Cheeseburger Calzones

I whipped this up one day when I some ground beef and was tired of the same old recipes.  My husband claims it tastes like a McDonald's Quarter Pounder (only without all the ick!) and the kids devoured it.  I'd say that's a success.


First you want to make some pizza dough.  This is my favorite recipe, courtesy of Ree (The Pioneer Woman).


1 tsp dry yeast
4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup olive oil (extra virgin works great, but regular is okay)

First I set my oven to "keep warm" which is 170F.  Sprinkle the yeast of 1.5 cups of very warm water and let it sit.  Combine the flour and salt.  With your mixer on low, drizzle in the olive oil, then the water and yeast mixture.  You might need to adjust the flour/water/oil amount as it kneads to get a smooth ball.  Roll in a little oil to keep it from sticking to the mixing bowl, cover, and set it in the oven.  Then turn off the heat and let it rise for an hour.  This makes 2 pizza crusts.

After the dough has risen, heat the oven to 400F.

Next I fry up a pound of hamburger with some salt and pepper, a diced tomato, and a diced onion.  Then add in some ketchup and mustard to taste.  I'd guess about 1/2 a cup of ketchup and a few tablespoons of mustard, but do it how you like.  Mix in a cup of cheddar cheese (more if you like) until it's melted.  Then add in some chopped up pickles.  Yes, pickles.  Don't leave them out.  I think I used around 4 baby dills.  Turn off the heat and get out the pizza dough.

Divide the dough into 8 equal portions.  Roll one portion out until it's fairly thin.  Add a couple of spoonfuls of the meat mixture.  Exactly how much is up to you, but don't get eager and overfill or the calzones will explode.  Or something.

Fold the calzone in half and roll the edges up, like this.

If you'd like, you can brush on some egg wash, but it's not necessary.  Bake for around 20 minutes and then dig in.

Chicken Stew with Dumplings

Simple, filling, cheap...what's not to love about chicken stew? If you're my kids, the best part is the dumplings, but myself, I can't get enough of the broth! Which you're going to be making yourself, because store bought broth is boring.

Start with a whole chicken.  Rinse it and salt inside and out.  Put it in a large stock pot and add some carrots, celery, onion, and a bay leaf or two.  I came across a great idea in another blog to save the ends of carrots, celery, and onion in a bag in the freezer to use for stocks, why did I never think of that?  Great way to cut down on waste.  Add some more salt and pepper.  Toss in some fresh rosemary and thyme if you have it. Bring it to a boil, skim the top, cover, and simmer for several hours.

Once the chicken is cooked through, remove it and sit it in a colander in the sink to cool.  Fish out all the veggie ends and the bay leaf.  Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and start pulling all the meat from the bones.  If you let it simmer long enough, it should fall off the bone easily.

Now to the yummy, nutritious simmering broth you want to add some veggies.  Here I've done diced potatoes, carrots, celery, and peas.  Zucchini and green beans are also great.  While the veggies get tender, start on the dumplings. 

Now I know these don't look like the dumplings I've posted in the past.  That's because they're not.  These are the fluffy little cloud type.  I like these for stews and the flat dumplings for plain old broth and chicken.

1.5 cups flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 tbsp fat

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.  For your fat, you could use vegetable oil, but yuck.  Don't.  Melt 2tbps butter or lard and beat with the egg and milk.  Pour into the flour mixture and mix until just combined (you don't want to over mix).  Once the veggies are tender, add the shredded chicken back in (you can use all the meat from the chicken or just half, saving the rest for another meal).  Bring the stew back up to a simmer.  Once you have a nice simmer going, start dropping the dumplings in by the spoonful.  Cover the pot, keep the heat on low, and walk away for 20 minutes.  Do not peek.  Just don't.  You'll ruin your dumplings.  After 20 minutes, the dumplings should be fluffy and wonderful.

Mmmm, dumplings.  And broth, beautiful golden broth.  Doesn't get much better than this!  This is a pretty low calorie dish as well, provided you don't gorge on dumplings.  Which, let's be honest, is hard not to do.

Good news!

Yay!  I found my camera!  Hopefully I will start posting again, now.  Later today I'll have a post for chicken stew with dumplings. 

Crockpot Beef and Noodles

If you search for beef and noodle recipes, a lot of really disappointing "cream of" recipes come up.  Personally, I think the "cream of" stuff usually drags a recipe down, and sometimes simpler is better.  My recipe is way tastier and only needs a few ingredients.

