Something Simple: Pig Blankets & Purse Pockets

Here for you are two recipes that have 3 ingredients apiece. So easy, it's kind of scary. These are recipes my mom probably pulled off biscuit cans over the years. When she made them, my sisters and I were always allowed to help.

I'll allow that the names are kind of silly. But Caitlin and I called them Purse Pockets when we were little, and the name stuck. And "Pig Blankets" was so chosen because I'm a bit too lazy to say (or type more than once) "Pigs in a Blanket." Too many syllables.

These recipes are great for a meal, or made in miniature for appetizers. They're always a hit here because of all the cheese. Plus, Purse Pockets make a great breakfast item too!

Happy Wednesday cooking!

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Pig Blankets & Purse Pockets

Pig Blankets

1 can Pillsbury crescent rolls

4 oz. block cheese (I like Colby Jack)

8 precooked hot dogs

Direction

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Slice the hot dogs lengthwise to make a slit that stops a half inch from either end, and doesn't cut all the way through the dog.

3. Slice the cheese into strips that will fit in the hot dog slit.

4. Place the cheese slices into the slit in the hot dogs.

5. Unroll your crescent rolls and stretch them slightly.

6. Place the stuffed hot dog on the wide end of the crescent roll, about an inch from the edge. Pull the edge up over the cheese, then roll the rest of the crescent over the hot dog. Repeat for all dogs.

7. Place the rolled dogs cheese-side up on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown.

8. Serve and enjoy. They're great with mustard!

Purse Pockets

1 can Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits

1 cup shredded cheese

1/2 cup sliced deli meat (I usually go with ham)

Direction

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Separate the biscuits and stretch them until they are almost twice their original size and about a quarter inch thick.

3. Place about a tablespoon of cheese and a half tablespoon of deli meat in the center of the stretched biscuit.

4. Fold the biscuit in half so that the edges meet. Seal the biscuits closed with a fork.

5. Place on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with extra cheese. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the biscuits are golden brown.

6. Enjoy!

Stuffed hot dog ready for rolling.

The cheese is covered and now the roll can be rolled!

Waiting for the oven.

Cheesy, flakey Pig Blankets.

Purse Pocket assembly line.

Folded and sealed with a fork.

Ready for baking.

Happy cooking!

Something New: Baked Steak

Day Two of the Five Days of Food. Actually, now that I think of it, all this talk of food is the perfect preface for next week: Thanksgiving! I'm so excited to go home and get a full 5 days with my family. I haven't seen them in almost 6 months, and I'm so happy to break that streak.

Plus, I can't wait for turkey with cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce is the best part of Thanksgiving (food), hands down.

But this isn't about cranberry sauce, this is about another fantastic dish. One with gravy and tender beef and minimal effort. The only downside is that your house will smell like deliciousness for five hours and you'll have to eat half a pound of goldfish crackers to stave off the drooling hunger until your steak is done.

Just saying. Happy cooking!

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Baked Steak

Ingredients

2 lbs round steak

1 can cream of chicken soup (10 oz)

1 can cream of mushroom soup (10 oz)

1 packet Lipton Onion Soup Mix

⅓ cup water

**You will also need aluminum foil**

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.

2. Cut the steak into serving size pieces and place in a 9x13 pan.

3. Mix together other ingredients and pour over top of the steak to cover.

4. Cover the pan with aluminum foil. Bake in the oven for 5 hours.

5. Serve and enjoy.

Serving size steak.

Covering the steak with the gravy ingredients.

Don't forget this step!!

Not photogenic, but definitely tastygenic. Happy cooking!

Something Old: Greek Turkey Burgers

We have made these many times before. They are delicious and easy every time, whether it's a weekday evening or a dinner party. In fact, Chase and I once made these for a dinner party because the supplementary ingredients you mix in essentially double the number of burgers you get out of one pound of ground meat. That and we wanted to share this recipe with all of our friends.

Happy Monday cooking!

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Greek Turkey Burgers February 8, 2010

Oh my god. These are the BEST BURGERS in the world!

