Author: Dad's Turn To Cook

Just an average Dad wreaking havoc in the kitchen.

Beef and Lentil/Mushroom Meatloaf

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I forgot to take a picture, but I’m sure you can imagine what a hearty slab of meatloaf looks like.

I’m also not entirely sure about the title of the dish.  It’s a very earthy, hearty dish.  I essentially wanted to figure out something to do with a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup that I had kicking around – without resorting to the ol’ standby of pork chops.

Enter…

Campbell’s Best Meatloaf Recipe

And of course, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I decided to make a few changes.  First, I went with Cream of Mushroom soup rather than Tomato (for reasons listed above).  I also decided that rather than go with 2 lbs of ground beef, I’d do a swap and make it a 50/50 beef and lentil split.  So, I started the entire process by cooking some green lentils.  A little bit of googling gave me the info I needed.  1 cup of dry uncooked lentils is the equivalent of 1 lb of ground beef.  Once cooked of course.  That means you put cups of water in a large pot, get the water boiling while you rinse off your lentils and strain the water out.  Once the water is boiling, put them in, get the water boiling again, cover things up and reduce your heat down to a low boil and walk away for about 20 minutes or so.  You want to keep the steam and water in the pot and absorbing into the lentils.  I still wound up straining things after they were cooked to get rid of some excess water, but it all worked out.

For the rest of the recipe I following along surprisingly well.  Onion soup mix, check.  Half a can of soup (cream of mushroom), check.  I used panko crumbs for the bread crumbs.  Mixing the beef and lentils together was surprisingly easy.  Made a real nice loaf in the pan.  PRO TIP!  Let the lentils cool for a while before you mix them in with the beef!  Having recently been in a pot of boiling water, that was rather warm on the hands!  Whoops.

Aside from that, it was a nice easy bake.  The moisture from the cooked lentils cooked out for the most part during the bake.  I also learned a very valuable lesson.  My loaf took a bit longer to bake than I anticipated, mostly as somehow my meat thermometer had been swapped from F to C.  So as I was waiting things getting to 160 degrees…it was, no surprise, taking longer than expected.  Doublecheck that next time!  Lucky for me meatloaf is pretty forgiving.

On a side note, I’m heading back to work tomorrow morning for a temp term.  I’m hoping to keep up the blogging, but we’re still going to be sorting out how the cooking duties will be divvied up.  At the very least there may be some more ‘quick fix’ meals in the coming weeks.  Or slow cooker stuff!  That’s an idea there too.  Hmmm.  Time will tell!

-g

Hamburger Hand Pies (my GCBS Bake-Along)

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I think we can all agree that the Great British Bake Off is the single best television concept ever devised.  If not?  Well, you can I can still be friends, we just won’t have something in common.

I got into the Great Canadian Baking Show last year as 1) it’s a spin-off of the greatest TV show ever 2) one of the bakers (Vandana) was from the city I was living in at the time and 3) even before I started trying my hand in the kitchen, I liked watching shows about food.  (Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is likewise fantastic).

On last week’s episode, Megan broke out a family hand-pie recipe that looked absolutely right up my alley.  As the recipe called for a lard crust, and I don’t have of that kicking around (lard?  really?) I decided to take on the challenge with a twist, following the suggestion of the judge Rochelle who thought a brioche dough would be a great compliment to these.  Not familiar with brioche?  Join the club.  Here’s a hint, it doesn’t use lard.  Lots of butter and eggs.  It’s quite sticky to work with, was kind of a pain, but DANG I enjoyed making and eating these.

So Megan’s recipe is linked above.  I’ll hit you with my alterations as we go here, starting with the dough.

First thing I did was ignore her dough recipe as I was going to try a brioche.  Some googling took me to this recipe:

Easy Brioche

This recipe seemed to have a much shorter rise/proof time than a lot of other ones I found.  That seemed like a good thing as I was starting this after lunch and wanted them ready for dinner.

