Four Cheese Macaroni

I hate the taste of cheese, but I enjoy eating cottage cheese and cheesecake! But my hubby loves mac and cheese, so I decided to give a try by using a recipe I found on www.allrecipes.com . When my husband sat down to eat dinner, I couldn’t wait to hear the verdict. My unbelievably picky husband loved my homemade macaroni and cheese. Yay…even though I never tried my creation, I was still a happy camper!

Ingredients:

1 tbs vegetable oil
16 ounce package of elbow macaroni
1 stick of butter
2/3 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
2/3 c. shredded cheddar cheese
2/3 c. shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2/3 c. shredded Monterey jack cheese
2 c. of half-and-half
8 ounces cubed Velveeta cheese
salt to taste

Cook pasta for 8 minutes until al dente. Once pasta is cooked, drain it and return back to the pot.

Melt butter and mix it in pasta

In a separate bowl mix cheese

Add half-and-half and 1 c. cheese mixture to macaroni and mix well.

Transfer pasta mixed with cheese mixture to a well greased casserole dish. Sprinkle remaining cheese on the top of pasta and get ready to bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

Every 10 minutes take the dish out and stir very well until Velveeta cheese is mixed well with pasta.

Steak, rice and gravy

I work with a friend, who always makes brings yummy looking homemade lunches. I noticed that her rice and gravy always looks wonderful, so I decided to ask her for a recipe. When I tried it at home, the results were great because my husband ate every single bite of steak, rice and gravy that I made.


I used 3 Chef Requested round steaks. I coated each steak in flour and fry them on the pan until each side was golden brown. Then I added enough water in the pan to cover the steaks. I cooked until steaks were done and the water was thickened and turned into gravy.



I took the steaks out and cut them up in small pieces. When the steaks were cooling, I added several spoons of flour in a bowl and added enough milk to dilute the flour. Since the steaks were no longer in the pan, but the brown gravy was still cooking, I added milk mixture in the gravy. This created yummy white gravy to go over rice.

I mixed gravy, steak and rice together, which created a delicious and easy dinner.

Homemade Biscuits

Daniel often has to get up at 4 am to go to school for PT (Army training stuff), so he enjoys a good breakfast. One breakfast item that he loves is whole wheat biscuits, which I sometimes buy from the grocery store if they are on sale. I was always shy about making homemade biscuits because I thought that it would be time consuming. Since I didn’t want to get up at 3 am to fix a hot breakfast, I let Pillsbury do all the work at 4 am. After awhile I decided that buying biscuits is sort of expensive, so it was time for me to put my armor on and a brave face to conquer my biscuit making fear. And can I just tell you that I was shocked how easy and quick it is to make homemade from scratch biscuits!

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tbs sugar
¾ tsp salt
¼ cup butter
1 cup milk (I used buttermilk

mix all dry ingredients together and add chunks of butter


add butter milk
start working the dough (knead) so that all ingredients are incorporated until you can form a ball with the dough



Roll out the dough and use a cup to form biscuits



Bake biscuits at 350F for 10-12 minutes until golden brown

I love biscuits with jelly!

Handy Dandy Kitchen Tools

Over the past year I have developed a passion for cooking! Growing up in Belarus we didn’t have the option of grabbing fast food or going out to eat to a nice restaurant, thus I always enjoyed my mama’s homemade cooking. Every single meal that she cooked always turned out delicious and recently I began to desire my mama’s talent for cooking. I am a true believer that some people are just gifted (like my mama) at making a perfect meal the first time they try a recipe, but for me it sometimes takes several attempts before it comes close to looking like the recipe picture.

But with my picky eater husband, cooking is not always easy. Sometimes my meals are a hit to him and sometimes they are a flop (he is always nice about my flops). So to make my cooking time less stressful especially since I work full time and go to school full time (1 more week left of classes…woot…woot), I rely on handy dandy tools.

I make pizza pretty often around our house, because I found the best recipe and my husband loves it. I make the dough for several batches and freeze it, just as I freeze shredded cooked chicken. So to make meal preparation quick, I let all my ingredients to unthaw and use my handy dandy pizza roller that prevents formation of bubbles on the dough. I used to rely on fork to get the job done and now I roll the pizza dough with holes poking roller and never have to worry about bubble!

My next favorite item is a meat tenderizer. Growing up my mama would make the world’s best pork chops (she still makes yummy ones) and her secret was always to tenderize the meat first. So when I came across this lovely tool several year ago, I had to purchase it and have been happy with my pork chop results every since. By the way, it is an amazing stress reliever also!

Finally I have to let you in on Misto. Because my “too healthy for his own good” husband does not like too much oil in his dishes, I bought an empty spray bottle to fill up with oil. I was very disappointed with the results, because my bottle didn’t spray it right. Then I read a review on Misto about a year ago and decided to try one for myself. My Misto came from Bed Bath and Beyond, because I had 20% coupon. And can I tell you that I love it! I never have to worry about pouring too much oil on a frying pan anymore.

Do you have a favorite kitchen tool?

