New Recipe

This week my husband chose Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwhich on page 88 for us to try out. Enjoy!

Calzones!

Last week I threw all the extra pizza dough into the freezer so that made the prep for this much easier! We made calzones when we were cooking from the Robyn Miller cookbook and I remembered that I didn’t like the ricotta cheese taste, so I substituted mine with cottage cheese.  Sean likes it so I made his with ricotta cheese.  These turned out really delicious and we both enjoyed them! The ground beef mixture didn’t sound too good to me at first but it turned out tasty.  I think another time I will try some different fillings like veggies or chicken but I did like the recipe the way it was written.

My dough wasn’t easy too work with so it didn’t turn out too pretty.

The ones I made for Sean looked a bit better!

Catch Up and Calzones

Since we didn't get any new recipes this week and there was a little confusion about last week's, how about we make the Calzones (pg 114).  It sounds like some people made them last week so this will give everyone a chance to get caught up! Hopefully your families aren't sick of pizza (could that even happen:).

One week of cooking !!!

The meatloaf “tasted Ok” according to the man of the house. I am not a fan of Meatloaf and maybe cook it once a year…… This was Ok but I didn’t care for the sauce on top. I would prefer to have used BBQ sauce (Head Country is our favorite).



LOVED THE PIZZA!!!!!!! the sweet leeks were perfect, I didn’t use bacon though I opted for some delicious pancetta that I got it a Trader Joes on my last stop there, The dough was pretty easy and very similar to my recipe that I use all the time. I was very surprised of how good the potatoes were, and YES the FRESH MOSSARELA is a MUST =;)
It was perfect for my girls night get together, both my frieds Jackie and Natsumi approved it!!!




The cobbler has become a staple here at our house , we have made it 4 times in the last month and we doubled the recipe and took some to people at church….Big hit. Here is a picture of the one we made with raspberries. Christopher made a one with blackberries for mutual for a dessert competition and the kids loved.



I decided to do a casserole for the breakfast bowls, these were extremely popular in Iowa when we lived there. Our ward used to have brunches for the sister’s birthdays and we always had the “crust less Quiches” my favorite recipe is with crab meat and asparagus . This one was Ok I’m not sure I will make it again. I would probably stick with just one meat and add some broccoli or asparagus.
I also made the breakfast potatoes on page 48 (no bacon fat thanks) and everyone loved it.

The Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce was good but very rich….. We could not eat very much at once and we had it for 3 days…. I was surprised the boys didn’t gobble it all up!!!

The Owens' Breakfast "Bowls"

We had our Breakfast "Bowls" on Tuesday night for dinner.  Connor and Ashley were both BIG helpers in getting this fixed.  :)  Connor scrubbed the potatoes for me and washed off the green onion and tomatoes.  He was also a big help in counting out the eggs as we cracked them.  Ashley was content to just watch and pretend to be cooking her own sausage.  It was pretty cute with my two helpers with their step-stools on either side of me.  I didn't have any bowls; so I just cooked it all in a small casserole dish - I think it was 7x11.  I omitted the onion with the potatoes since our family doesn't really like onions; but followed everything else.  Kenton and I thought that it was very good.  There were a few too many tomatoes for Kenton but he could pick some out easily enough.  The kids didn't really like it; but we don't eat sausage very much at our house... okay pretty much never.  We had cinnamon rolls and peaches to round things out.  I have also been heating it up and having it for breakfast in the mornings.  It still tasted good! 

All ready to eat! 

Rutter's Pizza & Calzone Roundup !

Pizza dough ready to rise.


Ingredients for the Potato Leek Pizza.



Dana busy cooking the leeks and homemade pizza sauce!

Pizza dough ready to be rolled out.

Calzone meat mixture cooking.

Meat lovers pizza fresh out of the oven!

Audrey prepping the pizza crust.

Potato Leek pizza ready to go in the oven.

Dana ready to take out the pizza :)

Dana showing off her pizza dough tossing skills!

