This item is for can't-miss recipes; things that anyone can make.36 responses total.
In item #189 (The chicken soup item), response #11, Mary Remmers said: --- Why don't you tell us what you and your son like to eat and then those of us who have a foolproof recipe to suggest could enter it here. Most of us have been where you are and understand. --- I don't like things that are primarily eggs. Omelettes are out, for example. I don't like cooked green peppers. John likes rice, plain white rice with soy sauce. If he has the choice, he will always eat that. Maybe it's a good thing he splits time between my apartment and his mother's house, as that way he gets to be around nutritious food as well. John also likes macaroni and cheese, and grilled cheese sandwiches. I can't recall him asking for much of anything else. So other than that, we're *pretty* open. I like my meat, so other than as side dishes, we're probably not going to make anything vegetarianish. We hardly ever have much time for cooking. On a typical weeknight, when John is with me, we have about 2 1/2 hours to spend on everything we're going to do. I get him at 6, and his bedtime is theoretically about 8:30. We can cook and save sometimes, but often we cook and eat pretty quickly. I'd like to try more casseroles, as that seems like the sort of thing we could reheat and re-use a lot. Soups are good. Anything in the slow cooker is great for us, if I can make it at night, turn on the slow cooker in the morning, and come back to it at night. (If it requires adding something after 5 hours, though, I can't do it except on weekends.)
Okay, here is one that might work. It's meat, it's kid-friendly,
it's crockpot, and it doesn't require exotic anything.
BBQ Pork Sandwiches
1 1/2 - 2 pound pork tenderloin
6 ounces (one little can) apple or pineapple juice
16 ounces KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce (I like "original")
1/2 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
Hamburger buns
Place the pork into the crockpot. Cut to fit if necessary. Placed the
sliced onion on top. Pour juice over. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.
Drain off most but not all of the liquid, shred the pork using two forks,
add the BBQ sauce, mix well. Allow to cook, covered, on high for maybe 5
more minutes to bring it back to a good serving temperature. Serve on
buns.
Tips for success: Buy tenderloin, not loin roast. Tenderloin is much
leaner - it's the one that looks like meat in a plastic tube. Because of
that it keeps well unopened so this can be a plan ahead meal. And
whatever you do don't make this with any meat that contains bones.
The original recipe called for ginger ale as the liquid. That works great
too but then I ended up wasting the other 58 ounces of pop. Little juices
work fine.
Leftovers freeze, no problem.
Add a little salad on the side to make your mother smile. ;-)
Wow. That sounds yummy. I'm a big fan of sloppy joes when I want a hot sandwich. I heat up the sloppy joe mix in a saucepan, put it on a hamburger bun, add a slice of cheese, and let the sandwich sit for a second so the cheese can melt. It doesn't sound as yummy as the BBQ Pork sandwich, but it's still delicious. ;) I always enjoyed having pancakes for dinner when I was a kid. That felt so decadent. I highly recommend Hungry Jack regular mix (not the "just add water" stuff...icky). The recipe for pancakes is on the side or back, and they're SO easy. Just be sure to add the milk gradually so your arm doesn't die from stirring the thick batter.
Here is an idea, John. If you have a crockpot, follow your favorite recipe for chili. Make a lot extra so you have leftovers. Serve chili one night for dinner with Jiffy corn muffins (just follow the directions on the box) and rice. After dinner, get out a cassarole pan. Mix the chili and the rice together. Top with shredded cheddar cheese (you can buy it already shredded). Cover with foil and put in your freezer. I am not a big leftover fan so I usually leave the cassarole in the freezer for a while. When you are ready for another chili like meal, take the cassarole out of the freezer and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour or so (This would work best for you if you are able to put the cassarole into the oven before you pick up John). The nice thing about the cassarole day is that there isnt any prep that day. I picked up this trick while working at ASH. I had a shift partner who worked with me on Sundays. We always had a big dinner on Sundays which we would convert into cassaroles with the leftovers. For example, we might cook a whole turkey and make up a batch of stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, the works. After dinner, we would take the turkey off the bone, mix it up with the leftover stuffing, put the mashed potatoes on top and freeze it for later. Or we might serve chicken with rice and broccoli. After dinner, we would take the chicken, mix in some shredded cheese and the rice and broccoli, top it with some more cheese and voila! Chicken, broccoli and rice cassarole! Sometimes we would put cream of mushroom soup into the cassarole. That worked well too.
Oh YUM. I love this thread. :)
The other thing you could do if you have a favorite chili recipe is make the chili, then pour it into a pan, spread corn muffin mix over it, and bake until the cornbread on top is done.
There's a lot of recipes and quasi-recipes like that. I tell the story a lot of my old housemate from Minnesota who knew how to make two different dishes: the one with the Bisquick on top, and the one with the Bisquick underneath. They were both, for what it's worth, quite good.
Oh yeah. I love the dishes with the Bisquick on top or the Bisquick underneath. My sister makes a really good quiche thing with bisquick in the mix. It settles to the bottom during baking and makes the crust. It is weird but very yummy.
resp:6 corn bread cooked over chili sounds quite good.
