RECIPE: Samuel Adams's Boston Lager Turkey

I made this turkey yesterday as a last hoorah for the holiday season and it turned out really, really well, I felt. There were compliments bandied about the table and that's a good sign. Because you know what isn't? People pushing bits of turkey around on their plates and when you ask them how they think it tastes, they say, "You know that dinner you make? The one with the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches? How's about we have that sometime again soon?"

Anyway, this turkey was served with all the trimmings and I roasted it just in the pan because there were so many irritable complaints about the turkey-in-the-bag I made at Thanksgiving. I thought that method just ROCKED, but everyone in my family hated it: they said it made the turkey TOO MOIST, if you can imagine that.

So here, for your discernment, is Samuel Adams Boston Lager turkey: just moist enough, flavorful, lots of good broth for the gravy and a pleasurable time around the table for all. Well, except for Mr. Tom, I guess.

By the way, here is the Killian's Irish Turkey from last year's holiday season, if you'd like to compare the recipes.

SAMUEL ADAMS BOSTON LAGER TURKEY

Ingredients
1 turkey, thawed, approximately 12-18 pounds
1 large sweet apple, such as Honeycrisp, or 2 or 3 smaller apples, washed and quartered
1 large Vidalia onion, outer skin peeled off, onion quartered
2 celery stalks, each cut in half
2 large carrots, scraped, each cut in half
1 pound butter
2 small cans chicken broth
1 bottle Samuel Adams Boston Lager
salt/pepper/paprika

Directions
Pre-heat oven according to package directions (mine said 325 degrees). Unwrap turkey and remove giblets; rinse in cool water. Salt inner cavity and place in roasting pan, breast side up. Stuff cavity with 2 sticks of butter, half the apple, onion, celery and carrots. Strew the rest of the apple and vegetables in the roasting pan. Softening the remaining two sticks of butter and rub the turkey's skin with a bit of the butter as if you're massaging it. Salt and pepper the outside of the turkey generously; add a bit of paprika if you'd like.

Pour about 1/3 of the beer and half a can of chicken broth on the turkey. Allow to roast for forty minutes; scoop up some of the remaining butter with a spoon or a knife and glide over turkey's skin; add a splash more beer and chicken broth. Continue doing this until the turkey's skin is a nice, deep golden-brown color; cover turkey with a little tent of aluminum foil so that the skin won't burn. Continue buttering and basting at forty minute intervals until turkey is done. Use a meat thermometer to figure out when that is because every turkey and every oven is different and there's just no sense in poisoning your family members with underdone meat.

Carefully lift roasting pan out of oven. Remove apples and vegetables. Decant the broth into a saucepan. Allow roasted turkey to rest for about twenty minutes before carving. Easy-peasy.

RECIPE: Chicken Chili (easy, easy, easy)

This is a chicken chili recipe my mom served to us last week on Christmas Cookie Baking Day. It was so delicious -- and she said it was so simple -- that I immediately asked for the recipe and made it last night for dinner. It was a big hit, with requests that it be served again sometime soon. Which, you know, is such a nice feeling, much better than the one I get when I serve the plates and my husband looks down at his food, glances warningly at the girls and then stares me straight in the eye with an insincere smile and a hearty, "I'm sure it's going to taste JUST GREAT."

This is the kind of recipe that some people absolutely loathe because it comes from the Cans-n-Boxes section of my cooking repertoire, but it was so quick and easy to prepare and so GOOD, I just don't care. Every cook has to have a few recipes that can be thrown together and ready to serve in a minimal amount of time and this one definitely fits those qualifications. Plus, it's a thick, hearty soup; really, more of a stew. Full of protein, too, with the chicken, the beans and the rice. And did I mention budget-friendly?

CHICKEN CHILI

Ingredients:
1 large can/bottle tomato juice
2 medium-sized cooked chicken breasts, cubed or shredded (or one large will do fine)
2 cans chicken broth
1 can chili beans, undrained
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole kernel corn, undrained
2 packets taco seasoning
1 cup instant rice or 1 1/2 cups cooked rice

Optional, for garnishing:
shredded cheese of whatever kind you prefer (sharp cheddar? Monterrey Jack?)
chopped green onions
corn chips

Directions:
Spray a soup kettle with non-stick spray. Spend several moments opening up a plenitude of cans. Drain the cans that need to be drained (and rinsed, natch); pour everything in the soup kettle. Add the chicken and the packets of taco seasoning. Bring to a boil and then turn heat to a low medium flame; allow to simmer for twenty minutes or so.

At the end of twenty minutes, add the instant rice. Turn off the flame and put a lid on the pot. Let stand for five minutes. Stir and serve with garnishes, if desired.

The debut of The Meal Matrix

My friend Julia, whose son, Sam, is one of my favorite religious ed students, like, ever, remarked in a tone of awe when I told her that I operate my kitchen on a meal matrix, "I didn't know you could do that."

"I have to do that," I admitted. "Otherwise, I end up making chili, meatloaf and tacos over and over again and after a few weeks, everyone in my family threatens drag me out to the park and make me eat grass and wet leaves until I agree to make something else for dinner."

She wanted to know what the Meal Matrix looked like and how it worked. I thought this would be a good time for me to go ahead and type it out, not only so that Julia can see it, but so that I can get it set down permanently for myself. Because one time last winter? I thought I lost the paper I wrote the matrix on and I fell into a terrible funk and kept sending anguished emails to The Keanu Reeves Fan Club and served everyone cold cereal every night for a week. Plus the president of the fan club may or may not have taken out a restraining order against me. I can't remember. It was a dark time.

Here's how it goes:

1) First of all, I sat down and thought about the different kinds of meals we like. We like the standard beef, chicken and pork meals -- you should just try my garlicky pork roast that's been simmered all day in the slow-cooker -- and we all like breakfast-for-dinner, homemade pizza and Mexican dishes. I also decided to reserve space every two weeks for meals that I designated as Easy/Cheap, for those nights when I just don't feel like cooking, or the weeks when I'm trying a more ambitious recipe that eats up more of my grocery budget than, say, eggs on toast.

2) Next, I got out a legal tablet and made columns, one column for each menu choice. For example, one column was labeled "Chicken," another labeled "Mexican" and so on. My columns for my family's preferences were as follows: Chicken, Beef, Pork, Mexican, Soup, Pizza, Spaghetti Night, Breakfast-for-Dinner, Easy/Cheap, Seafood/Meatless and New.

3) In each column, I listed the appropriate meals for the heading. For instance, in the Chicken column, I wrote: Chicken Pot Pie, Baked Chicken & Stuffing, Julia Chicken, Crispy Oven Chicken and Chicken, Broccoli & Rice Casserole and Chicken & Mushroom Casserole. Those are all recipes that I know how to make and that we all like. I tried to make sure I had at least 4-6 items per column so there'd be some variety. In some columns, there were eight or nine different entries, which I found interesting. Obviously, I like to cook some foods better than others.

