Buckeye Bean Soup & Refrigerator Rolls & Chunky Applesauce (Cake)

Bean soup mix from a friend and apples from the barber plus my standby refrigerator rolls combine to make a hearty fall meal. To make Applesauce Cake (see Everyday Food, October 2003), you first need to make applesauce. See recipe below.

Bean Soup
12 oz pkg Buckeye Bean Soup mix
1 onion
1 T olive oil
4 small carrots
1 stalk celery
4 cups chicken broth
1 lb bone in ham steak
2 cups water
-Soak the beans for 8 hours or more. Rinse several times and drain.
-Chop the onion and saute in the oil. Chop the celery, peel and chop the carrots and add to the onion. Cook until softened.
-Trim the fat from the ham and chop. Add it, plus the broth and the water and the beans to the vegetable mix. Bring to a boil, simmer for a while. Add the seasoning packet and keep cooking until the beans are soft - at least another hour or two.

Refrigerator Rolls
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 t yeast
2 T sugar
2 T olive oil
1 egg
1 t salt
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup white flour
-Put the warm water in a large bowl. Sprinkle the yeast on top and let sit for 5 minutes while you assemble the rest of the ingredients.
-Add sugar, oil, egg and salt to the bowl and whisk well. Add flour and mix. Use your hands to incorporate all the flour and knead a few times.
-Put the dough (it will be sticky) in a greased bowl, cover with oiled waxed paper or plastic wrap and proof in a warm place for an hour - until doubled in bulk.
-Place the dough on a floured board and form into 18 rolls. Put the rolls in a oiled 11 x 7 baking dish, cover with oiled plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator. The rolls can rest in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
-Take the rolls out about 45 minutes before you want to eat them and start preheating your oven to 400. Bake for 25 minutes.
-Best eaten very warm from the oven. Adapted from Everyday Food, December 2007.

Chunky Applesauce (made in the microwave)

4 apples - peeled, cored and cut into 3/4 inch chunks
1/4 cup sugar
1 T lemon juice
1/4 t cinnamon
pinch of salt
-Put the apples in a 2 quart casserole, cover and microwave on high for 10 minutes, stirring halfway through. Firmer apples may require more cooking. Mash to desired consistency. From Everyday Food, October 2007.

Hot meal for a hot day: Chinese spare ribs and Kung Pao noodles

A quick and tasty meal that doesn't heat up the kitchen. Inspired by a recipe in Everyday Food, June 2008.

Shopping list
1 watermelon
1.5 lbs boneless country style pork ribs
1 pkg Simply Asia Kung Pao noodle bowl
1 9 oz pkg Green Giant Simply Steam sugar snap peas (frozen)
5 spice powder
cayenne
hoisin sauce

Put the watermelon in the freezer when you get home from the store.

Wash and trim the pork and pat dry. The rest of this meal goes really fast, so take the time here to do a good job trimming. I didn't and ended up with pretty greasy ribs. One good way to get rid of a lot of fat is rip or cut the meat apart at the fat seams and then trim the pieces with scissors.

Mix 1 T 5 spice powder and 1/8 t cayenne (more if you like it spicy). Add salt and pepper. Rub the ribs with the mix and place in a glass pie plate.

Put the pork (uncovered) in the microwave and cook for 20 minutes. Check for doneness - pork should be opaque throughout. When done, remove from oven, slather with hoisin sauce, tent with foil and let sit.

While the pork is cooking, put the peas in a large glass bowl. While the pork is resting, microwave the peas for 3 minutes. Add the noodles, the sauce and the freeze dried vegetables, 1 T water and stir. Microwave for 3 more minutes and stir. Sprinkle with the peanut topping.

Serve the pork and the noodle dish with tamari on the side. For dessert, serve sliced watermelon (it should have cooled off pretty well).

This meal's virtues are: it's speed, it's not too expensive, one can find all ingredients at Nilssen's (except tamari and 5 spice powder), it doesn't heat up the kitchen, it's easy to clean up after. Made enough for me and Dan and Dan's lunch (a little shy on the noodle dish).

Lasagna supper: reflections

Here's how it really went:

• the friends we originally invited weren't able to make it, so we left a message at our pastor's (also our neighbor) house inviting him. Didn't hear from them, so I was all anxious about it, until I talked to Sylvia, his wife after church, and they said they'd love to come. Had plenty of food, so also invited a relative newcomer to our church to come too. Her husband was working a 24 hour shift at the hospital and she was happy for some adult company and we were happy to have her and her two charming young children.
• I bought a bottle of very good wine to go with the meal - Root:1 Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile. Oh it was so nice and smooth. I used my usually sophisticated wine shopping method: look for the right color, look for a good price, look for a good rating and buy the one with the nicest label.
  
• Saturday night I did some prep work but left most of it for early Sunday morning. Worked steady for over 3 hours. I find that I am very very slow but part of the enjoyment is taking my time and pottering about.