1.5-2lbs of beef stew meat
2 cups of beef broth and 2 cups of water (or, 4 cups of water and 4 beef bouillon cubes)
1tsp garlic powder
1 bay leaf
some salt and pepper
a few handfuls of eggs noodles
some fresh mushrooms

Sorry for the inaccurate measurements, but that's just the way I roll.

In the morning, put your beef stew meat in the crock pot.  Cover with the liquid, add the bay leaf and seasonings, and bouillon cubes if you're using them.  The total recipe time is either 8 hours on low, or 4 hours on high.  Or you can do 2 hours on high and 4 on low like I did.  Whatever works.  However you do it, at the start of the last hour, slice up some fresh mushrooms and throw them in.  After 15 or 20 minutes, add in the egg noodles, and then cook until the noodles are tender and have absorbed most of the liquid.

If you want it to be a stroganoff, just add in some sour cream before you serve it.  Super simple!

Oops...

Didn't I just start a new blog?  Oh.  Well, I suppose I forgot about it a bit, eh?  See, this is why I'll never be a professional blogger.  I'm a total blog flake.  But never fear!  Tonight or tomorrow I'll have a post for beef and noodles, crockpot style. 

Best Banana Bread

Banana bread is one of those foods that most people have a recipe for, yet every one is different (sometimes, significantly so!)  This is my favorite, pulled together from several different recipes.  There are a couple things that I've found seem to make a big difference.  One is using a mixture of half brown sugar and half white sugar.  The other is using buttermilk.  I've never had a banana bread missing one or both of these that I liked.  Also, I like to freeze my over ripe bananas and then thaw them to use for banana bread.  They look weird and slimy after they've been frozen, but it seems to concentrate the banana flavor, and they make excellent banana bread!

2 eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup melted butter
3 very ripe bananas
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Optional- 1/2 cup chopped nuts; I love nuts in banana bread, but my kids hate it, so I normally leave them out.

Preheat the oven to 325F.  If you aren't using a DeMarle loaf pan (a product I HIGHLY recommend), grease your loaf pan. 

Mix together the melted butter, sugars, eggs, buttermilk, and mashed bananas.  If you want, you can sift the remaining ingredients together and then add them, but I usually just mix the salt and baking soda in first, then add the flour.  The batter will be nice and thick.  Pour into your loaf pan and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes.  Done when the center comes out clean.  Banana bread is always better the next day, but we usually can't keep ourselves from digging in!

Sausage and Potato Hash

I call this a hash, though strictly speaking, it's not.  But it's easier to say than "fried potatoes, veggies, and sausage."  So simple it's almost silly to write it out like a recipe, but I've found that what seems simple and obvious to one person might not be so to another.  This is also a one skillet meal, which I love to do.  They're easy to increase and size and simple to throw together.  I normally use Italian sausage for this, but our fridge died last week and I had bratwurst that needed cooked, so I used that, instead.

First, cook the bratwurst.  I like the casing to have a pop to it, so this is how I prepare mine.  Heat a tbsp or so of oil over medium heat.  Add the sausage and turn every couple of minutes, until they're brown on all sides.  Next, add some water, about half a cup.  Cover the pan and turn the heat down to low.  Let them simmer for 20-25 minutes (you might want to cut one open to make sure they're no longer pink!)  So now that your sausages are cooked, let them cool down and then slice them up.

Next, start frying your potatoes.  3 or 4 medium potatoes should be good.  Peel and slice relatively thin so that they cook through.  Nothing is worse than biting into a half-cooked potato, yuck!  I like to fry mine in duck fat, when I have it.  If you've never had potatoes with duck fat, you are missing out.  Rectify this as soon as possible.  95% of the reason I make duck regularly is too keep my duck fat supply up, for no other reason than I want to fry my potatoes in it.  I add a little salt and pepper now, mostly because I'll be sneaking potatoes out as they cook, but don't add too much salt- your sausage will be salty, don't forget.

See how silky and unctuous the duck fat looks?  Mmmm.

While those are frying, slice your onion and green pepper.  How much depends on you and the size of them.  My children aren't fans of either, so I just did half an onion and half a green pepper.

I like my peppers and onions to be a bit crisp, so I add them in when the potatoes are nearly done and just give them a quick saute.  But if you like them soft, add them in earlier.  Go ahead and add in the cooked, sliced bratwurst.

So easy to throw together, hearty and filling!

