What's for Dinner - Steak, roasted veggies, and garlic mashed taters

This was my second-ever attempt to cook a real steak by any other method than "George Foreman Grill", and I was nervous that I would ruin it completely. I bought nice steaks, ribeyes, at about $7 each on sale, and I shuddered to think of the wasted money if I overcooked them. I mean, we'd have eaten them anyway but it would have been a sad waste of a tasty hunk of meat.

I took them out of their packages, rubbed them with salt and pepper, and allowed them to come to room temperature (per cookbook and Food Network instructions) while defending them from feline attack. Meanwhile, I cut up a green pepper, a red pepper, and half a red onion, tossed them with olive oil and a dash of Mrs Dash Original Blend, and put them on a cookie sheet in the oven at 375. I checked them and tossed them every 5 minutes until they looked properly roasty and weren't raw-crunchy anymore. It took about 20 minutes for me, but the size of the chunks will affect the cooking time. Smaller is faster.

I peeled and chopped 6 small potatoes and boiled them until they were soft. At the same time, I warmed up a cup of milk in a pot, after adding two big garlic cloves, peeled and smashed flat. I also added some pepper, mostly because it looked too white. I moved the drained potatoes (and some thick slivers of butter) to a plastic mixing bowl and used my hand mixer to whip them, slowly adding the garlic milk (take the garlic cloves out!) until it was the right consistency. I didn't end up needing the whole cup of milk, but it's always safer to have more than you need. Next time I'll just put the butter in with the milk and let it melt, because I had little butter chunks left in the potatoes. The garlic level of these potatoes was exactly right for me, but I think maybe the addition of smashed roasted garlic would enhance them.

For my steaks, I just plopped them into a very hot, buttery frying pan and left them for about 5 minutes before flipping them and leaving them there for another little while. I'm not sure exactly how long I cooked them, because I kept thinking I needed one more minute. It's very hard for me to tell when they're done enough and not overdone. These ended up on the medium-to-medium-well side, and I would have preferred them not quite as done, but they were still very tasty. Next time I'll just use the cooking times suggested in my cookbooks for various levels of doneness and stop doubting them. They just never seem long enough to me, and the steaks don't seem to be cooked enough when my time is up. Maybe it will be good for me to just follow instructions completely for once!

I'm learning. Slowly. I will master steaks eventually.

What's for Dinner - Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers for dinner tonight! Vegetables are so much easier to eat when they're stuffed with meat and rice and garlic.

Stuffed Peppers

6 large green (or red) bell peppers
1 lb lean ground beef
2 cups cooked rice
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup lowfat mozzarella or italian cheese blend, plus a handful for the tops
1 large 28oz can crushed tomatoes or tomato puree
1 package frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1tbsp Oregano
Salt & pepper

Brown the ground beef, drain off excess fat, and put it in a big mixing bowl. Slice the tops off of the peppers and then chop up the usable parts of the tops, tossing them in with the meat. Remove as much of the peppers' ribs as possible (using a knife or just picking at them with your fingers) and stand the peppers up in a big casserole dish - pick one with high sides if you can, to make sure the peppers don't fall over. If they won't stand up well, cut a little off the bottoms to make them flat, but don't cut the bottoms off or you'll end up with a leaky mess later! I personally cram them so tightly in my casserole dish that they couldn't fall over if they tried, although it does make it harder for me to get them out when they're done! Add everything else to the mixing bowl, except for about 1/4 cup tomato sauce and the reserved handful of cheese, and then stir it up. Here's your filling:

This is good enough to eat without a pepper around it, honestly. Just a bowl and a spoon, and you're good! But if you want stuffed peppers, I suppose you'll need to be filling those peppers over there in your casserole dish. Fill them to almost-overflowing, and then spoon some tomato sauce over the top of each pepper, with a little sprinkling of cheese over that. Cook them for about 30 min at 350 - the peppers will still be crunchy, and the filling will be warm.

