My Meatloaf and Stuffed Peppers

For Rachel:

No proportions have been measured.  It's mostly guesswork, but here are the ingredients:

Meatloaf

Ground beef
Very finely chopped onion
Worchestershire sauce
Ketchup
Dijon mustard (or whatever mustard is on hand)
Bread crumbs or cracker crumbs, finely crumbled
Uncooked oatmeal
Salt and pepper
Garlic powder
1 or 2 eggs, beaten with fork a few times
Little BBQ sauce (optional)

This can really stretch some ground beef to feed a lot more people.  Mix everything together by hand, adding enough of the wetter ingredients to make it kneadable.  Get your hands in there and squish it all together really well till well incorporated, and form it into a loaf or loaves.  Or form one loaf and set aside the remaining portion as the filling for stuffed green bell peppers.  Bake meatloaf in loaf pan or oval casserole 350 F till middle is firm and top is nicely browned.  I put tin foil over mine while baking and then take it off as it gets done and let it brown up the last 10 minutes or so.

If you want a topping, it can be ketchup or ketchup mixed with a bit of brown sugar and pepper and spread over top before cooking.

You can throw about anything into a meatloaf, even diced leftover veggies as long as you have a good proportion of meat and bread crumbs/oatmeal and spices in there, and the egg(s) as a binder to keep it from falling apart.

Stuffed Peppers

For stuffed green peppers, clean, de-seed, and cut in half 2 or 3 bell peppers (any color) and fill each with a portion of the meatloaf mix. 
NOTE:  if you want to make stuffed peppers and NOT separate meatloaf, you CAN substitute cooked rice for the oatmeal and some of the breadcrumbs.  But no worries if you don't have it on hand.

Place in a casserole, cover with tin foil, and bake 350 till done through.  You might want to take the foil off the last few minutes to let the tops brown up nicely.

If you like you can pour spaghetti sauce over all the stuffed peppers before baking, and top with cheese and let it melt on top of them just before finished.  Or dab a little tomato sauce and some garlic powder on each before baking.

Trying Moroccan: Lemon and Green Olive Chicken

This is how the first experiment turned out. It was not difficult, though I'm unfamiliar with how it's supposed to look or taste and have no basis on comparison. It was an easy and delicious first try, though!

I found the recipe at http://www.moroccan-recipes.com/Moroccan-Chicken-With-Olives.html

I started with this recipe for the simple reason that it was so very simple, and the only spices it called for were all ready in my spice cabinet...salt, pepper, ginger, and paprika.

Here's the recipe:

Moroccan Chicken With Olives

Ingredients:
4 Pounds Chicken
2 1/2 Tablespoons Oil
2 Onions -- sliced
Salt And Pepper -- to taste
1/4 Teaspoon Ginger
1 Teaspoon Paprika
1 Onion -- finely chopped
1/2 Pound Green Olives
1 Lemon/ Lemon Juice

Preparation:
Heat the oil in large sauce pan. Add 3/4 cup water gradually. Add onion slices, sprinkle with spices. Lay chicken on top. Cook over low heat, covered, one hour. Add finely chopped onion. Cook for another 1/2 hour. Place pitted olives in pan of cold water, bring to boil for 1 minute. Drain water. Add olives to pan. Cook for 5 minutes. Just before serving squeeze on lemon.

Serving Ideas : Serve with rice or couscous

Since this recipe includes green olives, I used olive oil for the first step of cooking the onion and spices. Can you see what I forgot?

Yup! The paprika! You'll see when it dawns on me something doesn't look right. One of the unknowns with this recipe is that it calls for 4 lbs. of chicken, but it never mentions whether to include the skin. Usually, I like to brown the skin before continuing. I read some other recipes, however, that included the skins and did not call for browning so, still feeling a bit insecure about whether I was doing it right or not, I just tucked em on the top of the onion and spices and let 'em slow cook as is, per the recipe. I confess the spice amounts seemed scant, so I added more.