Moroccan Lentil Stew with Naan

Last week I pulled what I thought was a ham bone out of my freezer, intending to make ham n' beans with cornbread.  Turns out it was a lamb bone, so I made Moroccan lentil stew and naan (a Middle Eastern flatbread) instead.  I always save bones.  They make the most fantastic stocks, far tastier (and more nutritious) than anything you can get in the store.  Plus, when is the last time you saw canned lamb broth at the super market?  Also, I swear some day I'll get a fancy camera that takes gorgeous pictures.

For the stew, you first need to get your bone simmering for the broth.  I like to put mine on first thing in the morning, so it has most of the day to simmer.  The longer it cooks, the better it tastes, plus, you'll get more vitamins and minerals out of it.  Just plop your bone into your pot (I'm using my cast iron dutch over here) and cover it with water.  Add some salt, and you can add a bay leaf and some beef boullion if you'd like, but they're not absolutely necessary.  Lamb is a strong flavor so the lamb bone can stand pretty well on its own.  You can also add in a splash of vinegar (I use raw apple cider vinegar) to help leech more minerals out of the bone.  Bring it to a boil, skim off the foam, turn the heat down, cover, and simmer. 

Isn't it beautiful?  And the chef gets to pick the meat off the bone in my house.

For the rest of the stew you'll need-

1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2-3 diced carrots
Some fresh grated ginger (about a one inch cube) or 1/2 tsp of ground
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can chickpeas, drained
1 cup of lentils, rinsed and sorted (red lentils are fabulous, but green work just fine, that's what I used here)
1 tsp garam masala (and indian spice mixture, if you don't have any, just add a little extra of the other spices, and add in 1/2 tsp of cinnamon)
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste.

Remove the bone.  If you'd like, you can saute the veggies in some olive oil before adding them to the pot, but you don't have to.  I just dump it all in, bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the veggies are tender.  I love lentils.  Besides tasting amazing and being good for you, they don't need a lengthy soaking process.  Just sort, rinse, and add to the pot!

Completely delicious.  Comfort food is comfort food, whether it's American or Indian, and what's more filling and comforting than a big bowl of stew and bread?

Now for the naan.  Like so many foods, that means many things to many different people.  Naan is traditionally baked, but the recipe I use is grilled/pan fried. 

1 packet yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp if you're using jarred yeast, as I do)
1tbsp sugar
1 cup hot water
3 tbsp milk
1 egg, beaten
2 tsps salt
4 1/2 cups of flour
optional- 2 cloves of minced garlic

Add the yeast and sugar to the hot water.  Let it stand for 10 minutes (make sure you put it in a largish container, you're proofing it and it should double in size).  In a large bowl, combine the four, milk, egg, salt.  Add in the yeast and water mixture and the garlic if you want to add it, and knead until it's nice and smooth (again, I use my KitchenAid mixer with the kneading attachment- loooooove it!)  Form it into a ball, drizzle with olive oil (about a tbsp) and roll your yeast ball around in the oil.  Cover the bowl and put it in a warm, draft free place. I like to turn my oven on low for just a few minutes and then turn it off before putting the dough in, gives it a nice, warm environment.  After the  dough has doubled (about an hour) punch it down to deflate, knead it a bit, and then form it in to balls about the size of an egg.  Put them on a pan, cover and let them rise again.

Let them rise for about half an hour, then start rolling them out on a floured surface.  You want them nice and thin so they get the distinctive bubbles naan usually has.

An indoor griddle or grill would be best for these, but I managed to squeeze them into my cast-iron skillet.  Cook them a few minutes on each side.  Brush with some melted butter or ghee (clarified butter often used in Indian cooking).  Delicious.

 If you manage to keep your family from devouring it, wrap them in aluminum foil to keep them warm and flexible until you're ready to serve them.  If it's going to be awhile, you might want to also pop them into a slightly warm oven.

Biscuits and Gravy

Growing up, my father sometimes made biscuits and gravy.  He used canned biscuits, which I personally think are kind of gross.  Once you've had homemade, it's just hard to choke them down.  He would also make the gravy by frying the sausage and then coating it in flour.  This is simple, but I've found it yields very inconsistent gravy.  I prefer to use a roux.  Roux sounds fancy, but it's very simple- just a mixture of equal parts fat (usually butter) and flour, used to thicken sauces.  But if you want to impress people, you can add in that it's the base of the three "mother sauces" used in French cooking.

Let's start with the biscuits.

Buttermilk Biscuits

You'll need-
2 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup fat (I prefer lard or butter, but you can use shortening)
3/4 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 450F.  Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in the fat- a pastry cutter is the easiest way, but if you don't have one, just mash it up with a potato masher and the rub the rest in with your fingers.  Do this until it looks like this-

Stir in the milk.  The dough will be soft and sticky, but it should still be workable.  Knead on a lightly floured surface (or with a kneading attachment on your KitchenAid mixer like I do).  Roll it out until it's about 1/2 inch thick.

