Feature Friday—Becky Povich

A big welcome to Becky Povich as my Feature Friday guest. Becky claims she doesn’t cook much, so I told her she could share anything she wanted. Becky sent me her favorite meatloaf recipe that she received from her niece, Renee. Becky says, “It’s the best meatloaf I've ever had!” I’m definitely going to have to give this recipe a shot.

We all know what meatloaf looks like, so Becky shared pictures of her homemade recipe book instead. How cute is that?

Here’s the front cover, the spine and the inside.

And now for the recipe.

If you have trouble reading the recipe card, here it is:

Grandma Berry’s Meat Loaf
2/3 cup bread crumbs
1 ½ pounds ground beef
2 eggs
¼ cup chopped onion
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
½ tsp. sage (didn’t use)

Sauce
3 T. brown sugar
4 T. ketchup
1 tsp. dry mustard

Soak 2/3 cup bread crumbs in a little milk. Add beef and remaining items. Put loaf in pan and cover with sauce.
Bake at 350 for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

A while ago, Becky had sent me some pictures of her ice cream cone cupcakes that she made when she was about 10 years old. The photo of the cupcakes aren’t the ones Becky made (they’re from the cookbook) although I’m sure Becky’s were just as cute, if not cuter. If you read my dessert blog, I had written about my ice cream cone cupcakes made from a silicon mold. I think Becky’s would be better because you put the batter in the cone and bake it. No worries about the cones falling over like mine did. As Becky said, “You can eat the entire thing—no mess, no dishes.” And look at that sweet Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls Becky received from her mother. I just love it.

Becky has a fun sense of humor, a generous heart and is working hard on her memoir. I’m glad to have met Becky through St. Louis Writers Guild, and that we’re now friends.

You should check out Becky’s blog as there’s something there for everyone, and she always has a cool quote to go with her blog post.

Thanks Becky! And I look forward to trying your meatloaf!

Scallops

It's Tasty Thursday.

Just so you all don’t think I always cook cheap or make comfort food or easy easy dishes, here’s something I’ll share. I prepared a French dinner for my husband for our anniversary. And since I wrote all about it and took pictures along the way, you can view it here if you’d like.

Otherwise you can just sauté the scallops in a little butter, squeeze a little lemon juice on them and you’re good to go. That’s not how I made them for this French dinner, but how I’ve made them before.

Bon Appetite!

Ingredients:
Scallops

Rating & Type: NE/F

Egg Salad

It’s Wednesday Casserole day. So why am I telling you about egg salad. Let’s use our imagination and pretend this is a cold casserole. Could be, couldn’t it? I mean, who wants to eat a casserole in this hot weather? Okay, I would. What won’t I eat is more the question.

Boil those eggs. Depending on how many you are going to feed will depend on the amount. It’s just my husband and me, but he LOVES egg salad. He tells the story of how he grew up on egg salad, that they were poor and ate egg salad all the time. I would think you’d hate egg salad if that’s all you ate growing up.

I usually boil at least 6 eggs. I found a trick peeling eggs. After you’ve boiled them, run cold water over them. Take the egg and roll it so that the shell cracks and keep it in the water for at least an hour. Then peel your eggs.

Chop them up. Add enough mayonnaise (I use Miracle Whip) to moisten the eggs, along with some pickle relish and salt and pepper, according to your taste.

Pile it on the bread and dig in. Something that would be good on it is a sliced home grown tomato. Mmmmm.

Ingredients:
Eggs
Mayonnaise
Pickle relish

Rating & Type: EE/V

Chicken Mushroom Spaghetti

For my Tempting Tuesday dish I wasn’t sure how tempting it was going to be, but it turned out pretty good.

I had some left over portabella mushrooms and wondered what I could do with them. Since we hadn’t had a pasta dish lately, I figured I could sauté the mushrooms and add them to the noodles and we’d be good to go. However, the only kind of noodles I had was spaghetti noodles.

I decided I needed to make more of a sauce and if I was going to do that, then I need to add some chicken to the mix.

