Dinner in a flash

My mom always said I only know two temperatures to cook at – High and Off.

I guess that’s still true, although I have come to love the medium position cause it can get you where you’re going quicker than … well, low.

Coming home at 6 every night, just in time, some nights, to make dinner and run out the door for a meeting, quick dinners are something of a necessity, not a luxury. I know everyone says I should just go in earlier and come home earlier, but it just never works… I feel guilty when I leave early, even if I’ve been in the office for 9 hours. If I leave before 5:30, I feel somehow, like I have let everyone down and everyone’s staring at me.

Between meetings, baseball games, plays, after-school activities, some nights I'm surprised we don't live off frozen dinners. But I hate frozen dinners... all that sodium, and all that fat... and it all tastes the same. I mean, seriously, can you tell the difference between stouffers and banquet? Once banquet got rid of my favorite mexican bomb dinner (with the two beef enchiladas and the cheese thing AND rice AND beans) i lost all interest in frozen dinners. They even changed my turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and stuffing. Who wants processed turkey roll on top of soggy croutons?

So anyway, at least a few nights a week, I come home and throw things together on the fly. Tonight, it’s nachos or hot dogs with chili. Probably should have only taken 10 or 15 minutes, but I was typing an email to someone and I got distracted. Instead it took half an hour. Damn internet. I'm figuring corn meal or bun - that's your grains, .... there's ketchup on the chili, so that's vegetables, right??? According to Ronald Reagan it is anyway. Cheese covers your dairy and the meat is .. well, your meat.

Kinda like eating pizza to cover all the basic food groups, except not.

Of course, there are other quick things to make... like easy pork chops.. but the boys swear they have had it so much they don't want it anymore. By far my favorite thing to eat, it reminds me a lot of school nights when it was just me and Mom. Wish I could remember the recipe for barbeque hot dogs - the first thing i ever cooked and I made it for me and Mom to help her out with the dinners after Dad dies. Bet that was quick to make. And if it's got hot dogs in it, there are two people in this house who are guaranteed to eat it.

Hot dog or Nacho Chili

1 lb. ground beef

1/2 onion, diced fine

1/2 T. butter or margarine

s/p

Gr. red pepper, according to taste (i use a couple of shakes)

tabasco smoked chipotle sauce

2 T. chili powder

2 T. ketchup

cinnamon, according to taste ( again, a couple of shakes does it for me)

water

In a small pot, saute onion with s/p in butter or margarine, until tender. Add gr. beef, breaking it up as much as possible. I pull small chunks off the pound as I add it to the pot so i'm not breaking it up with the spatula. Brown beef. Drain off grease. Add ketchup, chipotle, seasonings and a little water to make it easier to combine. Bring to a boil. Cook 10 minutes til flavors blend. Serve on hot dogs with cheese and diced onion. OR put tortilla chips on a plate, sprinkle with shredded cheddar cheese, add meat and broil in oven until cheese melts.

Easy Pork Chop Dinner

4 to 6 pork chops

1 T. butter or margarine or veg. oil

s/p

1 can cream of mushroom soup, condenced

1/2 can of milk

1/2 t. basil

1 t. worchestershire

prepared rice or noodles

Season pork chops to taste - for an added twist shake on a little seasoning salt or cajun seasoning. Brown on both sides in oil. In a separate bowl, combine cream of mushroom soup, milk, basil and Worchestershire sauce. Pour over pork chops. Bring to a boil. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes, until pork chops are cooked through. Serve over rice or noodles with gravy from pan. Serves four.

Soup of the Week - Baked Potato soup

Since we seem to be on a cheap eats rant here, a soup that will last you a few days and actually make two dinners. This is a favorite of little Mason's and is just yummy on a cold day.

Baked Potato Soup
8 medium to large baking potatoes
2 c. chicken broth
1 c. milk
1 T. butter or margarine
1 T. flour
salt, pepper and parsley
1/2 c. bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 c. to 3/4 c. shredded cheddar
1 to 2 T. sour cream

Bake potatoes in 400 for one hour.
Remove from heat and let cool, slightly. Cut into eights. Remove pulp from skin (leaving a small amount of pulp on skin) reserving skin for another use.
In a large soup pot, melt butter/margarine. Add flour, salt and pepper. Let cook for one minute. Add chicken broth, milk, potato pulp broken into pieces, bacon and parsley. Cook until soup begins to thicken slightly. Add cheese and sour cream. Heat through. Season to taste. Makes about four or five bowls, depending on how hungry you are.

Baked Potato Skins

Baked potato skins
bacon
cheddar
butter/margarine
salt and pepper

Brush reserved potato skins with butter or margarine. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add bacon and cheese. Cook in 325 oven for 15-20 minutes, until cheese melts and skins are crispy. Serve with sour cream.

Seven things to do with leftover Christmas ham

It's Dec. 26, and the house is quiet except for the hum of video games and the occassional explosion and scream of conquered aliens.

After spending most of the day going to the after Christmas sales, we're all home now and cozy... and we're all wondering about dinner. I know the boys would rather have pizza. They would always rather have pizza. After almost a week of rich, holiday food, they are begging for pizza. With as much as we spent on Christmas, running to Little Ceasars' ain't even happening.

So, for us, it's leftovers - ham, what's left of the veggies in the fridge and maybe a scrounged mini pack of fruit salad. Max now says he wants nachos. He'll get leftovers. Mommy's tired of cooking.

One of my favorite minimal effort thing to do with ham leftovers though is a big pot of scalloped potatoes. Simple country food that hits the spot after a long cold day. It just doesn't get any better than that after a week of Christmas.

