Tag Archives: cooking

#Thanksgiving Memories and a failsafe #Recipe @jacqbiggar

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Thanksgiving is October 11th in Canada!

Thanksgiving dinner is serious business. Most other nights you can get away with anything from Hamburger Helper to Spaghetti and your family won’t complain. They don’t dare.

However, tonight is all about family. It’s special, and the meal you serve needs to portray this.

A lot of houses will be serving ham, turkey, scalloped potatoes, Brussel sprouts :), and while this sounds great, at our house we do things a little differently.

When my daughter was young there wasn’t a lot of money, so I began cooking lunches at our local Farmer’s Market to help with bills. This way she could go to ‘work’ with me.

Needless to say, she was a hit with both the other venders and the buying public. Who can say no to a cute little two-year-old?

 

Brandy and her big cousins

One of my most popular dishes was something we called Lazy Man Cabbage Rolls, served up with potato and cheddar pirogues covered in fried onions, sour cream, and bacon bits.

We usually sold out long before market ended. 🙂

My daughter developed a taste for these and throughout the years, regularly pestered me to make them up for her.

That’s how it became our Thanksgiving Tradition.

I thought I’d share my recipe here, and maybe it will become a tradition in your home also.

2 pounds of med ground hamburger
2 med heads of green cabbage
Approx. 4 cups of uncooked long grain rice (no minute rice)
3 cans of a good brand of Tomato soup (I use Heinz)
Salt and Pepper

Start by mixing in a large bowl your hamburger, rice, and a small handful each of salt and then pepper. Mix until the rice has mostly been integrated into the beef.
Wash hands thoroughly.
Cut the cabbage up into slivers similar to what you’d use for coleslaw.
Using a good-sized Dutch oven, start with a thin layer of cabbage, about an inch thick, in the bottom of pot.
Spread a layer of rice-beef mixture loosely on top of this.
Repeat procedure until you reach the top of pot. You want to end with cabbage on top.
Open two cans of soup into the bowl you used for beef mix, (it’ll pick up residual spices) then take each can and half fill with water and swish before dumping into bowl. Stir until mixed.
Slowly pour this mixture over the pot of cabbage rolls, spreading it across the top.
Put a lid on and cook in pre-heated 350 oven for 2.5 hours.
Remove lid and spread last can of soup undiluted over the top of your casserole.
Leaving lid off, replace in oven for half an hour longer.

Remove and enjoy. 🙂

Hope you give this a try one day. Let me know how it turned out for you.
Any special traditions you do in your homes that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear about them.

My grandchildren’s favorite meal

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My children and the extended family children and grandchildren started eating cannelloni at a very young age, and grew up calling it their favorite meal. I usually prepare it in advance, freeze it, and do the final cooking just before serving. It’s always a winner at family reunion and big holidays.

Cannelloni  Recipe

  • Prepare the mix:
  1. 3 eggs
  2. 1 ¾ cups of 2% milk
  3. Tsp of butter 1 cup of flour

Mix together in a blender or mixer. 

 

 

  • Prepare the pancakes (or crèpes)
  1. Use an electric skillet or any other type but adjust the stove temperature to 400o  
  2. Melt ½ a Tsp of butter in the skillet at 400o 
  3. Measure ¼ cup of the mix and pour over the melted butter 
  4. Spread evenly in the skillet 
  5. Remove when cooked and slid in a plate 
  6. Repeat until the whole mix is made into pancakes
  7. You usually get 10 big pancakes with one dose of mix.
  8. I like to cut all the pancakes in half.
  • Prepare the filling
  1. 1 lb of ground beef 
  2. 1 small onion 
  3. 1 tsp all spice 
  4. Salt and pepper 
  5. 1 cup Ragu tomato sauce

Darken and cook the ground beef, onion and spices, until well cooked. Add the sauce and simmer till the meat is done. Set aside.

  • Rolling the cannelloni
  1. Use a clean plate. Arrange one half pancake on it.
  2. Transfer a Tsp of ground meat over the pancake and roll it over to form a cannelloni.

Repeat with the rest of the pancakes. With this dose of mix you can prepare about 20 small cannellonis or 10 big ones.

 

  • Cooking

    The tomato sauce and sprinkled parmesan cheese still needed to be added when this picture was taken.

  1. Spray the the pan with Pam Brush the bottom with tomato sauce.
  2. Arrange the cannellonis in a 9×13 pan in two rows.
  3. Pour enough tomato sauce to cover each cannelloni
  4. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese or Romano cheese.
  5. Bake at 300o for 20 minutes.

Bon appétit.

Here is Bosty, my grandchildren’s dog waiting for Grandma to have him taste whatever she’s cooking that smells so good.  

I use some of my recipes in my romance novels, whenever I have a grandmother of Italian or Greek background.

 


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Food – Almost Better Than Sex by @TaylorLeeWrites #Giveaway

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What’s Almost Better Than Sex? Why food, of course!  Remember, I did say almost. Next to writing sexy romantic thrillers, along with my very special guy, I enjoy, make that—lust after food. I love to cook it, eat it, discuss it, and frankly, play with it. Which for sensualists is totally understandable given that food in all its glorious iterations is sensuality personified. As Robin Leach says in his intro to Amy Reiley’s terrific sensual cookbook Fork Me, Spoon Me, “Forget the bedroom. The new sensual spot is in the kitchen—the perfect foreplay to getting hot and steamy, at—or on—the counter.”

Fork Me, Spoon Me

Face it. What can be more erotic than paging through glorious recipes featuring lusciously beautiful, tasty food in preparation for a special night—or morning or mid-afternoon with your special guy? To me, one of the best indicators of a man’s sensual “acumen” is how he relates to food. Does he eat for the pleasure of it as well to satisfy his hunger? Does he choose food based on color, taste, texture and aroma? And the real test, does he like to play with his food, eat with his fingers and of course to feed succulent pieces to you?

Two of my favorite cookbooks are InterCOURSES; An Aphrodisiac Cookbook by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge, and Reiley’s Fork Me Spoon Me. Both books feature tantalizing recipes guaranteed to liven your tastes buds and stoke your hormones. They are encyclopedias to the time-honored aphrodisiac powers of various foods. The pictures alone are sensual visual treats. So, grab your favorite guy/gal and head to the kitchen—the new sensual hot spot!

InterCourses Cookbook

Enter the Giveaway!

Contact me on Facebook and I will draw two winners. One will receive InterCourses: An aphrodisiac Cookbook, the other will receive Fork Me Spoon Me.

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Baking up Memories #mgtab #Dessert #Recipes @jacqbiggar

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One of my favorite treats my mom always made was Lemon Poppyseed Loaf. She had a baking table at our local Farmer’s Market where she sold Nanaimo bars, Butter Tart Squares, Rocky Road Squares, Lemon Pies and the most delicious glazed loaves.

Customers would line up to buy her desserts and she rarely had leftovers- our loss!

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https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/lemon-poppy-seed-bread/

Lemon Poppyseed Loaf

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This is sure to be a hit in your home, too!

baking

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