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Need inspiration, what ya cooking tonight


Thimble Hall

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1 hour ago, havanaholly said:

Try it both ways.  Also, holly makes those with ground turkey, not beef.

I went ahead and did them all in the cream sauce. I did the recipe as printed, not Holly's edition. :) 

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So tonight I went whole hog on suggestions here!  I made Holly's Swedish meatballs, as written on the site, I used very lean round steak that I ground tonight,  I served them over noodles with roasted beets and squash both from my garden as sides.  For desert I made the salted caramel custard, wow that is incredible, sort of like a cream brûlée, the caramel flavor is perfect with the salt, it was a really nice creamy smooth custard.  Guess tomorrow I will make an angel food cake with the 9 egg whites! There will be lots of delicious leftovers!

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25 minutes ago, Goldenrodfarm said:

So tonight I went whole hog on suggestions here!  I made Holly's Swedish meatballs, as written on the site, I used very lean round steak that I ground tonight,  I served them over noodles with roasted beets and squash both from my garden as sides.  For desert I made the salted caramel custard, wow that is incredible, sort of like a cream brûlée, the caramel flavor is perfect with the salt, it was a really nice creamy smooth custard.  Guess tomorrow I will make an angel food cake with the 9 egg whites! There will be lots of delicious leftovers!

You had me at roasted beets! :chef:

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Macaroni & Cheese in the crockpot review:

Simple ingredients and super simple recipe and process. I ended up adding about 4oz of additional milk because it did get kind of gummy. Boys thought it was so-so, as well.

What I will do next time is put in the milks, butter and cheese and let them get happy on their own for an hour or so, then add in the macaroni. Or, I'll just keep buying the Stouffer's and use the extra 30 minutes to make minis! :cheezy:

Hempler's hot dogs were okay.

The game was good - tied until the last couple minutes, so exciting.

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Today was Thanksgiving day in Canada my  daughter who now lives in the big house at the other side of my garden did the turkey thing but I had absolutely no appetite and didn't go across and join the family., in fact I am still in PJs.Yesterday  I did eat a couple of the Samosas I made ,baked 2 and froze the rest ready to bake. but so far have not been able to manage anything to day except a cup if tea and a glass of home made lemonade. It is now after midnight so I missed a while day without anything,, gonna try and go to bed now, I am so tired but still not sleeping,,not feeling so good overall actually. but as they say Tomorrow is another day.

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8 hours ago, Jeannine said:

Today was Thanksgiving day in Canada my  daughter who now lives in the big house at the other side of my garden did the turkey thing but I had absolutely no appetite and didn't go across and join the family., in fact I am still in PJs.Yesterday  I did eat a couple of the Samosas I made ,baked 2 and froze the rest ready to bake. but so far have not been able to manage anything to day except a cup if tea and a glass of home made lemonade. It is now after midnight so I missed a while day without anything,, gonna try and go to bed now, I am so tired but still not sleeping,,not feeling so good overall actually. but as they say Tomorrow is another day.

It sounds like it was one of those "sad days". They come from out of nowhere sometimes, but are just part of the transition of losing John, Big hugs dear lady. Get busy on something miniature today! I know it will help!

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27 minutes ago, Jeannine said:

I am doing my minis etc I just don't seem to want to eat much, it is a combination of can't be bothered and my old tummy saying no don't make me..I have been like this off and on for a long time. I will get over it.

It's a struggle for me to eat 2000 calories per day. And I need to since I'm considered slightly underweight. I'm too busy doing other stuff. I don't snack or eat desserts either. I think it's because I drink coffee all day long and it curbs my appetite.

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Mmm not good but I know that feeling of being busy. I am not underweight, far from it actually but despite thyroid meds my metabolism is very slow.

One of my problems is I can't eat "on the run" so to speak, I have to be relaxed and in a quiet place. I eat very slowly so I don't do well in company. I find everyone eats so fast and they are up and down from the table that I am waiting for them to settle down and of course they don't.. If I am on my own it is better but I am not good on my legs so by the time I have cooked it I need to settle before I eat it, if not the meal seems to become part of the chore and I leave it. I know it sounds crazy but here you are. It takes very little to put me off..