I used red peppers for the first time tonight because I got them on sale at Costco on the weekend. Usually I use the green ones because they're so much cheaper. I think I actually prefer the flavor of the green ones for this recipe, but my man disagrees, so I think we'll alternate. I could also only fit 5 peppers into my casserole dish, so I've got leftover filling, which I stuck in the freezer for another day. Frankly, this recipe makes too much filling - it's probably enough for 8 decent-sized peppers. But I like leftovers so I always make a huge amount!

If you make the filling ahead, reheat it in the microwave before stuffing the peppers or you'll have to wait forever for your dinner to warm up in the oven. I speak from experience - once when I made this and waited till the next day to cook it, after 45 minutes I gave up and nuked the peppers.

This works well with turkey instead of beef, and you can use brown rice and reduce the amount of meat, adding more spinach for volume. You can also pre-cook the peppers if you like them to be mushy, but I'm not a fan of mushy stuffed peppers, so I advise against it!

What's for Dinner - Mini Italian Meatloaves

I first found this recipe in a Rachael Ray magazine and I tweaked it a little bit to suit me.

1 1/3 pounds ground beef
1/2 cup diced green pepper
1/2 cup diced onion
1/4 cup grated parmesan or italian cheese blend
2/3 cup "italian-seasoned" breadcrumbs (or season them yourself, see below)
1 large egg, beaten
5 cloves of garlic, squished through a press or chopped fine
3 tbsp tomato paste, plus 1 tbsp set aside
2 tbsp olive oil

To make the normal breadcrumbs into "italian" breadcrumbs, mix in 1 tbsp oregano, 1 tsp basil, and a bit of black pepper.

Mix everything but the olive oil and 1tbsp of tomato paste in a big bowl. Use your hands and get real squishy in there, kneading until the breadcrumbs are well incorporated into the meat, and the diced vegetables are mixed in evenly. Take out small portions of the mixture and make little football shaped lumps out of them with your hands, and put them onto a baking sheet. You don't need to grease the sheet because the fat from the meat will come out as it cooks. For that reason, and for your health, I recommend getting the leanest meat possible! I also strongly suggest you use a rimmed baking sheet for this or you'll be cleaning your oven forever. I usually get 5 "footballs" out of the recipe.

Whisk together the reserved tomato paste and olive oil, and brush it over the tops of the meatloaves. Bake them at 400F for about 20 minutes. Cooking time will depend on how fat you make the loaves. Use a meat thermometer to make sure they're done (160F is recommended), because the tomato paste makes them stay pinkish and you can't trust color as a sign of doneness.


I forgot the olive oil step, so mine got much crispier than usual and didn't have a nice sweet tomatoey coating. Still tasty, but if you're trying these, definitely don't skip the oil and tomato paste step!

What's for Dinner: Hamburger Stroganoff

Hamburger stroganoff is a comfort-food classic for me, something that's un-fancy, very yummy, and easy to make. Some nights - ok, maybe most nights - I don't want to make a fancy filet au poivre with gorgonzola mashed potatoes and green beans almondine. Actually, now I do want to make that, so I'll have to add that to my to-do list.

Back to the program!

Hamburger Stroganoff

1 lb lean ground beef
1 small onion, diced
1 package mushrooms, sliced
8oz of medium-wide egg noodles, cooked and drained
1 cup beef gravy made from a powdered mix (I have a "Roast Beef" gravy mix from Canada (Berthelet brand) and I've never tried with any of the kinds available here, but that stuff is AWESOME and you all need to import some.)
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (or more, to taste)
1/2 cup sour cream

Using a deep skillet or frying pan, fry the mushrooms in butter until they're brown and soft, and set them aside. Saute the onions until they're soft, then add them to the mushrooms. Brown the ground beef, draining off any fat if necessary. Add cooked and drained egg noodles to the pan, and then add the prepared beef gravy and bring to a boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes to thicken slightly. Grate nutmeg into the mixture and stir. This really is best with fresh nutmeg - the taste is very different compared to the ground stuff in the jar. When you're ready to serve dinner, stir in the sour cream.


I personally love adding canned peas to this. Don't ask.