That's what I love about ham for Christmas though. Just like turkey, there's so much you can do with it afterwards. We'll take some of ours, dice it up and throw it in bags to put in the freezer. Later, we'll be able to take it out in a pinch, throw it in soup or on pasta and VIOLA! dinner is done, dude!

What do you all do with your Christmas dinner leftovers???


Seven things to do with leftover ham

1) Mock Croque-monsier - Had this for lunch today with french onion soup. yum!!!
For each sandwich, take a slice or two of city ham (sugar-cured, not salt cured country ham), a slice of muenster cheese, mayonaise, mustard, two slices of bread (preferably white) and butter or margarine. Melt about 1/2 T. of butter in a skillet. Spread mustard on one side of one slice of bread, mayo on one side of the other slice of bread. Layer with ham and cheese. Grill sandwich for a few minutes until crispy brown on the out side and melty on the inside.

2) Scalloped Potatoes
8 or 9 medium sized potatoes, peeled if you want, sliced thin
about 4 T. butter or margarine
1/2 c. to 1 cup of ham, sliced
1 onion, diced
s/p (salt and pepper)
about a 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup flour
milk
cheese if you want it.

okay - sorry, there's just no recipe for this. Layer the potato slices in the bottom of a round casserole dish until you are about two rows deep. Sprinkle with about a 1/3 of the onion, a 1/3 of the ham that you tear from the slices to make sure you're getting only the good parts, not the hard overbaked parts, salt and pepper, cheese if you want it, and some flour. Dot with butter or margarine, about seven or eight dots per layer (at this point, you can sprinkle with parsley too - since we have some dried over the sink, it just makes sense to grab a few sprigs and sprinkle on). Make sure the flour gets all over all the potatoes. We're talking a small handful grabbed straight out of the flour pot - probably about 2 T.
Repeat until you fill the dish, ending with a fourth layer of potatoes. Sprinkle top layer with salt and pepper. If you want, add cheese here too. Pour milk into the dish until it comes almost to the top. The salt and baking will release the water in the potatoes and the onion, so you don't want it to be all the way to the top, otherwise there's too much liquid. Bake in a 350 oven until the potatoes are cooked through, about 45 to 60 minutes.

3) Bean Soup
1 lb. navy beans
1 to 1 1/2 cups ham, diced
1 ham hock, about 1 pound
water
one onion

Wash beans and discard any bad ones. Soak overnight in about six cups of water. Three hours before serving, add onion, cut in half and ham hock. Bring to boiling, then cover and let simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours or until beans are soft. Remove from heat, remove onion, squeeze out juice from onion. Remove ham hock. Strip hock of meat and return to pot. Add diced ham. Return to heat to heat meat through, roughly ten fifteen more minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Don't salt prior to cooking. It prevents the beans from getting soft.  If soup is too thin, smash a few beans on the bottom with a mashed potato smasher. Serve with diced onion, ketchup, pickle relish and plenty of cornbread.

4) Country frittata

10 extra large eggs
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1/2 c. green pepper, diced
1/2 c. ham, diced
1 c. sharp white cheddar
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter


Preheat broiler and adjust the overn rack ot the center position.
In a bowl, beat the eggs. Season with salt and pepper.
In a skillet, saute onion, mushroom and green pepper until crisp tender.
Add vegetables, cheese and ham to eggs, and stir to combine.
Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet ion high heat. Pour olive oil into the center of the skillet. Put butter in the center of the olive oil. When the butter starts to sizzle, swirl butter oil mixture (this prevents it from burning) all over pan coating the bottom and halfway up the sides. Add the egg mixture, stirring contiuously, until the eggs are almost set. Use a metal spatula to scrape the eggs from the bottom of the pan and back into the mixture.
Put the pan on the center rack of the over and broil for 1 to 2 minutes until the top is nice and brown. Remove the pan from the oven and let the frittata rest in the pan for about 2 minutes.
To get it out of the pan, run a metal spatula around the edge of the pan and underneath the frittata to loosen it. Tilt the pan and use the spatula to ease it out on a serving platter. Cut into 6 wedges and serve hot!


5) Pasta with ham and shrooms

6 ounces spaghetti
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
1/2 pound white mushrooms
1/4 cup diced ham
3 green onions, chopped
1 T. garlic
3/4 c. heavy cream
3 T. grated parmesan
s/p

Cook spaghetti til al dente. In a large skillet on high heat, pour olive oil into a pool in the center of the pan, and put the butter pat in the center of it. When the butter starts to sizzle, spread it so the oil and butter coat the bottom of the pan. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring often, about 4 minutes. Add shallots and garlic, cook 2 minutes more. Add the cream and ham dice and stir until the cream reduces by half, about 3 minutes. Stir in the Parm and season with salt and pepper.
Drain your pasta and transfer to a large pasta bowl. Add cream sauce and toss gently.

Serve immediately with salad and garlic bread.

6) Ham and Biscuits

Make a batch of biscuits (even canned will do). Cook until lightly browned. Remove from oven and let cool. Split biscuits. Spread a mixture of dijon mustard, mayonaise and pickle relish on one side of the inside of the biscuit. Insert a piece of ham. Done.

7) Ham and cheese muffins

1 3/4 c. flour
2 1/12 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 T. sugar
1/2 c. ham, finely diced and browned
1/2 c. sharp cheddar, shredded
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 c. milk
1/3 c. vegetable oil

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, sugar ham and cheese in a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture. Add egg, molk and oil. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, stirring until just moistened.
Spoon batter into well greased muffin pans, filling two-thirds full. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes, or until golden. Remove from pans immediately. Makes about a dozen, depending on how good you are at 2/3s full.