At the same time, I sauteed some mushrooms to be incorporated later into the cous cous. Because you can never have too many sauteed mushrooms...and if nothing else turned out to be edible, I knew they would!

Here's a pic of the second step, after the chicken and spices cooked for an hour. My onions don't qualify for "finely chopped." Ah ha! You can see I now had reviewed the recipe and had added the missing paprika! (more than the recipe calls for, of course!)

I'm still insecure about how it's going to taste. At this point, the chicken is still pale and bland looking and knowing that the spice list called for NO GARLIC makes me pace about the kitchen, wondering if it will, indeed, be edible ;-) I deliberately force myself NOT to touch the garlic powder shaker. HOWEVER, my insecurity gets the best of me and I DO go ahead and add a few bits of fresh lemon to the bubbling dish. I keep having to shoo Jack away from the green olives till it's time to add them.

The recipe called for boiling the green olives for one minute, which also seemed sort of like a crime, since I had those wonderful olives I can only find at the deli...I didn't used the canned sort. But boiling and draining them before incorporating them into the dish did mellow them and make their mouth texture smoother and more buttery than crunchy...mmm.

Ahhh! They're added, and so is the juice of fresh lemons...and ah yes, well I did throw those clean lemon skins in, roughly chopped, for some more color and zing! (Told you I can't stick to a recipe) But I've still not added any garlic. Something genetically-programmed in me is battling against this recipe and URGING me to add garlic at this point...but....I resist. How will I ever know what it's supposed to taste like if I keep changing the recipe??

I serve it up, with rice pilaf and sauteed mushrooms on the side. Why rice pilaf?? Because I am short on time, I decided to make the boxed sort of cous cous and instead opened the boxed sort of rice pilaf. I have no idea if these things "go together," but we ate them...we feasted! I had some pizza dough in the fridge and decided to try making a skillet bread with some of it. I flattened a few balls of dough and cooked them on a flat oiled cast iron skillet set on a low setting. When they were done on both sides, I drizzled a small amount of olive oil over them, sprinkled GARLIC powder (ahhh, relief!), and a brief grind of sea salt...then chopped cilantro. Ohhhh, yeahhhh...this'll do me till I learn how to cook the more authentic middle eastern skillet breads.

And here is the final leftover...sorry for no pics of the main feast! We've now eaten on it for three days, and it's been good every time. Today's final plate was cous cous mixed with spinach leaves sauteed in a drop of olive oil and sea salt and folded all together when done, topped with chopped cilantro and a half lemon squeezed over the chicken and all. This last little thigh is all that's left, and the olive was lucky to have survived this long....mmm, supper!

Would I make this again?? Yes! I'll look to see what spices other similar green olive and lemon chicken recipes use, and might get all sassy with 'em. But even with these, it's delicious!

I still don't know about browning the chicken, or using skinless. I simply removed the meat from the dish when done and served it like that using some liquid as sauce, and overnight I refrigerated the remaining liquid (there's a lot) and skimmed the fat off the top the next day...that's the part it doesnt say to do, but there was a lot of fat at the top of the liquid.

The flavors are both subtle and distinct. The lemon and olives MAKE this dish, and adding a fresh squeeze of lemon when serving ramps up the taste for lemon lovers like my family.

Now that I've tried this, I'll move on to the next "Moroccan" experiment...I don't know how authentically Moroccan this is, but it's at least remotely North African/Mediterranean/Middle Eastern.

And whatever else it was or wasn't, it tasted great!

Trying Moroccan: Tagine of Moroccan Chicken

If only you could smell this cooking...

If only you could sit in my kitchen and taste it!!

Think spice markets, perfumed gardens, peacocks and nightingales, honeyed dates, hot mint tea, lattices and glowing tilework...and then inhale! Taste this recipe and you're THERE...