Now the measurements are in grams (which is not how I roll) but with my kitchen scale I sorted it out.  Basically you’re looking at 4 cups flour, 1 cup milk, a stick of butter and so on.  As I don’t have a mixer, there was a lot of stirring by hand, and then I just kneaded it until the butter was all worked through before setting aside to rise.  Following the first rise, I punched it down, dumped onto a floured surface and rolled it out.  Now, if you’re looking at Megan’s recipe, it’s calling for 6 cups flour.  It’s also calling for 1.5 lbs of beef.  I had 1 lb of beef handy and my dough had 4 cups flour…that seemed to be a good sign that we’d really be working with 2/3 of a recipe.  Hers called for 24 pies when it was all said and done.  I’m not the best judge of how big hers wound up being, but when I was rolling out the dough I basically just went with 12 pizza pop style pies and did a stuff and fold ‘perogy style’.  One, because I’m lazy.  Two, because have I mentioned the dough was really sticky?  It was quite a bit of hassle and I felt that cutting a bottom and a top and fitting them together would be a bit beyond my present level of skill and patience.  I guess if I was really going for a 2/3 yield to her original recipe, I’d be looking at 18 finished pies, but, I went bigger.  The dough stretched out and contained more filling than I had expected, so I maybe could have got to 16 pies?  Live and learn.

I rolled out 12 circles of dough, let them rest for a few minutes and then added the filling, crimped them and added an egg white wash.  I then let them rest a while as I sprinkled the tops with toasted sesame seeds, bacon crumble, and some leftover shredded cheese and then tossed them into the oven as per the brioche dough recipe.  It called for 10 minutes, swap racks/turn, then another 10 minutes.  Overall, I left them in for about 35 minutes I think.  Again, my oven cooks ‘slow’, and with the filling inside, it took longer for the dough to bake through.  Leave them in until the dough has a nice golden brown top, which if your oven is consistent would probably be 15 minutes on one rack, before changing racks and rotating for the next 15 on the other.

That’s the dough and the bake.  For the filling, I followed things pretty closely there.  We use turkey bacon, so I diced it up and then fried it while I was working on everything else.  The pickles were a bit of a pain to cut up.  Honestly, we usually have a jar of the dill bits relish kicking around, for some reason we were out, so that has since been rectified and I’ll just use that next time.  The filling is quite flavourful and tasty.  I think I’ll use a bit more cheese next time, possible a little less salt.  Between the cheese, meat, pickle and bacon, there’s definitely a lot in there.

The dip!  Basically you’re making Big Mac sauce.  Homemade, but, that’s the flavour you’re looking for.  I didn’t have French dressing, so a quick google told me that ketchup, sugar, white vinegar and a splash of lemon juice along with the rest of the ingredients already going into this sauce would do the trick.  It worked.  It’s tasty.

Overall, the kids loved them.  A bit less on the pickle was the only request.  Okay.  I’ll take that!

On the side I did some french fries (what’s a burger without fries?) and some cola.  Yeah, call it a ‘cheat day’ if you want.  Sometimes you just need some fun food.

-g

Chinese 5 Spice Ginger Chicken

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I tell ya, after a big Thanksgiving re-cap week on the blog, it’s time for something a little less ‘North American’ on the blog here, and you can’t get much farther away from here than China!

While doing some surfing I found the following recipe and it just so happened to call for a number of ingredients that I still had on hand in the veggie crisper, and more importantly, called for a protein that wasn’t turkey!  (I love you turkey, we’re just on a break for a while…)

Chinese Five Spice Ginger Chicken

This one was very quick and easy.  The most time consuming element here was the rice.  That’s a pretty hands-free thing to go about making, it just takes time – roughly 45 minutes from start to finish for that to properly cook.  Everything else here went pretty fast.  Warm up a pan with some oil, chop up on onion that you saute down before you start adding the other ingredients.  I picked up a bottle of Chinese 5 Spice the other week and hadn’t quite figured out what to do with it yet.  This works.  All told, the kids all enjoyed it.  My “picky eater” even said they enjoyed it although in her words “I’ve had chinese food before, and it’s better at the chinese restaurant”.  Yup.  I should hope so!  If there ever comes a day one of my dishes bests that of a paid chef or line cook at a restaurant?  Well, I guess that’s the day I can start selling ads on this blog or something.  Haha.