Calzone cooking.

Dana's plate. Notice the healthy steamed broccoli :)

Audrey's plate.

What a lot of pictures. Hope that we aren't overwhelming you with them. We are just having such a good time cooking from this cookbook and our family has liked quite a few of the recipes. Well, I guess that I messed up with the recipes ;( I could have sworn that the recipe picks were the potato leek pizza & the cowboy calzone, so that is what we did. Dana & I are now ahead of everyone, since we prepared the calzone recipe :) The pictures pretty much show what we did. The pizza dough was a big hit! Everyone really liked it and it was very easy to make and work with, which was sooo nice. We decided to use our pizza stone and that worked out real well. It takes a little longer to cook several pizza's though. We cooked three pizza's, since there were 6 of us eating & 4 were guys :) We knew that some wouldn't like the potato leek pizza, so we also cooked a pepperoni & meat lovers(pepperoni, canadian bacon & italian sausage)pizza. We also cooked our own homemade pizza sauce for some of the pizzas & to use to dip the calzone in and it was also a big hit ! First we made the pizza dough, so that it could rise. Next came the pizza sauce and we simmered that while we prepped all the ingredients, then we started fixing the pizzas. Everything went smoothly till we tried to slide the Potato Leek pizza off of the wooden paddle onto the pizza stone. Didn't want to go. After a combined effort between Dana, Brock and I & our spatulas, we got it in! Next time, if we use the stone again, we will have to assemble the pizza after we get the crust onto the pizza stone. The potatoes made it somewhat heavy & moist. It wasn't as pretty as it was before we got it in the oven, but it tasted really good! Next came the Calzone. We assembled those very quickly, since we had the ingredients cooked and the cheese/egg mixture mixed together. We just used shredded mozzarella for the cheeses and cottage cheese for the ricotta, since our family doesn't care for ricotta cheese. They took longer to cook than the pizza's, so we did some clean up while they baked :) To make the three pizzas and the calzone, we used two batches of the pizza dough. Everyone liked the different pizza's and calzone. I liked both the pizza and the calzone, but my family would be happy with just the pizza's, though I thought the Calzone were very tasty. I think that I will make up some batches of the pizza dough and keep it in the freezer for future use. Good recipe picks Ingrid !!

This is a Late Hello!!!

Hi to all my fellow cooking fanatics. As some of you may know, I am Audrey's daughter in law (Brandon's wife). I joined the cooking group a few weeks back, but I have yet to introduce myself. So..... HI!!!!



A little about me:

I am from the Sapulpa, OK, area (born and raised). Brandon and I met in high school and stayed sweethearts ever since. We have one temporary child named Marley (pictured below). She is our baby.....for now. :)



Brandon and I were recently living in Florida for his job, but decided we had enough of Florida to last us a life time. So we moved home. Nothing is better than being close to family and friends.

I am now working for a non-profit organization in Okmulgee, OK. When I'm not working, I love spending time with family and friends, practicing shooting my bow with Brandon, or Cooking up a delicious storm with Audrey.
We have such a great time and I am so fortunate that we are able to do this together.

Happy Cooking everyone! I'm excited for the upcoming recipes and success (or failure; LOL) pictures to come!

Dana

Leslee’s Pizzas

Last night I decided to try out the Potato-Leek Pizza.  It sounded delicious and we are big fans of making homemade pizza for dinner.  The pizza dough recipe was similar to one that I usually make except instead of sugar it had oil.  I thought this made it easier to work with and Sean said it tasted like Pizza Hut’s dough, so I guess we will be making the switch to this recipe! For myself I made a gluten free dough.  Getting all the topping ready took a bit of work, and I had a little trouble getting the potatoes thin enough.  I did just use the precooked bacon which made it easy and only sautéed them for a minute with the leeks for a little extra crispness.  The pizza’s turned out delicious though and were quite filling with all the toppings.  Neither of us are big sauce fans, so it was nice to not have any on there!