Cut in to rounds with either a 2 in round cutter, or the bottom of a glass.  If you want the sides a bit crusty, put them an inch apart on the baking sheet; if you want them soft, have them touching.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.

I have 4 biscuit crazed children, so I usually double the recipe.  Now for the good stuff- the sausage gravy.  Mmmm.

Start by frying a pound of sausage in a cast iron skillet or dutch oven.

When it's cooked through, remove it from the pan and set aside.  There's hardly any fat, so don't worry about draining it.  Now to make the fancy roux.  Over medium heat, melt 1/4 cup of butter or lard and then whisk in 1/4 cup of flour.  It should look like this-

Next, you're going to SLOWLY whisk in 2 cups of milk.  Do it slow so it has a nice, smooth consistency.  Once it's all whisked it, keep stirring it over medium heat until it's nice and thick.  Don't add in any salt yet; the sausage is salty, so if you try to seasoning the gravy now, it's very easy to over salt it.  Once you have the gravy the consistency you want it, add the sausage back in and then salt and pepper to taste.  Serve it over the biscuits and it's pretty much heaven.

Perfect Pot Roast and Gravy

Like many people, I used to do pot roast in a slow cooker.  Unfortunately, it always yielded rather mediocre results.  Determined to find a better way, I stumbled upon this recipe.  They roast is wonderful, but their idea of "gravy" and mine don't jive, so I change it up at the end.  Follow this recipe exactly.  Don't add veggies to the roast.  Don't add salt to it.  Don't change a darn thing!  Trust me.

Preheat your oven to 350.  In a cast iron dutch oven, heat 1 tbsp of olive oil.  When it's nice and hot, sear your 3-4 pound chuck roast for 4 minutes on each side.  Don't touch it.  Don't poke at it, don't wiggle it around.  Just put it in for 4 minutes, flip it, and do another 4 minutes.

While it's searing, slice one medium onion and chop 2 cloves of garlic.  When the meat is done searing, remove it, and cook the onions and garlic in the juices for a few minutes.  Turn off the burner.  Add in about a tsp of salt, some fresh ground pepper, and a bay leaf.  Put the seared roast on top and place another bay leaf on top of the roast, cover it with the lid, and bake it in the oven for 30 minutes.  Turn the oven down to 300 and cook for another hour to hour and a half, depending on how done you want it.  When it's done, remove the roast and let it rest on a cutting board for 10-15 minutes.  DO NOT CUT INTO IT.  Unless you like dry meat.  If you don't let the juices redistribute before slicing in to, all the love juice will seep out and your roast will suck.  On to the gravy.

You'll be left with lovely onions and garlic swimming in some beautiful beef broth.  Put the dutch oven on a burner over medium heat.  Whisk in 1/4 cup of flour until it's all incorporated.  Add in a bit of milk.  How much just depends on how thick you like your gravy.  I like mine fairly thick, so I just use a few tablespoons.  Season with salt and pepper and keep whisking it over medium heat until it's the consistency you want.  You can add some Worcestershire if you like.  Sometimes I do.

Slice up the meat.  Mmmmm, meat.

Serve with buttermilk mashed potatoes and drown it in gravy.  Don't worry fret about the lack of veggies on the plate; I had a salad with this, I swear.

Chicken and dumplings

Nothing quite says down home cooking like chicken and dumplings, does it?  Of course, depending on who you ask and where you're at geographically, "chicken and dumplings" can mean a lot of things.  Round, pillowy dumplings?  Or flat noodle-like dumplings?  Are there veggies and cream?  Or just plain broth?  There are as many chicken and dumpling recipes as there are grandmas in the world, and whatever you grew up on is what you love best.  My own grandmother made chicken and noodles, which are my fondest memory of holidays at her house.  Sadly, she passed away before I was old enough to have the sense to get the recipe from her, and I've never been able to find a recipe that replicates what she made.  I do know that she'd make up her dough and roll it out into paper-thin sheets, which she would cut into perfect noodles that she would let air dry on newspaper overnight (waking once at night to flip the noodles over).  I remember the chicken and noodles were very yellow and slightly thick, just right for pouring over her mashed potatoes and gravy.   If I could wish for any food, that would be it!

As for me, chicken and dumplings in my house is broth, chicken, and thick, flat dumplings.  That's it!  I do sometimes make the round dumplings, but I save those for chicken stew.