This was my second experiment cooking in what I think of loosely as "Moroccan Style." This recipe was found at this site, and promised a dish fusing flavors both savory and sweet.

The only problem is that I usually don't enjoy sweet flavors in conjunction with meats...probably just evidence of my upbringing. I'm open to change, as long as it's not a recipe asking me to dump a jar of marmalade over a perfect chicken breast and shout Bon Appetit...though I may be there someday, I'm not there yet :)

I chose this recipe because the spices were ones I have, though the list is longer than the last recipe's list. This one was also a chicken recipe, and the real hook was the word "Tagine" in the recipe title.

A tagine is a cooking vessel with a removable cone-shaped top and shallow-lipped round bottom dish that combines the benefits of clay cookery with a design that allows for slow-cooking, the conical top acting as a trap for the steam to return as condesation back to the stew. It's essentially part casserole and part stew pot, and is kept on a low heat to simmer for hours, which helps the flavors meld and mellow together into something quite wonderful. Or at least that's what I've read :)

Here's what my fantasy tagine looks like...and I've come so close to purchasing one, and yet...money's tight and I have a perfectly good pan with lid till I'm really sure that's where I want my money to go. Here's the one I saw on Amazon that captured my fancy...

Here is the recipe I made a couple of adaptations to, and cooked tonight:

Tagine of Moroccan Chicken

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 chicken thighs, bone in, skin removed
2 medium onions, sliced into thin wedges
1 1/2 teaspoons Garlic Salt
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Ground Ginger
1/2 teaspoon Ground Cumin
1/4 teaspoon Saffron, crushed (optional) -- I substituted Ground Turmeric
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup raisins
Chopped cilantro, for garnish
Slivered almonds, for garnish

DIRECTIONS
Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
Add chicken; cook 10 minutes, or until browned, turning once.
Transfer chicken to plate; cover to keep warm.
Cook onion in same skillet 7 minutes.
Add garlic salt, cinnamon, ginger, cumin, and saffron, if desired. (I omitted saffron and substituted turmeric.)
Stir in tomatoes and honey.
Return chicken to skillet; cover and simmer 5 minutes.
Stir in raisins.
Simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until chicken is done.
Serve chicken stew garnished with toasted, slivered almonds and chopped fresh cilantro on a bed of couscous, if desired.

Here are the 6 chicken thighs. After having made this, I believe any combination of chicken parts would taste great if it uses at least some dark meat. Mine were not thawed completely, so I added a few minutes to this browning stage. It doesn't really say whether to put a lid on them, but since they were on medium-high heat, I kept a lid on most of the browning time, removing it only toward the end when a lot of liquid started collecting. The recipe's directions aren't clear on this stage of the cooking.

While it browned, I collected the spices...

This is the point at which I continued on and removed the thighs to a plate and covered them to keep them warm. Next step was adding the thinly-sliced onion wedges.

Cook for 7 minutes...the dark stuff at the bottotm of the pan is the remains of the chicken browning liquid and the bits that stuck to the pan. They add flavor...these weren't charred, so I left the browned stuck-on bits right in there.

Into the softened onions and their fragrant liquid are added the spices, tomatoes, and honey, to simmer a few minutes. It is at this point I believe those who have actual tagines would move this from the pan to the tagine. The fragrance of the spices is incredible! Just one whiff of this is enough to make you hear camel bells, sand dunes and far away oases... You just want to put your nose right into the steam and inhale deeply...mmmmm!!!!

Ok, it felt strange putting cinnamon and honey into this...my southern girl cinnamon roll training revolted against the very idea of swirling it among the other savory spices bubbling around the meat. But OH MY, what a MAGICAL combination of fragrance and flavor...!!

According to the directions, there is very little simmer time left till this is done. I added to it a little, because I had started out with semi-thawed chicken, and I like it nearly falling off the bone when fully cooked. Here, the raisins have been added. Just ignore that cinnamon-roll training, if it seems too strange that you're once again adding sweetness to a meat dish. Honest...this is awesome. I know...I've already eaten it! I have eaten and lived to tell the story...it's...oh hang on, I'll go into raptures in a second...