Here are a couple of notes: I added one dinner a month to try out a new recipes, my choice. I also try to make sure I have a slow-cooker meal for Sunday, because that's Mom's day of rest too and I don't want to spend it in the kitchen.

4) When I got that all figured out, I got yet another piece of paper and, in four rows, I listed the days of the week, just as you see in the picture above. I looked at all my different column headings and divided them up so that we're always eating something different -- there aren't two fish meals placed back-to-back, for instance.

Here's what I ended up with for each month:

FIRST WEEK:

Monday - Chicken

Tuesday - Beef

Wednesday - Soup

Thursday - Pizza

Friday - Seafood/Meatless

Saturday - Mexican

Sunday - Pork

SECOND WEEK:

Monday - Beef

Tuesday - Chicken

Wednesday - Breakfast-for-Dinner

Thursday - Easy/Cheap

Friday - Seafood/Meatless

Saturday - Spaghetti Night

Sunday - Chicken

THIRD WEEK:

Monday - Chicken

Tuesday - Beef

Wednesday - Soup

Thursday - New Recipe

Friday - Seafood/Meatless

Saturday - Mexican

Sunday - Pork

FOURTH WEEK:

Monday - Beef

Tuesday - Pork

Wednesday - Breakfast-for-Dinner

Thursday - Easy/Cheap
Friday - Seafood/Meatless

Saturday - Spaghetti Night

Sunday - New Recipe

I found that this is a nice way to keep everything fresh in the kitchen. I mean, with my menu-planning. If you ever find a way to keep everything fresh in the refrigerator, or learn how to avoid finding a tin of sage that's been pushed to the back of the pantry shelf and reads "Best if Used by 2-26-99," please let me know. I mean "fresh" as in, "not cooking the same things over and over" which is important when cooking for a family.

My personal opinion -- and boy, do I ever have a lot of them -- is that moms should be always trying new things once or twice a month, not only to strengthen our own skills in the kitchen, which is the heart of the home, but also to avoid falling into the kind of rut that sends children out into the world as the kind of adult eaters who are so finicky, you just want to bash them over the head with a skillet.

"I don't like rice. I don't eat eggs. No vegetables, not even potatoes. I don't like Italian food. I can't eat anything with onions in it. Why? Well, because I don't like them. Oh, and I can't eat bananas, pickles, any kind of salad dressing, food imported from Brazil, any kind of cheese because it gives me gas or soups made from a chicken broth base."

"Really? Well, would you mind telling me: WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU EAT?"

"Ummm....chicken nuggets and french fries. And maybe corn. If it's from a can, not frozen. And chocolate milk."

See, parents have a responsibility to make sure that this kind of thing is not turned loose in society. And since parents are the ones who cook, well, that means that some actual cooking is going to have to take place and we can't rely on frozen convenience foods and/or packaged items all the time. Some of the time, yes. We have to allow ourselves room to serve fish sticks and Stouffer's macaroni and cheese sometimes. But we need to PLAN and SHOP for those meals and try our best not to be flinging ourselves into the grocery store at 5:35 p.m. with a wild look in our eyes and start throwing microwave dinners into a cart. That's not going to cut it. We all wind up with headaches and everyone grumbles that dinner sucks AGAIN and it's no way to develop a child's palate into an adult's palate.

So! Maybe the Meal Matrix will help. It has helped me enormously. The original idea isn't mine; it actually came from my internet friend Johanna. But it's brilliant and it makes planning and shopping and cooking a variety of meals so much easier, you just won't believe it.

Email me if you decide to try the Meal Matrix and tell me if you think it's helped you.

RECIPE: Crispy Oven Chicken

Crispy Oven Chicken has been a family favorite since Meelyn was a kindergartener - this was what she requested for dinner on her first day of school 'way back a long time ago when she was only five and I was STILL thirty-five. Oh, wait...I'm thirty-nine now. Kind of. Never mind.

Anyway, Crispy Oven Chicken is easy to make and very delicious and goes with just about any side dish you'd care to serve with it - it leaves enough room in the oven that you can bake a broccoli casserole or roast some potatoes right alongside it and everything can come out at the exact same time, ready for the table. It has all the crispy goodness of pan-fried chicken without the guilt. Deeelicious!

Crispy Oven Chicken

Ingredients:

5 or 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (soaked in buttermilk to tenderize for two or three hours, if you prefer)
1 stick of butter, melted and poured into a shallow pan (I use an 8x8 baking dish)
5 cups crispy rice cereal (such as Rice Krispies)
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper (use 1/4 teaspoon if you prefer a less spicy coating)

Directions:

Pour rice, flour and seasonings into a 1-gallon sized plastic bag; crunch up cereal. Remove chicken breasts from buttermilk. Dredge meat in the butter and then place, piece by piece, into the bag of rice cereal; toss to coat. Place coated chicken breast in a 9x13 baking dish; repeat until all chicken breasts are coated. Press any remaining topping onto chicken breasts and drizzle the meat with any remaining butter. Bake at 350 degrees for about forty minutes or until juice run clear when thickest chicken breast is pierced in the middle with a fork.

Leftovers are very yummy when sliced up or cut into chunks and made into sandwiches for the next day's lunch.

RECIPE: Cheesy Tuna Casserole (and a better-than-that version)

My pictures look a bit better, don't they? I've been forcing myself to stand across the room and using the zoom feature on the camera to get close up and feeling like I ought to be setting up those big things that look like inverted white umbrellas (what are those even for?) and murmuring to my food, "Work with me, babe! The camera loves you and you love the camera. SHOW ME SOME CRUST!!!"

I'm sorry to say that this casserole wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, so I'm going to post the original recipe I used last night, because it wasn't terrible. I mean, we ate it. Grudgingly. And we were really hungry because of Ash Wednesday being a fast day and all, so we were all like, "This sucks" even while we were tossing it down the hatch. But I'm also going to post a second recipe, one which works out what I perceived to be the kinks in this plan.

Actually, I think my biggest problem wasn't with the recipe. The sauce the tuna was in was actually very good. But the pasta I used? It was ALL WRONG. I used whole wheat penne, and I should have used just plain old elbow macaroni, the classic tuna casserole pasta. The penne was too big and led to a mouth-feel that was somehow unpleasant. I'm not sure why.

So! For your discernment, here are two tuna casserole recipes:

EASY TUNA CASSEROLE

Ingredients:

12 ounces pasta (approx. 6 cups), cooked and drained
2 cans albacore tuna, drained
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
½ cup mayonnaise
1 small onion, diced
1 large can French-fried onions

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, combine cooked pasta, tuna, soup, cheese, peas, mayonnaise and onions and stir. Pour into a 9x13 casserole dish that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bubbly. Sprinkle the French-fried onions on top, bake for five more minutes.

Makes 6 servings

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CHEESY TUNA-MELT CASSEROLE

My favorite sandwich in the whole world is a tuna melt, which is tuna salad with cheese on buttery grilled bread. In this recipe, some buttery elbow macaroni will have to take the place of the bread, but I plan to try this during Lent and see how it works.