My Pizza

Sean’s ( I had to cook it a little extra to get those potatoes cooked, good thing he likes crispy pizza:)

Kim's review (way late)

So, here is my review for the last few recipes. I went out of town with my family and it took me a while to get my feet back on the ground. I did make all the recipes though and here they are:

Enchilada's (I told you it's been a while)

My husband claims that this was THE BEST meal I have made (sometimes he's exaggerates a bit, but I'll take the compliment). It took me a while to make them the first time, and it was really messy, but there was so much meat and sauce left over that I just froze it. About a week later it was my hubby's b-day and he requested these. It was a breeze this time around and they tasted just as yummy!


Breakfast Bowls

I didn't have any bowls to bake these in so I just did it in an 8x8 pan. It worked fine but took FOREVER to cook. When it was finally done it was scrumptious!


Peach Crumble

We LOVED this at my house. I think next time I will make it in a smaller pan so the "crumble" part on top isn't so thin, but it was super yummy, and the maple sauce... HEAVEN!!


Lastly, the Scones

I hate to sound like I have no opinion because I have pretty much like everything, but once again, we loved these. The glaze on top was amazing. We ate these for breakfast on Saturday morning and for lunch Sunday! My two little boys devoured them and my 3 year old keeps asking for more "donuts"

Sorry about the pic overload, I'll try harder to stay caught up!

Jacki’s Review of Maple Pecan Scones

I made these this morning for breakfast and I thought they were very good.    I followed the recipe exactly as directed.  Next time I would roll the dough out a little thicker because mine spread out in cooking and kind of lost their shape.  They were pretty crumbly and a little difficult to transfer to the cookie sheet.  The maple icing was really tasty.  Mine turned out a little thick because I just guessed on the amount of one pound of powdered sugar so I probably needed a bit more milk.  Plus it was a little darker brown because I added a bit more of the maple flavoring accidentally.  Another good recipe from PW:) 

Baking in the oven.

Iced and ready to serve – they look rather homemade and rugged.

 

Paired nicely with fruit and eggs for a pre-church breakfast.

Recipes for Week of October 16th

Since we love to make our own homemade Pizza we will try the Potato-Leek Pizza on Page 110. Have fun!!!

Maple Pecan Scones- The Gluten Free Version

This morning I decided to make myself a little treat, so I got to work on these scones. First of all I have never had a English type scone before so I was excited for this little adventure.  To make these gluten free I replaced the flour with an Bob’s Redmill All Purpose Flour Mix and also added in some Xanthan gum (which helps hold things together like the gluten would do).

I wish I had a pastry blender like Ree used but I just stuck with the old fork method.  Besides that part taking a bit of time, the dough was quite easy to mix up with only a few ingredients.  I was surprised by the amount of baking powder the recipe called for but I guess she knows what she is talking about!

 

The icing was pretty straight forward to make. Since we don’t drink coffee I didn’t really know what to substitute for it (diet coke? haha just kidding) so I just left it out.  The icing was delicious and was prefect to pair with the more plain flavored scone! The texture of the scone was a little dry and crumbly but I think that was because it didn’t have gluten in it.  I am going to make the regular version for Sean later because he isn’t too thrilled about eating gluten free baked goods. I will let you know how those turn out!

Nika Reviews Several Recipes

First up… enchiladas.  These were great.  I made them Sunday and kept them in fridge to cook on Monday night.   I used a homemade red enchilada sauce recipe that is basically tomato sauce, chili powder and garlic and water but I substituted chicken broth for the water at my mom’s suggestion.  Did the rest of the recipe the same except I omitted the beef and just used cheese since we were already eating too much red meat that week and I didn’t dip them in the sauce because they were falling apart.  The enchiladas were great and I would make them again for sure.   Everyone liked these. 