Anyway, this is the step where you could leave it on to simmer very very low, covered, all day if you like, and then finish things off with a 5 minute cous cous. You can simmer it and then add the raisins, if you don't want them to disintegrate in the liquid too much. I used cous cous straight out of the box, one with natural ingredients in the herb packet. I like cous cous cooked in chicken broth or herbed liquid. Cous cous cooks up literally in 5 minutes, and is the perfect companion for this tagine/stew. It tends to absorb the savory liquid, and is very moist.

We enjoyed ours tonight served on a bed of herbed cous cous (out of the box!), with some torn spinach on the side.

Here's the last important note about this recipe. The garnish adds A LOT. I don't think it would have been the same without the finish of fresh chopped cilantro and almond slivers generously gracing each individual serving. There is just something PERFECT about the taste of the whole combination, so DO DO use these and consider them ingredients rather than just garnishes for visual appreciation. I also (as is our family habit) included lemon wedges to squeeze over the salad...and anything else you like, which means for us, everything on the plate :)

All in all, this recipe was a complete winner, and my husband was completely silent while eating it, he was that intent....heehee...

One single chicken thigh in this awesome tagine recipe made a whole meal when paired with savory cous cous and some torn greens.

If you're burned out on tomato-ey things, such as spaghetti and marinara sauces, don't look at this and think it's a re-hash of any tomato 'n onion duet you likely usually taste. No way...it's...sublime!

It's not hot. It IS a flavor party! The "unusual" factor is not the sort you really have to try to develop an acquired taste for...it's good straight from the first hesitant taste test.

In fact, there probably won't be leftovers, unless, like us, there are only two of you. If that's the case, you might be like me...looking forward to the next meal when you'll have an excuse to eat some more :)

Trying Moroccan: Peach and Honey Chicken

This is my third recipe to try, after having done a search on the internet under the term "Moroccan." It was delicious, and was by far the easiest to assemble and cook...not that any one of the recipes so far has been complex.

The sauce was so good I wanted to have something to absorb all of it! SO soooooo good!

There were a couple of things I adapted from this recipe; I did not have rose water as an ingredient, so I substituted the only thing I had on hand that had a subtle flavor/fragrance...a teaspoon of orange marmalade. Later I remembered I have some Guava Jelly somewhere in the back of the pantry...that might have approximated rose water a bit more closely. Ah well, next time.

The other adaptation was the cooking time. I did not use frozen chicken pieces, nor were the chicken legs very thick, but I had to cook them longer than the recipe calls for in order for them to be nearly falling off the bone. I don't like chicken that's difficult to release from the bone; cooking it longer did the trick for me with this.

When I cooked it, I was in a hurry to pack some of the legs for Jack's dinner overnight at work. The nice thing was that even after the three of us had eaten this meal, there was still a lot left over. So I took the leftover legs, put them into a Corningware dish, poured the liquid and peaches over, and left them in a very low oven overnight. Today, I will shred the meat, add it to the liquid, and serve it over cous cous with a green side salad.

And I'll garnish with the sliced almonds -- something I forgot to do last night when I served this, even though I had some on hand...oops! I might even throw some cilantro over all for some extra taste...for some reason, two of us have been craving cilantro lately, and haven't gotten it out of our systems yet!

The recipe I used was already adapted from another recipe, and it stated the original incorporated apricots rather than peaches. The amended recipe called for fresh peaches, but since I had canned, I used them, drained. They were already in syrup, so I omitted the sugar in the recipe.

I am not a sweet-tasting meat lover, per se. But I appreciate subtlety. And flavor! The sweet and salty liquid was only made better with the addition of the peaches, and I can see how this recipe would be delicious cooked in clay...something I don't have yet...which would enrich the flavor even more. I imagine the original recipe came from such, most likely cooked in a tagine.