I make my tuna salad with mayonnaise, diced celery and onion, some crushed dried dill weed and a tiny squirt of mustard. To make a tuna melt sandwich, I add a slice of cheese, of course. What I'm hoping this recipe will produce is a creamier casserole that isn't overpowered by the tuna, with the french-fried onions approximating the crunch of the grilled bread. Hence...

Ingredients:

4 cups cooked elbow macaroni

1 can albacore tuna, drained

2 cans cream of celery soup

½ cup mayonnaise

1 soup can warm water

1 teaspoon salad mustard

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup frozen peas, thawed

1½ teaspoons dried dill weed

1 small onion, diced

1 large can french-fried onions

sprinkle of paprika, optional

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the soup, mayonnaise, water and mustard. Add the cheese, peas, dill weed and diced onion, stir. Fold in the macaroni and the tuna.

Pour into a well-buttered 9x13" casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for half an hour or until bubbly. Top with french-fried onions and bake for five more minutes. Sprinkle with paprika to give it a savory color if desired.

Makes six servings

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Now remember, I haven't ever actually made that second recipe. It's just based on correcting some things I felt went wrong with the first recipe, which we ate for dinner last night. It's also supposed to be a take on my favorite sandwich, an old-fashioned diner tuna melt. Who knows? That second recipe might be as yucky as the first one, but I can't imagine how that could be.

RECIPE: Sweet and Savory Barbecued Country Ribs

My mom, a major sweetie, came by the other day and left two packages of beautiful pork country ribs for us. Even frozen, they looked delicious, and even though this is not the time of the year to pair them with cole slaw and corn on the cob, it sure is the right time of year to pair them with some oven-baked potato wedges and green beans.

I'm always looking for good recipes for barbecue sauce. If I have to buy it at the store, I find that Sweet Baby Ray's original style delivers the flavor we prefer, but I did post this recipe for Pulled Pork Barbecue Sandwiches in June 2008 and it is pretty darned good. So is this one, though, and just enough different that I think it's worth posting a second barbecue recipe. Plus, these ribs are so easy and good, I'd definitely make them again.

Sweet and Savory Barbecued Country Ribs

Ingredients:

3-4 pounds country-style pork ribs (whatever will fit in your slow-cooker)

1 large sweet onion, cut into rings
1 bottle honey barbecue sauce
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Dredge the ribs in a mixture of flour, seasoned salt and plenty of black pepper (I used about a cup of flour, 2 teaspoons of seasoned salt and a half-teaspoon of pepper for our tastes) Brown in a skillet on both sides; transfer to slow-cooker. Place onion on top.

In a microwave-safe mixing bowl, stir together the barbecue sauce, maple syrup, mustard, salt and pepper. Heat until warm, however long your microwave takes to do this. Pour over the meat and the onion in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours or until the meat is tender.

Dredge the ribs

RECIPE: Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf

Well, we all know by now that I am definitely not a talented food photographer -- I think I'm standing too close -- but honestly, it's hard to stay away from this meatloaf. (Nice segue, wasn't it?) I found this recipe online, did the usual tinkering that we all do to make it suit our family's particular taste, and served it last Wednesday with mashed sweet potatoes and green beans.

My husband very kindly allowed me to photograph his plate before he dug in.

Meatloaf is a very cost-effective main dish to serve the family because the "filler" in it stretches out the actual meat and allows for a multi-meal allotment that any busy family cook can appreciate. One of my favorite ways to use leftover meatloaf -- other than that way called LUNCH -- is to cut it in chunks and put it in baked spaghetti as meatballs. Er, meatcubes. You know what I mean. It's very good that way.

We enjoyed this a lot and it is a much easier recipe to prepare than the other meatloaf recipe I have posted here at InsomniMom, which is titled Comforting Meatloaf and can be found by clicking this link. True, the Comforting Meatloaf recipe is one that ingeniously hides a number of nutritious vegetables from the prying eyes of your picky children. And also true, it is a variation of Martha Stewart's mother's recipe and I have to say that the late Mrs. Kostyra -- God rest her soul -- really knew her way around a meatloaf.

But this recipe? It is much easier. It doesn't require lugging out the food processor to grate all those veggies, yet it is still really, really good. I don't know -- throw in an eighth of a cup of wheat germ for some extra nutritive value if you want to. But the main point is that this is an easy recipe, one that you can slap together in a matter of minutes when you need to serve the fam a meal that has nothing to do with On-Cor Salisbury Steaks, a frozen entrée that Kayte once scolded me soundly for dishing up chez McKinney.

Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground sausage

3/4 cup oatmeal (either old-fashioned or quick)
1/2 cup ketchup
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl; mix lightly but thoroughly. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick spray and put meatloaf into the dish, shaping into a loaf. Bake in oven for forty minutes. (I recommend not baking the meatloaf in an actual loaf pan because there won't be room for all the juices and they will spill out into your oven, creating a dreadful smoky mess and the smoke detectors will all go off and the dogs will bark and you'll have to gallop around the kitchen waving a magazine in the air to dissipate the smoke

Meanwhile, make the sauce. Because without the sauce, this may be somebody's meatloaf, but it can't be Mom's. Or even Dad's. The sauce makes the meatloaf and probably adds a serving of vegetables, so go ahead and pour it on.

Mom's Best Easy Meatloaf Sauce

1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar

When the timer goes off for the first forty minutes at meatloaf cookage, drain off the fat and then apply the sauce liberally over the top of the meatloaf. Bake another twenty minutes or until the inner temp of the meatloaf reaches 160 degrees.

Allow to stand for about ten minutes before slicing. Makes the best leftovers, like, ever.

RECIPE: Ragù Americana (American-style meat sauce)

This recipe is the one I use all the time and often refer to here on InsomniMom. It is partly my mom's, who first mined it from the 1960 edition of Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. But it's also my friend Celia's, who lived in France and Italy for many years and Knows Things about cooking that I will probably never figure out, even if I sleep with Julia's books under my pillow for the rest of my life.

This is an easy sauce to make, makes the house smell wonderful and homey, and makes enough for two meals plus a couple of lunch portions for our family of four. It goes over any kind of pasta, although our pasta of choice is always thin whole-wheat spaghetti. You can also use half of the recipe in lasagna, and the other half in baked spaghetti or even maybe the Red Sauce and Rice casserole I've been working on (recipe coming, you lucky things!)

In Italy, "ragù" describes a red sauce made with meat, which is just what this is. I've also added the word "Americana" to the title because this is a sweet sauce; Americans tend to like a hit of sugar in their tomato-based sauces. Think of things like barbecue sauce and ketchup and you'll understand what I mean. If you want a sauce that is more authentically Italiano, just don't put the sugar in, although I'd still recommend a teaspoon or so to cut the acidity of the tomatoes.

This sauce is a super-sneaky way to add some vegetables into your kids' dinner. Process them a bunch to make them invisible, or just grate them if your peeps don't mind seeing carrots.