I cooked up the chicken in some butter, added the mushrooms. I made a basic white sauce that is in a lot of recipes on this blog – shrimpy noodles or beef potato casserole or cod in cream sauce to name a few.

I added about ½ cup or so of parmesan cheese, then combined it with the chicken and mushrooms. After the noodles cooked, I added those and called it chicken mushroom spaghetti. I need to be more creative with my made up recipes, but hey you at least know what you’re getting, yes?

Ingredients:
Chicken
Mushrooms
Noodles

Rating & Type: EE/C

Fontina Cheese

It’s Monday’s Comfort Food. Nothing says comfort like cheese and bread, but this dish will knock your socks off.

It comes from the same cookbook where I got those Fleur de Sel caramels that will put you into a coma because you want to eat too many. I’m pretty sure you might want to pick up Barefoot Contessa, how easy is that? by Ina Garten.

My daughter Jessica had been wanting to learn a few cooking tips from her momma, but she’s always busy. However, she was home when I decided to make this dish and since she’s a vegetarian, it was right up her alley.

It’s so simple… easy, just like the book title says, that she could even do it, and she did, mostly. She bought the cheese, cut it up in cubes, put it in the pan. I drizzled the olive oil over it and sprinkled the rosemary, thyme, kosher salt and pepper. Jessica could have. Oh, I made the bread too. And I put the pan under the broiler until the cheese melted and started to brown. I also dropped the pan on the floor, screamed and Jessica came running thinking I hurt myself. Guess I should have let her do it all.

Just a tip, you might want to wear oven mitts on both of your hands in the event your one hand isn’t quite capable of holding the heavy pan and it starts to turn. If your other hand had a mitt on, it could just grab it. I at least had enough sense not to grab the just-out-of-the-oven pan with hot sizzling cheese with my bare hand. In slow motion the cheese slid out of the pan and plopped onto the floor. I grabbed a spatula and scooped it back into the pan. I had just swept the floor, so I didn’t think it would hurt.

Here’s the end result.

It would’ve looked prettier had I not dumped half of it onto the floor. It didn’t seem to have any affect on the taste as Jessica and I gobbled up as much as we could, which was about half. When my husband got home, he ate the other half. And yeah, I told him I had dropped it on the floor. And it was so good that I wouldn’t have cared if I had pulled out a cat hair from my mouth.

Ingredients:
Italian Fontina Cheese
Bread
Spices

Rating & Type: EE/V

Popcorn Sunday and Renee

Renee (pronounced REE-NEE), an elderly neighbor that lived near me when I was a single parent renting my best friend’s house, who lucky for me was moving and getting remarried as I was moving and divorcing. Renee seemed like she could have been a Southern lady. She had a bit of a drawl to her voice—okay maybe she was from the hills. I’m not sure. She also reminded me of Gladys—or whatever character that was in some sitcom who was always peeking out her window to see what was going on—maybe that was Bewitched. I always felt safe with Renee around—sometimes a little too safe. But Renee was nothing but good to me and my children. A true sweetheart.

Renee told me that every Sunday she took a break from cooking dinner. She and her husband would eat popcorn, sliced apples and cheese. I always thought that was an interesting combination.

So Renee, this one’s for you!
Pop some popcorn.
Slice up an apple.
Pull out your favorite cheese.
You can’t get much easier than that!

Ingredients:
Popcorn
Apples
Cheese

Rating & Type: EE/V

Sweet Potato Casserole

It's Saturday Side Dish.

I made this dish for Easter one year at my sister’s. I probably won’t ever make it again as the memory behind it shatters my heart. You can read the article I wrote that was published online by Hot Metal Bridge, Pittsburgh University’s literary journal called Sweet Potato Casserole (how clever, eh?)

There are many sweet potato casserole recipes out there and I can’t tell you which are the best. Someone will have to fill me in on that. But you can try the one by my cousin in the Bunco Cookbook. Head on over to Lynn, What’s For Dessert? (Hot Fudge Cake) for info on the Bunco Cookbook.

Ingredients:
Sweet potatoes

Rating & Type: Who knows