Well, without further ado, here's the recipe and link!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Moroccan-Peach-Roasted-Chicken/Detail.aspx

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup margarine or butter
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon rose water
1 teaspoon salt
ground black pepper to taste (I used a generous amount)
4 pounds bone-in chicken pieces, with skin
1 pound fresh peaches, pitted and sliced
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

In a glass measuring cup small saucepan, combine the margarine, honey, rose water, salt and pepper.
Heat in the microwave on medium heat until margarine has melted, about 30 seconds.
Place chicken in a baking dish and pour the margarine mixture over it.
Stir to coat the chicken completely. Place the dish of chicken into the oven.
Cook uncovered in the preheated oven until chicken pieces have browned, about 15 minutes (mine took longer).
Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Add the peaches to the dish and sprinkle with sugar (if using drained canned peaches, omit sugar).
Continue to roast until chicken is cooked through, about 20 more minutes (it took mine 35-40).
Remove chicken pieces to a serving dish and pour the juices from the pan over them.
Garnish with slivered almonds.


Here's the first step: browning the chicken in the liquid at a higher temperature. You don't want pale chicken...

Here's the other step: adding the fruit, lowering the temp to 350 and putting it back into the oven for the remaining cooking time...

Here's the finished product...oops! I forgot to sprinkle on the toasted almond slivers! Notice there is nothing served with these. They smelled and looked so wonderful, it's all I wanted! But it would be great with a cous cous or rice prepared with chicken broth...mmmm...and of course a deep, green garden salad! The addition of hot toasted pita bread brushed with butter and honey would be awesome, too...

Tucked back into a ceramic casserole, the remains of the day will go into a very very low temp oven, later to be deboned and put back into the liquid to serve over whatever starch vehicle (rice, cous cous, mashed or roasted potatoes, etc) strikes the fancy! Yum!

Will I try this again. Oh yes! The flavor is not as unusual as the other recipes I've tried so far, and not spicy at all, but the blend of chicken juices, honey, and fruit was a perfect combination. This recipe is so easy, even a (supervised) child can make it.

Which is why I forgot the final ingredient?? haha!!

Crystal Miller's Hamburger Pineapple Bean Bake

When I was growing up and we had a garden (some years, not all of them) we usually ate a lot of pink-eye purple hull peas, which we lumped generically under the term Black Eyed Peas, though they weren't actually. They are one of the few vegetables I actually enjoy the taste of better when home-canned, rather than cooked fresh. Either way, though, they made a fantastic supper with sliced fresh garden tomatoes, green onions, and any other vegetable...and cornbread cooked in a cast iron skillet.

That's really the closest we ever got to eating beans during my childhood, though I'm not sure why.

All these years, I've never really eaten beans except in the occasional pot of chili, or veggie soup. There may also be the reason that beans don't always agree with my digestive system... :)

That may be due to the fact I've not gotten used to eating them on a regular basis, though.

During the last few shopping trips to the grocery store, I've noticed how much prices seem to be soaring. I'm not sure if it's the prices, or if it's because I'm having to keep a closer eye on just how much I spend, since our gasoline bill now has edged out much of the discretionary spending cushion in our monthly budget. I'm enforcing a set spending limit now on every shopping trip, simply to keep track and make sure we don't come up short in other areas. I always had a limit, but it was more flexible...only now it is not.

That's fine with me...it's pretty much the way I've lived most of my life. However, during that time, there are certain things we buy now that we choose differently, and have to pay for the difference. Milk is one such item. I like my family to have milk, and to have access to milk for drinking at least once daily. For the past few months, we had been driving to pick up real milk...you know, for our ***pets***... but that had to be curtailed because of the gasoline and the price of the milk. We turned to organic milk in the local supermarket, and sometimes they have a store brand organic, but most times it's sold out, and we have to buy from the other brands. We have a favorite brand, but it's just plain expensive, so I've cut back on our milk.