For the recipe, I followed the link pretty closely.  Chinese/Asian cooking isn’t something that’s really in my wheelhouse or that I’ve had much experience with so I still need some more practical hands-on time with the flavours before I start experimenting.  My one notable adjustment…I didn’t have fish oil on hand.  From the sounds of it it’s a very salty/briny flavour, so I subbed in a spoonful of the brine/juice from the feta cheese in the fridge and just a little dash of lemon juice for good measure.  It worked.  I also was missing a dried red chili, so a very small pinch of dried chili pepper flakes went in early on to add just a minor touch of heat.

Other than that, I followed along the recipe as written.  It’s a pretty flavourful dish, you’ll want to salt/pepper to taste.  I found it didn’t need too much of that.  I could have gone for a bit more sweetness overall.  I was wondering about some brown sugar into the mix to accomplish that, or perhaps just a bit more honey?  My only real complaint is there isn’t a lot of ‘extra’ sauce when it’s all said and done.  I’m a big fan of drenching my rice in sauce, you might be the same.

Budget wise?

Chicken – $4.50 for a pound of boneless skinless (on sale and frozen)
Onion – $0.70
Green Onion – $0.50
Rice – $0.50
Peas – $1.00

The rest was honey, soy sauce and some spices I’d say it would be about $1.00 worth, if that.  At the least, we’re looking at $7, at the most, about $8.  Fed 4 of us at dinner with a decent portion of leftovers for the fridge.

Maybe it’s this cold that I’m fighting off, but I’ve been really enjoying dishes with ginger infused as of late.  Watch for some more of those in the future!

-g

Thanksgiving Dinner – The Pie

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Apologies for the delay in wrapping up Thanksgiving Week here.  I managed to catch a killer cold from my Wife and I’ve spent the last couple days convalescing with my “Man-Cold”.

I was going to tackle the turkey to wrap up the week, but in all honesty, that wasn’t my purview with our dinner, so I’ll leave you with this.  Break out the olive oil and rub down the bird.  Don’t go crazy with the seasoning.  Salt and pepper will work just fine.  Cut up some slices of butter and pull the skin up from the bird and place those dollops of butter underneath.  That’s about it really.  Bake as per the directions on the bird itself, you’ll want to make an aluminum foil tent over the bird for about 2/3rd of your cooking time.  And that’s all the advice I can give on that front besides this: don’t try to eat the whole bird in one sitting.  I learned my lesson the hard way this year.  😦

Okay, with that said, let’s break down the big finish of Thanksgiving Week on the blog, and why not wrap it up with the big finish to dinner itself?  Pumpkin Pie!  I actually made this up the afternoon before our big feed.  It holds well in the refrigerator.  All you’ll really need to do on the big day is whip up some whipped cream (don’t you even DARE think about using pre-fab cream in a can!).  Okay, fine, do what you do.  There’s no judgement here.

First up is the crust.  If you’re ever doing a standard fruit pie, you’ll want to do a blind bake on this.  As pumpkin pie has a much longer bake time than most, you can just whack it all into the oven at the same time if you like.

Basic Pie Crust

This should make enough for a 10″ pie crust. If you want to put a lid on your pie, just double the recipe.

  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter (very cold)
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 3 to 4 (if not more) tbsp ice water

Put some water and ice cubes in a cup.

Mix flour, salt and sugar.  Cut the butter into 1/2 inch cube and then combine with a pastry cutter, fork or two knives until the flour/butter mixture is crumbly.  Don’t overwork it too much, you don’t want the butter to melt.

Slowly add water until dough forms a ball.  Don’t get it too wet.  Knead once or twice on a floured surface, then wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour until ready to use.

