recipes

Cream together
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (cooler work better than warmer butter)
1 tsp vanilla

Add one egg and beat well.

Separate bowl mix together
1.5 cup flour
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel
1/4 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients into wet thoroughly.

Cover the bowl and let chill for two hours.

Shape dough into small bowls and roll in cinnamon sugar to coat.
Set cookies, one inch apart on a greased cookie sheet.
Cook at 350 for 10 minutes until edges are slightly browned.
Cool  slightly on pans and then remove to racks to finish cooling.

Verdict: These cookies are a HUGE favourite in our household.

On January 7th, my side of the family has our annual potluck meal.  We had a pretty good time eating, laughing and singing together.  The lad brought a friend with him.   Folks brought some good food. 

My sweet man, knowing how I hate coming up with something to make for potlucks, suggested I make Spaghetti Casserole.

It was REALLY good.  The only one in our family who wasn’t keen on it was the lad.. because we told him it was much like spaghetti and meatballs but…it wasn’t really spaghetti and meatballs and so offended his sense of rightness.  🙂  Precision sometimes causes troubles!  

Anyways, you are probably waiting for the recipe.  It is based off this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 (16 ounce) package spaghetti
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 2 (26.5 ounce) cans meatless spaghetti sauce
• 1 (16 ounce) container fat-free sour cream
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• salt and black pepper to taste 

  
Changes I made:

• used a whole medium sized onion
• Added basil, parsley, oregano and a touch of garlic to the meat mixture.  Other than the garlic, about 1 tbsp each of the dried herbs.
• Instead of sour cream used greek yogurt. 
• also guesstimated the spaghetti used as I used leftovers from during the week (had hubby cook extra when he asked)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a deep 9×13 inch baking dish.
2. Bring a large pot of
   salted water to a boil over high heat. Stir in the spaghetti. Boil the
   pasta until cooked through but still firm to the bite, 8 to 10 minutes.
   Drain well.
3. Brown ground beef and
   onion in a large skillet over high heat; drain fat. Stir in the
   spaghetti sauce, sour cream, and 1 cup of the mozzarella. Mix in the
   cooked pasta. Transfer pasta mixture to prepared baking dish. Top with
   remaining 1 cup of mozzarella and the Parmesan cheese. Cover pan with
   aluminum foil.
4. Bake in preheated oven until hot and bubbly, about 30 minutes.

End result:

• Came home with about a 1/3 of a large casserole dish full.   
• Requests for the recipe.
• An international student who eagerly devoured the leftovers. 
• Knowledge that hubby picked a good recipe and now I have a new recipe to add to our repertoire.
• it works well making the night before and then cooking in oven the next morning and travels very well.

So I am hopeful I made these correctly.  I’ve never seen scones like these before (always been flat irrecgular shapes), but the recipe called for balls…

The recipe below.  🙂

There were very easy to make.

My son liked them but said “they need cheese mom!”

Served them at Christmas dinner and people liked them!   WOOT WOOT!!!   Think I’ll do them again sometime.  🙂

This recipe was more complicated to make than I care to admit… Not sure why I found it so, but I did.

Anyways, here we go.

So I made two different sizes though only included the pics of the small ones.  It made a lot of dough (if turning into bread would have made probably three loaves).

Anyways so I made soft ones by cramming a bunch of little balls close together.

Then what was supposed to be harder rolls by making bigger ones that weren’t touching.  I admittedly could not really tell the difference except the size. 

How to make them?

What did I find a challenge?
 Scalding the milk, then mixing the milk with the oil without creating a mess, and the rising of the dough seemed to take forever despite a warm house.

I also didn’t use as much flour as the recipe called for so that made me feel a bit leery.

Anyways, the buns were made for our Christmas meal, hopefully people like them (though by the time this recipe posts they will have been eaten).  🙂

This is a recipe I threw together one night.

Needed:
One Pillsbury Pizza dough package.  Rolled out.
Cooked ground beef that has been seasoned.
Mozzarella Cheese grated.

I didn’t add anything else as I planned to share this with my Brazillian Student (who doesn’t do veggies at all), but if I were doing it for myself I would add a bit of green pepper and mushrooms, or even some tomato meat.

Place your ingredients on one side, meat, veggies (if any) and grated mozzarella
Fold the other side over top.   Pinch the sides together well.

Cook it in the oven

What temp??   whatever you normally cook pizza at.  🙂  375 I think…. Cook until it’s well browned.

We both found it quite filling.

It makes for a filling meal.

I have been making my pineapple ham for ages, but I’ve never blogged about it as far as I recall.  🙂

Was finally up for making a real meal tonight so opted for a family favourite.

Take a half ham… sometimes I use a country ham, or a black forest one, or like tonight a kitchen ham.  Usually whatever is on sale to be frank.  🙂

I slice it in thin even slices, sometimes I use my meat slicer (if taking it to a potluck) but more often I just kinda wing it like I did tonight.

Lay them down in your casserole dish.
Cover them with pineapple rings. Slightly overlapping them.
Drizzle some brown sugar overtop…perhaps about 4 tbsp.
Cover your casserole.

USUALLY I then add some apple cider pop… but if I can’t find it (not always available) then I’ll add some sprite or apple juice (usually 1/2-1/2 mix).   If I’m really stuck I’ll add the pineapple juice from the can.

Stick it into a 300 oven and let it cook for an hour or so.

Variations that I occasionally do.

– instead of brown sugar add some raisins or craisins.
– sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the pineapple
– use crushed  or chunked pineapple instead.  My boys don’t like this variation though so I do it when they aren’t around.

Serve with whatever you are up to.
Goes really well with spaghetti squash lightly seasoned with spices and oil.
Tonight I made crescent rolls and corn which all got devoured.