Cooking 101 #5/52 Meat Loaf

Tonight was meat loaf night.  Homemade meat loaf (2 lbs ground beef, 1 cup diced onions, 1/4 cup ketchup, 1/8 cup mustard, 2 cups bread crumbs, 1 clove roasted garlic, 1 egg, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp pepper, 2 tsp parsley) along with garlic/Parmesan mashed potatoes and corn.  Another success, I can tell because my father was here and actually had seconds.  My father eats little, even less if he doesn't like the food.  

Dicing onions was yet again part of the prep, I'm pretty sure I have that mastered at this point.  Peeling potatoes is another item I'm getting a bit of practice with.  That still needs work, too much potato getting wasted with the peels.  Still, I definitely took less this time than last and I'm sure it will get better next time.  Still trying to master the basics.... proper knife handling.  Getting there.  

Cooking 101 #4/52 Lasagne

LASAGNA!  I love allrecipes.com.  So far each meal I've tried has been a hit.  This week's recipe was lasagna. Nothing fancy, but it was delicious!  I'm getting to be a pro at dicing onions.  One of the basics of cooking down.  Fresh grated Parmesan definitely worth that tiny bit of extra effort.  I might cut back on the hamburger a bit next time and increase the liquid component slightly, maybe a small can of tomato sauce.  Tons of food left over, lunches for work over the next week are set!

Cooking 101 #3/52 Pizza Rolls

Meal #3 wasn't really a meal.  This week was a bit busy.  There were no nights that were good for a family dinner.  So the meal for the family turned into snacks for a neighborhood party.  I'd seen a recipe for crescent rolls stuffed with peppers and cheeses.  The end result looked like pizza rolls.  I figured I could modify that to make pizza rolls, so I did.

The picture is actually taken after the party....  dummy forgot to take one when they came out of the oven.  Sorry!  They did look a bit more presentable when they were fresh!

For each pack of crescent rolls, I mixed up 4 oz of pizza sauce, 1/4 cup of mozzarella, and enough cubed pepperoni to suit your tastes.  Mix these ingredients in a bowl.  Unroll the crescent rolls, separate into four rectangles and pinch closed the angled perforations.  Put a thin layer of the sauce mixture on about one half of each dough rectangle (along a long edge).  Roll the dough up, sealing the sauce inside, and slice into three sections.  Bake on a cookie sheet (spray with cooking spray) for about 15 minutes (the dough should be golden-brown).  Let cool for a few minutes and serve!

Cooking 101 #2/52 Chicken Pot Pie

    The second meal of my Cooking 101 project was a Chicken Pot Pie.  Crusts were again store bought refrigerated crusts from Pillsbury, but they are honestly excellent crusts.  Maybe I'll eventually get ambitious enough to try to make some from scratch, but not quite yet.  I made the recipe as listed except I used a frozen pack of mixed veggies rather than the individual frozen veggies and fresh carrots.  This meal definitely topped the first one for flavor.  Definitely recommended.

Cooking 101 #1/52 Broccol/Ham/Swiss Quiche

I don't cook.  I heat.  I reheat.  I may occasionally grill.  The most adventurous I normally get in the kitchen is scrambled eggs.  This project is meant to change that.  One meal a week, no repeats, not already prepared meals.  Maybe not entirely from scratch, but at least some assembly required.  By the end of the year I hope to be much more confident in the kitchen.  Who knows, could happen, right?

Broccoli/Ham/Swiss Quiche

The first item I decided to make was a broccoli/ham/swiss quiche.  I admit to cheating on the crust, that was prepackaged, but other than that this was assembled by me.  Fresh broccoli, steamed a bit in advance so it wouldn't be completely crisp, a couple of slices off of a baked ham, cut into cubes, and some shredded swiss cheese layered into the shell.  Beat some eggs, milk, salt, pepper, mustard powder together and pour it over the layers.  Forty five minutes in the oven and above was the result.  Golden brown with just a slight crispiness to the top.  Fluffy and moist inside.  A nice balance of flavors although I would definitely cut back slightly on the ham and/or increase the amount of broccoli.  Overall a very successful first night for my Cooking 101 project.

Interested in trying this? Here's the recipe.