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A couple of weeks ago, I was startled by a cookbook among the books we picked up at the library. I don’t generally read new cookbooks and why on earth were we getting one from the library. It was too polished, too many pictures, too new. Cook’s Country Best Lost Suppers-Old-Fashioned, Home Cooked Recipes Too Good to Forget, 2009. I put it in the cold room to flip through while waiting for the dogs to come in.

I didn’t like it. First was the matter of the pictures (am not a fan). Then there was the matter of the “Notes from the Test Kitchen” at the end of each recipe. These were family favorite recipes from all over the country. How dare they change them? I read on though. And I thought. I considered. I craved.

Then I realized a couple of things, these are recipes that I would LIKE, do like, and uh, I tweak old recipes all the time. The people who submitted probably tweaked the originals as well. Ok, so maybe I love this cookbook, as new as it is and as much as it first rankled. I may even put it on my wish list. You see, there were a lot of recipes I want to try but it will be due back at the library soon. So, go see if your library has it. Give it a look. See what you think. The only thing I would have liked is the exact recipe pre-tweaking. For instance, one mentions that the original had used the crock pot but they preferred the oven to save time. I would nearly ALWAYS prefer a crock pot than the oven.

The one recipe I made already, Funeral Potatoes with Ham, got mixed reactions last night. Boy child and youngest objected to the mushrooms. (They both liked it well enough though-even if it had that horrible food included) Girl child-food snob-objected to the “casserole-ness” of the recipe. She also wasn’t impressed. But as she reflected on it, she said “You know, I didn’t think I liked this much, but now I want more.” Denise feared the ham and the “That looks like au gratin. I don’t like au gratin.” She had two servings. As for me-yum.

My notes-the peeling and shredding of the potatoes after cooking them was highly unpopular as a step. I think in the future, I will use pre-shredded potatoes-it won’t change the baking time and save a big step. We also didn’t butter the cornflake crumbs. I served with a dill cole slaw.

Funeral Potatoes With Ham

4 lbs russet potatoes, scrubbed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 lb white mushrooms, sliced thin (We used pre-sliced)
salt (oops-left that out)
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
11/2 cups whole milk
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon pepper
11/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 pound ham steak, cut into 2-inch matchsticks
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups cornflakes crushed fine

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking dish. Set aside

2. (This is the step I would skip in the future) Bring the potatoes and 4 quarts of water to a simmer in a large pot and cook until just shy of tender (a paring knife should glide through the flesh with slight resistance), 10-15 minutes. Drain the potatoes and set aside. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them and then grate the flesh lengthwise on the large holes of a box grater. Return the grated potatoes to the pot.

3. While the potatoes cook, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmering. (a step we said “Huh?” to) Add the mushrooms and 3/4 teaspoon salt (yeah, that salt, forgot.) and cook until mushrooms have released their juices and are brown around the edges, 7-10 minutes. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

4. Whisk in the milk, thyme, and pepper, bring to simmer, and cook, stirring frequently until thickened slightly, about 1 minutes. Stir in the cheese and 6 tablespoons of butter and cook until melted, about 1 minute.

5. Off the heat, stir in the ham and sour cream. Pour the mixture over the potatoes and toss to combine. (I think this could be done in the 9 x 13 pan in the future and save a second saucy pot to clean) Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a bowl in microwave. (skipped this) Stir in the cornflakes, then sprinkle evenly over the top of potato mixture.

6. Place the baking dish on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet and bake until potatoes are bubbling and the top is golden brown, 35-45 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Tonight, we had non-traditional lasagna for dinner. Or “Meatloaf Lasagna” or Mommy’s new lasagna recipe. I had planned meatloaf for dinner. Boy was kitchen sous chef for tonight’s prep. He hates meatloaf. I was out of cheese nips, so I ended up crushing corn flakes. Then I realized we had no potatoes or instant potatoes and I couldn’t serve meatloaf without potatoes. Ok. Boy was happy! Maybe I should make polenta layered something. Boy grumbled he liked polenta even less than meatloaf. My eyes lit upon the lasagna noodles. Oooo some sort of lasagna. Out of Parmesan, out of mozzarella.

Non-Traditional Lasagna AKA Meatloaf Lasagna

1 box of lasagna noodles (uncooked)
1 lb ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 tsp Italian Seasoning
1 cup cornflake crumbs
1 tsp chopped garlic (or to taste)
1 can diced tomatoes (undrained)
2 cups small curd cottage cheese
2 cups shredded cheddar
2 eggs

Spray 9 x13 pan with nonstick spray. Brown ground beef. Mix with spaghetti sauce, Italian seasoning, cornflake crumbs, diced tomatoes, garlic. Beat eggs with fork. If you like a less lumpy lasagna, (I do) whiz cottage cheese in blender/food processor/handy chopper until smoother…or have ricotta on hand. Mix cheeses and eggs together. Splash about 1 cup meat mixture in bottom of lasagna pan. Add layer of noodles. Use half of cheese mixture. Then half of remaining meat mixture. Repeat with layer of noodles and rest of meat mixture and then cheese mixture. Sprinkle a bit more cheddar on top. Cover with foil and bake 1 hour at 350. Take foil off. 10 more minutes or until bubbly.