Wow. That quiche thing sounds intriguing. Any chance of a recipe? (Or, yanno, an approximate eggs-to-bisquick ratio...)
We bought the Bisquick Cookbook the other day. It's kind of silly to have a cookbook about Bisquick, but it does seems too have all the recipes you might remember from the Bisquick boxes over the years. Lots of relatively easy things to make/bake.
Re #9: Yeah, it is.
i'll ask her for it
a web search turned this up: http://www.recipesource.com/main- dishes/dinner-pies/02/rec0246.html
I entered this item and then left town for several days. Now that I'm back I see some good ideas. Thanks! A friend in college made a casserole he called Goop. It was tuna fish, macaroni and cheese from a box, and a vegetable, usually corn, green beans or peas. There's my contribution!
We call it slop at our house :-)
*I* call it trash; a waste of good food. :(
Actually we call it swill, we call something else slop.
I have made that dish before back when I was poor. It is still good but now I make it with real cheese sauce and whole wheat macaroni.
re resp:18: Well, if that's "swill", then let's have the recipe for "slop"!
Reminds me of omni-salad. An old housemate of mine and I made it a few times. It was sort of a crossbreed between egg salad, potato salad, and chicken salad, but there's no reason not to extend the principle even further and throw in some tuna and pasta.
"Professor Velleman's Universal Salad"?
<blink blink> That last one threw me for a loop. There are three Professor Vellemans in my immediate family, and none of them are me.
"The Impoverished Students' Book of Cookery, Drinkery, & Housekeepery" is one of my out-of-print favorites. In it are some General Remarks Concerning Casseroles. "Since you are clever as well as impoverished, you have by now doubtless grasped the basic idea concerning casseroles. There are two basic patterns: A starch thing, a meat thing, and a cheese thing. OR A starch thing, a fish thing, and a vegetable thing. The non-starch things must be prepared in such a manner as to allow sufficient liquid for all the flavors to sort of slop together. You are now in a position to construct an infinite number of casseroles, all of your own devising. Aren't you proud? As for seasonings, the following are useful suggestions, but constant use of the principle emobdied in Maxim II is a sure and safe guide to flavoring success. A Few Seasoning Hints 1. Anywhere that tomato appears, basil will be welcome. 2. It is difficult (although not impossible) to misuse garlic. 3. From our Greek and Armenian friends, we learn that thyme does incredible things for lamb. 4. Oregano is the predominat spice in Italian cooking. 5. And Mexican cooking is seasoned most heavily with cumin and chili powder. Maxim II: The impoverished student always tastes as he cooks. Always!
Oddly, that book is not found on eBay.
"Housekeepery"... I love it.
Here's a sloppy joe recipe which is quick, easy to fix, and yummy: 1 lb hamburger 1 C ketchup 1 sliced onion 1/4 C vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar, but suit yourself) 1 tbs sugar 1/2 tsp dry mustard Brown and drain hamburger. Add other ingredients. Simmer, covered, 20 minutes.
<analyzes recipe> I can taste it pretty much, and it's basic enough almost to memorize. I'm curious to know how it would handle chili powder or another basic seasoning, such as pepper. I've used a sloppy Jos variant that uses lentils.
Jos=Jose (somehow, Backtalk doesn't recognize accented e's)
If I were going to do that, I'd substitute tomatoes for the ketchup. But then the recipe starts to get complicated. ;)
barring that, you can make your own ketchup. Still complicated, more hassle, but probably a slight easier to figure out. What about tomato sauce?
re: 24, standard casserole recipe. For us it's always A starch thing, a meat thing, a vegetable or fruit thing. (Almost all fish makes my stomach feel queer, so no fish, and Dave has problems with too much milk product, so we minimize dishes that depend on cheese -- sometimes add cheese toppings at the last minute)
I tried my friend's Goop. I made macaroni and cheese -- from scratch, which takes over a minute longer than making it from a box, oh, the horrors! -- and added tuna fish and corn. I called it Toxic Waste. I guess I was hoping my kid would go over to his mother's house and talk about how we had Toxic Waste for dinner. He, however, didn't follow the plan. He described it as being very appropriately named, and opted for a sandwich instead. "Why'd you have to put in the tuna fish and corn?" "You said you called it Toxic Waste so we wouldn't have to feel bad if we didn't eat it!" Who would have thought a 7 year old would be so affected by a marketing decision? Next time I'll call it "Harry Potter's Magic Delight" and he'll probably love it. I just had leftover Toxic Waste for lunch, and I still thought it was fine.
Either you haven't read enough Calvin & Hobbes comics with him, or they didn't take.
I think John III is just sort of set in his food habits and the name was irrelevant.
So simple: brown ground meat or TVP with some pepper and nutmeg, put aside make oatmeal, a little thick Add poultry spice, garlic powder, onion powder to the oatmeal mix in the meat (or substitute) Stir over low heat for 10 minutes Serve
You have several choices: