Recipe and a tribute

My grandmother was the cook in my house growing up. Before she and my mom emigrated to the US, she was a dietician and nutritionist. After they came to the US in 1951 they were employed in a private home as cooks/nannies for a wealthy family. When they saved enough money to leave that family and buy their own house, my grandmother became the pastry chef for Villanova University.

The holidays in my home growing up were great. My grandmother baked constantly and the house smelled wonderful. She didn't write down her recipes, but I figured a couple of them out. My favorite is a cookie dough that I use for pies and cakes too.

1-2-3 Dough

1 cup sugar
2 cups butter
3 cups flour
1 egg
Mix all ingredients together until well blended. Chill. Dough can be stored for a week or two in the refrigerator or it can be frozen. This amount of dough is enough to make 2 cakes. If you need only enough for 1 crust, halve the ingredients and eliminate the egg.


I made some of this dough last night and when I make the cookies I will post pics.

Chicken and Rice casserole

One of my local grocery stores had a killer deal on chicken this past week. So, I filled up the freezer. Sunday was a bit blustery, so I decided to make use of some of it.

Chicken and Rice

4 chicken breasts
16 oz white rice
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
milk

I boiled the chicken breasts until done and then cut them up into bite sized pieces. When the chicken was almost done I cooked the rice and separately, mixed one can of milk with the mushroom soup and heated it up.

When everything was heated through I mixed the rice and soup together in a big bowl and added the chicken. This was my cheater way of doing it instead of baking it. I served it with vegetables and salad.

A quick and easy meal for a cold day.

(I think I need to resize the pics, will repost the pics later.)

Chili

I will admit that the secret to most of my recipes is that I don't usually use a recipe. Hence, my chili recipe. I just dump stuff in a stock pot and go, but this time I wrote down what I did.

Chili

.81 lb stew meat
1.78 lb ground beef
1 40 oz. can dark red kidney beans
2 40 oz cans light red kidney beans
2 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes
1 green pepper
1 medium onion
minced garlic
chili seasoning
montreal steak seasoning

I browned the stew meat and ground beef with minced garlic. I love garlic and I probably used at least 2 tbl of garlic in the meat. I also seasoned the meat with chili seasoning, about half a packet, and about a tbl of steak seasoning. When the meat was almost done, I added the pepper and onion and sauteed until done.

I mixed the rest of the ingredients in a stock pot and added the beef mixture. Bring to a boil and then simmer for a couple hours. I served the chili with cornbread (Jiffy Mix).

For some reason Blogger is not uploading pics for me tonight, but I will post the pics soon.

Baked Ziti

In my former life as a restaurant worker/manager, one of the restaurants I worked for was Sbarro's.  I was an assistant manager there for about 2 years.  Part of my job was to make the entrees for the day.  One thing I made daily was ziti.  Here is my recipe, a favorite of the family's, especially J.

1 lb. box ziti

1 jar spaghetti sauce

1 15 oz container of ricotta cheese

1 cup mozzarella cheese

Parmasean cheese

ground beef or sausage,  if desired

Cook ziti according to package directions.  While that is cooking, in a casserole dish combine ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, and about a half cup parmasean cheese.  If you decide to add meat to the dish, I brown the meat and add the spaghetti sauce to it when it is browned and heat the sauce.  I find that this speeds up the baking process.  Add the spaghetti sauce to the cheese mixture.

When the ziti is cooked, drain and add to sauce/cheese mixture.  I usually do this in increments, makes it a bit easier.  (I will also add extra spaghetti sauce if I think it needs it.)

If desired, add more mozzarella and parmasean cheese on top before baking.  Bake 15-20 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

                                                                               Before:

  

After:

Why not??

I like to cook and I don't think I'm too bad at it. So, let's join the fun with a cooking/food blog. Since I haven't cooked for a couple days, I'll post some pics I've taken lately.






Pizza in the back of my truck for band camp.

Lunch at the Chinese buffet.





Breakfast at IHop.


I will post some recipes soon, with pics.