I have just pulled the last of my tomatoes out of my greenhouse. I like tomato sandwiches with home growns so I might be Ok with that, the bread is rising as we speak., not a lot of nutrition in that but.. I am going to look in my freezer and see if there is anything I fancy. I think I have frozen clams, I could make clam chowder and I will usually eat that..so hey I might be in luck.

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1 hour ago, Jeannine said:

I am doing my minis etc I just don't seem to want to eat much, it is a combination of can't be bothered and my old tummy saying no don't make me..I have been like this off and on for a long time. I will get over it.

It is hard to get interested in food when you grieve, I actually lost 50 lbs in 6 months, I wasn't sleeping or eating, then getting the flu because I was so run down started me into making small meals.  My dr said if I was eating that bad taking two multivitamins was probably a good idea.  I would cook a meal then not eat it, or plan a meal and maybe eat one thing, like if it was meat, veggies and potato, just eat the potato and not bother with the rest, sometimes a meal would take me 3 days to eat. Be gentle with yourself.  

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I cooked extra grits the other morning for breakfast, so tonight for supper I'm going to pan sear the rest to crisp them on both sides and erve them with a little honey & cayenne pepper sprinkled on the, a side with salmon fillets in parchment and steamed kale.

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Ha! I actually cooked tonight. I've been reading this thread with all these fancy words and foods I've never dreamed of, and I'm like "Waffle House", "Chick Fil A", "ham steak and box mac and cheese", "carry out pizza", "plain baked chicken and Bob Evans mashed potatoes"... I never really learned to cook. And my crew doesn't do extra stuff in food. I've never cut an onion, and I let a garlic clove rot on my counter because I didn't know what to do with it. And once I made pickle.soup (YUM!) and had to cut all the veggies into tiny bits, and realized I just don't enjoy that. I prefer cake and cookie and candy making.

But, tonight I cooked! Well food got cooked in the crock pot. Beef roast, carrots, and potatoes in cream of mushroom soup, and green beans. :)

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Good for you Sparkly.

I have a theory about cooking. It is very hard in the beginning especially if you didn't learn from you rmother as I did.. It takes a lot to pull off a meal.First you have to think up a choice, then you have to shop for the ingredients and the choices out there are vast. An old time cook will know the difference between a pimento and a pepper but a newbie might not and asking in the shop won't help. Most recipe books assume you know something about the job OR and this is worse still the book spends 3/4 on the time on the history of the authors life, then the pictures ,so very little is left for recipes and if you are not a cook  you wouldn't know a good book from  bad one so you are immediately at a disadvantage. Presuming you get home with all the right things and the book is Ok you have to plan 20  minutes to boil potatoes, 25 for carrots, and the book will tell you to season to taste,and while you are reading how to make a roux for a gravy the meat is getting overcooked. The planning is crucial but a newbie would not be proficient in that. Of course it all comes together with practice and eventually you will know exactly how much salt to add without tasting but like any other craft it takes a long time to get proficient.

Some of my disasters include cooking a chicken which I had carefully stuffed from a recipe . The book did not tell me to look inside and I cooked it with a plastic bag of innards still in situ.. How about the first hot dogs I cooked. I had seen them being briefly boiled so I did that but did not realize they had a plastic skin on them. Then there was the fancy stove I got when newly married which had an auto turn on turn off option. I decided to cook rice pudding in the oven, I knew it only had rice, milk, butter and nutmeg but was not sure about the amounts, so I used a bottle of milk which in those days was a pint, some sugar , some nutmeg and a whole lot of rice. I set the clock and went out. May hours later I returned expecting my rice pudding to be cooked and cooled, it was. It was stone cold, it had boiled out of the dish all over the floor of the oven then when the oven cooled it set like glue. I could not open the door and my husband was away that night so it stayed glued shut.John had to use a chisel screwdriver to break the seal the next day.

I have forgotten the salt in veggies as many times as I have double salted them. I have served fried chicken that looked perfect but was rare in the middle etc etc etc.

Cooking is a craft like any other and it takes time and patience to get it so it is easy..and it doesn't come easy, there are many pitfalls among the way.

Just my thinking!!

Oh and my clam chowder and home made bread hit the spot, I ate a huge bowl

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Or...