Ragù Americana

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 pound sausage (we use spicy sausage, but Italian sausage is also very good)
2 cloves garlic, diced (or one teaspoon of garlic powder)
1 large onion, diced

1 large can tomato juice
2 small cans tomato sauce
2 small cans tomato paste

2 carrots, grated or puréed
2 celery stalks, ditto
1 cup spinach leaves, cut chiffonade or puréed
about ten fresh mushrooms, thinly slice or puréed

1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil leaves
1 tablespoon salt
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 bay leaf

1 cup of hot water
1/4 cup red wine (optional)

Directions:

Brown the beef and the sausage in a large Dutch oven with the garlic and onion; drain and return to the stove. Over a medium heat, add all the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a slow simmer, stirring every twenty minutes or so. Allow to cook on stove for about two hours. Serve immediately over pasta. If there is sauce left over, allow to cool and then put in a refrigerator container. Store for up to one week.

If you'd like to prepare this in your slow-cooker, simply omit the cup of hot water. Brown the meat ahead of time and put everything in the cooker all at once; stir to combine and cook for four hours on low heat.

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One thing I like to do is make up small snack-sized plastic bags of the herbs and other dry ingredients ahead of time. That way, when I'm preparing the sauce, all I have to do is empty out a pre-measured bag into my Dutch oven, even though I've made this so many times, I just measure everything out in my palm anyway.

If you don't want to add the fresh vegetables, you don't have to. The sauce is much richer and more complex in flavor if you do add them, though. I made this for years and no one knew that all those vegetables were in it. It was my little veggie secret.

This sauce freezes very well. If I intend to freeze it, I pour it carefully into gallon-sized freezer bags, remove as much of the air as possible from the bag, and then freeze it flat on a baking sheet. If you divide the sauce in half, it will fill two gallon-sized freezer bags about half full.

RECIPE: Chicken & Broccoli Casserole (oven version)

I wish I'd thought to take a picture of this delicious, down-home-cookin' casserole before it got finished up -- I purposely bake it in a 9x13 dish because it makes such yummy leftovers and we really enjoy having it for lunch -- but I didn't think of it until too late. I suppose I could take a picture of my empty baking dish as proof that we enjoyed it very much? No? Oh well.

This is pure, sentimental, 1950s, back-of-the-mayonnaise jar kitschy comfort food, first baked back in the days when Mom wore an apron over her dress while she cooked; I can't eat this without thinking about June Cleaver and Marian Cunningham. I don't want to think about the calories and fat content; all I know is that is tastes good, feeds everybody and makes enough for multiple meals, so here goes:

Chicken & Broccoli Casserole (oven version)

Ingredients:

2 cans cream of mushroom soup
8 oz Cheez-Whiz (or half a large jar, whichever is easiest)
1/2 cup light mayonnaise
1 soup can of hot water
1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 1/2 cups Minute Rice, uncooked (either white or brown will work)

1 medium onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 can water chestnuts, diced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

2 bags frozen broccoli cuts, thawed (or fresh, if you'd like that better)
2 cups cooked and cubed chicken

2 cups crumbled Cheezit crackers or similar, stirred with 2 tablespoons melted butter (for topping)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x13 casserole dish with non-stick spray. In the baking dish, stir together the mushroom soup, Cheez-Whiz, mayonnaise, water and lemon juice. Add the rice, onion, celery, salt and pepper and stir to combine. Add in the broccoli and chicken; stir to coat.

Place casserole dish in oven and bake for forty-five minutes or until bubbly. Top with crushed crackers and bake for ten more minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately.

RECIPE: Killian's Irish Turkey

Okay, I couldn't take a picture of my Christmas ham because there didn't seem to be anything particularly photo-licious about a ham stuffed in a slow-cooker. But would you just feast your eyes on this beauty? I pulled him out of the oven about five minutes ago -- I can see him from where I'm sitting -- and I'm telling you, that turkey smells so good, I can hardly wait for dinner tonight.

To the left in the photo are the ingredients I used for roasting the bird: one quart of chicken broth (not quite all of it is gone) for basting, two bottles of Killian's Irish Red, three sticks of butter and some salt and pepper.

I decided to use the Killian's because of an unusual roasting method Pat was telling me about: he makes the best turkey, like, EVER and he uses butter, salt, pepper and a can of Coke or Dr. Pepper or something like that. I decided to use the lager because it is made of God's own sweet barley and frankly, I'm not sure what soft drinks are made of. Besides, I thought it would be a nice experiment. If I throw some red wine in my ragù, why not some beer in the turkey? The worst that could happen, I thought, would be a really rich, smooth broth. Bummer.

Here's what I did. It couldn't have been easier:

1. I preheated the oven to 325 degrees and sprayed the inside of that big, disposable roasting pan with non-stick cooking spray

2. Unwrapped Mr. Butterball and rinsed him well with warm water, making sure to remove those mysterious packages in the neck and body cavities, which is what I didn't do the first time I roasted a turkey. Imagine my embarrassment when my mother-in-law, who was doing the carving, said, "You're supposed to take these out. Dear." Some people make gravy with the contents of those packages, but I throw them STRAIGHT IN THE TRASH.

3. Plunked the turkey breast side up in the roasting pan. Two sticks of soft butter in the body cavity, one stick of soft butter rubbed all over the outside of the turkey, which would have been a rather pleasant massage, I imagine, if he'd been alive and all.

4. One bottle of Killian's poured into the body cavity, one bottle reserved on the counter for basting. Chicken broth, ditto.

5. My turkey was 13 pounds and Butterball's instruction sheet recommended some configuration that ended up with my turkey needing to cook for three hours or so. So! Turkey into the oven at 11:30.

6. Basted that baby with a great deal of loving care and attention, just like a Julia chicken. Every half hour on the dot. Killian's and broth poured over the top.

7. Made a little foil tent and crimped it to the roasting pan at 2:00 and continued the roasting until 3:00.

8. Removed foil tent (being very careful not to be burned by the steam) at 3:00 and left in oven an additional twenty minutes to make the skin a nice, toasty golden brown.

9. Retrieved from oven at 3:20 and allowed to stand undisturbed for fifteen minutes, at which point the girls and I did a taste test. Delicious!

I carved the turkey later in the day and we had it for dinner last night, along with some rich gravy I made from the pan juices. It was a complete success and so simple. Obviously, with a good-sized turkey and the stock and lager and all, the most difficult part was taking the turkey in and out of the oven. (For basting, I just pulled the oven rack out a little bit, but I took the whole kit and kaboodle out when I made the foil tent.) Just make sure you have hot pads that have no thin places in them, you know what I'm saying?

RECIPE: Christmas Ham with Cherry Glaze

I wish I'd taken a picture of the ham I made for Christmas dinner yesterday, but I'll be the first to admit that it isn't really a picture-perfect presentation. I mean, I'm sure you could lift it out of the slow-cooker and put it on a platter surrounded by greens and kumquats and ripe cherries, but when all is said and done, you may as well just hide in the kitchen and furtively get some slices of ham onto that platter and forget your dreams of making a big show. To that end, here is a picture of someone else's ham.