Chase and I have made these before, but that was before I was writing Culinary Adventures. Hearty burgers sounded like just the thing for this Sunday night dinner, and indeed they were.

These burgers are topped with a tzatziki, a delicious Greek yogurt dip. It is the icing on the cake for these burgers. (Probably shouldn’t mix food metaphors).

For those of you who like your burgers made by cows, I’ve tried these to great success with ground beef instead of turkey. Since beef is a stronger flavor, just add a dash more oregano and parsley!

Anyway, two recipes below. First the tzatziki, then the burgers themselves!

Tzatziki

¼ cup cucumber, peeled and finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 cup plain Greek yogurt

2 tsp fresh dill, chopped

2 tsp fresh lemon juice (more to taste)

Salt and pepper to taste

Direction

1. Mix all ingredients together. Keep refrigerated until serving.

Turkey Burgers

1 pound ground turkey

½ cup chopped onion

1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 Tbsp chopped fresh dill

½ cup finely chopped fresh spinach

3 Tbsp crumbled Feta cheese

½ tsp dried oregano

½ tsp dried parsley

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

Direction

1. In a bowl, mix all ingredients together by hand. Then form into about 5-6 patties.

2. Coat a large skillet with cooking spray and turn to medium to medium-high heat.

3. Place patties in the skillet about 1 inch apart (you may have to cook in more than one round). Let cook for a few minutes on the first side before flipping.

4. Flip the burger to brown the other side. Continue to flip occasionally until the burgers are cooked through (with turkey, there's nothing safe but well done).

5. Remove the finished burgers from the skillet and onto buns. Top with your favorite burger toppings, including the tzatziki.

6. Enjoy!

Burger ingredients.

Tzatziki waiting so patiently to be atop burgers.

Browning away in the skillet.

Happy cooking!

Something Crazy: A Week of Recipes

Hello food friends!

Life being what it is, I have been away from the blog and internet communication in general, for awhile now. I've been filling my life with applications, so food has fallen to the wayside. Chase and I have hardly cooked until this last week. Then in a flurry of cooking, we cooked a lot.

And I have a lot more energy (finally!) for things that I've been leaving by the wayside. So I've decided that there should be a flurry of posts too. Lucky you!

Here's the plan for the week:

Mon: Greek Turkey Burgers

Tues: Baked Steak

Wed: Piggy Blankets & Purse Pockets

Thur: Dessert TBA

Fri: Corn Casserole

Lots of happy cooking!

Something Old: Sloppy Joes

Hello again!

This has been a pretty great weekend. Connor flew in to apartment hunt (congrats on the new job!), and it was strange but wonderful to see someone from Oklahoma again. We played plenty of cards and ate plenty of food, although we ate out instead of cooking (I'm slacking!)

And it's a shame I was slacking. I have plenty of recipes in the arsenal that are short and simple, and no less delicious. This week will be for those recipes. Today's recipe is a one-pan gig, and the two recipes that will go up together on Thursday have all of 3 ingredients apiece. Simple indeed.

Happy cooking!

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Sloppy Joes January 3, 2010

This is a recipe I grew up with. It was a staple in my mom’s dinner repertoire, and therefore one of my favorite comfort foods. Excepting the French Dip, I know of no simpler warm sandwich.

Feel free to play with the amounts of ketchup and mustard, according to your tastes. Mine’s usually ketchup heavy; it’s my favorite condiment! And Chase loves adding cheese to his sandwich. Moral of the story, this recipe is easy to make, easy to modify, and tasty to boot.

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef or turkey

1 can chicken gumbo soup

2-3 Tbsp ketchup

2-3 Tbsp yellow mustard

Shredded cheese (optional)

Hamburger buns or rolls

Directions

1. In a large skillet, brown the meat.

2. Add the soup, ketchup and mustard to the skillet and stir.

3. Cook over medium heat until thickened (5-8 minutes).

4. Serve on buns or rolls, with or without cheese sprinkled on top.

Recipe my mom wrote for me to take to college.

