A Meal In Need Is a Meal Indeed

When my first child was born my mother came up to help out. I needed that help badly. Since my son was born two weeks before the due date I missed out on the section of the childbirth classes that dealt with what to do after the birth. I had no idea how to pin a cloth diaper or what to do with a crying baby.

My mother stayed with us, made meals for us, and got up in the middle of the night with the baby. She'd change him, bring him to me to nurse, then take him away and put him back to bed. It was wonderful.

Of course, like all good things, it had to come to an end and she had to return home and I had to learn how to do it all on my own. After about 3 weeks, when I wasn't certain I could make it through another day, a sweet friend brought over dinner and a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls. What a wonderful gift! She had a little one of her own and told me she'd learned that the best time to bring a dinner is not right after the baby's born. That's when mom gets all the help and attention. It's several weeks after the birth, when all the helpers have gone home and mom is a sleep-deprived zombie, that the gift of a dinner means the most.



I've taken her words to heart and have now perfected my "in time of need" dinner, Easy Enchiladas. When I make the dinner for my family I double the recipe and put into zip-lock bags a meal's worth, then I have extras in the freezer for a dinner later, or I can grab one and take it to a family who's had a baby, a hospitalization, or been down with the flu and haven't been able to get to the grocery store in a week. And if they've been flooded with casseroles, they can stick the enchiladas into the freezer and pull them out when they need them.

These are not "authentic" by any stretch of the imagination, but they're quick to fix, don't call for any obscure ingredients, and my family gets happy every time these are on the menu. Even my 6 year old, who dissects his food, gobbles them up.

Easy Enchiladas
- adapted from Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook

1-1/4 lbs ground turkey
2 cups shredded Jack cheese
3/4 cup sliced green onion
3/4 cup sour cream (low-fat is OK)
3 Tbsp snipped parsley
1-1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp pepper
24 oz. canned tomato sauce
3 Tbsp canned chopped green chilies (optional - I usually do without)
1 Tbsp chili powder
1/4 tsp ground cumin
Flour tortillas
Olives (optional)
Guacamole (optional)

1- Preheat oven to 350, if you're going to cook the enchiladas today.

1- Cook and stir the ground turkey in a skillet until light brown: drain. Remove from the heat.

2- In a large bowl combine 1-1/2 cups of the cheese, the green onion, sour cream, parsley, salt, and pepper. Add the cooked meat and gently toss to combine.

3- Heat remaining ingredients, except tortillas, olives and guacamole, to boiling. Reduce heat. Simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.

4- Spoon about 1/4 cup of meat mixture onto each tortilla, roll the tortilla. If you're preparing the meal to eat today, place the rolled tortillas into a rectangular baking dish (11 x 7 works well). Spread the sauce over the top and sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese.

5- Bake uncovered for 20 minutes. Garnish with sliced olives and guacamole before serving.

To save enchiladas in the freezer, place as many as you need for a meal into a gallon zip-loc bag. In a snack-size bag, place the half cup of cheese for garnish. In a sandwich size zip-loc bag put enough sauce for topping. Seal both bags in with the enchiladas. Write baking instructions on the bag with a sharpie.

To cook, thaw the enchiladas,then follow cooking instructions above.

Dinner Is All Rolled Up

I'm not a fan of horror movies. The heart pounding tension of not knowing what the next horrific disaster will be - it's too much like the hour before dinner time at my house. If I haven't menu planned and prepped my ingredients for the day, 4:00 is a terrifying time. What's for dinner? What to cook? I pace the floor muttering the meager contents of the refrigerator as a mantra. "Cheese, mayonnaise, leftover rice, cheese, mayonnaise, leftover rice," as if the incantation would somehow produce a palatable meal for my family.

I try to be good and menu plan for the week, but inevitably I forget to pull meat out of the freezer to thaw or forget to run to the grocery store for a crucial ingredient and then my wonderful and infinitely patient husband says, "Sure, honey, I'd love pancakes for dinner."

There is a secret weapon in my arsenal, though, to help me avoid this kind of scenario. It's the freezer. And just a little bit of forethought.

One of the books that really influenced how I cook for my family is Once-A-Month Cooking. I was floored by the concept behind the book - if you're already spending the time and energy to make dinner, why not double the ingredients and put half the dinner in the freezer for another dinner later. The book outlines how to do a huge day of cooking once a month and then have meals to pull out of the freezer all month long. I tried that a couple of times, but figured out my family was happiest and it worked best for us if I just applied the principles on a smaller scale. My family loves variety and having to eat the same casserole 4 times in a month made for some dinner time crankiness, especially if they didn't like it that much the first time around. But if I had had a busy day and wasn't even home till 4:00, what a blessing to have a dinner ready to go in the freezer.

