Brains...BRAINS!!!

First, let me be clear. This is not a post about zombies. Christina, I know you got all excited, but just calm yourself down. No zombies here. Except this guy:

Here in my hometown of Evansville, Indiana, we are fortunate to play host to the second-largest street festival in the country. What's the first? Mardi Gras, of course. Let that sink in just a little bit. This tiny river city (not a small town, but not a large city, either) in Indiana is home to a festival that is second only to MARDI GRAS. I still cannot for the life of me understand why the Food Network and Travel Channel are not beating down our door. Heaven knows I've email them enough times. But I digress...

In its 92nd year, the Fall Festival draws more than 200,000 people each year and features parades, carnival rides and midway, talent shows, live music, and - of course - FOOD. More than 126 individual food booths, in fact. Each booth is run by local not-for-profit groups, such as churches, schools, private clubs, scouts, and fraternities. And many make it their mission to try to have the most outlandish, grease-laden or bizarre food item for sale on the street.

My fascination with the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival began in middle school, when my dad's Shrine unit opened a booth at the festival, selling hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Polish sausage, curly fries, pizza, and soft drinks (or "sody pop", as my dad was so fond of putting on the menu board). I would tag along with my parents when they worked their volunteer shifts in the booth, and I usually got put out front selling soft drinks - a thankless job. Some chilly October evening go outside for a few hours and fish cold cans of soda out of barrels of ice or ice water a few hundred times. It sucks. But the people-watching from the sidewalk makes up for it in spades.

Now a member of a Masonic- and Shrine-affiliated body myself, I have a booth of my own to work each year. And we don't have a menu of typical fair food. We, too, have an outlandish, grease-laden, and bizarre treat for sale. In fact, it's the ONLY thing we sell: Brain Sandwiches. Read it again if you have to: Brain Sandwiches. Little brains from fat little piggies all battered up and fried like a delicious, organ-filled fritter, served on a white bun with pickles and onions. And people cannot get enough of them. Although the Big Guy didn't seem to sure about it when he tried his first one a couple of years back.

Anywho, it take a lot of work to get all those little piggy brains ready for cooking, and that's just what we did this week. Every member of my unit - plus some outsiders who were nice enough to volunteer to help us out - spent hours this week sitting around tables "cleaning" brains. I won't go into the particulars, but you know how it is when you prepare an animal or cut of meat - there is some trimming, picking, "cleaning-up" to be done before you can cook it. Same with brains. For someone like me, who had to be excused from Biology class in high school before I barfed all over my group when we started dissecting a frog, this is a chore I dread every year. But it's all for a good cause, and it's only once a year, so I take the Big Guy's advice and "suck it up, Buttercup!" and get the job done. I do enjoy the fellowship that takes place during the cleaning, though. Sitting with a group of ladies for hours at a stretch with nothing to do but talk makes for some interesting stories and a lot of laughter. 

Midweek this year, though, we experienced incredible sadness in the midst of our fun and fellowship, and our time in the Brain Booth at the Fall Festival will not be the same. One of the originators of our famous brain sandwiches was taken from us. In a previous post, I briefly mentioned Miss Wilda, who was one of Miss Mary's dearest friends. After a day of cleaning brains, Miss Wilda went home for the evening and quietly passed away. I will never forget her or the impact she had on my life. Our organization owes much to the leadership and passionate dedication of this elegant lady. Always dressed to the nines, Miss Wilda was the picture of class and dignity, and I am honored to have been her friend these past few years. 

Next week we will honor Miss Wilda with walk-throughs and a memorial service conducted by the officers of our order. And the week after that, we will work our tails off in the Brain Booth and remember these two incredible women who devoted their lives to Masonic service and to their fellow man. We will laugh at remembrances, and I'm sure we'll shed a tear or two as well. It's going to be a grueling week, but I can't wait for it to get started. Check back for a recap of the Fall Festival in a couple of weeks, complete with photos of - you guess it - brain sandwiches. 

Pinterest to the rescue!

I love Pinterest. I guess you could say I'm slightly addicted. But I have good reason to be! I've found over this past year that, whenever I'm in a pinch, Pinterest is there to rescue me. For example, last night around 9 p.m. the Big Guy and I realized we had forgotten to run to the store to get a crucial ingredient for my crock pot Italian beef sandwiches, which were on tonight's dinner menu (yum!). How on Earth was I going to make Italian beef without the Italian dressing? And since it would be going in the crock pot around 6 a.m. before I left for work, there would be no picking it up the next day. I sat there in my yoga pants thinking, "Do I REALLY want to get dressed and go to the grocery at 9 p.m.?" And then I remember my dear friend Pinterest.

A paltry 10-second search turned up dozens of recipes for homemade Italian dressing. I quickly scanned them, and before I could've driven to Schnucks I was in the kitchen whipping up my very own batch of Homemade Zesty Italian Dressing! No getting dressed, no conversation with the furbabies about why they couldn't go with me, no $2.50 spent for processed crap - just some vinegar, olive oil, seasonings and dried herbage. Everything I needed was readily on hand in my cabinets.

That is what I love so much about Pinterest. I'll find myself scratching my head over what to make for dinner, or I'll freak out because I'm missing an ingredient, or I'll be cursing a home project that I just KNOW there has to be an easier way to tackle. And then I'll turn to my dear digital friend Pinterest, and soon all is right with the world. Seriously, if you aren't on Pinterest already, you should be. It's the cat's pajamas.

