To Die For Meatball Sandwiches

Inspired by Suffocation Meatball Sandwiches over at Palatable Pastime; these awesome Meatball Sandwiches were a big hit with my guys. The melted Provolone Cheese, warm bread and a little kiss of garlic butter were wonderful! A Spicy Marinara Sauce added just the right amount of kick. Using frozen meatballs made short work of the preparation process.

I’ve never been a fan of meatball sandwiches. All it took was one bite and now I’m a convert – yeah, gonna have these again – and soon!

To Die For Meatball Sandwiches
4 Sub Sandwich Rolls
16 Frozen Italian Meatballs
1/2 Jar Spicy Marinara Sauce
8 slices provolone cheese
1/2 Cup Melted Butter
1 Teaspoon Garlic Powder or to taste
Pepprocini Peppers for garnish

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Place meatballs in a sauce pan and cover with Marinara Sauce. Heat over medium heat, about 20 minutes.

Melt butter in a small skillet and season with garlic powder

Slice bread lengthwise and paint the inside of the rolls with melted garlic butter, followed by warm Marinara Sauce.

Fold Provolone cheese in half, place 2 folded slices on the bottom of each roll.

Warm rolls in the oven until cheese melts, about 5-8 minutes. Remove from oven.

Place 4 meatballs smothered in Marinara Sauce over melted cheese. Close rolls.

Slice into manageable pieces (down middle between two meatballs works best) and serve with Pepperocini peppers as desired.

Chorizo and Green Chili Stuffed Chicken Breast

street-tacos-4A while back, I cooked up some Chorizo-Lime Street Tacos served with plenty of Refried Beans and Spanish Rice. We had a lot of filling left over, enough for another meal of tacos. The idea of tacos twice in the same week just didn’t appeal to me. I had planned to try a new recipe for Green Chili stuffed Chicken Breast. And that’s when the light came on! Why not add the leftover Chorizo? It’s been a while since I went winging it in the kitchen. When Kiddo came into the kitchen, he looked around and asked where the recipe was so he could help. I smiled, and said just follow my lead – we aren’t using a recipe tonight. How complicated can it be? Butterfly the chicken, brown, season and fill. Pop the breasts into the oven and bake.

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Whispers of France and Marseille Omelette

Recently Facebook asked if I wanted to share a memory from a few years ago. Surprise! The memory was a wonderful Omelette recipe. Before my blogging days, I shared recipes with family on my personal Facebook Page. Oh my stars – imagine my delight to be reminded of a wonderful recipe for Marseille Omelettes!

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Awesome Chicken Parmesan Crock Pot Style

Warning – this is one of those rare Crock Pot dishes that does require the meat to be thawed first. It is the only drawback to an otherwise fabulous dish. That one tiny step – thawing out the chicken – is the only step that requires you to think ahead rather than stagger into the kitchen in the morning and throw everything into the pot.

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Spicy Korean Beef Stir-Fry with Mirin Sauce

Good morning everyone! And Happy New Year! How was your night? When we were younger, a wild night was nothing. Do you remember those days?

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Food for Thought

I know, this is a food blog – but every now and again, I am not in the mood for sharing a recipe so much as I feel the desire to invite you in for a visit and to chat a while. I don’t know about you, but looking toward the new year makes me think about the past.

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Warm Ham and Cheese Crescent Bites

Let me ask you just one question – did you serve up a Holiday Ham? Since we were spending Christmas Day at the farm, we decided to have a little celebration of our own, just us. Going home for the holidays is very important. So are setting traditions of your own in your home. If your children see you going home, they will also go home. But without traditions to return to, they will have nothing to pass along. That’s just my opinion. I’m old, what do I know?

Anyway, we enjoyed a wonderful Apricot Glazed Ham for a special Holiday supper. The smoked, bone-in ham weighed 12 pounds – more ham than our little family of three could eat in one meal. Since then, we’ve been taking ham sandwiches for lunch, and delighted in Omelettes for breakfast. I’ve made deviled ham spread to put on crackers. (Yum!)

One of Hubby’s favorite hot sandwiches has got to be Grilled Ham and Cheese. It’s great with a piping hot bowl of Wintertime Tomato Soup. This got me to thinking, what else could I do with all that left-over ham? A light came on and it was awesome!