This is one of the recipes that I adapted from the book and my family never got tired of it. It's a versatile recipe that you can tailor to your family's tastes and what is on hand or on sale. It takes barely any more time to make a huge batch of these rather than a single dinner, and you'll feel so proud that you're serving your family homemade, tasty food on those hectic days, rather than resorting to the drive-through at McGrease.



Pizza Roll-Ups
adapted from Once-A-Month Cooking
by Mimi Wilson & Mary Beth Lagerborg

1 recipe of pizza dough
or 2 loafs frozen bread dough
1 lb ground turkey (I use 1.25 because that's how it's packaged here)
1 lb. bulk Italian sausage
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
4 cups grated mozzarella cheese
2 tsp Italian seasoning
2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Your favorite spaghetti or marinara sauce
Olives (optional)

1-Make or thaw the dough.

2- While the dough is rising or thawing, cook the turkey and sausage together. Drain the grease.

3- Place the cooked meat in a large bowl with the rest of the ingredients except the spaghetti sauce and olives. Mix well.

4- Preheat oven to 400 deg. F.

5- Divide the dough in half. Roll one half out into a large rectangle about 1/4" thick. Spread 1/2 of the the meat mixture on the rectangle. Roll up the dough lengthwise like a jelly roll, and cut into 2" slices. You can cut them thicker or thinner depending on your preference and how many roll-ups you'd like to have. I cut mine into 14 slices.

6- Place the rolls, evenly spaced, on a baking sheet treated with baking spray. Let the rolls sit for 10 minutes.

7 - Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or till golden brown. While the first batch is baking prepare the second half of the dough into rolls.

8 - Remove the rolls to a cooling rack to cool. Bake the second batch.

9- Once the rolls are cooled, place enough for a meal into a gallon zip-lock bag, smooshing as much air out as you can and sealing it. Stack the bags in the freezer. You can label the bag at the top with a sharpie to tell the contents or the cooking instructions, if your sweetie will need to be the one pulling it out of the freezer and getting dinner on the table.

To serve the rolls, thaw and warm in a pre-heated oven for 10 minutes and top each roll with a dollop of warmed spaghetti sauce and sprinkle olives on, if you'd like. Or you can top with the sauce and microwave on high for 1 to 2 minutes (check to see if it's warm - microwaves vary). Ta da! Dinner on the table in under 15 minutes! Throw a green salad on the side and your family will adore you. Well, they probably already do, but this might prompt them to mention it.

Cobbled Together With Love

My husband was one of two boys and my mother-in-law was mighty glad when he got married. She'd been swimming in the testosterone sea long enough and was thrilled to have another woman in the family. When my in-laws crossed the state to visit us, she'd bring over dishes and pans that she found at garage sales (she's the queen of garage sales) to stretch out my meager newlywed kitchen. Then she'd take me to the grocery store and buy treats to stock our cupboards and give me advice and pointers on how to be a homemaker.

One of the best things she shared with me was her recipe for cobbler. This is a wonderfully versatile recipe that you can adapt to fit your tastes, preferences, and whatever fruit is in season. It's not especially elegant, but it's quick to throw together and tastes like the very best of warm, home-made comfort food.

My mother-in-law loves tasting mostly fruit, so she makes this in a 9 x 13-inch pan. I love the dough, so I'll use a 9 x 9-inch pan or double the dough for a 9 x 13-inch pan. You can use a single fruit or pair up fruits. I used peaches and blueberries for this one. I also love apples and blueberries together. You can add extra spices according to your taste. Maybe some cinnamon and nutmeg with apples or some ginger with pears? Play with it and have fun.



Pat's Any Way You Like Cobbler

Your choice of fresh fruit, sliced
Sugar
Tapioca
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

- Fill a pan (9 x 13-inch for mostly fruit, 9 x 9-inch for more dough) about 2/3 full with fruit.

- Sprinkle the fruit with sugar. Just a bit if it's very sweet fruit. Be more generous for tart fruit.

-Sprinkle the fruit with tapioca. This absorbs the excess juice, so you'll need to add more for very juicy fruits or berries.