Now that we have all that out of the way, wanna hear more about those Italian beef sandwiches? They're not Chicago-style Italian beef; they're cheater Italian beef. But I still think they're the bomb-diggity. My favorite chef friend Mel taught me how to make these back in the early years of our marriage when I was just realizing how much I enjoyed cooking. I watched her every time she cooked or baked. I tried to pick up tips where I could, but since she didn't use a lot of recipes I almost always ended up failing spectacularly. I needed a RECIPE, dammit. Specific instructions to follow. I'm good at following instructions. So when she made these sandwiches and told me that even I couldn't screw them up, I knew I'd found a winner. Over the years, as I've come into my own as a cook, I've added my own little twists to her original two-ingredient, three-step process. Here's my version:

Crock Pot Italian Beef Sandwiches

1 beef chuck roast
16 oz bottle of Zesty Italian dressing (or make your own!)
Hoagie buns or Italian mini-loaves, cut in half
Mayonnaise
Sliced provolone cheese

Sear chuck roast in a couple tablespoons of butter and olive oil (this step can be skipped if you oversleep and are running late to work in the morning). Place in crock pot and pour dressing over top. Cook on low at least 8 hours. Remove roast from crock pot and shred meat, discarding fat and gristle. Return meat to crock pot while you prepare the bread.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice buns or loaves in half, lengthwise, and spread top half generously with mayo. Tear cheese slices in half and arrange on bottom half of bun so that the whole area is covered. I usually use two slices of cheese per sandwich - sometimes more. We like cheese in our house. Support your local dairy farmer! Using a slotted spoon, scoop shredded meat onto buns. Cover and loosely wrap in foil, leaving top of packet open so sandwiches can toast. Place wrapped sandwiches on baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and bread is toasty.

Dip your sandwiches in the au jus from the crock pot, or eat them straight-up. Either way, you're gonna need a napkin. Enjoy!

Labor Day in the kitchen with the Big Guy

I have apologize for how late this post is in coming. I have so much to cover that it's going to epic...like Homer or some shit. The last two weeks have been a blur! But the Big Guy and I had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We spent a large portion of it in the kitchen, whipping up new and tasty treats. I love it when my honey cooks or bakes with me...as long as he doesn't talk to me when I'm measuring ingredients! (He screwed himself up this time by talking while he was measuring, and I had a good laugh at him.)

We started out by going on a shopping adventure that Saturday. I wish I had taken a picture of all the yummy goodness we purchased at our local processor, Dewig Meats. We picked up Cheese Beef Sticks (summer sausage), Cheese Polish Sausage (heaven!), German Bologna, "Not-So-Center-Cut" Ham (love that name), Smokey Links, Pastrami, Grippos BBQ Sauce, and a new, locally produced, bottled taco seasoning that the creators were sampling in the store. Instead of that nasty packet of dried spices and preservatives, this contains real ingredients like tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc., without the chemicals. And it's a hometown product! We also grabbed sandwiches in the store to eat while we browsed. I love that they just ask for a donation for these treats, which goes to a local charity. I had the best hot dog you could ask for and the Big Guy had bratwurst (gag). Both served on a slice of white bread folded over - nothing fancy!

Care for some meat "loaf"?

Meat in tube form. Porky goodness.

Where the magic happens.

The only thing we could not get at Dewig's that we wanted was chicken. They don't handle it. So, off to the Old Fashioned Butcher Shoppe! If you've never purchased a fresh whole chicken from a locally sourced butcher shop, go do it. You can tell just by looking at the skin and the size of the bird how differently its been raised than those large-scale commercially produced chicken. (Yes, Tyson, I'm looking at you.) And if you're intimidated by breaking down a whole chicken (like I am), the butcher will do that for you in a jiffy for free.

That evening we went to a friend's house for an experimental game of "Chopped" - Couples' Edition. J is a Pampered Chef consultant who I met several years ago and later became friends with while doing vendor events with Tupperware. She and her husband, C, and the Big Guy and I went head-to-head in a cooking competition using the same (not-so-secret) "mystery box" items. I think the boys had as much fun as we did, and I learned that I'm not the only one who's a little OCD about how my kitchen is organized. At least I haven't pulled out the label maker to mark which cabinet things go in (though maybe I should...hmmmm). C delighted in taking us all around the kitchen and pantry to show us where she's placed labels and which ones are outdated. We also had appletinis. J and I may have been a little buzzed. In short, a good time was had by all.

Sunday morning, we were terrible Methodists and skipped church to take a little road trip to meat mecca and Food Network/Travel Channel-featured Moonlite Bar-B-Q. They have the most AMAZING Sunday brunch buffet featuring stuff you don't find any other day of the week. Perfectly wet scrambled eggs, insanely salty cured bacon, savory smoked sausage, homemade donuts, fried chicken, and then - of course - bbq and all the fixins. Yes, 100 miles round trip is a long way to go for breakfast. But the drive with the Big Guy on such a beautiful sunny day made it all worth while.

Sunday afternoon we got busy in the kitchen.

Not like that. Dirty birds.