This Christmas ham is one of the easiest recipes I've ever made. Since you use your slow-cooker, this method leaves your oven free for other festive components like dinner rolls and green bean casserole. Basically, all you have to do is plunk the ham into the slow-cooker, turn the slow cooker on low, stir up the glaze, pour it on and leave it to itself for about four hours, and presto! You look like a culinary genius and your family will say things like, "This is the best ham I've ever eaten."

INGREDIENTS:

1 large slow-cooker
1 pre-cooked, spiral-sliced smoked ham (9 pounds is the biggest ham that will fit in my slow-cooker, and I advise you to check out what your slow-cooker will hold well before you're down to the wire on a holiday when all the stores are closed)
cherry glaze for the ham (recipe follows)
1 1/2 - 2 cups of chicken broth
4 tablespoons of butter (reserve for later)


Spray the inside of your slow-cooker with non-stick cooking spray. Unwrap the ham carefully and place it, largest surface up, in your cooker. A nine pound ham completely fills my slow-cooker, leaving ju-u-ust enough room to put the lid on. Just barely enough. Please note that this goes against the wisdom of all slow-cooker manufacturers, who generally recommend leaving a space of about two inches between the top of your food and the bottom of your lid. If going against the manufacturer's recommendations bothers you, then put your ham in a roasting pan and warm it in your oven according to the packaging directions. If you're okay with assuming the burden of heating your ham in this manner, carry on.

Pour in the chicken broth; set slow-cooker's heat control to Low. Allow the cooker to warm up while you make the glaze.

CHERRY GLAZE FOR HAM

I found this highly-rated ham glaze at one of my favorite internet sites, Allrecipes.com. It is really a fabulous site and has a lot of nice features, like a personalized recipe box. This particular recipe currently has nineteen reviews and a five star rating, which was good enough for me.

3 tablespoons water
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 (12 ounce) jar cherry preserves
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

The instructions couldn't be simpler: Spray a small saucepan with non-stick spray. Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring frequently over a medium heat. Reduce heat and allow to simmer for two minutes.

When you've finished the glaze, pour it over the ham and chicken broth in the slow-cooker, cut up the four tablespoons of butter and put them on top of the ham. Put the lid on the cooker -- my lid is always right up against the ham. Heat the ham on the Low setting for three and a half hours, turning it up to the High setting for the last half hour of cooking.

Remember, slow-cooker temps do vary. My current slow-cooker, which is about two years old, gets much hotter than my old one did. If you have a close relationship with your own slow-cooker, you'll know if this will be enough time. Because remember -- you are just heating this ham, not cooking it. Just, you know, keep your eye on it. The amount of time I stated was enough to thoroughly heat the ham into a moist and steamy yumminess and yours should turn out similarly.

Couldn't be easier and got me lots of compliments from my family, the same people who bitterly threatened a dining room anarchist movement if I served them chili once more before February.

RECIPE: Thanksgiving dressings - Cornbread & Sausage, Cranberry-Walnut and Oyster (ew)

I literally cannot believe that I made dressing this good that was so simple. And cheaty. And a total secret, so shush before everyone finds out. We can't ALL have rock-star reputations for making good dressing at Thanksgiving, so keep this on the down low.

My delicious, steamy-in-the-middle, crispy-on-the-top-and-edges dressing yesterday had one basic secret ingredient.

Are you ready for it?

Stove-Top Stuffing. That's the secret ingredient. It comes in a box and is made by Kraft Foods and if I could get my arms around their corporate headquarters? I would so be hugging them all right now. Because after three years -- three long, purgatorial years of producing one vomit-inducing pan of dressing after another at the family Thanksgiving dinner -- I have finally found a winning recipe that won compliments from everyone.

And let me tell you: the leftovers? Even better than yesterday. No more tearing up loaves of bread and baking them dry and not having a bowl big enough to keep from slopping eggy, brothy bits of wet bread onto the kitchen floor; no, it was a simple enterprise from first to last. So without further ado, the dressing, with many thanks to my friend Amy, whose granny-in-law cracked the dressing code and paved the way for all busy holiday cooks to have a little more time and a little less stress.

CORNBREAD DRESSING

Ingredients:

1 pound sage sausage, browned and chopped into small pieces

4 boxes Stove-Top Stuffing Cornbread mix

2 sticks butter

2 medium stalks celery, diced

1 medium onion, diced

4 eggs, beaten

approximately 5 cups of chicken or turkey broth/stock

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9"x13" casserole dish. In a large mixing bowl, empty the four packets of Stove-Top Stuffing and set aside. In a small bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed. Melt the two sticks of butter in a small saucepan; simmer the celery and onion until both are translucent. Combine all ingredients with the contents of the STS packets in the large mixing bowl: about four cups of the broth, the eggs, the butter/celery/onion. Stir thoroughly to combine. Add more broth if mixture seems dry (it should be a bit wet; not VERY wet, but slightly wet.)

Empty the stuffing into the prepared casserole dish; cover with foil shiny side down and bake for thirty-five minutes. Remove foil and bake for twenty-five more minutes or until the top is slightly brown and crispy. Serve hot with slices of turkey and enough gravy to fill a bathtub.

CRANBERRY-WALNUT DRESSING

Ingredients:

4 boxes of chicken or turkey Stove Top Stuffing

2 sticks butter

2 medium stalks celery, minced

1 medium onion, minced

1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage

2 cups chopped walnuts

1 cup dried cranberries

approximately five cups chicken or turkey broth

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a 9"x13" casserole dish. Empty the packets of Stove Top Stuffing into a large mixing bowl and add the cranberries and walnuts; set aside. Beat the eggs in a small bowl, set aside. Melt the butter in a small saucepan; add the sage, celery and onion and cook until translucent. Combine all ingredients in the large mixing bowl: stuffing packets/cranberries/walnuts, eggs, butter mixture. Add broth, stirring thoroughly to combine. The dressing should be a bit wet.

Turn out into buttered casserole dish, cover with foil (shiny side down) and bake in oven for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for twenty-five more minutes, or until the top is browned and crispy at the edges. Serve with great fanfare, because this is a truly lovely, delicious and festive-looking holiday dish.

OYSTER DRESSING (ew)

Ingredients:

1 box of chicken or turkey Stove Top Stuffing

1 egg

1/2 stick butter

1 small rib of celery, minced

1/2 medium onion, minced

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

1/2 pint fresh oysters, minced, liquid strained and reserved in a small bowl

approximately 1 or 2 cups chicken or turkey broth

Directions:

Only if you have to, preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously butter a small casserole plate (mine is about a six-inch diameter dish); set aside. If you're absolutely certain that you must, empty the STS packet into a medium mixing bowl. Reluctantly beat the egg and add to STS mixture. In firm denial of your nameless fear, melt the butter and add the pepper, celery and onion; cook until vegetables are translucent. With a sense of impending doom, add to STS mixture in bowl. Cringing in dread, add minced oysters and the strained liquid; stir. Add more chicken or turkey broth as needed until the stuffing is slightly wet.