Note: Mama liked it. Teens liked it. Lasagna hating tween didn’t but she ate some. Denise said it was ok and certainly ate it. I liked it.

Thursday found me busy. I was fresh back from San Francisco. I had kid pick up-gear pick up, Thursday Night Dinner, homework. I had the usual craziness of my life. We hadn’t been to the store since getting home from San Francisco I knew it would be a crockpot night. I knew I would be cooking a roast. I had a chuck roast in the freezer. I thawed it. I realized…I was feeding a child with day old braces. Uh oh. My usual dry no sauce roast would not work. We needed a soft roast. Why did I leave that French Onion Soup in SF? Ok, scrounge. Boy child and woman…not fond at all of Cream of Mushroom on a roast. No wine in the house. (Why didn’t I bring that wine home from SF? Oh, yeah, airports) Crud. No time to think.

So I threw the two pound chuck roast in the crockpot. I opened a can of tomato soup. I poured that on top. I put 1 1/2 tsp of Lawry’s in the crock pot. I turned it on high for the next 6 hours. Dinner was ready. Everyone loved it. Even the boy who won’t eat new foods on school days. Even the woman who doesn’t do roast liked it. My 72 yo mother said “great dinner.” My kids all got up to get seconds, even the one with brand new braces. It is so tender! So good. It was a beautifully popular dinner on a Tuesday night.

Another winner and easy…soft and friendly to the chewing issues in the house but tasty to the whole crew.

With my mother living here, Denise has been opened to a whole new world of metaphors, colloquilisms, etc. Some unique to my mother. Yes, she googles them.

Last night, as I griped about eating peanut butter on a leftover hot dog bun the night before…I happened to mention that my mother would make “Guns and Bullets” with hot dogs. (a dish I actually mostly hated) She was sure this was something my mother made up as a title for…pork and beans served with hot dogs. (no buns) I protested that no, this is what my father called it…that it must be an Indiana thing or a military thing. Military wouldn’t have worked on her…daughter of one branch, ex-wife to another. Like S.O.S. I protested.

In any case, when I asked my mother about the name as a child, I remember her explaining that the hot dogs were to represent the guns, the beans the bullets.

She proceeded to Google it. No dice. The search terms you would think to use…not choice when looking for discussion of convenience meals of really cheap food. Believe me, I checked. S0, I told her I would blog it so there would be at least one reference to it on the internet.

Here you go:

Guns and Bullets

Enough hot dogs for your family. Open enough cans of pork and beans (or veggie baked beans if you are vegetarian). Heat hot dogs. Heat pork and beans. You can even heat the hot dogs IN the pork and beans if you want. Serve on plate, slice of buttered white bread on the side optional.

So…if anyone else’s family called them guns and bullets…please comment so I don’t really think my family is a freak show without a tent more than I already do.

I cheat when making meatballs for my family. In general we buy the vegetarian frozen meatballs (ideal!) or regular frozen meatballs. Some good, some bad.

I grew up making a lot of meatballs with Lipton California Onion Soup Mix. I don’t think they call it California anymore but they did in the 70s.

Basically, here was the deal. You grab a kid (because who wants to touch cold raw hamburger, right?). Make kid wash hands.

Take 2 lbs of fairly lean ground beef, 1 packet of Lipton Onion Soup mix, an egg, and about 1 cup of dry bread crumbs. Combine the ingredients. Roll into small balls…then BAKE them. Yes, bake them. Oh, you can microwave them too, but if you are doing a fair sized batch, just toss them on your cookie sheet…err Jelly Roll pan. (not a real cookie sheet with no edges to prevent a grease fire in the bottom of the oven) Bake until done-usually 15-20 minutes for a normal party sized meatball.

Then you can use the other packet of onion soup mix and make a lovely, yummy, sauce like I do…and shared in this recipe: Mama’s Meatballs.

It is quarter to seven pm as I write this post, I don’t know what is for dinner. At all. I thought we were having stuffed zucchini. But the zucchini I remembered as being in the fridge transformed into cucumbers. I don’t know how that happened. Really.

I am hungry. Laughing Cow + cranberry bread is not really enough to fuel me all day…even with a generous amount of coca cola and a caramel macchiatto.

