Recipes Discovered

All In One Holiday Cake Recipe

The holidays are all about sharing and giving, and a lot of people have been asking me for my Thanksgiving recipes. On the menu this year, besides the normal roasted turkey with stuffing, and the not so normal deep fried turkey, was macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, candied yams, green bean casserole, creamed corn, and cranberry jello salad. To keep everyone happy (and quiet) until dinner was served, I made a bacon ranch cheese ball and a pumpkin cream cheese dip, which was really great with pretzels. For dessert, there was pumpkin pie, all in one holiday cake (pumpkin, cranberry, apple, and pecans), and brownies. Of course, with all the food we had, Seth and I have a refrigerator full of leftovers. I’ve come up with some interesting uses for them though, including potato pancakes, turkey cranberry sandwiches, sweet potato and black bean chili, shepherds pie, and a macaroni and cheese concoction that I don’t even know what to name. Thanksgiving was a lot of fun and hopefully there are a lot more recipes to come during the holidays.

While unpacking (still), I found an Irish cookbook that I had bought a long time ago. Seth’s family is very Irish, and I’ve always wanted to learn to cook traditional Irish food. I had Seth pick out recipes for a complete meal, and this is what he came up with.

We started with Mushroom Soup, which simply a lot of mushrooms cooked with potatoes, onions, garlic, and some stock. The recipe implies to blend the soup, but it leave it rather chunky, but Seth and I both prefer the soup blended smooth. It developed a very cream texture, similar to cream of mushroom soup. I used portobello, crimini, and white button mushrooms, which gave the soup great flavor. I served the soup with Brown Soda Bread, which is so incredibly easy to make. I mixed whole wheat flour with baking powder and buttermilk (I had to use more buttermilk than the recipe called for) together until a dough forms. I then kneaded the dough for a minute until it was smooth and baked until hollow. The bread was so good! It formed a nice crust on the outside, but was so soft and smooth on the inside. Seth wanted me to make it everyday. >> Read more

Pasta Salad Recipe

I like taking pasta salads on picnics. I don’t have to worry about mayonnaise spoiling like with macaroni and potato salad, plus pasta salad just gets better the longer it sets. This is a really simple pasta salad that can be changed up a 100 different ways. I’ve made it with a lot of different ingredients, and it’s always a big hit.
The base of the pasta salad is, of course, pasta. I like the spiral pasta, especially the multi colored kind, but any pasta works. I don’t cook the pasta completely because I like a little bite to it. After I cook, drain, and cool the pasta, I toss it with Italian dressing. My favorite is Kraft Light Done Right Zesty Italian. It has a lot of flavor and a lot fewer calories. >> Read more

Macaroni and Cheese with Tomatoes Recipe

A few years ago, my mom made macaroni and cheese with tomatoes in it and to me, it tasted just like pizza. Not too long ago, I asked her for the recipe, but she had no idea what recipe I was talking about. After a lot of searching, I found two recipes that I combined together to replicate that macaroni and cheese that tasted like pizza.

First, I cooked a pound of macaroni (4 cups uncooked) until the noodles were just soft. Since it bakes in the oven, the noodles shouldn’t be cooked completely or they would fall apart. After I drained the noodles, I returned them to the pot and let them cool while I made the cheese sauce. >> Read more

Stuffing Recipe

My brother called yesterday and asked if my mom could make stuffing for my sister-in-law’s birthday party. Of course she said yes, and then he told her that 100 people were invited. So we ended up making a lot of stuffing today, but since I never made real stuffing before, it was a learning experience for me.

Based on her expert calculations (which I’m still not sure how they work, but they do), we needed 6 loaves of bread, 1 pound of carrots, 2 very large sweet onions (about 4 cups diced), 2 bunches of celery, 3 pounds of potatoes, a dozen and a half of eggs, 1 can of chicken broth, and a pound of butter, plus all the seasonings. She figured that would make two 17x12x3 pans – big roasting pans – of stuffing and would feed at least 60 people. >> Read more