College Casserole

So here's an interesting meal. It's interesting because anybody not in college may want to close the page now. You will probably be disgusted/insulted by this meal appearing on a cooking blog. However, if you are in college, this is the best thing you will ever eat in your life.

You may be asking yourself: How can that be?

This is how:

frozen ground beef + tots + frozen corn + cheese = college casserole.

Simple ingredients that ended up being staples in my fridge last year combined to make the most ridiculously fattening cheesy delicious meal ever. Of course, when I started telling non-college students about it, all I got were nauseated looks! I expect that as soon as I graduate I will no longer like it. So I post it while I can!

This is basically a trashy shepherd's pie. I know, Paula Dean makes a pretty trashy one too involving potatoes, biscuits, beef, sausage, and an insane amount of butter, but I think I out-trashed her with the tots.

College Casserole

2 lb ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

2 cups chopped tomato

4 tsp Worcestershire sauce

4 tsp salt

3 cups frozen corn

1 32oz bag of frozen tots

1/2 cup flour

8 Tbsp melted butter

Shredded cheese

Combine the beef, onion, tomatoes, worcestershire, and salt. In a separate bowl combine the potatoes, flour, and butter. If this is an obscene amount of butter to you, that's ok. You don't have to use all of it, it just makes the crust crispy. Then spread the beef mixture in the bottom of a casserole dish, followed by the corn, then the potato mixture. Bake uncovered at 375F for 45 min. Sprinkle the cheese over the casserole and then bake for another 10-15 minutes.

It's super easy, and the guys in my apartment really really loved it. So come on, I dare you, make this college casserole.

XOXO

Natalie

Daring Cooks: Pierogi

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Daring Cooks again! YAY! I love doing these daring cooks challenges, because they are usually just that: a challenge. Super fun! And my family likes it too, cause they get to eat something new and exciting. This month's challenge was pierogi which was perfect because Becky had asked me to make those a couple weeks ago and I never got around to it. I made two kinds: Potato/cheese and Meat/cabbage. I liked both of them, however I felt like the potato cheese one went over better. Although if you don't want to eat just carbs and cheese for dinner, I recommend the meat one. There are a bazillion types of Pierogis, so feel free to experiment with it as well!

Pierogis

From the Daring Cooks

Dough
2 to 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 large egg
1 teaspoon salt
About 1 cup lukewarm water

Potatoes and Cheese

3 big potatoes, cooked & mashed (1 1/2 cup instant or leftover mashed potatoes is fine too)
1 cup cottage cheese, drained
1 onion, diced & sauteed in butter until clear
3 slices of streaky bacon, diced and fried till crispy (you can add more bacon if you like or omit that part completely if you’re vegetarian)
1 egg yolk (from medium egg)
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of pepper to taste

Meat and cabbage
200 g cooked meat (minced or cut very finely)
500 g white cabbage (chopped and simmered in a little bit of water, until soft)
1 onion (diced and fried)
1 whole medium egg1 tablespoon butterdry breadcrumbs (add as much to hold the filling together, about 2 tablespoons)
salt and pepper

To make the dough, combine the flour and salt together in a pie dish. Make a well in the center of the flour and crack the egg into it. Using your hands, or a fork if you don't want to touch the egg, combine the flour and egg together. Then slowly add in the water. The water amount is a guesstimation, you might need more or less. Form the dough into a ball, cover with a towel and let rest for half an hour. To make the Potato/cheese filling, just combine all of the ingredients together! (That's a great idea Daring Cooks had, putting the cooking instructions in the ingredient list! Me likey!) Same goes for the meat/cabbage filling.

When you've got the fillings put together, prepare an assembly line situation. If you can, recruit you're family to help. Roll the dough out thinly and cut out circles using a glass or cookie cutter. The size doesn't really matter, it's mostly just personal preference. Put a small amount of the filling in the center of the circle and close the sides up. Seal them with your fingers, but make sure they are sealed all the way, or else the filling will just fall right out. I went around the edges of the potato cheese ones witha fork so that I would be able to tell them apart. You can also use a pierogi form, but hey, where's the fun in that?