We dove in and tried something I've been talking about for a long time - and even blogged about recently - but never committed the time to: homemade bagels! The pictures below tell the story.

Little balls of dough resting on Day 1.

Fresh from the fridge on Day 2 and ready for their hot bath.

The Big Guy wanted to mark one as "his." At least, I hope that's what he's doing. Gross.

Bath time! That giant stockpot is Tupperware, by the way. Want one? I can hook you up. I know a lady.

Bagel toppings ready to go (sesame seeds, poppy seeds, coarse sea salt).

The Big Guy even took photos for me so I could move quickly from boil to topping.

Still warm from the oven...mmmmm.

Yes, making bagels is a two-day process. But when you stop and think about it, it's really not that bad. I spent about three to three and a half hours on Day 1 making the sponge, dough, and forming the bagels. But really it was only more like an hour because most of that time was just resting. Day 2 went very quickly. I think I was done in 30 minutes. I made average-sized bagels (more like Lenders, not giant like Panera Bread) and got 16 out of the batch. That's three weeks of workday breakfast which would've cost me around $14, plus gas, had I gotten them from a bakery every day. I'll try to figure out the food cost next time I make them, but I'm estimating it cost me about $3 to do this at home. That's a savings of almost $200 per year. Plus I get to take out any frustrations on the dough while I'm kneading! Win-win! I did learn something in the process. The original poster (Smitten Kitchen) said all her toppings fell off, so she would try an egg wash next time. I had the same problem but only with my sesame seeds. Lesson learned. Egg wash next time for sure!

Fatty McGee begged for a snack the whole time. Look at those sugar lips. Is he the cutest or what?

Short story I have to share. A couple of years ago the Big Guy had a second job driving a delivery truck for the local donut bakery in the mornings. Every day I begged him to bring me home a sesame seed bagel, and sometimes he obliged. One morning, as he was grabbing my warm, fresh bagel from the rack, he started talking to the owner of the bakery and asked him if they had ever tried making sea salt bagels (like the ones at Einstein Brothers that I loved so much when we lived in Florida). Owner had never heard of such a thing and thought it was a great idea. Said he would experiment with it and see how it turned out. Never heard of him trying it and Big Guy went on to a different second job. Now, here we are two years later and sea salt bagels have never shown up on the menu. But they have in my kitchen, and guess what, Donut Bank? I think we're breaking up. 

My homemade bagels were a huge success. They're pretty freakin' yummy - and chewy. Very authentically stiff and chewy, not doughy or soft and bread-y. And they freeze great as well. I put each bagel in a sandwich bag and then put as many as I could fit into a gallon freezer bag. Each morning at work I just pull one out and let it sit on my desk for a half hour to hour to thaw and then pop it in the toaster oven. Couldn't be happier. 

Before we got down with the bagels, Big Guy and I starting prepping the chicken for Monday's cooking adventure. We used this recipe for brine to keep the chicken moist while smoking it (using only herbs from our garden, thankyouverymuch). On Monday, the Big Guy pulled out the smoker and got to work.

Look at all that fresh chickeny goodness.

See those giant man-beast hands? I swear it's a perspective thing. We were not smoking tiny
chicken parts on a smoker the size of a dinner plate. My man just has giant man-beast hands.

Throughout the whole process, the skinny dog was Losing. His. Mind. He loves chicken more than almost anything in the world. This is his happy face:

It's a smile. I promise.

We were all smiles, too, when those beautiful pieces of fowl came off the smoker a few hours later. The Big Guy smelled like a campfire - a delicious, lickable campfire. This is some pretty tasty yard bird right here. Still have a bit left in the freezer that we'll be using to make homemade BBQ pizzas later. I'll post about that too. But right now, I'll just leave you with this...

Mouthwatering, isn't it?

Gettin' all Little House on the Prairie up in this joint

I love to bake. Cookies, cakes, pies, breads - oh, bread! I love working with yeast dough - the smell, the texture, the kneading and stretching and rising and punching and rising again. If I was a KW (that's kept woman, or stay-at-home wife, if you prefer) we would eat only bread I baked myself. And I would do all sorts of other crafty and pioneer woman kinds of stuff.

But crafting dough and dough-based foodstuffs takes time - hours upon hours of resting and proofing. And when you work full time, sling plastic part time, are active in community organizations, and try to have a satisfying married and social life as well, there's just not much time left for dough. But I'm trying to learn to live again, remember? So I shall bake more this year than I have in the last three years.

When I do find time to bake, though, I get sidetracked easily and I go take a nap or start another project while my dough is rising and then it takes twice as long to get anything done. So I'm working to enlist the help of my friend P to the Enny to have an all-out baking day. She's game, but our schedules are both so hectic that - again - it's hard to find the time. But find the time we must! We're planning to work our baking day into the whole freezer cooking concept as well by either freezing several batches of dough or freezing finished bread products. I especially want to bake up a mess of bagels and freeze them to have for breakfast throughout the week. I found a bagel recipe on Smitten Kitchen that just looks amazing. I can't wait to try it out myself. Even if you don't plan to ever make your own bagels, pop on over to her blog to see the beautiful photos that accompany her recipes. I'm jealous.

So tell me, readers - do any of you have a favorite go-to bread recipe? Do you have a secret for finding the time to bake and making it happen? Do you bake at all? Or do you find it intimidating and just not worth the effort. I love seeing your comments, so share with me! Tell me your stories! Use the little "Post a Comment" box below. Let me know you're out there.