- For the dough combine the egg, sugar, and melted butter. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir till smooth. Stir in the milk. Stir till smooth. Pour the flour mixture over the fruit in the pan.

- Bake for about 1 hour, till the top is browned. The time will vary depending on how much fruit, what size pan, and how much dough you used.

Unrighteous Cornbread

Thanks for all your positive comments about the family favorites project. It's nice to know that it's not just my kids who will benefit from these posts. And now the series continues....

Because of an overwhelming number of requests for cornbread, I will do that next. Ok, it really was only Melinda, but how could I refuse such a sweetie? Also, the request dovetails nicely with my plans because I always serve cornbread with chili. Cream goes with peaches, peanut butter goes with chocolate, and cornbread goes with chili.

Now some of you may be laboring under the delusion that cornbread is cornbread. Not so, gentle readers. There are some who say the war between the states was fought over states' rights; there are some who say it was over slavery; and there are some who would say it was over cornbread.

Mark Lowry, a comedian from the South, says that sugar in cornbread is not of God. (You can hear his whole riff on Southern vs. Northern cooking here.) Well, if that's the case then put my name down in the godless cornbread column because I make Yankee cornbread. It's moist, not too crumbly, and has sugar in it. Then it's topped with butter and honey (or honey butter, made by creaming together equal parts of honey and softened butter) and a panful is gone in a flash. There's particular jockeying to get the center piece as that's the moistest piece, but no one will admit to it.

Yankee Cornbread
- adapted from The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar*
1 Tbsp double-acting baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil**

1- Preheat oven to 425 deg. F. Grease an 8 x 8-inch baking pan.

2- In a medium bowl stir together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

3- In a small bowl with a fork, beat together egg, milk and vegetable oil. Pour this mixture all at once into the flour mixture. Stir just until flour is moistened and quickly pour the batter into the prepared pan.

4- Spread batter evenly and bake 25 minutes or until golden. Cut into 9 squares and serve.

* To make a more righteous cornbread, reduce the sugar to 2 Tbsp.
** You can substitute 1/3 cup melted butter for the vegetable oil, but I honestly don't think it makes a taste difference.

Making Memories

Early in my marriage I got a wonderful book, Let's Make A Memory by Shirley Dobson and Gloria Gather. It was full of suggestions on how to turn everyday humdrum activities into special memories for your family. Something as simple as turning off the lights and putting candles on the table for dinner, giving someone the "special" plate to acknowledge an accomplishment or occasion, or taking dinner to the park, the beach, or the backyard for a quickie picnic. All ways to make an ordinary meal a wonderful memory.

One of my favorite childhood memories was going out for pizza. Not something we did often, it was a much anticipated event. We had two choices of where to go. One was in a large, open, dark room with wood tables and wood benches. We always got a pepperoni pizza and a green salad and a pitcher of root beer. We had to eat our salad before we could have pizza. I wasn't big on the salad, quickly finding and eating the black olives, then poking the greens around in the bowl. Then came the skinny strips of pizza with mozarella cheese pulling into long strands as the pieces were handed out. Gooey, spicy goodness. I was a small child, but I did a credible job of putting away pizza!

Our other pizza tavern choice was my favorite. We didn't go there as often. It was farther away and I suspect a bit pricier. It was more of a sit-down restaurant and in the waiting area were two things which fascinated me. One was the paintings on the wall depicting a bachanalian scene, with one boy holding a bunch of grapes up, about to bite one off. When I tired of looking at the paintings I could go to the counter where they had a step to stand on and a glass pane separating me from the artist making my pizza. In hindsight I know they were probably just high school kids working a part-time job, but to me they were pizza wizards, tossing the dough up in the air, whirling it around, deftly ladling sauce, sprinkling just the right amount of cheese, and flicking toppings on in rapid fire.

When I started thinking about creating memories for my own children, pizza was a natural starting point. I went on quite a long hunt for a dough recipe. I wasn't comfortable working with yeast yet, so that was something of an adventure. But I finally found a recipe that has become my old reliable. I have made it so often I don't even need the cookbook, Good Housekeeping Illustrated, anymore. I experimented with various sauces and found that for speed and convenience I like Prego sauce. I'm sure it's much tastier with fresh sauce made with fresh ingredients, but most of the time I don't have the time for that because I make pizza every week.