After all the pierogis are constructed it's time to boil them. Bring a deep saucepan or a wide pot of water to a boil and then drop the pierogis into the water in batches. I did about 5 pierogis per batch. When they rise to to the top, set a timer for 5 minutes. When the timer goes off, take them out of the water and let them dry off a bit. When you've boiled all the pierogis you can go ahead and eat them. OR you can go one step further and fry them. (DO IT!) Wait until the pierogis have cooled then fry them on both sides with butter. They should be lightly brown and crispy. Nowwwww you can eat them. Frying them makes them like 10 times better. Not even kidding.

XOXO

Natalie

Spaghetti and Meatballs

I love pasta. I love it. A lot. I know that pastas bad for you because it's all carbs or whatever, but I'm totally addicted. Gimme a big old bowl of pasta and tomato sauce and I'm a happy girl. Last weekend, after the barbeque, we had a lot of left over ground beef. Usually when that happens, I just make some meat sauce to throw on top of pasta, but I wanted to do something different this time. So I made spaghetti and meatballs! And they were sooooo good. I can safely say that this is MY recipe. Usually the things I post on this blog are slightly altered recipes I found online. But this time, I looked up cooking times and changed the recipe so much, it had absolutely nothing in common except ground beef and Parmesan. So here's my original meatball recipe!

1 lb ground beef

Plenty of Seasoning mix (Whatever your favorite is, I used pappy spice. Just add however much you want really.)

chopped onion (optional, I just think it would work really well with this)

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 egg

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1/2 cup oats

Mix together the beef, seasoning, onion (if you're using it), and worcestershire. Then blend in the egg, cheese, and oats. The oats are how I made this gluten free, normally you would use bread crumbs. If you don't want to use oats or don't have them, you can totally use bread crumbs. Roll into small meatballs and place them on a foil lined baking sheet. Bake in 400F oven for 20-25 minutes. Using lean beef is better here; I didn't use lean beef and there was some gross fat on the pan after I baked them. Luckily the fat stayed on the pan and the meatballs were delicious. While the meatballs are cooking, heat up some marinara sauce and season to taste. I usually use jarred sauce then add: Basil, Oregano, Bay leaves, and sometimes Thyme. Let the marinara sauce cook for a while so the flavors come together.

When the meatballs are done, add them to the sauce so they stay juicy and delicious. When the pasta's done, grab a big old helping and dig in!

XOXO

Natalie

Shloppy joes

Today I have another semi-recipe for you. That is, I was making it up as I go along and not measuring, so it's not really a recipe but a list of suggested ingredients. Other than the beef and onion, all the measurements are guesstimations. So here ya go everybody! Sloppy Joes!

I made 'em extra Shhhhhloppy for ya!!

(Anyone who can name that movie gets 10 bonus points)

1 lb ground beef

1/2 onion, chopped

1/2-3/4 cup ketcup

1-2 Tbsp seasoning blend (whatever you favorite one is)

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp Worchestershire sauce

1 tsp A-1

First cook the onions over med-high heat until softened then add the ground beef. When the beef is about halfway browned, add the seasoning blend and stir. When the meat is fully browned, add everything else. Cook for about 5 minutes, adding more ketchup and seasoning if needed.

We decided that a pound of beef wasn't enough for all of us, so we added a couple of cut up chicken-apple sausages as well. If you want to add other veggies I'm sure that would be awesome too, but we didn't have any other veggies.

Serve it up in a sandwich or a tortilla and you got sloppy joes!
XOXO
Natalie

Not a pie

So a couple nights ago I made shepherd's pie for dinner. Shepherd's pie is really really good, but I have one problem with it. The name makes no sense!

1. It is not a pie. it is ground beef with potatoes on top.

2. Shepherd? there is no sheep or lamp in this pie.

3. Shepherds would not have the time to make shepherd's pie. takes too long for someone who stands in a field all day.

So therefor, shepherd's pie makes no sense at all. But I like eating it, so that's ok.