This is a sign of the times. In my childhood, we seldom had much money and I remember milk was a luxury item for us. We had it for cereal, but not just for drinking, and never more than a single helping per person...it was bought, and rationed. When I became an adult, having milk for something other than cooking and cereal seemed like I was really living rich!

As I've tightened the belt with some items, I've been trying to substitute with others. I've been wanting for some time to experiment with beans.

I'm very unaware of all the different sorts of beans and their flavors and uses, but I've noticed fascinating lists of them, complete with pictures, in some of my favorite heirloom seed catalogs. Obviously, the rest of the world has been enjoying something I haven't yet discovered. It appears different beans have different uses in foods, and if I don't care for one, there are hundreds of others to choose from. As easy as they are to grow and store, and to cook, they will be a regular in our garden the next time we plant one.

They are just affordable as all get-out. It's time I began experimenting to see what some of our favorites will become.

I see a lot of bloggers using pinto beans, and yesterday I ran across an interesting recipe I thought I'd try. I just didn't want to spend all day cooking, but wanted some hot and hearty comfort food that would stick with us. Why I'm craving that in the middle of the blazing hot summer I can't tell you, but the urge was there, so I adapted this recipe and made a big pot along with some cornbread.

This recipe for Hamburger Pineapple Bean Bake is from Crystal Miller's wonderful site Homemaking Homesteader. What I liked about it is that it's not dependent on a tomato base. I've been using tomato in so many of my recent recipes, I wanted to try something different. The pineapple as an ingredient adds an interesting twist.

I tried it out last night when my daughter brought her boyfriend over for dinner. He ate several helpings, so I think everyone enjoyed it as much as I did, though my daughter who is picky picked out the pineapples. Nevermind though...this is the kid who picks the soft center out of homemade dinner rolls and leaves the entire outer crust because she doesn't like the texture. She only gets away with this when I'm not watching! ;-)

We're enjoying some of the leftovers today, and I'll freeze the rest. It's even better the second day!

This dish can be made in a slow cooker/crockpot or on low in a heavy pot. I substituted canned beans instead of soaking my own, simply because I didn't have the time that day for all the soaking. It is delicious with tortilla chips, or with hot cornbread, which is what we had. And because I'm a die-hard Southern girl, that cornbread went IN that bowl of meat-'n-beans! :)



Here's the recipe: (notes in parentheses mine)

Crystal Miller's Hamburger Pineapple Bean Bake (crockpot meal)

2 cups dried pinto beans (I used 4 regular cans of canned pintos)
1 cup dried black beans (I used 2 regular cans canned black beans)
12 cups water
1 T salt
1 lb hamburger
1 onion, chopped
½ cup chopped peppers (green or red or yellow) (I used 1 whole green bell pepper, chopped)
2 T apple cider vinegar
2 T prepared mustard
2 T molasses
1 20oz can pineapple chunks
1 ½ cups bbq sauce
salt and pepper to taste

(I skipped this step and put the canned beans all in the crockpot) In a large pot combine the dried beans, water and salt. Bring to a boil, reduce and cover and cook until the beans are soft, about 3 hours. Drain beans saving some of the bean broth to add later.

In a frying pan cook the hamburger, onions and peppers until the hamburger is no longer pink and the veggies are soft.

Put the beans along with the meat and veggies into a 5 or 6qt crockpot. Add the remaining ingredients and cook on low for about 5 hours. (If using canned beans, heat till tastes are blended...I heated about 2 hours in crockpot) Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.

-------------------------

In addition to the entree recipe, Crystal has a recipe for cake...using pinto beans...on the same page. Check it out!

Not long ago, Jayedee at Life In the Lost World posted several delicious-looking dessert recipes using pinto beans, including one for pinto bean fudge. I've been promising myself to try it soon! Check out her recipes. Who knew beans could be the secret to rich, nutritious, affordable desserts?