Secret Helpers

I love female sneakery and inspirational stories of anonymous do-gooders. So, when I happened across this headline today, of course I had to click and read more. The Business 9 Women Kept A Secret For Three Decades, by Lori Weiss is the story of nine Southern women on a mission to help others - secretly.

My last post was about paying it forward and cooking for others in need. To see this article so soon after that post just reinforced my belief that I need to be doing more of this. I have nothing else to say today. Just read the story linked above and be inspired.

Image source: http://flic.kr/p/7mGRVe 

Taking a meal to a friend in need...and other musings on paying it forward

Since early in our marriage, whenever I hear of a close friend or family member who's had a death in the family, major surgery, extended illness, birth of a child, or some such life event, I've been the type of person who immediately thinks, "I may need to take this person a meal." It all started in 2004 when a good friend delivered her son at 28 weeks, and he spent the first months of his life in the hospital. Our mutual friend suggested a few of us having a cooking day and provide the family with several freezer meals they could heat at their convenience. (My very first freezer cooking adventure!) I immediately agreed to the plan because the Big Guy and I had experienced our own family crisis a couple years earlier, and the thing I remember most fondly is those friends and co-workers who showed up with a meal. It was one less thing we had to worry about during the most difficult time of our young marriage.

That's part of the reason this whole freezer cooking adventure appeals to me so much. When you have meals already prepared in your freezer, ready to thaw and reheat, it makes helping others so effortless! Friend had a baby? Grab a casserole on your way out the door to visit! Relative had knee replacement surgery? Snatch up a bag of soup from the freezer and you're on your way! There have been so many people in my life in the past year who I have wanted to help with meals or in some other small way, but I've just been stretched too thin. If I had had meals already in the freezer, it would've been a cinch. But now that I have several go-to meals on hand, I don't have to worry anymore about my busy schedule preventing me from helping my friends and family in the best way I know how. And that makes me very happy.

Another thing that makes me very happy is a website I ran across during my freezer cooking research, and it is what prompted today's post. Take Them a Meal is a site that allows people to coordinate meal-taking efforts online. Simply create a free account, invite friends via email to join your effort, and the person in need will have a meal delivered to their door as often as needed. Brilliant! The site also features recipes, a blog, and tips for coordinating meals but also for other simple ways to help those in need. Created by a group of friends who saw a need and were tired of coordinating meal-taking through endless phone calls, this site has grown into a useful tool for anyone - even those who don't want or have time to cook or deliver a meal, or who live at too great a distance. Through their partnership with A Bowl of Good, you can simply order a pre-made meal online to be shipped directly to the friend you're helping.

How do you help your friends in need? How do you give back to your community in general? I've found that, no matter how much I have going on in my own life, no matter how self-absorbed I am at any given moment, what sometimes brings me the most pleasure is carving out time to give back to someone or some organization. Taking a meal is something simple I love to do because (selfishly) I love to cook and (for whatever ulterior motive) I love to share my cooking with others. In the last several years, this has carried over into other areas of my life - this desire to help others. Whether it's through our non-profit activities, or through the "give-back" team at my office, or just through helping a dear friend, I carve out time weekly to pay it forward.

Recently I lost someone who I considered to be a good friend - though I learned at her funeral that, truly, I hardly knew her at all. Miss Mary and I were both members of the same ladies' organization. I always knew her as just this sweet old woman who happened to also be a member of the club. But a few years ago, while we were attending a convention in Florida, Miss Mary became ill in the middle of the night. Her roommate, Miss Wilda, called me - knowing I was the only person in our group who did not have to go to the business session the next day - and asked if I would accompany them to the emergency room. The three of us spent the next several hours at the hospital and filled our time with conversation. I learned so much about these beautiful women who had been the best of friends for more than 50 years. And as Miss Mary began to feel a bit better the next day, she and I spent more time together and I learned even more about her life and what kind of person she was. The most important thing I learned that week about Miss Mary was that there was so much more to her quiet demeanor than met the eye. But I never realized just how much more until people got up to speak at her funeral. Miss Mary - and her husband, who survives her - are the model for living a life of service to others.

Being child-free, I cannot tell you how many times I've heard, "Don't you want a family of your own?" "But won't you be lonely in your old age?" "Who's going to take care of you when you get older?" I wish the people who have asked me these questions (sometimes repeatedly) could have been at Miss Mary's funeral. It was a testament to how not alone and how very cared for an elderly person can be...IF they've lived their life right. Miss Mary had no children of her own - no grieving "immediate family" left other than her husband. The funeral home was unprepared for the number of people who attended. It was standing room only. The pastor even commented during his eulogy that he's done many funerals for 85-year-old women, and there is never a crowd that size. Several people stood up after the pastor and spoke about what Miss Mary meant to them. She and Mr. Lefty touched countless lives on their journey, believing strongly that, as Christians, their primary duty on Earth was to humbly serve others. 

That is Miss Mary's legacy - a peaceful life of service to her fellow human beings. Whether that service was simply delivering a batch of homemade jam to say thank you or giving a ride to someone who had no transportation or even opening their home to a single parent and child who had nowhere else to go, Miss Mary and Mr. Lefty exemplified Christian love every day. And because of this, in their last years of life, this childless couple has been surrounded by loved ones. They've not been lonely. They've not been forgotten. Because throughout their lives they made sure others were not lonely - others were not forgotten. 