2 large potatoes, peeled

1/2 cup milk

1/2 stick butter

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 lb ground beef

1 tsp dried oregano

1 1/2 tsp dried parsley

1 1/2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

4 tsp flour

1/2 cup minced onion

1/2 cup diced carrot

1/4 cup white wine (or beef stock if you don't want to use wine)

1/2 cup beef stock

1 cup green peas

Boil the potatoes until they are soft, about half an hour. Drain and mash them with the milk 1/2 tsp salt, and 2 Tbsp butter , then set them aside for later.

While the potatoes are boiling, melt the remaining butter in a big skillet. Add the garlic and beef and cook until the beef is very brown.

Season with the oregano, parsley, and Worcestershire. Sprinkle 2 tsp flour on top and stir to thoroughly coat the meat. Cook for another five minutes. Take the meat out of the pan and set aside. Dump the remaining grease out because that stuff is icky. Add the onion and carrot and cook for about five minutes, or until soft. Add 2 tsp flour, wine, and broth.

Stir and let cook for a few minutes to thicken. Then add the meat and peas.

Pour the entire mixture into a buttered baking dish and spread the potatoes on top. Be gentle, because the meat will try and escape if you spread the potatoes too roughly. Bake, uncovered, for 40 min at 350F. YUM!

XOXO

Natalie

Easter Brisket

Hope everyone had a happy easter! I know I had a crazy one! I basically spent the whole day cooking, but hey, I'm totally ok with that. I wanted to make a nice easter dinner for my roomies, so we had beef brisket, scalloped potatoes (and mashed potatoes cause Andy begged me to make them), and carrot cake. Well those are the things I made anyway, we also had dinner rolls but I just got those from a can. *shame* I'll be posting all those recipes this week, but I thought I'd start off with the main course: beef brisket. This is pioneer woman's recipe for brisket and it is the most ridiculously easy thing I could imagine. So here's how you do it!

1 5-8 lb brisket, with the fat mostly trimmed

1 22 oz bottle of ketchup

1 packet of onion soup mix

So this isn't something you can just do in a day. I almost didn't get to make this cause I forgot about marinating it. Luckily I happened to look at the recipe the night before! This needs to marinate for at least 12 hours, so you can do it right before you go to bed and then put it in the oven in the morning. So first you need to trim the brisket. Ours was trimmed on one side but the other

side was ridiculously fatty. So I got Dan to help me cut it all off. At one point he just started tearing chunks off!

While you get someone else to do that for you, you can make the marinade. Just dump that bottle of ketchup into a bowl, and mix in the onion soup mix. Add about a cup of water to thin it out a bit and stir it all up. Once the meat is trimmed, but it in a 9X13 baking dish and pour the marinade on top. Tightly cover it with foil and put it in the fridge.

When you want to actually start making it, just preheat the oven to 275F and, once it's hot, put the covered brisket in. That easy! It should cook for 6-8 hours depending on how big it is. Mine cooked for 7, but it could have easily gone another hour. After 3 hours, take it out of the oven and flip it over.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL! there is a lot of liquid in the pan and it hasn't all cooked down yet. While trying to put it back in the oven I sloshed some all over my leg. Luckily I had the good sense to put the brisket down instead of throwing it, and then running into the shower. So my leg didn't burn that bad at all, but seriously! It hurt! So don't make the same mistake I did! Bt on the plus side, it also got me the nickname easter burney. which I thought was pretty awesome.

Anyway, after another three hours check on it to see if it's done. Just take two forks and try and pull the meat apart, if it resists at all, then it's not done. Put it back for another hour. After 7 hours, the meat was falling apart when I tested it, which is awesome. Also, after that long in the oven, all the liquid will be soaked up and the pan will look like a bomb went off. Don't worry about it. Cause dinner will be tasty. Transfer the meat to a cutting board and cut it into strips against the grain. Then serve it up! omnomnom!

XOXO

Natalie

secret family recipes? AWESOME

So guess who's on spring break?! MEEEEE! I am so glad that winter quarter is over and I'm excited to get to spring quarter. But here's a scary thought: I'm basically half way through college. ...what the hell? How did that happen? It feels like no time has gone by at all! AH!

whew. sorry.