Fighting back nausea, cover casserole dish with foil, shiny side down, and bake in the oven for twenty minutes; remove foil and bake for another twenty-five minutes, until stuffing is golden on top and slightly crispy around the edges. Serve hot with love for your relatives who actually eat that stuff. Sit slumped in a chair with a medicinal glass of brandy. Weep.

RECIPE: Oodles of noodles

This is my VERY FIRST foodie post here on InsomniMom. Oh, how I love my digital camera, even though this picture looks weirdly blurry. Why is that? I'll have to ask Kayte. She has the same camera I do, only it is her play camera, not her real, serious camera. Anyway, maybe she can tell me why the eggs in this image look like giant cotton balls.

I also want to point out that all of the ingredients for this recipe came from ALDI except for the salt. The book is an old church cook book with the best noodle recipe in the world, which I am fixin' to share with you any second now.

I am really proud of my noodles, ever since the time I made chicken and noodles for dinner one Sunday last winter, having cheated and bought some Amish noodles at the grocery. Those Amish noodles are pretty darned good, coming straight from Das Dutchman Essenhaus in Middlebury, Indiana, a restaurant at which Carol and I once ate, if by the word "ate" you understand that I mean "stuffed ourselves with as much starchy Amish goodness as we could get our hands on."

My husband took one bite, chewed, swallowed, and then said with a decided lack of an instinct for self-preservation, "What did you do to your noodles?"

I bristled immediately, of course. "Let's see. I COOKED THEM."

"They don't taste the same," Meelyn spoke up. "Your noodles are usually really fabulous, but these are just....okay."

I brightened. "Oh! Well, I can tell you, then, that these noodles? They are not mine. They were made up in Middlebury by Amish hands."

"Well, no wonder, then," my husband said jovially. "These aren't your noodles! They're someone else's noodles! And no one -- let me repeat, NO ONE -- makes noodles with the kind of love you do, SWEETHEART."

I am a total sucker for blatant flattery.

So take that, Amish ladies! I make great noodles by hand, better than yours, my family says, and I watch television while I do it.

NOODLES

2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour

Beat the eggs together in a medium mixing bowl. Add the evaporated milk and whisk until the mixture is creamy. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring with a large spoon until combined.

Divide the dough in half. Place half the dough on a well-floured piece of butcher's paper or parchment paper. Roll it out thin, thin, thin, adding more flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking to the paper or the rolling pin. Repeat with the second half of the dough on another piece of paper.

Allow the noodles to dry, preferably overnight. I usually transfer them, paper and all, from the counter to two baking sheets, covering them lightly with paper towel. If you can't let them dry overnight, give them at least six hours or so. Or turn a fan on them to help speed up the process.

To cook, drop in simmering stock (about five cups, chicken, beef, or even vegetable) over medium heat, stirring frequently until the noodles puff up a bit and start to float. This usually takes about twenty minutes for me. The noodles will absorb a great deal of the broth, so adjust the heat of the stove down if necessary.

Serve with whatever kind of meat you like to eat noodles with. And mashed potatoes. You have to have mashed potatoes with noodles because that's just the way it is and don't argue with me because I don't make these rules. I just pass them on.

RECIPE: (Naughty) Glazed Carrots

I don't think it's a big secret here in the midwestern or southern states that Cracker Barrel has the best ever glazed carrots. They are, like, delicious. Decadently delicious. Honestly, you never knew that a humble carrot could taste so good.

Here at our house, where we are constantly occupied with the circumference of our hips and the clearness of our complexions and the state of our blood sugar, we do not often indulge in glazed carrots. Frankly, carrots are pretty good all on their own with just a smidge of butter and some sea salt, and who needs all those extra calories?

But I offer you the Coke Float Corollary, which follows thusly: Coke is good all on its own. Fizzy. Icy cold. All thirst-quenchy, sweet and sparkly. So having a Coke? That's a good thing. But if you plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream in that Coke -- and please do not bore me with your ice milk and your artificially sweetened "ice cream" because I will simply laugh in derision -- and you have something extra-special. Something that you should not drink all the time unless you want to be, well, the size of me. And trust me on this: you don't. Shut up.

So that brings us back to where we started, with the glazed carrots that have now not only have had butter, sugar and salt applied to them, but also the Coke Float Corollary, which has no discernable taste, unlike an an actual coke float, which is, like, mmmmmmmm.

*ahem*

Anyway, here's the recipe I found at Mama's Southern Cooking which we feel has the true Cracker Barrel flavor. For some reason, glazed carrots seem so right at this time of year and around the holidays, which is why we had them for dinner tonight.

2 pounds of fresh baby carrots

1/2 cup of butter

1/3 cup of sugar, or 1/2 cup of honey

1/2 teaspoon of salt

In a small pot add the carrots and cover with water. Bring to a boil reduce heat, cover and simmer over medium heat for about 10 minutes (OR steam them in the microwave for approximately 10 minutes.)

In a saucepan, melt the butter and the sugar. Add the carrots and salt. Saute over medium-low heat until carrots are fork tender. This could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending upon the size of your baby carrots. Serve and enjoy for your harvest season or Yuletide cheer.

RECIPE: Homemade baking mix

This recipe is a handy little money saver for those of you who use it often to make biscuits, pancakes, waffles or little shortcakes to heap with sugared strawberries. Baking mix can be found just about everywhere - there are two well-known national brands and a bunch of knock-offs. This recipe is a very close approximation and it's been around for years: you can find it in every single church cookbook that's ever been published, I imagine. "Time honored" would be a good way to describe it.

I really love the biscuits this baking mix makes. They're light and fluffy and EASY, especially if you make the "drop" variety. If you add a teaspoon of garlic and a handful of shredded cheddar to the dough and then BATHE THEM IN VERY GARLICKY BUTTER as soon as you slide them out of the oven, you have a pretty good cover of Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay biscuits. Which, you know, I could eat my weight in, which is not an inconsiderable amount.


Ingredients:

8 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
8 teaspoons sugar (optional)
1 cup shortening

Directions: Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Using a pastry blender, cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse meal. Store sealed in pantry or refrigerator.


BISCUITS - add 2/3 cup of milk to 2 1/4 cups of baking mix in a medium mixing bowl. Stir until combined.

For rolled biscuits, turn dough onto a floured surface and knead or fold about four times (do not overwork dough). Roll out to half-inch thickness and transfer to lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

For drop biscuits, stir milk and baking mix until combined. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold the dough inside the bowl three or four times. Drop onto lightly greased baking sheet by well-rounded spoonfuls. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

PANCAKES - 3/4 cup milk to 1 cup of mix; stir in one egg. Drop onto hot, greased griddle with a 1/4 cup measuring cup.

For pancake mix - Add a one quart envelope of powdered milk, or 3/4 cup powdered milk to the whole batch when making the mix. Add 3/4 cup water to the mix when making pancakes.