After an hour, on floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8″ thick.  Fit into pie plate and trim off excess with knife.  Back in the fridge it goes for 30 minutes.

Take a fork and prick the bottom of the pie a bit.  You’ll want a fair number of little holes scattered across the dough (stops the pie from rising or bubbling away from the bottom of the plate).

Okay.  As we’re making pumpkin pie,  I’ll cut that recipe short as you won’t do any of the blind baking that’s required for that one.  Instead, we now default to the pumpkin pie recipe.

Point of note: I’m not a big pumpkin pie fan.  There aren’t many I have ever come across that I’ve enjoyed, but THIS one I like.  It’s going to feel pretty soupy when you’re making it, but it WILL thicken up just nicely in the oven.

Pumpkin Pie Filling

This will very nicely fill a 10″ pie

  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ginger
  • 1/4 tsp cloves
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 12 fl oz can of evaporated milk (350ml for us Canadians)
  • 1 3/4 cups + 2 tbsp of pumpkin puree
  • 1 tbsp flour

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees F.

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs lightly.  Stir in the pumpkin puree and the dry ingredients from the small bowl.

Gradually stir in the evaporated milk.

Pour into your unbaked pie shell.  This will be a very runny soup at the moment, that’s fine.

Cover the pie with foil and bake at 425 for 15 minutes.  Remove the foil and reduce heat to 350 degrees, you’ll want to bake for another 40-50 minutes or until you can stick a knife in the centre and have it come out clean.

If you’re baking this on the big day, cool for a couple minutes, add your whipped cream and enjoy!  Otherwise, cool on a rack for a good hour or more, then put some plastic wrap up against the filling and chuck it all into the fridge overnight.

I don’t think I rolled my dough thin enough when I was making it as it didn’t give me enough excess to really get a crust up and over the edge of the pie plate.  My dough was also pretty crumbly.  In the ‘add water’ phase, the 3 to 4 tbsp is a suggestion.  It will really depend on the humidity where you are.  I put in 5 tbsp and should have done a bit more I think to really give me a solid dough to work with.  It felt dry to me, I really should have trusted my instincts on that front.  That said, it all worked out and tasted great, so that’s just me being self-critical and learning for next time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-g

Thanksgiving Dinner – The Dressing

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Dressing?  Stuffing?  What do YOU call it?  I just call it “delicious” and a definite MUST for any big family feed.

Now, just as a point of order, if I disappear mysteriously after posting this recipe, you’d be wise to look at my Mother-In-Law as the prime suspect.  It’s her recipe and I’m divulging family secrets, but seriously, this is such a simple recipe and it is SO GOOD.

The worst thing you can wind up with is a flavourless stuffing that’s dry as sawdust and adds nothing to the turkey experience.  This one is moist, full of flavour, and much like the potato recipe I shared yesterday, I should have just gone ahead and doubled it.  I like it that much.

Note 1: the following was just enough stuffing to fill a 12 pound turkey.  You’ll want to adjust accordingly if you’re roasting a bigger bird.  Or learn from my mistake and double it from the get-go.  Leftovers of this are not a bad thing.

Note 2: you can buy a bag of bread cubes at most grocery stores.  I just bought a loaf of white bread and it out for a few days.  I saw the local Safeway had ‘dressing flavoured’ bread available, but I went with white as we’ll be adding our own spices to the mix and I didn’t want to over-do it.  Remember to keep your slices separated so they dry out nicely.  You can also expedite the process by putting them in the oven at the lowest temperature for about 5-7 minutes on each side.  You don’t want to make toast, you just want to suck out the moisture.

Nana’s Turkey Dressing

  • 4 cups dry white bread cubes
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 tbsp melted butter
  • 2 tbsp dried parsley
  • 1 med onion, chopped (pieces should be about double the size of ‘diced’)
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tsp poultry seasoning
  • 1/2 cup chicken/turkey broth

That’s it!  If you’re sticking it inside the bird, you want the bread cubes to be DRY dry.  Stuff the bird, put in the oven and roast as you normally would a turkey (remember if you stuff you bird you need to ADD some cook time to the process).