Anyway, I have an awesome recipe for you today. This is one of my favorite things in the world, and it's super easy, and it's healthy! (well reasonably healthy, cause it doesn't have any butter in it.)

I got this recipe from my stepmom, Becky. When I graduated highschool, she gave me a recipe book with three recipes already filled in. One of them was tuna pasta (which I will share with you all later), one was a cure for nausea (she thought it might come in handy in college), and that last one was CHILI! The best part is, this chili has a secret ingredient, but Becky has kindly agreed to let me post it here. So you are now in the circle of trust. welcome.

1-2 lbs ground beef

1 onion, chopped

3-4 carrots, chopped

1 large can of crushed tomatoes

1 med can tomato sauce

1/4 cup brown sugar (this is the secret one!)

1-2 cloves of garlic minced

1 can black beans, drained

1 bag of frozen corn

1 Tbsp chili powder

1 Tbsp oregano

1 tsp basil

salt to taste

So first chop up the onions and carrots. Then add a tiny bit of oil to the pot and heat it up on medium heat. When it's hot, add the onions and carrots and let them cook until soft.

Now the thing about these carrots is that you can do them anyway you want. Becky usually grates them, but I like to chop them into rounds. So do with the carrots as you please! As the onions and carrots cook, stir them occasionally so that they don't burn. When the onions are soft, add the ground beef. Let the ground beef get really brown, stirring it every now and then.

Once the meat is browned, add everything else! That's right, just throw it all in there! (heehee, the brown sugar looks like pacman)

Stir it up really, really well and let it come to a simmer. Once it comes to a simmer, put the lid on it and turn the heat down to low. I mean it when I say turn it down to low. If you don't the bottom will get all burned and sad. Unfortunately, my crappy stove doesn't really have a low setting. It has medium and what you think is low. but then you come back and the room smells like gas and the flame is out. Sooooo I got some burned chili yesterday. But that's ok! Cause a little burned chili is way better than no chili!

Let the chili cook on LOW for at least an hour, but the longer you cook it the better it tastes! But if you do let it cook for a long time, you might want to go back and add more tomato sauce later because it can dry out a bit. Just check on it every now and then and see if it needs it.

Serve it up with some grated cheese and plenty of chips!

XOXO

Natalie

Stupid school makes me eat beans and frags

UGH school is not fun sometimes. Yesterday I had a freak out moment because I don't know if I will be able to graduate in four years because of the UC budget system. Basically, I came to UCSC to get a film degree, but it's suddenly become really popular and now the classes are impacted beyond belief. Because I'm a second year and I don't have priority enrollment, I can't get into any of the classes I need. I decided that film was impossible to do in four years, so I switched to a history major with a film minor. But now, that seems to be impossible as well. I calculated how many classes I need to take and I have to take 18 classes within a space of 21 classes. So basically, I have to get into every class I need perfectly and never get blocked out of classes. That doesn't work at all because, with the budget problem, the UCs have cut thousands of seats from classes and now the classes are significantly smaller--but I'm still paying more. THIS SYSTEM SUCKS. Lately there have been strikes all over California over the education cuts, but I admit that I didn't go to any of them. The last few have turned out not so great in that some (stupid) people have veered off from the strike lines and occupied buildings, vandalized private property etc. Which seems like it completely defeats the purpose of a peaceful strike. So basically, I'm angry and the government/UC system need to get their act together. Sorry for the rant, but that was my entire day yesterday, and I thought you all should know.

Last week, you all said that I should make more breakfast foods, so this week, the poll is all about breakfast foods! So vote for your favs!

Also! My cousin Erin just started a blog and you should all go check it out! She has a lot of cool stuff to say, so go read it!

http://erinbutterfield.blogspot.com/

I have a funny food post for you today. Some of you who are on facebook may have seen my status a couple days ago that said: "The best meals are the ones where you and your roommates realize your hungry at 1am and the only things you have are ground beef, baked beans, hotdogs, and onions. OMNOM"

And so that's exactly what happened. We were hungry and had no groceries. And that is how Beans and Frags was invented. Beans and Frags is a play off of beans and franks, but frags are not franks at all. frag is another word for grenade in gamer-speak. (we mostly talk in gamer-speak here, especially the boys)

Now, if you aren't in college, you will probably never want to eat this ever. I think this is one of those things that college kids think is awesome and delicious (and cheap) but anyone else in their right mind would rather just order a pizza.