The Big Guy and I talked at length after Miss Mary's funeral about this legacy, and we know we want it to be ours as well. I believe most people find themselves alone at the end of their lives as a consequence of how they've lived their lives and what kind of relationships they nurtured - or allowed to wither - along the way. So I will strive to focus on those relationships that can be nurtured. The ones that will continue to grow and be fruitful throughout our lives. And I will continue to try to live a life of service - even if that service is simply taking a meal to a friend in need. Sometimes it's the simplest things that make the most lasting impact on a person's life. 

How will you try to serve others in your life? Who will you take a meal to this year?

Freezer Cooking Adventure #1

My freezer is full, and I'm pooped! Yesterday was our first freezer cooking group event. It was a long day, and my shoulders are aching from chopping, wrapping, stirring and scooping, but I think it was a great success, overall. Our little group of four unexpectedly grew to five, but we had a massive table to work around, and some of us had prepared extra meals, so it was all good. Four of us prepared multiples of two recipes each, and the fifth person prepared multiples of one recipe. Every person walked away with at least one (in some cases more) each of nine different meals. Score! Variety!

As you read in my previous post, we spent a couple hours last Saturday planning and organizing the event. Since so many people would be prepping and cooking all at the same time in one kitchen, we each made a packing list of all the tools we would need to bring with us, in addition to the ingredients for each of our recipes. So when we arrived at Olivia's house, step one was to "apron up" and unpack the goods! (I think Christina wins the prize for best apron. Nice briefs, Batman.)

Step 1: Apron Up & Unpack!

Community Box

We also decided during our planning meeting to create a community box that we would each donate items to for group use and one person would be the designated keeper of. I donated the storage tub, the aluminum baking pans and covers, a Sharpie, and the wax paper. Others donated quart and gallon-size freezer bags, plastic wrap, commercial-size aluminum foil, and salt and pepper. We got this idea from an awesome book called Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer. Such a great resource for planning and for recipes with detailed freezing and reheating instructions. I'm so glad I invested in it.

Step 2: Organize Tools & Ingredients

Step 3: Cook!

We were blessed to have such a massive kitchen table to work around. With only a little shuffling, there was room for everyone to prep their food and wrap and package their meals. We each staked our claim on a little section of table and stuck with our spots the entire day. Another imperative was a sink full of hot, soapy water all day. Staying on top of washing the pots, pans, mixing bowls, cutting boards, and utensils was an absolute must to stay sane.

The only thing I would prefer to have different next time would be no kids and no pets. We had a small army of four children (I'm pretty sure there were four - they didn't stop moving long enough for me to accurately count them all) and three dogs beating a path through the kitchen all day. At least the doggies had manners and didn't try to snatch any meat off the table like they would have at my house! (My boys are rotten and have no manners.) My plan is to talk to my church about the possibility of using our church kitchen (industrial, lots of open space, LOVE IT) in the future. I'm also planning a baking day with my girl Penny (AKA P Diddy).

Baby, the sweetest black lab, and Pixie, an equally sweet
American bulldog puppy. Beggars, the both of them.

Assembly line for breakfast burritos

So, do you want to see the fruits of our labors all laid out at once? Do you? It's pretty darned impressive. Recipes provided where possible. What you see below is:

• 80 Breakfast Burritos - Scrambled the eggs separately and formed an assembly line to divide the labor; made some with onions & peppers, all WITHOUT hash browns - I've done that before; it was gross with the potatoes.
• 8 portions of Stromboli meat - Each portion makes 6 sandwiches - recipe below.
• 6 portions of Meatloaf - Some portions divided into individual packaging for easy husband lunches and some divided into 2 smaller loaves for smaller families. Recipe below.
• 4 Chicken Pot Pies 
• 8 (I think) 4-count bags of French Onion Burger patties
• 4 gallons of Broccoli Cheese Soup
• 4 Cheesy Ham & Potato Bakes
• 4 Chicken Potato Casseroles
• 4 portions of Chicken Tacos (cooked in the crock pot all day - shredded chicken, salsa, taco seasoning, black beans, and I'm not sure what all else - they look delicious!)

Easy Meatloaf 
(makes two loaves that serve approx. 6 each)

Meatloaf:
2 lbs ground beef
8 oz Pepperidge Farm Herbed Stuffing Mix
2 eggs
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup water

Topping:
~1 cup ketchup
~1/2 cup brown sugar

Combine all meatloaf ingredients and mix well. Form into two loaves. Place both loaves in 9x13 pan. Combine topping ingredients and spread evenly over top of loaves. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees, or until done.

If freezing, wrap each loaf in plastic wrap, then in foil, and place in gallon freezer bag. Then place in freezer. When ready to cook, thaw overnight in the fridge, mix topping ingredients and spread on meatloaf, and cook as directed above. Loaves can be cooked individually and can be frozen in loaf pans, if desired.

Barbecue sauce is a nice alternative topping as well.