RECIPE: Baked Steak (total old-fashioned comfort food)

I think you used to be able to order baked steak (also known as "smothered steak," as in "smothered with gravy") as a Blue Plate Special in restaurants in my childhood. It was usually offered with the steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn or green beans and a brown-and-serve dinner roll. Maybe some pie and a cup of coffee. But anyway, however it was served, it was delicious.

This recipe comes from an church cookbook that was published in 1992. The name of the recipe in that book is "Poor Man's Steak" and the name of the contributer, whom I knew personally before she passed away, leads me to wonder if Baked Steak or Poor Man's Steak or whatever you want to call it, is actually a Depression-era recipe that was handed down from that time even when prosperity returned because it was just so good.

I made it last night with some creamy whipped potatoes and sweet corn and it was comfort food par excellance. Not in the least bit hip, haute, nouvelle or elegant, it has it's very own place in American diner cuisine.

BAKED STEAK

2 pounds ground beef
1 "row" or package of saltine or round butter crackers, finely crushed
1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 packet brown gravy mix
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Mix all ingredients together and press into a 9x13 baking pan. Chill for three hours in fridge. At the end of three hours, cut the meat into eight squares and dredge in flour; brown in a skillet with just a tiny bit of oil. Return the squares to the baking dish. In a small bowl, combine the two cans of cream of mushroom soup, gravy mix, Worcestershire and garlic powder with one can of warm water. Whisk until smooth; pour over steak slices in the baking pan. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place baking pan in oven, uncovered, for one hour.

Serve with mashed potatoes, and be generous with the gravy. Also recommended are corn, green beans or cooked carrots.

And a brown and serve dinner roll.

RECIPE: Poured-crust Homemade Pizza

Like many nights, Friday night has turned into Family Night at our house. It used to be Date Night, but times are lean and we just can't afford to go out to dinner ourselves and bring home whatever food the girls would like to eat plus a DVD from Blockbuster for them. These days, we rely on old standbys like homemade pizza and episodes of Top Chef and Survivor from the DVR.

My mom found this homemade pizza recipe somewhere, but couldn't remember if it was an online recipe or one she'd found in a magazine. Wherever it came from -- heaven, maybe? -- it is definitely a keeper and produces a really yummy homemade pizza with an absolute minimum of fuss and effort, i.e. you don't have to be a former employee of one of those hand-tossed-dough pizza parlors to produce something delicious.

And fast! Did I mention that this recipe is fast? This is a fabulous recipe for a busy mom or dad, and so simple that even a kid can even stir it up.

POURED-CRUST PIZZA

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
2/3 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 teaspoon rosemary, optional

pizza sauce/barbecue sauce/salsa or desired sauce topping
desired pizza toppings, limited only by your imagination

Directions:

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Generously oil a 12" cast iron skillet (or a 9"x13" casserole dish). If using a cast iron skillet, allow it to heat up inside the oven.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, garlic powder, pepper (and rosemary, if desired) and stir together. Add the milk and stir; add the beaten eggs and whisk well. When the oven/skillet have heated, remove the skillet from the oven and pour the crust ingredients into it; return the skillet to the oven and bake the crust for fifteen minutes. If using a casserole dish, pour the crust into the dish and place in oven, baking for fifteen minutes.

While crust is baking, assemble desired ingredients. In the pizza world, they usually go on in this order: sauce, thin layer of cheese, toppings, thicker layer of cheese.

When crust comes out of oven, top the pizza according the above directions. Carefully return the assembled pizza to the oven and bake for 15-20 more minutes, until cheese on top begins to brown slightly. Remove from oven and allow to rest away from heat for five minutes or so -- if you try to immediately cut and serve the pizza, it will fall to pieces.

Serves 4-5

Here are some combinations that we've tried/ones we'd like to try:

Deluxe: Pizza sauce, mozzarella, cooked Italian sausage, pepperoni, chopped green pepper, onion, mushrooms, black olives

Hawaiian: Barbecue sauce, mozzarella, pre-cooked ham chunks, pineapple tidbits, chopped green onion (I always add just a few sliced black olives for garnish, because it looks pretty, more than about the taste)

Chicken Barbecue: Barbecue sauce, mozzarella, grilled chicken strips, chopped sweet onion

Taco Pizza: Thick salsa, pepper jack/cheddar blend, seasoned ground beef, chopped green onion, black olives, diced tomato - top with shredded lettuce after removing from oven.

Double-Cheese Chicken Florentine: Pizza sauce, mozzarella, approximately 1 cup of washed and pressed-dry spinach leaves, grilled chicken, chopped onion and mushrooms, top with slices of provolone

RECIPE: Asian Roast Beef (in the slow-cooker)

This recipe came to me through one of those happy accidents where you're thinking miserably, "What, oh what, am I going to cook for dinner?" and ideas like baked chicken breast served with a sauce made of peanut butter, strawberry jello, ripe olives and pistachios starts racing through your head and you think no-no-I-don't-want-to-do-that-I-served-chicken-breast-on-Tuesday, so you decide to go ahead and make the sauce but instead cleverly serve it with pieces of sliced ham and American cheese rolled up together and skewered with a toothpick....This recipe came to me on the back of a packet of Superior Touch's Better Than Gravy beef gravy mix. I had the beef gravy mix because I was thinking of using it to make a sauce of beef gravy, mini-marshmallows and pimientos to disguise the leftover meatload from earlier in the week.

Superior Touch's recipe was very useful because it called for ingredients I had on hand. I thawed out a beef roast I got on a deep discount and cooked it all in the slow-cooker. It was absolutely succulent and delicious. If you would consider stir-frying some sliced carrots, broccoli florets, water chestnuts and onion quarters in a skillet or wok and then serving them with some steamed rice alongside the beef, I guarantee that you will have a meal that is easy and eminently do-able without a lot of fuss and your family will love it.

You can, of course, substitute your own minced garlic and your own sliced or grated fresh ginger, but I'm giving the fast instructions here.

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds beef pot roast
1 packet Superior Touch Better Than Gravy mix
1 cup hot water
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice or white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper (or a couple of dried pepper pods from the produce section)

DIRECTIONS

Spray the inside of a large slow-cooker with cooking spray; place the beef pot roast inside and turn the slow-cooker to the HIGH setting. In a small mixing bowl, combine the remaining ingredients and stir with a small whisk until blended. Pour over meat in slow-cooker; cook for 5-6 hours. Remove from slow-cooker to a platter and allow to stand for about ten minutes before serving.

Serve with fresh stir-fried vegetables and steamed rice. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds if desired for some extra calcium. Delicious!!!

RECIPE: Parmesan-Garlic Tilapia

Thankfully, my husband works such insane retail hours, we don't sit down for dinner until 8:30 p.m., so when I wrote that post earlier today about not knowing what I was going to cook, I was actually not too terribly worried because it was five hours until everyone was expecting me to start shoving casserole dishes into the oven (or, perhaps more to the point, shoving cardboard platters of On-Cor Family Size Salisbury Steaks into the microwave.)

[Brief pause...]