Andy had recently bought some onions and he wanted to try making an onion frag. So he put the entire onion in the oven on a baking sheet and cranked up the oven. He was hoping to get a sweet delicious onion and, surprisingly, he did!

While the onion was cooking, we cooked up some ground beef. We were hunting around for other things to add, when Dan came across a can of baked beans leftover from last weekend. And I came across some hot dogs in the fridge. Then I shouted: "CHILI DOG! put the baked beans with the ground beef, you get chili. Put it on a hot dog, wrap it in a tortilla and you're good!" BUT by then, andy had taken the onion out and was peeling layers off. He filled one layer with ground beef and started making yummy noises. And then I did that too, but I added some baked beans on top. After we had all tried the baked beans/ground beef combo, we just decided to dump the beans in with the ground beef and make chili. Then we filled the onion layers with the chili and it was soooooo good.

Dan came up with the name: Beans and Frags

This is Andy. He's a weirdo.

And now this is our go-to meal for when we run out of groceries.

Dan also made a chili dog, jsut for funsies.

The other thing we did, was use the chili as dip for nacho chips and jalapeno chips. OMNOMNOM indeed!

XOXO

Natalie

OMNOMNOM nachos

Last night I didn't make my own dinner because I had had a terrible day and I just wasn't up to it. (It's a long story, but basically the managers at the dining hall reveled to me that they had been feeding me things I am allergic to since I started going to school here. And fed me shellfish today, even though they know I'm allergic to it) But one thing that always makes me feel better is nachos. So without further ado, I would like to introduce you to...

TACOS MORENO!

Tacos is amazing and delicious. It's the restaurant in my dorm area and last year I lived right next to it. It was really hard to not eat there everyday, because whenever I walked by, my mouth would water and I would suddenly be craving a quesedilla. But this year I live like two minutes away so it's a lot easier to resist. I try to pace myself to only eating there once a week. We have these things called flexi dollars. Our ID card has a strip on it, so we can use it like a debit card and every quarter we get $50 put on it. Tacos accepts flexis so I spend alllll of them there. Usually I get nachos because they are amaaaaaaazing. They come with cheese, beans, guac, sour cream, jalapenos, and your choice of meat. I usually get them with out meat and jalapenos, that way I get more cheesy goodness. Look at these things! OMNOMNOMNOM!

And can anyone tell me if this is a guy or a girl? It is a continual debate among me and my friends and we still haven't reached a conclusion.

Here's andy enjoying a quesedilla

Here's dan who wasn't very hungry, but he got a little quesedilla anyway.

Anyway, more food tomorrow hopefully!

And don't forget to vote for this weekend's winner!

XOXO

Natalie

Lost tacos

Well Lost was disappointing. It just raised so many more questions! We (me, dominick, and andy) watched the summary episode and the premiere (We missed the second episode, and so I had to go back and watch it late) and thought up some theories as we were watching. SPOILER ALERT! I talk about the newest episodes. If you haven't seen them, don't read this part.

1. The String Theory: Metaphysics and what not. Parallel universes are just messing everybody up! The explosion caused two different universes to be created, one where they were sent to the old hatch, and one where the plane crash never happened.

2. The Writes are Messing With Us: Maybe the scenes on the plane are what will end up happening at the end of the season and they just haven't fixed it yet. But in my mind, this counts as a dream, because it's basically saying that the last five seasons we watched just didn't happen. And that is BS my friends!

3. The Garden of Eden: This is one that I came up with during season one, but had kind of forgotten about until now. I think that the island is the garden of eden, or maybe a rebuilt garden of eden. Hence why there are others who were there before dharma (they're angels) and Richard, who never ages, is the head angel. Also during the summary episode, they referred to Jacob as a spiritual guide, which in my mind also implies angel like figure. ALSO the bad john is the smoke monster (I always referred to the smoke monster as the hand of God because it seemed to just fix stuff) so maybe he's like a mean messenger for the spirits?