Miss Wendy's Strombolis
(makes 6 sandwiches)

This recipe comes from an old friend of mine. When we were in grade school, our teacher asked each of us to bring in a family recipe and a story about it for a classroom recipe book. My friend Jake brought his mom's Stromboli recipe. My mom started making it soon after, and it's been a family favorite ever since. Incorporated below are a couple of my own tweaks I've made over the years, but they are so insignificant that I felt the need to give Miss Wendy credit where credit is due.

1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb pork sausage
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1/2 cup ketchup
2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese (the fake powdered kind)
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp oregano or Italian seasoning blend
6 steak or hoagie buns
12 slices provolone or mozzarella cheese

Brown beef, sausage and onion. Drain. Stir in sauce, ketchup, Parmesan cheese, garlic powder and oregano. Cook over medium low heat for 20 minutes. Split the rolls and divide meat evenly on bottom buns. Top with cheese slices - 2 per sandwich. (I fold my slices in half so they don't hang over the edge of the bun and cook onto the foil wrapper. I want to make sure ALL the cheese goes on my sandwich and in my belly!) Close sandwiches and wrap in foil, leaving open at the top. Heat in the oven 15 minutes at 350 degrees to melt cheese and toast buns.

If freezing, stop after cooking meat and sauce mixture for 20 minutes. Let mixture cool. Place in quart-size freezer bag, squeeze all air out of bag, lay flat on counter and gently press mixture flat. Flash freeze and store. When ready to eat, either thaw mixture in refrigerator or open bag and defrost in microwave. Either way, warm meat in microwave before assembling sandwiches to ensure finished sandwiches are hot all the way through.

Enjoy!

T-minus 3 days until Freezer Cooking Adventure #1

I can't wait, y'all. I just can't freaking wait. Saturday morning just can't come soon enough. We're gonna get our freezer cooking on! As you may have read last weekend, I've joined forces with three other women to begin freezer cooking every so often. We haven't landed on a schedule for repeat cooking days yet - going to see how the inaugural one goes first. We have high hopes that this will become a regular adventure, though, and hopefully grow into a larger swap meet for freezer meals.

For the first cooking day, we're starting small. Each person is responsible for two recipes. I say "responsible for" rather than "each person is preparing" because we have one person in the group who apparently cannot be trusted in her own kitchen. Plus she wants to make hamburgers but will not touch raw meat...anyone else see the problem here? So we all agreed that since she is so graciously volunteering her huge kitchen, providing the cooking day snacks, and paying for all her own ingredients, we'll share the duties of preparing her meals for her and let her swap with us as normal. I'm trying to put her on dishes duty as well. Not because I think she needs to contribute more; I just don't like doing dishes. She also apparently has no kitchen tools (because she can't be trusted in her own kitchen), so we're all taking all hardware we need as well as ingredients. Must remember to pack all that crap up Friday night.

This little group should prove to be very interesting, to say the least. This whole escapade is the brainchild of my high school nemesis friend Christina, aka the Dark Queen/Zombie Queen/Mother of All Things Dark & Creepy (and puppies!). Of the other women in our group - one of whom I met last Saturday morning and the other whom I'll meet for the first time this Saturday - one is a devout Christian, studying theology and working at a Christian Church; one is all hot pink, sparkly, recently saved and all about church; and one is a snarky, foul-mouthed, workaholic, Methodist girl. (Can you guess which one is me?) I can't wait to see this entire dynamic at work. And I should probably check in with Chris to make sure the other two ladies aren't going to be offended by my mouth. I held it in check last weekend during the planning session, but during a whole day of cooking? No way. An F-bomb is guaranteed to slip at some point. And at least one That's What She Said. Guaran-frickin-teed.

Going to do my grocery shopping Thursday night for Saturday's festivities, and I'm planning to stock up on chicken as well since our local Schnucks is running a hella-deal on leg quarters (59 cents/lb in 10lb bags - woot!). This whole scanning circulars and watching grocery sale trends to maximize savings for bulk buying thing is going to take some practice. But hopefully it will positively impact our grocery bill and my weeknight dinner stress in the long run! We shall see. And I'm excited you are all going to be part of the journey! Here's a sneak peek at the planning sheets I've been using:

Oh, and for those keeping tabs on Materpalooza 2013, check out what I get to process tonight for sauce. For you Tupperware nerds, yes, that is a Thatsa Bowl chock full of little Romas. For those of you who are not YET Tupperware devotees, the Thatsa Bowl has a 32-cup capacity. That's a lot of maters. About two gallons of sauce. Which means lots and lots of trimming, seeding, and pureeing tonight! Hooray! 

Taking off the training wheels

It's official! I'm live and worldwide!

Just changed the settings on my blog to viewable by everyone. Yikers. It took a lot of talking myself into it, but I've finally done it. Now we'll see if I can deal with the haters who I hear are so prevalent in the blogosphere.

Since this is my first post since going live, I've got to give props to a couple of people. A friend of a friend - who is a social media consultant/guru and blogger extraordinaire - lit a fire under me a couple of years ago to get serious about blogging this time. Then I just had to find the time to devote to it.

Now that I've carved out a little time to do this, I needed a name. I went through a few different blog names and urls and was really struggling with what to call my new creation. Nothing felt right. So I turned to my Sista From Another Mista, Rachel, who is a very creative and wordy person, and she nailed it with only her second or third suggestion. My friends always joke about my undiagnosed OCD - especially in the kitchen - so her suggestion of Obsessive Cooking Disorder just seemed perfect.