All the ingredients in the pan, waiting for a good stir.

Happy cooking!

Something New: Chase & Sarah's Meatloaf

While shopping for meatloaf ingredients a couple weekends ago, we fell victim to one of the classic blunders: grocery shopping while hungry. Almost as dangerous as involvement in Asian land wars, but I'm glad we did it. Our fridge was stuffed, and we have many ideas of things to cook in the next week or two. Plus we have kettle corn again.

Anyway, this meatloaf is entirely our own recipe. The only thing we really consulted the internet for was oven temp and cook time. And I suppose you could say we consulted our memories to recall what our mom's used to put in their loafs, but I don't have a hyperlink for memories.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy our meatloaf as much as we did! We made two loafs and froze one, but if you want you can half the recipe to just make one loaf. Or double and make four to feed a group!

Enough exclamations about meatloaf. On to the recipe.

Happy cooking!

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Dorn-Bollig Meatloaf

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef

1 lb ground pork

1 ½ cups plain breadcrumbs

1 packet dry onion soup mix

1 can plain tomato sauce (8 oz)

2 eggs, beaten

¼ cup ketchup

1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce

½ tsp oregano

¼ tsp pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix all ingredients by hand in a large mixing bowl.

3. Form into two loafs, and place on a sprayed cookie sheet or into two sprayed loaf pans

4. Bake for 1 hour, until cooked through. Remove from oven and allow to set for 10-15 minutes before slicing.

5. Serve with lots of ketchup and enjoy.

Chase's hands mixing the ingredients.

Before making a loaf, Chase made a Stegosaurus.

Two loafs, ready for the oven.

Resting loaf.

Perfect for all ketchup fans. Happy cooking!

Something Old: Corn & Potato Chowder

Last night Chase and I hosted a dinner party for our friends (do people host dinner parties for strangers? Or enemies?). Anyway, it was a great success and great fun. You know the dinner part of the party went well when you get many requests for the night's recipe.

And this recipe was particularly well suited for last night because it's getting cool and autumny, and because it was very easy to turn into a vegetarian dish.

Plus, who doesn't love half a pound of cheddar cheese in a dish?

The last time I remember cooking this was last summer in Norman, when a couple friends joined me for a cool-weather dinner in summer. As you'll see from the original post, a cheap AC system made summers an interesting climate experience.

Happy fall cooking!

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Corn & Potato Chowder August 14, 2009

Soup in the summer? Yep.

It turns out our apartment doesn't regulate temperature very well. If I want the bedroom down to even 80 so I don't melt in the night, the living room ends up 60 degrees. Brrrr! So to accompany the sweaters and socks I've been wearing this summer, I decided to make a nice soup.

This is a recipe I've made before, and have had so long I don't quite remember where it came from. But it's delicious nonetheless.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups peeled and chopped potatoes (about 3 medium potatoes)

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup shredded carrots

2 cans of corn, drained

3 cups shredded cheddar cheese

3 cups milk

1 cup water

3 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp veggie oil

1 tsp pepper

2 chicken bouillon cubes (sub ½ tsp salt for vegetarian option)

½ lb bacon, cooked and crumbled (or bacon substitute)

Directions

1. Place a large pot on the stove over medium heat. Add oil to bottom of pan and brown onions until translucent (4-5 minutes).

2. Add water, potatoes, carrots and bouillon/salt. Bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cover. Cook for 15-20 minutes, until potatoes are tender. (This is a good time to work on cooking the bacon.)

3. Add milk, corn, and pepper. Return to simmer, stirring occasionally.

4. Meanwhile, mix cheese and flour by hand in a separate mixing bowl. Add to soup and stir over low-medium heat until cheese melts.

5. Serve sprinkled with crumbled bacon.

Last summer's co-chefs, Chase and Osi, busy chopping potatoes.

Potatoes, carrots, water and bouillon added to the browned onions

and cooking gently.

Milk, corn and pepper in.

Cheese added and melted, ready for serving!

Happy cooking!