Buttttt, in the end of the second episode he tells Richard, "Nice to see you out of your chains." So is Richard bad? Or was a prisoner of some kind?

Dominick thinks that the last one can't be true, because there's no fiery sword. I think it'd be really cool if they made it a weird spiritual thing. And I think that parallel universes is kind of selling out a bit. Like I said, that's basically a dream. Nonsense.

Anyway! For dinner last night I made tacos. Well, I'm calling them "Pantry Tacos" because I just used what we had. Here's how to make them!

Ahhhhh College

Last night for dinner....well...when I say dinner I mean the general eating time between 7 and midnight. We (being me and my roomies) went grocery shopping last night and since we don't have a car, we have this neat system that is basically rent-a-car. It's called zipcar, and we can reserve a car for a couple hours and go grocery shopping. Trust me. You do not want to do any major shopping when you need to take two buses and walk up and down an enormous hill, even when you do have five people to help carry.

Anyway! We went shopping and since we had the car, we figured we might as well stop and get a nice healthy dinner all together. NOT. Sorry, I totally lied there. We went to mcdonalds. Then we went home and ate a very....confusing...dinner. I had a box of safeway veggie sushi, one order of medium mcdonalds fries, a sierra mist, and a gogurt. I would argue that my meal was at least a little healthy. VEGGIE sushi. goGURT. (like yogurt, but better?)

Don't hate. It was good.

But then it got even more intense! We also had some steak in the freezer and it was decided that we couldn't let that poor steak go to waste. So the boys fried up some of those as well.

Here's Andy ripping apart the frozen steaks.

They seasoned their steaks with garlic powder, onion powder, pappy spice, and cinnamon. (I was a bit skeptical about the cinnamon, but it was pretty good!)

This is Andy explaining how to cook steak. What he's motioning to is the level of tasty meat or flavor or something like that.

While they were cooking I made Dan pose for the camera

Look at Andy enjoying that steak!

And I made mashed potatoes and gravy to go along with it.

That's how I know I'm a housewife. My boyfriend asks for mashed potatoes and gravy and I make it.

Overall....we ate a friggen lot. And it was amazing. Also it put Dan and Andy in "fat-ass-video-game-mode" and they played brawl for a good long time after that.

That was my story and now I have an announcement!

The vote is over! And the winner is....(drum roll please)

....

Cinnamon Roll Muffins!

I am making those today and I will make a post for them within the next two days or so. So come on back and check it out!

XOXO

Natalie

Rice-plosion!

So today I would like to introduce you to something magical. "rice-plosion." That's right people it sounds ridiculous and it is. It is essentially whatever is in my fridge mixed with rice...please interpret that in the most delicious sounding way possible. Anyway! Rice-plosion is basically improvised fried rice. You can thank Dan and Andy for the name. They came up with it during one of their wild culinary adventures. Rice-plosion is fantastic because even though it's different every time, it's simple and you can literally use whatever you have.

(Click after the picture to read the rest!)

Hello World! Here's some lasagna!

Hello world! My name is Natalie and I'm a student at UCSC studying....well, I don't know what yet. But I'll figure it out soon!
I love cooking and am a self proclaimed (unmarried) housewife. By that I mean, I love messing around in the kitchen and feeding my friends and family tasty meals. I tend to cook delicious comfort food, which may not always be the healthiest, but, hey! At least you'll be happy eating it!
I am also a celiac, so I cook gluten free and am always working towards making non gluten free dishes into yummy gluten free dishes.
Seeing as this is my first post, and this is in fact a food blog, I think that I should give you all a recipe! Here is a recipe for lasagna that I made for a dinner party with my friends last week. I found it on allrecipes.com and it's super easy, especially for lasagna, and I think you will all like it a lot. Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list, just gooooo with it. I doubled this recipe (we are in fact hungry college students) and I served it with garlic bread and my friends brought salad. Made for a great dinner and a fun night! (Click to read more!)