But, instead of fixing a meal, I am here. Mostly because I can’t fathom what to make for dinner. I flipped through the cookbook on my desk. I seem to have few of the ingredients needed for any of the recipes and really, we all know what not having dinner ready by this hour means at this house: No recipe is going to save me from serving everyone what is known as “scrounging” at this house.

Yep. Every able bodied person old enough/young enough to run a microwave without assistance gets to figure out what they want for dinner and prepare it themselves. (This would be everyone in this house, save my mother who isn’t having an able-bodied day. I will fix something for her. (Oh, by the way, the limited posting of late has been related to the fact that my mother moved in to our home at the end of the year)

Going out seems too taxing and oh wait, taxes mean we don’t have the money anyway. Well, taxes and other things mean we have no money. Chicago is expensive. Moving to Chicago is expensive. That sort of thing.

I could use a recipe in this book though. We have the ingredients. Some in our family might even enjoy it…mostly the part of the family not here for dinner tonight. On the other hand, they may look at it suspiciously. They often do if they see some new food and evidence of a retro cookbook. They also are highly reluctant to eat anything with either “mock” or “casserole” in the name. This recipe contains both.

If you can sell your family on it though…nice budget dinner and you likely have all the ingredients.

Mock Lasagne Casserole

1 pound bulk pork sausage
1 15-oz can tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon each garlic salt, pepper, and dried basil leaves, crushed
1 7-oz package macaroni-cooked and drained
1 1/2 cups cream-style cottage cheese
6 oz shredded process American Cheese (1 1/2 cups) (oh good grief, use cheddar)

Brown the meat; drain off fat. Add tomato sauce, garlic salt, pepper, basil and 1/2 cup water. Cover; simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a 2-qt casserole, layer HALF each macaroni, cottage cheese, shredded cheeese, and meat sauce. Repeat. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Serves 6 to 8.

(Recipe from Good Food on a Budget, 1971)

The title of this recipe tickles me. I have no idea what man-style beef stew means at all. This is from a recipe card…looks like the recipe was cut out from a Hunt’s tomato sauce ad. Despite the name, it is a fairly reliable, decent beef stew for comfort food purposes whether you are a man or a woman.

Beef Stew, Man-Style

Something wonderful happens when you add Hunt’s Tomato Sauce to Stew! It brightens up the color, gives meat and vegetables a spicy goodness and makes a heartier, richer gravy. Try it in your own casseroles.

2 lbs lean stewing beef, cut in pieces
2 tsp salt
1/4 c flour
2 T pure vegetable oil, such as Wesson Oil
1 cup hot water
2 8-0z cans Hunt’s tomato sauce
1/4 t pepper
1/2 bay leaf
1/8 t thyme
6 carrots, scraped
6 onions, peeled
6 potatoes, peeled
1 cup peas, canned or frozen

Season meat with salt; roll in flour. Brown slowly in oil in heavy kettle or saucepan. Add hot water, Hunt’s tomato sauce, and seasonings. Cover tightly; simmer gently about 1 1/2 hours. Cut carrots, onions and potatoes into quarters. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add to stew. Cover and cook about 45 minutes longer. Add peas 10-15 minutes before serving. 6 servings.

This dish from a little “Illinois Cookin” cookbooklet (1994-but the recipes are very retro in nature) we picked up a couple of weekends ago will be our dinner tomorrow night. My Aunt Gale used to make a similar, if not the same dish. I loved it and always drove my mother crazy because I didn’t like her pork chops. We will see if it is a hit. It might turns the kids against the pork chops like my mother made because I make them now.

I will serve with a cucumber salad and braised greens.

Baked Pork Chop and Dressing

4-6 pork chops
1 can apple pie filling
Favorite sage dressing (err yeah, I am using Stove Top stuffing)

Brown pork chops. Put pie filling in bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish. Arrange pork chops on top of pie filling. Put dressing on top of chops. Bake at 325 for 1 hour (or until done) , uncovered.

Yum! A retro teriyaki appetizer. What more could you want?

1/2 c soy sauce
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 clove garlic
1 tsp cracked ginger root
1 1/2 lb. round steak

Combine soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger root. Cut steak into 1/2 inch cubes; add to soy sauce mixture. Let stand overnight. Remove meat; cook quickly in hibachi and serve on toothpicks.

Ok, a bit of beef stew is not so bad in the summer is it? Especially when trying to stretch the budget. This one is from my Great Grandmother’s files.

1 1/2 lbs cubed stew beef
Dredge in 2 TBS flour and pepper and salt (to taste)
Brown in 2 tbs. cooking oil
1 can beef broth or consomme
1/3 cup burgundy wine
1 cup celery cut fine
Cover and cook 1 hour
Add 1 small can mushrooms
6 onions
6 potatoes (medium)
8 carrots
Cook slowly until vegetables are tender.
Serves 4 to 6.