Here are the chicken fried steaks.  I have always wanted to try these since my Dad would often order them in restaurants.  Sterling and I also watched a cowboy cooking demonstration at the international folklife festival in Washington DC a few years ago and had wanted to try to cook these since then.  They were so good!  I even made them again last night when we had some friends over for dinner.    The kids were so excited they just picked them up and started eating!  The potatoes were great too.   I was pleased with how easy it was to make the gravy.   Oh yes, after reading some of your reviews I put my cube steak in a ziploc and and pounded it out a bit thinner with skillet so it would cook faster and it turned out great. 

  

We had the breakfast bowls for dinner on Thursday night.  These were so good.  I would add extra basil and tomatoes though.  I did end up having to cook them a bit extra.  

Recipe for Week of October 10th

I picked the Maple Pecan Scones on pg 68.  I have never made scones before and these sounded really good.   Plus, with this recipe I can use my newish French rolling pin just like PW does in the pictures!  Happy baking.

Heidi's Enchiladas and Peach Crumble

I fixed the enchiladas and crumble last Friday.  Kenton's parents were in town and it turned out great.  I followed the recipe on the enchiladas pretty close; except that I didn't use onion since our family doesn't really like them.  It seemed like a LOT of work to dip the tortillas in the sauce and mine sort of feel apart.  The end result was very good though!  Connor was most helpful in helping me place the olives.  I thought the flavor was great though.  I am not a huge fan of beef enchiladas; but this was actually pretty good.  I think that it would also be good with shredded chicken too. 

The crumble seemed to need to cook for a little longer than Ree called for; but it was really tasty!  I ate mine and Ashley's since she only ate her ice cream. 

Good choices!!

Dana & Audrey's Review of Perfect Enchiladas & Peach crisp

This was a busy, late night for us, as we cooked both the enchiladas and the peach crisp and didn't get started till around 7:00 that night :) After cooking them, there are definitely ways to cook some of it before hand but, we wanted to see what it was like doing it all in one go. Both recipes were a big hit, we are glad to report. In fact, Doug likes these enchiladas better than the ones I have been making. I am sure that I will make my original recipe at times, but its nice to have another enchilada recipe, so that it I can change it up. We followed the recipe very closely, as that is how we like to do it on a first try. We didn't have quite enough enchilada sauce, so we added a can of tomato sauce and that worked really well. Also, our family isn't big on sharp cheddar, so we used our usual mix of colby and jack cheese. We aren't very adventurous when it comes to cheese :) We also used a large onion instead of a medium onion and I won't do that in the future as that was too much onion. Some of you mentioned not seeing the big deal about the oil and flour mixture in the enchilada sauce, but we think that it helped the sauce in its consistency. We also lightly fried the tortillas in oil before filling them, like she said and we think this helped make the rolling easier and the tortillas to not break up as we did it. Corn tortillas like to break up some when they are handled.



Here are our fresh ingredients washed and ready to use.


Dana had the fun job of stirring the maple cream sauce for its 20 minutes and also keeping an eye on the enchilada sauce.

Here's all the ingredients ready to be made into the enchiladas.

Brock is ready to eat, but first the enchiladas need to cook :(

Done cooking!

Plated up and ready for eating!

Dana enjoying her hard work!

We also followed the peach crisp recipe closely. We did add extra maple syrup to the cream sauce as many of you recommended. We simmered it for the 20 minutes and that worked fine for us. We stuck it in the frig till after dinner was done. For the filling, we used fresh peaches, as we found some at the store. They tasted good, but we want to try frozen peaches next time, as they won't take so long preparing. The crisp part of the dish turned out real well. We used a bigger pan and put it under the broiler for about 5 minutes after it finished cooking and we think that helped crisp it up. We really liked both the enchiladas and the peach crisp and plan on cooking both again in the future. We had fun cooking both recipes, so good job picking them out!

Peach crisp fresh out of the oven.

Peach crisp with sauce with some ice cream. We really enjoyed this dessert. It is very rich, so we couldn't eat too much of it at one sitting :)