If you’re not going to stuff the bird and you want to do this ‘on the side’, you can bake the dressing in a covered casserole dish at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or so.  If going this method, you’ll want a bit more moisture in the bread – so don’t use DRY dry cubes.  You could probably get away with chopping up some bread slices you’ve left out overnight.

It’s quick and easy and full of flavour, what more do you want?  Some people would take the turkey neck and put that in the casserole dish for a little more flavour.  You do you.  If you’re doing that of course, even if you’re not going to eat the neck afterwards, I’d recommend using a meat thermometer and making sure that it got to the proper cooking temperature.  I get super cautious when dealing with poultry and temps.  I got served raw chicken at a restaurant once – it didn’t end well.

Thanksgiving Dinner – The Potatoes

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Well, first of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Canadians this past weekend.  Aside from some tight defensive battles in the CFL (Go Stamps!) we also saw the Riders clinch a playoff spot and me demolish enough turkey to conceive a food baby that turned out to be triplets. (In other words, I ate WAY too much turkey dinner…but in my defense, this is the first year that I handled the bulk of the prep for the big feed, and it turned out pretty good.

First up?  The taters.  Now, these are no ordinary mashed potatoes.  These are creamy, cheesy (yes, cheesy) whipped potatoes that you can actually prep up a few days prior to the feast so you can really limit the amount of work (and dishes) you’ll require on the big day.  I have to give my Wife’s aunt Connie a big shoutout.  She brought these to a family gathering potluck over a decade ago and they’ve been in our rotation ever since.  Well, at least whenever we have the time and ambition to ‘fancy’ things up a bit.  It’s well worth the time and effort, and honestly, I forgot how fast they disappear so my best advice is to take the recipe and just go ahead and double it right away.

Without further adieu…start softening that cream cheese, here we go!

Creamy Oven-Mashed Potatoes

  • 5 lb red potatoes
  • 8 oz cream cheese, softened (1 brick of Philly)
  • 1 cup sour cream (1 250ml tub…the small ones)
  • 1 tsp onion salt
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 2 tbsp margarine or butter

Directions:

Peel the potatoes.  Chop them up into quarters, or smaller even if you want to minimize the boiling time.  Toss them into your biggest pot filled with water.  Boil until you can stick a fork in ’em and have them relatively break apart.  Drain all the water out.

Mash the potatoes with a hand mixer.  Soften your cream cheese and add all the rest of the ingredients in (with the exception of the margarine/butter – keep that aside for now).  Take a hand mixer and whip up the mixture.  It should essentially become a white smooth paste – the goal is to get all the lumps out, you want these to be fluffy.

Spray down a casserole dish with cooking spray (it will save you TONS of scrubbing when doing the dishes later).  Put all the potato mixture into the dish.  If you’re cooking right away, take the margarine/butter and dot it over the top, I dust a bit o paprika over the top as well like you might do with a shepherd’s pie.  Cover your dish and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

That’s if you’re baking right away.  If you are prepping these in advance…you can just cover and freeze in the dish and they’ll be ready to bake whenever you need them.  You’ll then take the dish out to thaw before putting in the stove.  You’ll want to add about 15 minutes to your cooktime as well.  If the potatoes are looking watery, just cook them uncovered and that will take care of some of that excess moisture.

You can also prep this the day before, toss them in the fridge and bake them the next day.  Again, you’ll want to put on the counter and bring up to room temperature before you bake, as well as add a bit of extra time to the proceedings.  Just hold off on putting the margarine/butter on top until you’re about to put in the oven.

Now, remember when I said you should just go ahead and double the recipe right away?  I really meant that.  These potatoes are delicious, and the best part is they keep really well.  Once you’ve baked them, you can keep them in the fridge for about a week and divvy them up with your leftovers.  They don’t NEED gravy, but it doesn’t hurt.