What's for Dinner - Easiest Slow Cooker Pot Roast

At my bridal shower in Montreal almost a year ago, I received the most beautiful and touching gift from everyone - a book of special recipes from friends and family, lovingly put together like a scrapbook by my mother. It's got my aunt's "best chicken recipe", my sister's favorite party dip, my grandmother's tomato-and-cheese macaroni dish, and a whole bunch more that I'm looking forward to trying. People get together over food, and having my family's best and favorite recipes makes me feel closer to all of them, and I'm so grateful for the gift.

Today I attempted my Mom's Pot Roast in the crockpot. And, because I've never met a recipe I didn't tweak, I tweaked it. Partly because I had a smaller piece of meat, and because I love onions more than Mom does. So here's my tweaked version (sorry, Mom)!

Easiest Slow Cooker Pot Roast

3 lb beef roast
1 medium onion, quartered
1 can cream of mushroom soup
3 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tbsp flour
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup red wine

Cook 8 hours on LOW or 4 hours on HIGH.

Mom's version was for a 5-6lb roast, and so it had an extra can of soup and 1/2 cup more water. It also doesn't include a chopped-up onion, but I don't think Mom would be opposed to the idea. I should have tossed in some carrots too, now that I think about it.

I mixed the dry onion soup with the thyme and flour and the squished-through-the-press garlic cloves, and then rubbed it all over the roast. I put that in the crockpot with onions around it, then added the liquids, mixing with a fork so the mushroom soup didn't stay in one big glob. I rolled the roast around to coat all sides, then it was time to cook it. Here's what it looked like before cooking:


I leave first for work, so I asked Dave to start it up before he left, so it wouldn't cook to death. Our crockpot has a timer and it goes to "warm" mode after it's done cooking, but I still hate having it on longer than necessary. Unfortunately the message got confused along the way because it was put on high for 8 hours, instead of the low that it should have been. Luckily, though, everything turned out fine. It was a little dried out, but not too bad, since the crockpot retains all the liquid as it cooks, and besides, we had a bucket of gravy in there to help us choke it down. :) It was really, really good. Really good. Like, I wish I had a bigger stomach so I could eat more good. Like, wanting to set the alarm for a 3am snack good.

What's for Dinner: Jen's Spaghetti Sauce

Let me first say that my Mom makes the best spaghetti sauce in the world. Anyone on either side of my family would shove aside any other family member to get to it. As is usual with Mom recipes, there are no measurements. I learned to copy this recipe by watching her closely and figuring out what a "half a palmful of thyme" means. The scientist in me does not like this sort of measurement - what if you have tiny hands? Luckily, my hands are carbon copies of my mother's, so our measurements work out great. I suspect this is also a sneaky way of ensuring that nobody else but us ever gets this recipe exactly right, so everyone has to keep coming to us for the world's best spaghetti. I can only hope that I have a daughter who inherits my hands, or the secret of the sauce dies with me. And in fairness to Mom - I tweaked it and made my own version. I will try to write out a recipe so you can try to make it, but please know that it's a very "fuzzy" recipe that never comes out the same way twice.

And yeah, I'm bragging about my fabulous sauce because I love it to death, but I know it's not everyone's favorite. It's not made with fresh garden tomatoes or anything, and I know that fancy pro chefs would cringe at it. But it tastes so damn good to me that I frankly don't care. I could eat this three or four times a week for months and never get sick of it. Provided there was garlic bread available to soak up the extra sauce, of course.

Jen's Spaghetti Sauce

3-4 sweet italian sausages
1/2 pound extra lean ground beef (this is really flexible - add more if you like it meatier, less if you don't, but DO get the extra-lean because you're getting plenty of fat from the sausages)
5 cloves of garlic
2 28-oz cans of tomato sauce or tomato puree
(have an extra one on hand in case you find the sauce too thick after you add the meat)
Big palmful of oregano
Palmful of basil
Half palmful of thyme
Generous amount fresh ground black pepper


First I snip the sausages into pieces with scissors. I cut them fairly small, ending up with 8 pieces from each sausage. I fry them up until they have a nice brown crust. They don't need to be cooked all the way through at this point, because you're going to simmer them in the sauce for a while later. I put them aside to drain on paper towels, then brown the ground beef. I make sure to season the beef well with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, I've dumped the cans of sauce into a big pot and added my spices. I use a garlic press for the garlic, but I suppose you could chop it fine if you prefer. Now, the spice measurements are tricky. I basically cup my palm and pour a whole bunch of oregano into my hand from my huge Costco-sized jar. Dump that in, and then do the same with slightly less basil, and then half as much thyme. This is also where you'll want to pull out your pepper grinder and grind some coarse pepper into the mix. As much as you think you'll like - it's never the same twice, which is part of the fun!

