Posted on 10/15/2011 9:39:16 AM PDT by libertarian27
Welcome to the 45th installment of the FR Weekly Cooking (Recipes) Thread.
Looking for something new to make or made something new that came out great? Please share a 'tried-and-true' recipe or five- for fellow FReepers to add to their 'go-to' Recipe Stack of Family Favorites!
Here's the place to share and explore your latest and greatest favorite recipe.
******
(On Dec 10th I'll be posting a thread with all recipes for this past year - 52 weeks of recipes - as a sort of online Cook Book. The recipes will be sorted by type and referenced to the week that it was posted. If you have a recipe you'd like to get onto the "Free Republic Cooks Cookbook" Post for this year, get 'em in now - 2 months to go :>)
Sounds wonderful! Thank you! I will definitely try them.
Another fun Halloween idea is Spaghetti and eyeball meatballs, served with severed fingers. For dessert I served spiderweb brownies. I used to fix this for my family when they were little.
I fixed this for fun for my family last year for our dinner on Halloween. My family got a kick out of it, even if they are all grown up. They did tease me and tell me that they weren’t in elementary school any more! LOL!
While looking over my shoulder while I was reading this thread yesterday, my oldest daughter said I should post the idea on the thread and asked if I would please make this meal for dinner on Halloween again this year!
Halloween Dinner
I just use my regular meatball recipe and push a stuffed green olive into each meatball with the open side sticking out before cooking them up. Serve with spaghetti noodles and your favorite spaghetti sauce.
For the severed fingers I use a can of Pillsbury breadsticks. I roll each breadstick into the shape of a finger and brush them with olive oil and a light sprinkling of garlic powder (or use garlic infused olive oil). Add a slivered almond at one end for the fingernail. For the other end, add red food coloring to a beaten egg and paint the other end to make it look a little bloody. Drips make them look even better, so you don’t have to even be neat about it. Then bake the breadstick fingers until lightly browned. For a party you can skip this last step and just serve them sticking up out of a shallow dish of your favorite Marinara Sauce.
For the spiderweb brownie, make your favorite brownie. (I like to use my round spring form pan, but you could really use any shape pan.) Then draw the spiderweb on top using either white frosting or melted white chocolate with a piping bag or a zip lock bag with the corner clipped off. For the spider on the brownie use any dome shaped chocolate candy for the body and thin cut pieces of black licorice for the eight spider legs.
This time of year I also make a lot of hot spiced apple cider. I usually set it up in my crock pot. I use a half gallon of apple cider, throw in 2 cinnamon sticks, 5 whole cloves and a piece of lemon rind. I heat it up on high until the cider is hot and then reduce the heat to low to keep it warm so it is ready whenever someone wants a cup to warm them up.
For a quick fix method fill a cup with apple cider and throw in a pinch of pumpkin pie spice and warm it up in the microwave.
Either way is delicious!
Sorry about the double post. I don’t know why it did that. It didn’t finish posting as quickly as usual, but I didn’t try to post it a second time. I guess every once in a while my computer hiccups when posting things here.
I never liked peanut butter, not even in cookies. My grand-kids like it, and I find that if I add some maple syrup to it I can eat a small amount on a cracker. It is just not a favorite to me.
Maybe I'll mention it to the kids. They might want to try it. Thanks for the tip.
I know it’s late on the thread but could I ask how long chicken stock can be kept? It may have been two weeks ago I had roasted a chicken and ended up making a lot of stock. Put it in a plastic storage bowl, sealed and forgot about it.
Going through the fridge today Mrs p6 and I found it. She is leaning to tossing it but I hate to waste it.
Any thoughts?
Generally 5 -7 days for home made stock is the limit. Boxed stock (with additives, of course), will last longer.
Thanks, it’s getting pitched! We’re going shopping when David is done on QVC and we’ve decided to make something else...probably the Ronald Reagan Hamburger Soup so I’ll be using beef stock.