So I'm now taking the training wheels off my shiny new bike. I hope you enjoy it. Please don't run over it with your giant SUV or steal my nifty basket. Thank you.

~K

Freezer cooking adventure starts now!

I'm absolutely giddy with excitement right now. I love starting a new project. It's the follow-through I usually have trouble with - which is why it's taken me years to finally start this blog. But when I have cohorts, I have a better chance at success. So, tomorrow morning, a couple of ladies are coming over to have our first freezer cooking planning session! The planning nerd in me has been fapping nonstop for two days.

TMI? Sorry, you'll have to get used to it on this blog. That's how I roll.

The timing of this whole initiative is just perfect. It dovetails so well with the beginning of my blog and gives me more fuel for posts. And I didn't even plan it this way. It's just kismet. My old high school nemesis (now grown-up friend) Christina posted on Facebook earlier this week about how tight her family's budget is and that she would like to get her family living more frugally but also be healthier and shop more locally. One of the best ways you can control what your family eats while also being budget-minded is to do freezer cooking - cooking large batches of a few meals and freezing them to cook or reheat later for easy weeknight meals. And it gets even better when you go about it with friends - greater variety of meals, much-needed girl time, larger quantities often mean smaller cost per meal, and so on.

I'll be keeping track of our progress right here and sharing it with all of you. Fingers crossed I remember to bring my camera to our first cooking session next weekend!

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about freezer cooking too, Pinterest has a ton of resources. Dinnercoach.com has a lot of great resources, plus I invested in a couple of books I found on Amazon that were highly rated.

A night 25 years in the making

Sunday night was a night I have waited 25 years to experience. My first New Kids on the Block concert!! And Boyz II Men were the whipped cream & nuts on top. 98 Degrees was the cherry. If you know me, you know I usually suck the whipped cream off the cherry and give it to the Big Guy. That's kinda how the concert was...I enjoyed looking at how pretty Nick Lachey is and then left it to the Big Guy to sing along to their songs. He's a closet late-90's boy band nerd. I blame his misspent college years.

The highlight of the night, though, was my sweet NKOTB. Donnie was almost close enough to touch. Le sigh. Here's the photographic evidence:

Donnie!

Shawn - Boyz II Men

Joey MacIntyre!

My girl Amanda, who accompanied us to the event, praised my ticket-selection skills about a dozen times. I gotta admit, I was pretty proud of myself. I rewarded myself pre-show with an iced Dunkacino from the Dunkin Donuts next door. It was a massive let-down that has cured me of my DD cravings for at least a year. (Don't tell the Big Guy or my friend in Boston who loves to ridicule my love of DD coffee.)

Since we didn't make it home until 2 a.m. that morning following the concert, I took (most of) the day off work to chill. Ended up sleeping half the day, as per usual. But I did accomplish two things that evening in the kitchen. 

First, I made a batch of pizza dough for the freezer. This recipe from Annie's Eats is incredible. Try it. Right now. Go mix up the dough and come back here to finish reading while your dough is rising. I mean it. It's that good.

While my dough was rising Monday night, I made my famous spaghetti with tomato basil sauce using ingredients from my own garden. This is the recipe my friends request I make the most. They cannot get enough of it. It's so fresh and yummy and simple to make. My favorite thing about this recipe is where I first learned it (though I've tweaked it and made it my own over the years). When we were living in Orlando, Florida, I worked next door to Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. One of my coworkers took cooking classes there with her husband once a month or so. One weekend they weren't able to go, so she gave me her ticket. It was the greatest experience. I learned knife basics; how to butcher, truss, and roast a chicken; and how to make this splendid spaghetti sauce using the ingredients we had just practiced chopping, mincing, and chiffonade-ing. This is one of the few recipes in my arsenal that I don't have exact measurements for, so just do your best and wing it, just like I do every time I make it. :)

Tiny Roma tomatoes fresh from my garden. It's materpalooza this year!

Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Basil Sauce

1 lb spaghetti, cooked & drained

2 Tbsp olive oil

1-1/2 sticks of butter, divided

2 large or 3 medium shallots, minced or grated

3-5 cloves of garlic, minced or grated (we like garlic in our house)

3-4 cups pureed Roma tomatoes (if mine are big enough, I like to skin them first - personal preference)

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Kosher salt & pepper to taste

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Melt half of butter in a large skillet with olive oil. Saute shallots and garlic over medium heat until translucent. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Add tomatoes and cook down while boiling water and cooking pasta. Season with additional salt and pepper as needed while simmering. Tomatoes need salt! (And quit using that iodized crap. Go kosher.) When your pasta is just about done, chiffonade the basil leaves and add to sauce along with remaining butter. (What's chiffonade? Stack all the leaves on top of one another and, starting on the long side, roll them up like a jo...I mean, cigar. Then thinly slice across the tiny herb log so you end up with little ribbons of basil to sprinkle over your sauce.) Stir to combine and fully melt butter. Toss with drained pasta and serve with freshly grated Parmesan cheese (no cheating with the powdered crap - this sauce deserves the real deal!). Serve with warm, toasty bits of chewy garlic bread.

Go make it now while your pizza dough is still rising. Now. (Geez, I'm a little bossy, aren't I?)

