Wookie Gingerbread Cookies

Not my recipe, but I've got to try this. Putting the link here so I can remember it Christmas Eve. 

http://www.sugarednerd.com/recipes-and-how-tos/2015/12/2/recipe-gingerbread-wookiee-cookies

Meatball Sandwiches

I had a hankering for meatball sandwiches. I had not cooked meatballs by boiling them in tomato sauce before. So I figured this would be a good opportunity to give it a try. 

Tomato sauce was on sale at the grocery store. While I have made tomato sauce in the past, it is quite an undertaking. So I settled on store bought sauce. At any rate, whenever I get store bought sauce, I soup it up. 

So, I put two jars of store bought sauce in a large pot. I added a can of diced tomatoes. I then added one half of an onion, diced, one half of a green pepper, diced, and one clove of garlic, sliced thinly. I also added Italian herbs (this was a blend I bought at Aldi's), pepper and salt. I heated it at low to bring to a boil. 

I didn't measure out the meatballs. I used about a pound and a half of ground beef. I added half a cup of bread crumbs. Then Italian spices, paprika, cumin, salt and pepper. I mixed it all together along with an egg. The egg is used as a binding agent. 

When the sauce was at a boil, I added the meatballs, and cooked for about 25 minutes. 

I took a roll, sliced down the top length-wise. Then I removed some of the inner bread. Once the meatballs were down, I carefully spooned the meatballs into the bread. 

My one son does not like cheese. For him, this was the end. 

For everyone else, I preheated the toaster oven to 350, and turned it to broil. I placed 2 slices of provolone cheese on top, and sprinkled Italian spices on top. 

I heated in the toaster oven until the cheese was melted, and voila. We had meatball sandwiches. 

Macaroni and Cheese and Salsa

I had the guys over for an evening. I was going to make chicken wings, and thought about what I could serve with them. At first I thought mac & cheese, then I thought why not spice it up a bit. 

Ingredients:

1 pound pasta

1 stick of butter

1/2 cup flour

1/2 onion

1 clove garlic

1 jalapeño pepper

Juice of 1 lime

1 cup salsa

2 cups milk

1 cup parmesan cheese

2 cups shredded cheese, Mexican blend

Salt

Pepper

Italian seasoning

Chili pepper spice

Dice the onion. Slice the garlic into tiny pieces. Dice the jalapeño. 

Preheat oven to 350. 

Boil the pasta. Drain. 

In a large pot, make a roux. Melt the butter. Mix with the flour. Add salt, pepper, onion and garlic. Save the jalapeño for a little later. Add the milk slowly. Add the cheese slowly. Add the salsa. Add the lime juice. At the end, add the Italian spices and jalapeño.  Add chili pepper spice to taste. 

Add the pasta. Mix. Put in a large pan. Sprinkle more graded cheese on top. 

Heat in the oven for about half an hour. 

It's an alternative to the regular mac & cheese with heat!

Baked Potatoes Stuffed with Meat, Mexican Style

I was looking for something a little different; namely a Mexican inspired dish. I found a recipe for fried potatoes stuffed with meat. I didn't want to fry anything. Then I thought, what if I combined it with a baked potato. 

Ingredients:

8 White Potatoes

1 Lb Ground Beef

12 oz Tomato Paste

1/2 Onion

1/2 Green Pepper

1 Clove Garlic

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Pepper

Cumin

Shredded Cheese

Siracha

Buffalo Sauce

Preheat the oven to 450. Wash the potatoes. Drizzle with olive oil and seas salt. Baked for 25 minutes. 

Chop the onion, green pepper and garlic. 

In a skillet, heat olive oil.  Add the onion, green pepper and garlic. Cook at medium. Cook until the onion is translucent. 

Season the ground beef with cumin, salt and pepper. Add the skillet. Mix with onions, peppers and garlic. Cook until brown.

Turn heat to low medium. Add tomato paste. Splash in sirach and Buffalo sauce for heat. 

Remove potatoes from oven. Let cool a bit. Cut in half. Scoop out middle. Add the meat mix. 

The next thing I did was to use a toaster oven. I preheated it to 400. Turned it to broil. I broiled the potatoes filled with the meat mixture for ten minutes. Sprinkled shredded cheese on top. Then broiled another three minutes. 

Salt and pepper for taste!

The innards of the potatoes, I mixed with the leftover of the meat mixture to make a hash. 

Fried Tomatoes

While cooking sausage for the kids this morning, I got inspired. You see, sometimes I put ketchup on my sausage. I looked over on the table and saw the bounty of tomatoes from the garden, and thought this could be something. Ketchup, after all, is just tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and spices. 

So, I sliced up some Roma tomatoes. In a small bowl, I put some brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, basil, thyme, oregano, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, pepper and salt.

After cooking the sausages, I put the tomatoes in the same pan, utilizing the sausage drippings. I drizzled the mixture over the tomatoes and cooked over low heat until the tomatoes were warm. Not even a minute. 

Not bad, and maybe a good addition whenever you eat sausages. 

Watermelon Lemonade Slushies

One thing I love about summer is the availability of fresh fruit. Plus, having grown up in Philly, I grew up on summer water ice. Combine the two and you get fresh fruit slushies. 

I've tried a lot of different combinations in the past two years. What I've found is that you need some splash of citrus to make a good slushie. 

My son requested watermelon lemonade. The ingredients are easy:  watermelon, freshly squeezed lemon juice, sugar, ice. Put in a blender. Blend until all the ice is smooth. Mmmm. Refreshing. 

Sticky Rice and Sausage

My kids' mom is Laotian. One of the things she introduced me to is sticky rice. It's not the rice we Americans are used to. It's meant to stick together. 

Even within Asian cultures, stick rice is used differently. The Laotians and Vietnamese use it as part of the meal. If you eat pho, for example, you can ball up sticky rice and dip it in the broth. You can dip balls of sticky rice in soy sauce. You can use it to wrap around meat and veggies. 

The Chinese and Japanese tend to use sticky rice for desserts. 

Stick rice goes by a few different names: glutinous rice and sweet rice. Here's one example:

My kids love to wrap sticky rice around sausages. So, here's how to make it. 

The rice needs to be washed first. Run water through it until the water is clear. Then you need to soak the rice in water.  Best to soak it several hours. But I've been able to cook it right after an hour of soaking. 

Now, my kids' mom uses this contraption to cook the rice:

It consists of a pot of water and a bamboo basket. The idea is to boil water and let the rice soak up the steam. It's not like white rice where you put the rice in the boiling water. For sticky rice you want the rice above the boiling water.  She taught me to cap the bamboo basket with a plate to keep the steam in. You can get a contraption like this, as well as the sticky rice itself, at an Asian supermarket. 

The rice should cook for at least half an hour. Sometimes it takes longer. After half an hour, you monitor the rice until you see that it sticks together. 

Now, the easy part is the sasauge. Our favorites are the Johnsonville breakfast sausages. We usually get either the maple syrup or brown sugar sausage. Brown the sausage. 

We have bamboo containers to put the rice in. You can get them also at an Asian supermarket. 

Serve the rice and sausage together. Wrap the sausage in the rice. If you like, dip in soy sauce. Then enjoy.