The Ham and Cheese Crescent Bites are essentially  a tiny grilled ham and cheese sandwich baked inside a crescent roll. Light, warm, flaky and oh so delicious. These little bites can be served as light supper at the end of a long day or the perfect TV-watching snack. It takes almost no time at all to whip up these little pockets of buttery goodness.

Warm Ham and Cheese Crescent Bites
2 Cans Crescent Rolls
4 Tablespoons Butter, Melted
3-4 Garlic Cloves, pressed
2 1/2 Cups Chopped Ham
8 Slices American Cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut ham into chunks easy to process in a food processor. Pulse ham until chopped into a coarse mixture. Set aside.

Cut American Cheese into fourths, creating 16 squares. Set aside.

Melt butter. Add pressed garlic cloves into the butter. Taste and adjust as needed with more garlic. Set aside.

Roll out 1 can of crescent rolls on a cutting board. Separate the first can into 8 triangles. Brush each triangle with garlic-butter. Spoon some of the chopped ham onto the wide end of the crescent roll (about 1 or 2 tablespoons). Press the chopped ham down slightly into the crescent dough to help hold the meat into place. Add one small square of American cheese on top of ham. Roll as you would a crescent roll. Press pointed end into completed roll, tuck sides in and press together to create a nice pouch around the filling. Place pouch on an ungreased baking sheet. Repeat until all 16 crescent triangles have been filled.

Place baking sheet into preheated oven and bake 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve warm from the oven and enjoy. (Hubby likes to mix a little ketchup and mustard together to create a “dip” for his bites).

My New Year’s Day Cheater’s Chili

mt-charleston-nevada-2Every New Year’s Day I like to make a big pot of beans. In years gone by, it was a big pot of Pink Beans with hunks of left-over Christmas Ham. While a lot of people were dining on honey ham or glazed spiral ham for their Christmas Supper, back in the day I had to have a good smoked ham because I knew the bone and scraps of meat would end up in a pot of beans come New Year’s Day. We had a family tradition back then – a day at Mount Charleston building our New Year’s Snowman and sipping hot chocolate, then home again to snuggle up to a big pot of beans with warm cornbread that evening.

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Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus Baked Potato Soup

One upon a time, Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus Restaurants were all the rage. It was a great place to hang out, to go for drinks, maybe dance a little (back in the day when their lounge featured live music) and get a great steak dinner. The perfect “date” destination in its heyday.

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Cheese-Stuffed Pasta Shells in a Meat Sauce

Today’s post is going to be simple and to the point. I love Italian Food. Northern Italian is my favorite, but anything Italian is great. While I prefer to stuff my own shells, a good quality frozen-stuffed shell can be just as delicious with a lot less effort. Skip cooking the shells, mixing the filling, letting the shells cool to the point that they can be easily handled, piping the filling into the shells – you get the picture. Using frozen shells allows you to skip over all of that and go straight to the sauce, the assemble and the bake. It lets kitchen clean up be a snap.

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Spice Rubbed Tri-Tip Slow Cooked Roast

Generally speaking, crock pot meals can be left on the counter to simmer all day. Upon your return, there’s something wonderful waiting for dinner. This is not one of those effortless crock pot suppers. It requires time to prep. Lots of time. If you have a hectic morning schedule, then this needs to be a weekend supper. Soaking wood chips, making a parchment-paper pouch, rubbing meat with a spice-rub (not to mention mixing up the rub) may require more time, effort and energy than what’s available on a crazy Monday morning. However; have a cup of coffee, relax and take all the time in the world to get your pot roast going, yeah that might be a Sunday supper.

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Eggs Benedict – An American Classic

One morning a while back I came across a recipe for Eggs Benedict. That got me to thinking about my own recipe for Eggs Benedict, and the history behind this wonderful Breakfast-Brunch classic.

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My Ugly Sweater Cake

Hey Everyone! I know, it’s after Christmas. But I just had to share the Ugly Sweater Cake with you. I did the baking, Kiddo did the decorating. It came out great! While I could have waited a year to share, who knows what I’ll have planned next year.