I cook the chicken and make the broth at the same time (fancy, right?)

To a stock pot, add your whole chicken, and onion, a couple stalks of celery, a carrot or two (I'm really precise with my measurements, huh?), salt, pepper, and a bay leave.  Add enough water to cover it all.  Bring it to a boil, skim off the yucky chicken foam that forms on the top, and cover it and let it simmer.  The longer, the better, as far as I'm concerned!  I put mine on in the morning and let it simmer most of the day.

After it's cooked through, remove the chicken to a strainer to drain and cool off.  Remove the veggies and bay leaf from the broth and then run a small hand strainer through the broth if you want to remove any little bits.  I leave the broth simmering so no gross germy things grow while my chicken is cool off.  Once the chicken is cool enough to work with, remove the skin and pull of the meat.  You can either shred or chop the meat, it's up to you.  One thing I will say is SAVE THE BONES.  You can save them to make bone broth to can or freeze for other meals.  It's worth it.  If you're not going to do it within a few days, put the bones in a freezer bag and do it later.  Dump the chicken in and bring the broth back up to a gentle simmer.

On to the dumplings.  This also doubles as a noodle recipe, so if you're feeling up to it, feel free to do that.  You'll need-

2-4 eggs (I usually use 4, but I've also used 2 or 3 when I've gotten to this point only to realize I'm nearly out of eggs, and they come out just fine)
2+ tbsp of water (start with 2 tbsp, and add more water if needed)
3 cups of flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda (you can omit the banking soda and salt if you're using self-rising flour)

Mix up the flour, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl with a whisk (or sift it if you'd like, I'm just lazy).  Make a little well in the center of the flour.  In a separate bowl, whisk up the eggs and 2 tbsp water.  Add them to the flour and start mixing (again, I'm lazy, so I usually use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer).  This is a stiff dough, but you'll need to add enough water to make it workable and to keep it from gunking up your hands.  Once the consistency is right, you lay it out on a floured surface (if you stuck with a small kitchen, and thus, teeny tiny workspace like me, divide the dough in half and do it in two batches).  Roll it out until it's as thin as you can get it (I usually give up around 1/2 inch) and then use a pizza cutter to cut it into diamonds.  Like this-

Drop them into your gently simmering broth that's now full of chicken, then put a lid on it and walk away for 20 minutes.  Don't peek.  Steam helps get you nice soft dumplings instead of falling apart or yielding horrid little cement things.  You'll be rewarded with this-

Salt and pepper as you like and dig in.

How I Learned to Cook

When I got married at the ripe age of 18, I had not a clue how to cook.  If it wasn't pre-made, or didn't have 3 simple steps to follow on the back of a cardboard box ("Just add hamburger!") I was hopelessly lost.  It's not surprising; although both of my grandmother's were excellent cooks, my mother was a miserable failure when it came to the kitchen.  There were a few things she could make well, like meat loaf (of all things), but most of what we ate was pre-made, highly processed, or from a can.  I didn't realize until I was an adult that I actually did like things like peaches and asparagus, because I had only ever had them canned.  (If you've never had canned asparagus, just trust me- it's absolutely disgusting).

Lucky for me, my new sister-in-law bought me a copy of Betty Crocker's New Cookbook for Christmas the first or second year we were married.  I love this cook book and always recommend it to fledgling cooks, because it isn't just recipes.  It does teach you the basics of cooking; how to chop, dice, and julienne, how to avoid giving your family food poisoning through cross-contamination, basic cooking charts for all varieties of meats and and veggies, and so on. I used my old edition until it was literally falling apart, and after several dropped hints, received the 10th edition a couple of Christmases ago from my mother.  Thanks, mom!

Although my foray into cooking originally began out of sheer necessity- a young family starting out simply doesn't have the money to eat all processed and pre-prepared foods- it really did turn into a passion over time.  I enjoy cooking, and moreover, I enjoy feeding people!  My heart is in the down home, midwest cooking that my grandmothers prepared when I was a kid.  Buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy, pot roasts, chicken and dumplings, bread pudding; while I might make the occasional coq au vin, nothing says dinner to me like meat and carbs! 

I also cook with real food in mind- I almost always use homemade chicken broths that are full of vitamins and minerals and gelatin, real butter, lard from local pastured hogs, farm eggs from chickens who nap in the sunshine and scratch in the dirt; these things matter! They're more nutritious, they taste better, and they connect you to the local community in ways processed junk like margarine never will.

I hope this gives you a taste of what this blog will be! Cheers!