubes
2 c  Hot water
2-4  Potatoes (I like the peels left on)
2  Ribs celery
A small head of cabbage
5 Carrots
8 oz Tomato sauce
Salt and pepper


Throw it all into your crock pot

Garlic Chuck Roast

No. We're not roasting Chuck the dog. Thank God.

We're roasting chuck, the cow. Or Chuck the roast? Click here to see nice diagram of beef cuts.


So. On with the garlic. If you don't like garlic, move right along. Don't stop here, nothing to see. I promise, you will hate this.

I like to ward off the vampires so we use vast quantities of garlic.

You'll need:

A chuck roast (3ish pounds)
Some more of that wonderful minced garlic
A little Olive Oil
Some salt
Some pepper
Some bay leaves
A large onion
Some butter
Some water
And a pound or so of carrots
Potatoes if you like

Pre-heat oven to 325.

Cut slits in the chuck roast and cram them full of the minced garlic. Put as many holes as you like and as much garlic as you like. See my picture below? We like lots of garlic.

Put a little olive oil in a pan and sear the chuck roast.



Put the roast into a baking pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper then top with bay leaves.



Next, slice up the onion and put it on top. We like onions, too. Keeps ghosts away. I put extra onions around the side.

Put a couple cups of water around the roast, cover and bake for 1 1/2 hours.



After the hour and a half, add carrots and potatoes around the roast and bake for another hour.

And there you have it.

Too bad you can't see a picture of the finished roast. I forgot to take it because I was shoving my mouth full of my delicious garlic chuck roast.


And then, you can make beef and cabbage crock pot stuff for leftovers.

Roasted Potato Soup. Otherwise known as OMG is this good soup.

I used more than one potato, but I forgot to take a picture until now.

Potatoes (about 2lbs)
1 big onion or 2 small onions
Little chunk of butter
10 cloves garlic
Salt and Pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I used garlic infused Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
6 cups chicken stock
2 Tablespoons flour
1/2 cup milk or half and half

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cut up potatoes and onions, toss with the olive oil, use enough to coat them. Layer them on a cookie sheet. Throw some salt and pepper on them. Bake for an hour. (the tips will get a bit burnt, don't fret...this causes some seriously good flavor)



Melt some butter and put your garlic in. I use the pre-minced garlic. LOVE that stuff. If you want to use a head of garlic, put it in some foil with the butter and throw it in the oven, bake it for 45 minutes. If you're like me, spoon the minced stuff in a pan and cover, heat on low for a good half hour, raise the heat a bit towards the end and get it a nice golden brown color.

When the potatoes and onions are done, you can put some stock in a food processor and chop up about 1/4 of the potatoes and onions.

Make a roux with the butter and flour then mix with the stock, stirring smooth. Add in potatoes, onions, garlic and milk, simmer for a bit and you've got the best potato soup I've ever made!

We ate this with some buttered sun-dried tomato bread. Oh man. Delicious!!

Beef Things with Spicy Dipping Sauce

I started with this package of frozen "seasoned shaved beef slices" You could probably fry up some flank steak or any kind of thin shaved or sliced beef. Use your imagination.

I was out of Rice-a-roni, so I looked up a recipe for a copy version, tweaked it to my taste buds and went at it.

Then I put some corn tortillas right the burner of my gas stove, added some of the beef, the homemade rice, and there you have it. A new creation!

Oh. The dipping sauce. Really, really hot. Don't dunk. Dip lightly. Or put less hot stuff in it. But it is supposed to be a little spicy, so don't take it all out.



Homemade Rice-a-roni

4 tbsp butter

2 c. rice
1 c. angel hair, vermicelli or spaghetti pasta, broken into very small pieces
¼ c. parsley
8 tsp. beef bullion powder
1/4 chopped onion
1 clove crushed garlic
¼ tsp. thyme
4 1/2 cups hot water


Melt butter, add in rice and pasta, brown.




Heat water in microwave, add beef bullion powder and spices to it. Add to browned pasta/rice mixture slowly. Bring to a boil. Turn down to simmer, cover until pasta/rice soaks up the liquid.


For the dipping sauce, I didn't have any apple juice, so I used that little packet of Mott's Hot Spiced Cider, Red Delicious flavor. Hey. It worked.

Spicy Dipping Sauce

1/2 CUP Apple juice
2 TBSP Soy sauce
2 TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar
1 TBSP Chili Sauce or hot sauce
2 Garlic Cloves, minced or 1/2 TSP Garlic Powder
1 TSP dried, crushed Chilies, finely crushed
1/4 TSP White Sugar
Pinch of Pepper

Combine ingredients in a small saucepan. Heat until simmering. Cover. Simmer for 10 minutes. Serve at room temperature. Makes 1/3 CUP sauce.

~mich cooks snowballs

Update September 6, 2008:
Thank you Maddy for the award!

Snowballs are a Slovak tradition in our family. (So are kolachy but I didn't make those for Christmas this year. I'll get in trouble for not making them and end up doing them for our New Year's Day dinner.)

As a kid (about Zane's age) I used to help my Baba (grandma) roll these out for hours on end. You shouldn't really make this unless you double or triple the recipe. I triple it.



1 cup margarine (real butter makes them go flat)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla (I always pour extra in)
1 cup of fine chopped walnuts, packed tight (you can't do it with pieces, stick them in the food processor--they need to be like a thick powder)

Cream butter and sugar together.

Baba's recipe says to sift the flour--I'm sure this makes a great difference but I've lost my sifter and haven't replaced it so I've been skipping that step for years now.

Add salt to creamed mixture, work in vanilla and nuts--I use a spatula for this part.

Add sugar and butter stuff to the flour. Don't bother trying to use a spoon, get both hands in the bowl and mix it up until it looks good and mixed.

Chill about an hour. (Ok, I usually skip this step, too.)

Roll into little balls.

Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes. The tops won't look much different, you'll have to pick up the cookie and peek at the bottom, they'll be done when the bottom is a nice golden brown. Don't under cook them, they'll be doughy. Trust me.

While they're still warm, roll them in powdered sugar. Then a little bit later, roll them again. Don't skip this step.
If you're making a triple batch, buy a pound of shelled walnuts and put them through your little chopper or food processor. It'll come out to exactly 3 packed cups and that's what you want!


Then let me know how much you love these things! They're so addicting!