Merry Christmas! Continue reading “My Ugly Sweater Cake”

Putting on the Ritz (Mac and Cheese Ham Casserole)

When Kiddo was not yet a year old, Hubby’s career was on the fast track to the top, but reaching that plateau required us to pack up and move from the central valley that I had called home my entire life. Moving to the dessert wasn’t easy. I had never been away from family before.

In the beginning, we made the ten-hour drive several times a year to be with family. One by one, those treks became fewer and fewer. First it was Christmas. Since we came out for Thanksgiving, Christmas was too quick of a turn around. And then the summer camp-out disappeared. Eventually even Thanksgiving every year became tough to manage. While I missed my family deeply, the move to another state meant we had the opportunity to develop our own little family traditions. I wanted to give Kiddo the holidays I remembered. We made friends, and they became our large, extended family.

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Over the years, we developed our own magical family traditions. So to did our California family.

When we returned to California a few years back, once again adjustments needed to be made. Hubby, Kiddo and I hosted a full-blown sit-down Christmas Dinner with a big ham and all the trimmings for our adopted families. My family does a cold-cut smorgasbord on Christmas Day. We missed the big, fancy dinner. So we began rearranging our traditions. Our big dinner was moved to Christmas Eve. That posed some issues since our Christmas Eve was also rich in keeping with the spirit of Seven Fishes. When we lived in the dessert, we were adopted by a great Italian family. They were old school Catholics, so Christmas Eve was an unending feast of pastas and seafood, followed by Midnight Mass. When we first landed back in California, we did a smaller, more intimate version of the Christmas Eve Feast and skipped the Christmas Supper entirely. It wasn’t long before my guys were missing their old traditions. Wanting my guys to be happy, and clinging to our own traditions, we ignored the dates on the calendar. For us, Christmas Eve is December 23, Christmas is the 24th. We have our traditions while acclimating to the traditions of others.

I love doing it this way for several reasons. First off, I have the ham bone for our big pot of beans for New Year’s Day. Secondly, shortly after Christmas I make my guys one of their favorite casserole. Typically, it consists of Macaroni, Cheese, Peas and diced ham saved from Christmas. This year I tried a new recipe, adding Ritz Crackers to the mix. Guess what? It was a hit – as in nothing left. My guys polished it off with eager delight.

Ritz Mac and Cheese Ham Casserole
For the Casserole
2 Boxes Kraft Three-Cheese Macaroni & Cheese Dinner
8 tablespoons (1 stick) Butter
1 cup Milk, divided
1 1/2 cup chopped Smoked Ham
1 can Peas, drained
1/3 cup shredded Mild Cheddar Cheese
1/3 cup shredded Monterey Jack

Buttery Ritz Topping
1 sleeve Ritz Crackers, crushed
2 tablespoon Butter, melted
1/2 cup shredded Mild Cheddar Cheese

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Cook pasta as directed. While the pasta is cooking, chop the ham, drain the peas and crush the crackers. Place the crackers in a small bowl. Blend with 1/2 cup cheese, and drizzle with melted butter. Set aside until ready to use.

Once the pasta is cooked al dente, drain the pasta. In the now empty pot, meld 1 stick of butter. Blend melted butter with macaroni cheese packets. Stir in 1/2 cup milk. Return pasta to sauce pan over low heat.

Add chopped ham, peas, remaining 1/2 cup milk and both cheeses. Stir to blend over low heat until cheese has melted and mixture is well blended.

Spread mixture into a 9×13 casserole dish. Top with Ritz mixture.

Bake for 15 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

This is great with a simple salad.

General Tso’s Glazed Shrimp over Broccoli

General Tso’s most famous dish is made with chicken. The name General Tso is said to honor the Qing dynasty statesman and military leader, Zou Zongtang, also known as Tos Tsung-t’ang. There is no actual record connecting him to a dish that was popular in Hunan, Zou’s home province. While the chicken variety of this dish has been associated with Tos Tsung-t’ang, there are other stories. Like most food folklore, we might never know. One thing is certain, this dish is equally amazing with shrimp as we all know there’s more to life than just Chinese Chicken.

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