You learned from your mother, planned and prepared 10,000 meals (often for the 34 regular family members during the holidays), raised and fed two kids (plus their countless friends through the years), are good at anything you set your mind to (including the 14 or so regular things you can cook), and then one day realized that to you, the work is not worth all of the time, effort, expense and 15 minutes worth of enjoyment and would really just rather spend your time perusing things that do make you happy.

:cheezy:

Yep, this one's me! 

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33 minutes ago, Its_a_sm_world_after_all said:

Or...

You learned from your mother, planned and prepared 10,000 meals (often for the 34 regular family members during the holidays), raised and fed two kids (plus their countless friends through the years), are good at anything you set your mind to (including the 14 or so regular things you can cook), and then one day realized that to you, the work is not worth all of the time, effort, expense and 15 minutes worth of enjoyment and would really just rather spend your time perusing things that do make you happy.

:cheezy:

Yep, this one's me! 

AMEN!

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I had to learn to cook on my own. looking for simple recipes. i just wasn't interested in cooking till I got married. The only thing I could cook before that was hot dogs, hamburgers and spaghetti sauce. I have to admit, I did stumble onto a good spaghetti recipe. I studied a bunch of recipes in Italian cookbooks and tweaked and changed things till I got a sauce that I thought tasted just right. Mom even liked mine better than hers. DH gave me a tip to make it even better, cook it for at least 5 hours. He was right. By the way, mom learned how to make that exotic American dish, spaghetti, from an Armenian woman shortly after she came to America.

I'm not a natural born cook. i need recipes. DH could never understand that. As far as he knew, no woman in his family ever used a recipe, they just cooked.

Tonight we had tacos or taco salad, depending on who wanted what. I use the McCormick chipotle taco seasoning, I like it best. I tried some scratch recipes, but they were either too bland or too overspiced. Finally i said the heck with it, stick with the packet. I keep meaning to try and make fried tacos, but I haven't built up enough energy to attempt it.

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For me it isn't the 15 minutes, well maybe 45 in my case but the doing of it that makes me happy, it is another form of creating. I used to do a lot of birthday cakes with fondant icing, it was just like working with clay. My problem isn't doing it, it is more having no reason  to do it , except for Saturdays and on that day I couldn't think of a better thing to do with my time than feeding people, but I don't usually eat on Saturdays LOL

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Kathie I don't get hungry for something that's going to heat up my kitchen all day until I have to have the heat on in the house anyway.  If someone else cooks the gumbo I can eat it any time; our "third Monday" jazz event most months includes gumbo.

My grandmother way the family cook; my mother couldn't boil water.  When I married, DH had a $1 cookbook that  I used until I discovered Julia Child on the PBS station; but I was already saving recipes from matchbooks (DH was a smoker 'way back when), the newspaper and the recipe booklets that came in the 5 pound bags of flour.

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On Monday, October 09, 2017 10:40:57, Its_a_sm_world_after_all said:

Ha ha! My hubs grew up in Gardena CA and ate at Perry's in Redondo beach. He says the same thing - no good pizzas in WA. It is ironic that he spent a year and a half remodeling Pizza Hut's in our area. They always tried to feed him near the end of the job when testing the ovens and such, and he's come home saying how awful it made him feel. Now he's remodeling Larsen's Bakery in Ballard and he has no complaints at all. He's a "bread of any kind" fiend!

Every so often you've just gotta have fried fish & chips. Nothing like the real thing! I'll have to remember them when we're out running around. Is the tartar as good as Ivar's?

I don't know because I don't like tartar sauce so I've never had it.

The fish is much better in my opinion than at Ivar's, though. Although over here there's a place that makes fried fish that will blow away anything else around. It's the Airport Diner at the Bremerton Airport. Go figure. Ask your husband if he remembers Arthur Treacher's fish and chips and add 100. It's that good.

I'm surprised the mac and cheese didn't turn out that good. Maybe it needs the evaporated milk after all. I'm going to try it again without and see what it tastes like. I read in the comments that a few people had gummy mac and cheese, too, but mine was just liquidy until about the last half hour and then it all came together and thickened up into a nice cream sauce. I did use the same amount of ingredients as in the recipe, but only about 3/4s of the macaroni. Maybe that's the reason. You can also over cook this, too.

 

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