Here are the recipes I used as a base:
Pistachio Raisin Biscotti
used walnuts instead and some oat flour; didn't rise at all; had to bake much longer than the recipe called for; yummy
Freeze-Ahead Lasagna Primavera
wasn't a huge hit, but may be worth trying again; use zuchinni or summer squash or asparagus in place of the carrots and only 1/2 the spinach; the sauce took a loooooong time to thicken
Tomato-Sausage Lasagna second time for this recipe; you'd think you'd miss the ricotta, but you don't; used 20 oz of the sausage instead of 1 lb and didn't soak the noodles since they were of the no-boil type. The Hunt's organic crushed tomatoes won the taste test hands down. Wonderful flavor and color and RTU without any mashing.
Sweet Ricotta With Chocolate There was no need to drain the ricotta, and, in fact, it might have been better if it were a little more liquid. The cheese to chocolate ratio was off - needed more chocolate. Next time, I'd used 1/2 the cheese but the same amout of chocolate and would serve it already dished into little dishes. The blackberries and raspberries I served alongside were more popular than the ricotta dish but not everybody is used to the idea of cheese for dessert.
I ran out of parm cheese and didn't want to make the Caesar salad without it so I just threw together a romaine salad with some stuff I had on hand: vine on tomatoes, feta cheese, cuke, kalamata olives and the redirected croutons. Quite tasty.

I'd give the meal two thumbs up but the best part was spending time with my dear family and our lovely guests. We had a very nice time together.

Lasgana Supper

We're having some friends over tomorrow and I plan to serve a couple kinds of lasagna, my famous Caesar Salad and a ricotta cheese dessert. Biscotti, too, if I get around to making them.

As usual, my recipe source is Everday Food. It's a little warm today to have the oven on but the forecast is for a cooler day tomorrow. I'll bake the biscotti and toast the croutons this evening or early tomorrow.

In conjunction with making this fabulous meal, I am conducting a taste test of four different types of canned tomatoes: Hunts, Flavorite (the store brand), Red Gold and Hunts Organic. The last is crushed, the others are whole, as per the recipe. But I don't know why you wouldn't use crushed, since you need to break them up anyway.

Here's all the stuff I will do ahead:
Caesar Salad

• toast croutons
• wash and tear romaine
• squeeze lemon

Lasagna

• shred gobs of mozzarella
• removing casings from and brown the sausage (I'm using Jennie-O Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage)
• chop one onion
  
• make the red sauce
• defrost and squeeze the spinach
• clean and slice the carrots
• make the white sauce

Biscotti

• chop the walnuts

Sweet Ricotta dessert

• drain the ricotta
• chop the chocolate
• rinse the berries
  

Abe prepared the sun tea (now brewing). We'll serve that to drink plus water and milk. A little wine would go fine with this meal but the folks we've invited are Baptists and don't imbibe.

Both recipes call for NOT boiling the lasagna ahead, a very desirable thing. I'm trying Barilla noodles this time - they're advertised as being the more traditional lasagna shape - short with no crinkling at the edges.

That's the game plan. But right now, I'm going to take a nap.

50 Virtuous Meals: early summer steak dinner: base recipes

Here are the recipes I used as inspiration
shrimp gazpacho
grilled cheese casserole
green bean and bell pepper salad
strawberry shortcake
lemonade

Variations:
I almost ditched the gazpacho because I was running out of time but I'm glad I served it. I used 1 whole cuke and 4 cups chilled V-8 (the low sodium kind). Skipped the garlic and the tomatoes and the onion. Mixed in salt, pepper and vinegar and chilled in fridge in 2 quart casserole until ready to serve. Spooned into soup bowls, topped with shrimp, LF sour cream and cilantro.

I made the casserole, salad and lemonade just as written.

I modified the shortcake quite a bit. Used 3 lbs of strawberries. Doubles the recipe. Used regular muffin tin lined with liners. Uses 8T butter, 1/2 c sugar, 1/4 c oat flour and 1 cup cornmeal (per batch). Skipped the almonds. Mixed each batch seperately but baked them at the same time.

50 Virtuous Meals: early summer steak dinner: intro & prep

This is the first post in a series I'm labeling '50 Virtuous Meals'. The idea is to plan, prepare and post 50 meals (including dessert) that have virtues that appeal to me. For example: something that freezes well or something that can be made with ingredients usually on hand or something that my family can't get enough of or, in the case of this VM (Virtuous Meal), something that's festive enough for company. These posts may not always be meals, but could be a collection of tried and true cookies recipes, for example, or my favorite things to take to potlucks.
Enough background information, let's get to the meal at hand.
Menu
shrimp gazpacho
steak baked in the oven
grilled cheese casserole
green bean and bell pepper salad
strawberry shortcake with frozen yogurt
iced tea
lemonade
Sounds yummy, no? My mouth is watering even now!
Steps that can be done ahead
shortcake

• place butter in bowl to soften
• mix dry ingredients
• clean & slice strawberries
• mash & sweeten strawberries

casserole

• slice & butter & cube bread
• grate cheese
• butter 9 x 13 glass dish
  

salad

• slice pepper
• clean beans
• steam beans
• slice onion and marinate in dressing

lemonade

• make ginger syrup
• squeeze 7 lemons
• squeeze 2 limes

gazpacho

• defrost shrimp and remove tails
• put V-8 in fridge
• chop cucumber
• chop roasted red pepper