One thing I also like is you don’t have to be TOO fussy with the cooking temp.  If you have a turkey or other dish baking in the oven at 325 or 375, you’re fine tossing these in and adjusting your cook time accordingly (add a few minutes if you’re lower than 350, subtract a few if you’re hotter…)  They’re pretty much fool-proof which works just great for this amateur cook.

If you’re back-timing the whole process?  I made these up the afternoon before the big feed and whacked them in the fridge overnight when I took the turkey out of the fridge where it had been thawing for about 24 hours and put it in cold water in the sink to finish thawing overnight.

Tomorrow?  The stuffing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The countdown is on!

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I’ve been a bit remiss as of late with some recipes. My apologies. I’ll make up for it this week. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in Canada. I have a few recipes that are “musts” around our place, and this year I’m tackling the big feed mostly by myself. My wife and Mother in Law will be around to prod for any assistance, but…

The pumpkin pie is in the oven right now. Knock on wood!

-g

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Buns

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Here is my conundrum.  Since I began this blog I have a policy of linking to all of the recipes I use as reference.  I may tweak something, but if a solid 95% of the recipe is unchanged, I link there and then just let you know what I’ve riffed on.

For this one I used two completely different sources, changed a bit, and mashed them together.  For the sake of continuing my trend of full disclosure, here is the recipe I followed (for the most part) for the dough.  Here is the recipe I followed (for the most part) for the filling and glaze.  Now, for the sake of a having a comprehensive one-stop-shop for this recipe, here’s my take on it all…

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls

The Dough:

  • 3/4 cup warm milk (heated to 110 deg F)
  • 2 1/4 tsp yeast
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 egg yolk (at room temp)
  • 1 egg (at room temp)
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 2 cups all purpose flour (bread flour if you’ve got it)
  • 3/4 tsp salt

Take your eggs out and leave them on the counter.

Warm up the milk and put it in a bowl.  Sprinkle the yeast in there and let it sit for a few minutes.  If it doesn’t look a little frothy after a while, you already screwed up.  Toss it and start over.  The right temp for the milk is important.

Add the sugar, egg, egg yolk and butter.  Stir it up a bit until it’s well mixed.  Sift in your flour, add the salt, and then stir until the dough begins to form.

Sprinkle some flour on your counter, then get to work kneading the dough.  Get your hands in there and work it.  I punch it a bit, fold it in on itself, just give it a good working over until it’s well mixed and just a bit sticky.

Get a big bowl, spray it with some cooking spray, then put the dough in there, put some plastic wrap on top and put it in a warm place to rise for about 90 minutes.  (I turn my oven on at 180 degrees F, then turn it off as soon as it’s reached heat and just let the dough proof in there).

The dough should double in size.  Once that’s done, flour your countertop, dump out the dough and roll it out into a big rectangle that looks like your HDTV flatscreen (longer than it is tall).  You want the dough about 1/3 of an inch thick?  Now you’re ready for the filling.

The Filling:

  • 4 tbsp melted butter (don’t mix in the pumpkin!)

 

  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1 tbsp milk
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar (packed down)
  • 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

Okay.  First of all, take the melted butter and paint your rolled out dough.  Leave about a half-inch a short edge ‘butter free’.

Next, mix up all the ingredients with your pumpkin spread.  Give it a good stir, then, again, like you’re saucing a pizza, paint your rolled out dough.  Leave that ‘butter free’ buffer zone free of your pumpkin spread as well.

Now…the fun part.  Grab your dough on the opposite end of your ‘butter free’ buffer zone, and start rolling.  You want a pretty tight roll on this.  When you get to the ‘butter free’ zone, that dough should stick to the backside of the rolled up dough and seal things up (that’s why you left it butter free!).

Next, you’ll want to cut your fancy new dough log into slices about… 1 inch thick.  I find a bread knife works best for this.  Saws through nice and clean and doesn’t crush the slices too much.