I set the heat on low for the sauce and then dump in all the fat-drained meat and stir it all in. That simmers for at least an hour, but I usually leave it for about two on the lowest heat that keeps it gently bubbling. Oh, and keep the lid on unless you want a red-spotted kitchen. A splatter screen works well too. After about an hour I taste it and make adjustments. If it's too acidic, I am not ashamed to say that I add a little sugar. It doesn't usually need it, but I found last time that when I used puree instead of sauce, it was more acidic for some reason. Maybe it was a different brand that made the difference, I'm not sure. Let your tastebuds guide you.


When I'm finally starving and going crazy with the super smell of my kitchen and desperate to eat, I check the sausage chunks by pulling one out and cutting it in half. If it's still pink in the middle, it's got to keep cooking.

I know it's "spaghetti" sauce, but I don't think we've ever had it with actual spaghetti noodles. This needs a big noodle. I love it with rigatoni, but penne or rotini do pretty well too. Anything with ridges or spirals to really hold the sauce. You will also need pasta bowls. Big ones. Oh, and some wine.


This recipe obviously makes a ton of sauce, because my mother could only teach me to cook for a vast crowd. So, have some tupperwares handy to freeze the extras. It freezes very well and keeps for at least 4 months in the freezer... we've never had it last longer because we eat it before then.

What's for Dinner: Pâté Chinois (Shepherd's Pie)

I'm not sure why it's got such different names in English and French. I like to think that it originated with Chinese shepherds and so we've both got it right. Either way, it's one of my favorite examples of cold-weather comfort food, and one of the easiest to throw together. My recipe is really simple, and I will eventually start tweaking it to add different seasonings and vegetables, but for now it's still appreciated every time I make it so I hesitate to play with it.

6 to 8 meduim potatoes (plus butter, and a dairy-based liquid of choice for mashing)
About a pound of ground beef
A packet of powdered beef gravy
One small onion or half a big one
1 can corn
1 can creamed corn

Peel, chop, and boil up the potatoes for mashing. Then, obviously, mash them. Use milk or cream, whatever you like better, but definitely toss in some butter. Everything is yummier with butter.
Dice the onion and fry it up in some butter (see - yummier!), set it aside.
Brown some ground beef in a pan. The amount is up to you - I used about a pound of it because that's what I had. Season the meat with salt and pepper, and when it's all done, mix a couple teaspoons of powdered beef gravy with about a 1/4 cup of water and stir it into the meat. Mix the onion back in.

Pour the meat into a baking dish*. Spread it around to get a nice even layer. Add the two cans of corn and spread that around. Use a big spoon to plop a scoop of mashed potatoes every couple inches across the top of the corn - you can't really spread very well because the corn is squishy and you'll make a mess, so the trick is to use smaller scoops of potatoes and try to cover a lot of surface with well-placed blobs. Then you spread the tops of the blobs so they all connect, leaving you with a smooth potatoey surface. Which you can then poke at with various utensils to make it look pretty (I used a fork and made lines). It's important to spread the potatoes to the edges to "seal" everything, otherwise you'll get meat juice bubbling up and it might make a mess.

Into the oven for about 30 min at 350. The top of the potatoes should get the slightest bit brown and will be firm when you poke at it.

And when you scoop some out to eat it, it will be delicious.

*I used an oval Corningware casserole dish, but a lasagna pan would work pretty well too. I like my shepherd's pie to be thick, as opposed to all spread out in a flatter pan, so I usually use smaller dishes with higher sides. If you're using a flatter one, check the oven often, because you won't need to leave it in as long.