billroper | Entries tagged with recipes

Yesterday, when I was over at Sam's Club, I picked up a couple of the big loaves of ciabatta bread. Today, I cut them in half in both directions and we made pizza bread. This took a can and a half of pizza sauce (happily, I had a half-sized can in the pantry), two pouches of shredded cheese, pepperoni (for all), and mushrooms (for Gretchen and K). Assembly was simple, I popped the two cookie sheets into the oven, and eight minutes later, we had some lovely pizza bread.

It *looked* huge. Gretchen and I had no trouble getting through our half-loaves; the kids didn't quite manage to finish theirs, but it can be reheated.

I'm keeping this approach in mind for the winter break festivities, because the ciabatta loaves are a lot cheaper -- and easier to manage! -- than Boboli crusts. Or pizza crust dough. :)

RXO called today and my new TV is now scheduled to be delivered on Monday, October 7th. I am hoping that they don't drop it. :)

In other news, we have found a quick and easy way to make an improved version of beans and franks. Whether this is useful to you depends on your tolerance for *any* version of beans and franks; or whether or not you have children eating the beans and franks who might flee in terror from this concept.

We start with a tub of the Member's Mark BBQ Brisket & Beans from the refrigerator case at Sam's Club, plus a single big link of the Johnsonville Smoked Sausage (about 14 ounces, as I recall). Slice the sausage thin and brown it in a Dutch oven on the stove top. Then add the tub of beans and heat until thoroughly warmed through.

And that's it. It doesn't get much simpler.

And it is *very* tasty. :)

It's been a bit since we tried this (and since there is cauliflower in the fridge, we need to try this again).

We tossed cauliflower florets with olive oil and the Spice House's Carne Asada blend, then roasted them in the oven until done. This resulted in some really tasty cauliflower.

It was especially nice, because we've been looking at cauliflower seasoning that isn't so high in garlic, because Gretchen can't handle too much garlic. The amount of garlic in the Carne Asada seasoning was low enough to pass.

We had leftover pulled pork in the fridge and Gretchen was in the mood to experiment. The other day, we started tossing ideas back and forth and came up with the following recipe. I acquired the ingredients from the grocery store and she put it together. It came out well -- it was *definitely* tasty.

All amounts are subject to change. :)

Gretchen prepared one box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix, adding a drained can of Green Giant Steam Fresh Crisp Niblets Corn to the mix, and baked it until almost done in the bottom of a casserole dish at 400 degrees. While that was baking, she took a saucepan and added the remaining pulled pork, diced into smaller chunks as required, along with a can of pork and beans. Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce was added to taste. (Your BBQ sauce may vary. We used pork and beans instead of baked beans of any variety, because that made it easier to control the seasoning.)

The almost-baked casserole dish of cornbread was removed from the oven. The remaining space in the dish was filled with the pulled pork and bean mixture, then topped with a generous portion of shredded cheddar jack cheese. The cheese was then sprinkled liberally with french fried onions.

The casserole dish was returned to the oven for six minutes at 400 degrees, which finished the bread and made the french fried onions nicely crispy.

The results were pronounced yummy.

Crossposts: https://billroper.livejournal.com/1890513.html

Having become bored with our usual stew recipe, which consists of stew beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions,

daisy_knotwise suggested some changes and I suggested a few more. The net result was that as we near the end of the cooking process, we add a small jar of chunky salsa to the mix, along with a can of the Green Giant low-water kernel corn, which happily turns out to be quite crisp. That is then mixed in well and allowed to cook long enough that everything that was just added is heated through.

The results are pretty tasty in our opinion. It's not quite Brunswick Stew, but it's leaning in that direction.

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Bill Roper's Journal

Entries tagged with recipes

An Easy Dinner

Upscaling

Cauliflowered

Pulled Pork & Beans Pie

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