Should have started earlier but Mrs p6 was making apple crisp and some other stuff in our new Tem-Tations QVC bakeware.
Got behind on things this weekend!
We got behind, too....making canned salsa from our bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes...gotta get em done.....
Two weeks is far longer than I have ever kept chicken stock in the refrigerator. I was always taught to give it the smell test. If it smells even the least bit sour, then throw it out. On one of the cooking shows I watched a while back it said you should always heat up your stock and make sure it smells good and not sour before adding it to anything you cook, because even the boxed or canned stuff you buy might have turned sour.
As my mother always told me, “When in doubt, throw it out.” You don’t want anyone getting sick because you didn’t throw it out when you should have done so.
Like others have said - I’d pitch it too....
I like to freeze stock in muffin tins - pop them out and into a freezer bag - each muffin tin worth is 1/2 a cup (easy for recipes)....trick from Alton Brown.
Thanks to all. It’s gone.
Mrs p6 and I just got back from shopping. We spent over $80 and got almost nothing,LOL! Maybe that doesn’t seem a lot today but for me it’s heart attack material.
Mrs p6 is laughing because I can’t believe the prices. We did spend $20 some for 2 packs of thick bottom round..2 big steaks in each. It was BOGO so we got $40 for $20.
Diced tomatoes at ten for ten, some Italian sweet sausage, butternut squash, a couple of frozen pizzas and take to work lunch stuff, carrots, celery, more veggies and that was about it! .
So thanks to all for the info. I had a couple of recipes to post but they didn’t turn out too good. Note: ro-tel diced tomatoes with jalpeneos don’t work with home made spaghetti sauce. Plus my bread machine recipe for pizza dough failed.
Want to try David Venable’s recipe for sausage, b-nut squash and pasta casserole later this week.
My Safeway store here sells three different flavors of pizza dough. They are often on sale for 99 cents. When they have them on sale, I pick them up and make homemade pizza for my family. We like their whole wheat crust the best and I think it is more filling too. I usually make three pizzas for my family of 5 and we end up with enough leftover for lunches the next day.
I usually make one cheese pizza, one grilled chicken pizza, and one Italian sausage pizza. I kind of clean out the refrigerator and supplement with stuff from the pantry for the rest of the pizza toppings.
Usually we have grilled onions and mushrooms on at least one of the meat pizzas, and I fill in with things like sliced black olives, sliced tomatoes, green and/or red peppers, sliced zucchini, artichokes, and crumbled bacon. I usually take a survey of what we have on hand and what everyone is in th mood for that night, and go from there.
The cheese and the Italian Sausage pizza I make with a tomato sauce base, but the chicken pizza we just rub down with a little olive oil and chopped garlic mixture and then top it with lots of mozzarella cheese before adding the chicken and anything else we decide to throw on it.
The chicken pizza is my favorite! Last week we had the chicken pizza with grilled onions and mushrooms, red pepper, black olives, and green onions. I topped my pizza slices with some beatutiful thinly sliced tomatoes. It was absolutely delicious.
We like to use the baby dills and the sweet pickles are also good done this way.
Going to try this with my Koolickles this year.
-
If the ham is a little too wet to spread the cream cheese I take a piece of bread and blot - then have a nice snack after wards.
To perk up plain brussels sprouts...add butter and a skoshe of nutmeg
Funny, I was going to post about adding fresh grated nutmeg in cream based sauces.
My sprouts gets lots of real butter and some bacon bits.
Thanks beethoven, I’m pretty good with excel (not html:>) so everything is all set to go for the online cookbook - that’s if my elderly computer doesn’t poop out - lol.
Every week I send the updated excel sheet to my e-mail box just in case my ‘puter decides to quit :>)
These recipe threads are great - I’ve made so many recipes from them and doing this forced me to try new recipes on my own to post here - after a couple of months of posts I ran out of all my own tried-n-trues - lol
I haven’t looked at it yet, but is it the same as post #38?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.