Take your slices, and lay them flat in a greased cake pan (I use cooking spray).  8×8 or 9×9.  You should be able to get 9 of these in there like a tic-tac-toe arrangement.  If you still have some dough left?  Grease another pan up and drop in as many as you have left over.  I got a solid 12 slices, so 9 in my one pan and 3 in my ‘reject pile’ pan.  (The rolls from the ‘ends’ of the log that weren’t all pretty).  Cover up your cake pans with plastic wrap and let the dough puff up and proof a bit longer.  30 minutes.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 while the buns are on their last rise.  Once your 30 minutes has run out, take off the plastic and whack ’em into the oven uncovered for about 25 minutes.  Once the edges start going golden brown, take them out.  Being a bit ‘underbaked’ is good.  Makes ’em chewier.

The Frosting:

  • 4 oz cream cheese (basically a half-block of philly), softened
  • 1.5 cups powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Soften the cheese in the microwave, then using your hand blender (or whisk and some elbow grease) start mixing it up until it’s creamy.  Add the sugar a bit at a time.  Once that’s all mixed in, add the vanilla, then add the pumpkin pie spice to taste.  I went heavy with that.

Your buns should cool a bit before you frost them, but once they’re ready, just slather this stuff on and give them some love.

That’s it!  Enjoy!

My mother-in-law complimented me on these you guys.  That’s an internal happy dance right there.

-g

p.s. – if you can’t find pumpkin pie spice at your grocery store (I couldn’t, and I looked at 3 different stores…) here’s what you can whip up as an approximation.

Pumpkin Pie Spice:

  • 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1.5 tsp ground allspice
  • 1.5 tsp ground cloves

It will make more than you need for this, but you can use what remains for your next batch (and there WILL be a next batch) or to sprinkle over your coffee like a Basic B…

Enjoy!

-g

Peanut Butter/Mayo Sandwiches

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So…this is apparently a thing.

Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s what I’ve been told.  There is not a lot of grey area with this combination.

Just for giggles…here’s the recipe.

Peanut Butter/Mayo Sandwich

– 2 slices bread
– peanut butter (your choice of crunchy or smooth)
– mayonnaise

Spread peanut butter liberally on once slice of bread.  Repeat with mayonnaise on the other slice of bread.  Press bread slices together.  |

Enjoy.

Slot me down on the love it side of things.  Well, maybe not ‘love’ love, but it wasn’t an immediate gag reflex for me and if it came down to nothing else in the pantry, I’d totally pull this one out of the grab bag of goodies.

I used to do cheez whiz and strawberry jam.  I wonder if that would go viral?  Huh.

-g

Bacon Lentil Burrito

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First.  Michael Smith is a dirty liar.

Second.  MAN he has a recipe for a tasty burrito.

Third.  If you’re making things with lentils, do your level best to space them out.  For my family it’s a pretty new ingredient and I may be going a tad bit overkill (last week I made 3 meals in a row featuring them).  It can be a bit much.  Honestly, that’s part of why I started this blog was to challenge myself to bring a little variety into the food I was making.  So there!  Lesson learned!

Oh!  Here’s the recipe I went with…

Bacon Lentil Burrito

Now why is Michael Smith a dirty liar? I’m guessing he has a much nicer stove then me.  Or hotter at the very least.  The timings listed in the recipe were WAAAAAY off.  How far?  Well, he mentions about 45 minutes for the lentils to simmer off the water and cook through.  After about 90, I just grabbed a strainer, because we were hungry and there was still plenty of liquid in the mix.

Aside from that, everything went alright.  I added a bit too much heat for some of the family, but some more cheese and going off-book and adding a bit of sour cream helped sort that out.  There are definitely some tasty flavour combinations at work in this one.

Budget wise?

Bacon – $4 (was on sale)
Lentils – negligible.  Probably … $0.50?
Cheese – $3
Carrot/Onion/Cilantro – $1.50

Some corn and some salsa round things out.  Oh!  And the wraps.  I paid about $4 for 32 of them at Costco.  They’re split into packs of 8 so they last quite a while.  I was worried they’d all be in one pack and we’d need to burn through them all post-haste as soon as we opened them.  Not so.  Whew!

Enjoy!

-g