Getting up the nerve to go live

This is blog entry #4 and I'm sitting here wondering when I'll get up the nerve to go public with this whole thing instead of it just being my own personal diary.

If you know anything about me, you'll know I'm a deadline-oriented person. Also a bit of a procrastinator - ok, a HUGE procrastinator - which is why I'm just now starting this whole blog journey about six years after I first started toying with the idea. So I guess I need to just set myself a deadline.

But the problem with self-imposed deadlines is that they are too easily moved for an endless number of inconsequential little reasons.

• I don't have enough content yet! I need to write just one or two more entries. THEN I can go live.
• I need to add visual interest. Gotta pick out photos to add, and THEN I can go live.
• I need to talk to the Big Guy and make sure he knows I'm going to be talking about him.
• Things are REALLY busy at work this week. I'll go live this weekend.

And my personal favorite...

• It's not perfect yet.

Did I mention I'm also a perfectionist? Yeah. Totally.

For instance, I decided to start playing with adding free stock images to my blog. Like the one below. But you see what I have to put below the photo? Giant horsey attribution line. Gag.

It's not perfect yet.

© Photographer: Johnlric | Agency: Dreamstime.com

None of their damn business

I know I want to make a go of this whole blog thing, but I'm struggling to find my niche. Do I want to be just another recipe blog? No. But is anyone interested in reading about my hum-drum daily life? And do I really want to put all that out there anyway? No and no.

So I started trolling blogs on BlogHer for inspiration. I found something interesting while there. Something that strikes a nerve with me and I find constantly irritating me in myriad places - from magazines to television to, now, blogs. There are nine sub-categories under the "Family" heading. Not one is for DINKs (that's "double income, no kids") or otherwise childless (by choice or otherwise) couples. However, under "Work/Life" there is a Childfree sub-category. I think, great! Until I start scanning the posts there. Over half of them are from either parents talking about childfree couples, singles, people who've lost their children, or people who are currently childfree but are completely focused on trying to have children. Then, about 75% of the remaining half are trying to defend their position as childless by choice because of the near-constant vilification of DINKs by the parent crowd. ARGHHHH!! 

So maybe my niche is DINKs in the Kitchen? I dunno. What I do know, though, is that this is a minority that needs to start standing up for itself. We need to start providing resources for others like us, and we need to make the parent population out there understand that childfree couples are not deficient or cold or selfish or pitiful or secretly envious of them. We simply choose to live a different lifestyle than they do and we wish to do so without judgment from others...because it's none of their damn business why we live this lifestyle. Sometimes it's a conscious choice and other times it's not. But it is always, first and foremost, none of anyone else's damn business.

It's the little things

Last week, after two days with no Internet at home (first world problems) waiting for a Time Warner service man to come to the house and it still not being fixed when he left, I dug deep to find my inner geek and headed out to Best Buy in search of a new modem and some home networking advice.

I met the most awesomely helpful little dude at Best Buy who convinced me to try just one more signal booster to go with my new modem and the new wireless router I bought a couple months back. I went home with all my *expensive* new toys and set about trying to figure out how to hook it all up by myself without going on a shooting spree.

The dogs were there for moral support, but as usual were otherwise completely useless. I've got to say, the most painful part of the whole process was sitting on hold with Time Warner for nearly an hour. If you know me, you know that patience is NOT my strong suit. The Big Guy came home in the middle of the adventure and he made me look like Job in that department. But I got the new modem all hooked up and we were back in business. So I let the Big Guy take over and set up the booster. Within minutes I was standing in the middle of my family room with full wifi bars showing on iPad and iPhone.

The Big Guy got quite a kick out of my extreme happy dance. But come on, this was SIX YEARS in the making! So the moral of the story is...don't give up. Dig deep and find that inner determination to fix that one little thing that's been making life more difficult for you. Sometimes it's not really as scary as you've convinced yourself it would be.

Learning to live again

I have a project I should be getting started on, but what am I doing? Writing my first blog post.

Nearly a year and a half ago, I posted on Facebook that I was toying around with the idea of blogging. An acquaintance offered to help me get started, but I declined. "I'm too busy." That's been my mantra for the last three years. And at that time it really was true. But this weekend I realized that it's not really true. I'm not always "too busy." It's just become a convenient excuse for getting out of things I don't want to do and for being a horrid time manager.

Recently some things have happened in my life that have granted me more free time than I previously had. I'm trying to get myself motivated to take control of my life again and start being a better housekeeper, a better wife and a more productive employee. But it's hard, yo.

In the midst of all this, I'm trying to learn to live again. I remember the first few years the Big Guy and I were married, I had time to do nearly everything I wanted to do. My house was tidy and clean. Laundry was done and put away. I read books...often. I saw at least one of my girlfriends almost daily. On the weekends, my girlfriends and I would cook and bake and play. Sometimes on weeknights too. If I sat down to watch TV, I often worked on a project simultaneously - copying down recipes, doing cross-stitch, organizing photos.

So why don't I do any of this anymore? Why is everything such a chore? I'm pretty sure depression has something to do with it, but I refuse to go to the doctor, who will likely just want to give me a pill for it. So I'm going to start blogging. And cleaning house. And cooking up a storm. And taking walks. And reading books. And just trying to learn to live again in general.

Step one: Post this blog.