Kayte, I am just kidding. I do not serve those nasty things to my family, although I used to, back in those halcyon days before you looked at me with big, sad eyes and said, "Oh, Shelley. Shelley. Please. Please, don't buy those awful things," which is around the same time you started giggling when I asked, in innocent surprise, "Whaddaya mean, Kraft doesn't make good cheese? What is good cheese, if not Kraft?" until you realized I was serious. And then you fainted.

[Resuming....]

So anyway, I figured I still had time to burn. I sat myself down upon the couch with a cup of tea at my elbow and my book propped on my lap and read cozily until oh-my-freakin'-gosh, it was 6:30.

So I went to the kitchen and prayed for some kind of magic to happen, which it didn't. St. Zita, where are you, girl? Then I opened the freezer door and a bag of frozen edamame came flying out as if self-propelled and hit me in the head, which didn't seem magical either. But then, when I picked the edamame bag up off the floor and started to stick it back into the freezer, I saw some flash-frozen tilapia. Yippee!!!

Problem solved!

I love tilapia because it goes with just about anything. I love flash-frozen tilapia because it tastes so good and is so easy to prepare, requiring all of fifteen minutes in a moderate oven. And I love being able to make something for dinner that everybody enjoys and which also looks as if I spent a lot of time cooking it. Which is kind of the complete opposite of the Julia Principle, which is make something for dinner that everybody enjoys, but which took seventeen hours to prepare, albeit with easily obtainable ingredients.

I think Julia would have liked this recipe, though.

PARMESAN-GARLIC TILAPIA

4-6 frozen tilapia filets

2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon water

1 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
a bit of dried parsley, for sprinkling

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 375^o

Break the eggs into a shallow pan (I used a cake pan) and beat, add the water to combine. In a separate shallow pan (another cake pan, natch) pour the melted butter and then add the remaining ingredients, stirring to combine. This mixture will be very thick and a bit clumpy.

Rinse the tilapia filets in a bit of cold water and pat dry with a towel. Place each filet in the egg wash and then place it in the bread crumb-butter mixture, pressing the crumbs onto the top of the filet. Transfer the filet to a baking sheet that has been lightly oiled; repeat the process with the remaining filets. Sprinkle some dried parsley on the top of each filet.

Place the baking sheet in the heated oven and bake the filets for 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately with some lemon pepper. These filets are very pretty and make a nice presentation, being not at all pale and fishy and nekkid-looking.

RECIPE: Comforting Meatloaf

Please don't tell Martha about this post because she may come here and try to hurt me, maybe by bending all my fingers back until I promise to never try to improve on her mother's meatloaf recipe again. Because that's where I got the original recipe for this meatloaf, from Martha Kostyra. Well, not exactly from Mrs. Kostyra, who passed away in November 2007 -- +God rest her soul+ --but from Martha's website, which is close to being the same thing, if by "close" you understand that I mean "as close as Indiana is to New Jersey."

We all love meatloaf in this house. Meatloaf is one of the first things I ever cooked for my husband after we were married nearly eighteen years ago. I proudly placed a plate with my meatloaf, some mashed potatoes and corn and a biscuit (which might explain why people in Indiana are so fat, and more to the point, why I grew to the body mass index I currently mourn over) on the table in front of him and what did her say?

"This isn't how my mom makes it."

Ah, gentle readers, what a sweet memory that is! It marked the day that my husband learned to Never Compare My Cooking with His Mother's, ever again. We laugh about it now and my husband no longer wears ear plugs to dinner.

The good thing about meatloaf is that it can make enough to serve at two meals with leftovers coming from that for lunch and it is relatively inexpensive to make. In her book Anybody Can Do Anything, author and humorist Betty MacDonald writes side-splittingly about her mother making meatloaf in the Depression for something like two hundred suppers in a row. Meatloaf is your friend in lean times. It will accept anything you throw at it -- two tablespoons of leftover peas some smart-aleck kid left on a plate in the fridge, the stale bread heels no one will eat, the leafy part of the celery -- and simply expand to make more. Meatloaf has heart. Meatloaf has soul. It is a great comfort food, makes fantastic sandwiches, and is the #1 way of mothers everywhere to hide veggies in the food. Mine is made of ground beef and pork sausage, but you can make it out of any ground meat you choose.

Anyway, here's my recipe, which I developed over the years and which benefited from a few ideas stolen from Big Martha, may she rest in peace.

COMFORTING MEATLOAF

1# lean ground beef or turkey, whichever you prefer
1# bulk pork sausage, either spicy or sage
6 slices whole wheat bread, torn into pieces or whirred in the food processor
2 large eggs
2 carrots
2 celery sticks
1 large onion
1 cup spinach leaves, pressed down
1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder

FOR SAUCE

1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons salad mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 375^o

Break the eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat with a fork; add the meat.

Get out your food processor (thank you again, Katie, from the bottom of my heart) and whirr the bread into fine crumbs, if you don't feel like tearing into pieces. Empty the bread crumbs into the mixing bowl. Next, assemble all the vegetables; wash and peel what needs to be washed and peeled. Cut the large veggies into chunks and whiz them in the food processor until well-chopped. Drop the spinach leaves down the chute and process them as well. When all vegetables have been processed, empty them into the mixing bowl.

Add the salt, pepper, garlic powder and ketchup into the bowl. "Stir" by reaching into the bowl with clean hands and squeeze and mush the ingredients together until well-combined. If you're a big sissy, use a large rubber spatula or a wooden spoon. As you mix the meatloaf, thinking loving thoughts of your family and how nice it is to be able to make a comfort-food dinner that is so cheap, hides vegetables so well, and tastes so good. Protein! Vitamins! Low GI carbs! Fiber! Mix it, pretty mama!

When mixed, you can transfer the meatloaf to a large bread pan for baking, but I've had so many run-overs into the oven when the fat from the meat boils up that I prefer to use my 9x13 Pampered Chef stoneware baker. I use my hands to form the meat mixture into a "loaf" shape.

Place the meatloaf in the oven and set the a timer for forty minutes. While you're waiting for the timer, get a small microwave-safe mixing bowl out and mix the ketchup, mustard and brown sugar for the sauce. Zap the sauce in the microwave for about one minute and thirty seconds. The idea is not only to make sure the brown sugar is well melted, but also to take the refrigerator chill off the ketchup and mustard before you pour the sauce on your hot meatloaf.

When the timer goes off, set a heatproof cup (such as a Pyrex measuring cup in the two-cup size) in your sink. Lift the meatloaf out of the oven and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y pour the hot fat out of the baking pan into the heatproof cup. When you have accomplished this, top the meatloaf with the sauce and return the pan to the oven for an additional twenty minutes.

Let the meatloaf stand for about ten minutes before cutting or it will not slice well.

This recipe makes about ten good-sized servings. Refrigerate leftovers and enjoy for another meal or in lunch sandwiches, sliced thin and warmed up on the griddle and topped with a piece of cheese. (If you're throwing all caution to the winds, warm up the meatloaf and top with cheese and then grill the meatloaf between two slices of bread. To assuage your conscience, use olive oil for grilling instead of butter. Mmmm....)