We started pizza night every Saturday night. We would watch Star Trek, The Next Generation and have pizza and root beer. It was a fun, family time to look forward to all week. With my little kids we still do the Saturday night pizza tradition, only now we watch the Lois & Clark- The New Adventures of Superman. And just ask any of my kids what you eat on Saturday and I'm sure they'll tell you pizza.

Since I've made so many pizzas over the years, I've tried lots of variations and I'm going to blog about some of our favorites this week. Today, though, is just a basic pizza, starting with the dough. Once you've got the dough down, you can decide what you like best in the way of sauce and toppings, but the dough is essential!


Basic Pizza

1 pkg active dry yeast
about 4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Kosher Salt
1-1/2 cups water
Olive oil
Prego spaghetti sauce
Italian herb seasoning
Garlic or garlic powder
about 1 lb. grated mozarella cheese
Toppings (whatever you like)

1- In a large bowl (I use my KitchenAid mixer), combine yeast, 2 cups flour and 1 tsp salt. For a stiffer dough, at this point you can swap one cup of all-purpose flour for 1 cup whole wheat flour. Either in a saucepan or microwave, heat water until very warm (120 to 130 deg. F). I am blessed with an Insta-hot so I just add hot and cold water into my liquid measure until it's the right temp.

2- With mixer at low speed, just blend water into dry ingredients. At medium speed, beat 2 minutes, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in 1/2 cup flour to make a thick batter; beat 2 minutes more. Stir in about 1-1/2 cups flour to make a soft dough.

3- At this point either switch to the dough hook on the KitchenAid or put the dough on a floured surface to knead. Knead, adding flour as necessary, about 8 minutes. I like to let the KitchenAid do the work for a while and then finish the kneading by hand. That way I can tell by feel when the dough is ready. It should feel smooth, not sticky. If it's sticky, just keep dusting it with flour and kneading till it feels smooth like a baby's bottom.

4- Shape the dough into a ball: place in a large, greased bowl (I give the bowl a hit of cooking spray. I don't want it super oily, just enough so that the dough doesn't stick to the sides. Then I turn the dough so that the top is now light greased so it can expand.) Cover with a towel and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

5- While the dough is rising, make sure you have all our toppings ready to go. Chop olives, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, or whatever you want to put on your masterpiece. Cook sausage, if you're using it, and press out excess grease.

6- Punch down dough. I love this part. My kids clamor to be the one to punch a fist into the soft mound of dough and watch it collapse. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Cover for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 deg. F. and grease your pizza pan with olive oil. I have an Airbake pizza pan that I love. Actually, I own two. It's large, about 14" in diameter, and has holes in the bottom. This allows the crust to crisp up on the bottom. I've tried using a stone and unless you have a pizza peel, a stone is not my recommendation. You need to have the stone preheated in the oven and then use the peel to slide your pizza onto the stone. If you try to build your pizza on the cold stone and then put that into the oven, the stone will take a long time to heat up and the crust will be soggy on the bottom.



7- With a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a circle slightly larger than your pan. If you have a small pan, you might consider cutting the dough in half for two pizzas or freeze half for a later pizza. Otherwise you'll end up with a very thick crust.

8 - Transfer the dough to the pizza pan. I like to drape it over the rolling pin to move it. Fit the dough to the pan and pinch up the edges to form a rim.Pour on the pizza sauce of your choice.Again, for taste and convenience, I like Prego, but I add herbs to punch up the flavor a bit.

You can press fresh garlic over the sauce or dust it with garlic powder, sprinkle Italian seasoning over it. Fresh oregano and thyme taste amazing here. Make sure the sauce completely obscures the dough beneath it. Too little sauce and you see the dough, too much and you have a swimming pool of sauce and your toppings will slide off when you try to eat it.

9 - Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the sauce. I use 1 lb. as a starting point, but you can use more or less, depending on your preference. Good quality mozarella makes a difference, too. Usually I just use the Costco pre-grated mozarella, but for a special pizza I'll buy fresh mozarella.

10- Spread your toppings. Remember that whatever is the topmost layer will receive the most heat, so items that are prone to scorching, such as pepperoni, I'll put on first. Items that are particularly juicy, like fresh tomatoes, I'll put on last so that some of the juice will cook off.

11- Bake for 20 minutes or until the crust is golden and the cheese if bubbly. Take out of the oven and let rest for a few minutes if the center seems jiggly. Then using a pizza cutter, cut into slices, serve, and enjoy the thrill of fresh, homemade pizza! Oh, and have some root beer, too. Lois and Clark is entirely optional.