Russina Blini

My mom makes the world’s best blini (crepes). She can make crepes with butter, apples or meat. When my mom came to visit us this summer, she made lots of crepes with meat so that I could freeze it. My husband thinks that my mom’s blini are better than mine…perhaps it is because she spent years making them.

The first time I tried to make blini in high school, I ended up calling my mom at 12 am (her time) asking her why my blini are not coming out right. Of course she couldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong, because an ocean was between us. But I dumped everything out of my bowl and tried to make another batch. As Russian saying goes, “Pervui blin komam”. This literally means that the first crepe won’t come out right, meaning that the first time you try to do something, you won’t be good at if you don’t keep on practicing.

I had plenty of practice in college making blini, when I found out that my friend Lindsay loves crepes just as much as I do. So we would get together and make crepes. Now that I am married, when I want to get rid of milk that may be expiring in a day or two, I make crepes.

1 egg
1 tbs sugar
1 ts salt
1.5 drinking glass of milk**
1 drinking glass of flour *

*My mom brings Russian flour with her, when she comes to visit us. She doesn’t like the fact that American flour does not dissolve good. I have tried to make crepes with organic flour and found that it works just as good as Russian flour.

** Growing up in Belarus we didn’t have measuring cups. So when my mom cooks, she uses a drinking glass. The trick in this recipe is to use the same drinking glass to measure milk and flour.

In a mixing bowl add egg, sugar and salt. Mix everything very well.


Add milk to the mixture and once again whisk everything together.

Slowly add flour constantly whisking. Make sure that you whisk until flour is dissolved.

Make sure that your frying pan is hot. Gently coat the sides of the pan with butter and add ½ cup (our measuring cups) of crepe mixture in a frying pan. Do the same things as you would do with pancakes, make sure that mixture is spread evenly on the pan creating a very thin looking pancake.



When one side is cooked, which you should see brown dots on the bottom of the crepe, it is time to flip the crepe.

Once the crepe is cooked, I usually like to eat it hot with butter. I also like to dip my crepes in jelly for dessert like dish. You can be creative and add fruit or whatever your heart desires.




When I want a more filling meal, I fill the crepes with ground turkey mixture (you can add onion and boiled egg to the mixture). I then roll it up and when I am ready to eat I warm it up in a hot frying pan. It is best warmed up in a frying pan with butter. Cook a crepe until both sides are brown and crispy.

Banana nut muffins

When Daniel’s parents came to visit us during the summer, Karen (Daniel’s mom) made wonderfully tasty banana nut muffins. Ok, she was actually going to make banana nut bread, but because I couldn’t find a bread pan for the life of me. It was probably because when my husband washed dishes he stuck the pan in one of the draws that had empty space. But at least he washed the dishes, right?

So this month I decided to make muffins using Karin’s recipe. The result? My picky husband liked it so much that I have made 3 batches of muffins in one week. I am muffined out! :)

I hope you will enjoy the recipe as much as we did.

2 bananas (very ripe/almost rotten for better flavor)
2 eggs
½ cup of oil (you can add apple sauce instead or do half and half)
1 tsp of vanilla

mix all the ingredients together

Add:

2 c of flour
1 c of sugar
pecans to taste
pinch or two of baking soda



Mix everything well and pour either in muffin tin or loaf pan

Bake at 375F for 45 minutes (you may want to start checking your muffins/bread after 35 minutes)

Yummy!

Russian Potatoes

I am a potato eater! Growing up my daddy and mama made the best pan fried potatoes with onion. When I request a dish made with potatoes, my dad would give me a knife and potatoes to peel. Needless to say by the age of 12 I could have entered and won a contest for the best potato peeler, because of my potato peeling experience. When I moved to the US, I started to make this simple dish and it was a hit with my picky eater husband. Now I make this potato side pretty frequently.

While you are peeling potatoes, turn the stove on and let you frying pan covered with a little bit of olive oil warm up.

Wash potatoes and start cutting it in small pieces.

Cover the frying pan with lid and let your potatoes cook for at least 30 minutes turning them occasionally.

In a mean time cut 1 medium/small size onion in tiny pieces and fry it in another pan until golden brown.



Uncover you potatoes and mix cooked onion in the frying pan. See if the potatoes are cooked by using a fork and trying to cut potato pieces in half. If you can easily cut potato in half, then it is done. You can serve potatoes with steaks, chicken, pork chops…the options are limitless.




Enjoy it!

Yummy Hash Browns

Growing up my mom cooked a lot of dishes with potatoes because the dishes came out to be inexpensive and filling. My favorite potato dish growing up was draniki, but when I came to the US I fell in love with hash browns. So now I make yummy dish fairly often, especially since cooked potatoes (before frying them in the pan) freeze very well.

Peel a few potatoes and wash them well.

Stick potato with the fork to avoid explosion in the oven (I am not kidding...they will explode).

Place potatoes in a baking dish with a lid on and cook them for 1.5 hours at 350F.

Let potatoes cool and then grade them.

At this point you can either freeze hash browns for later use and fry hash browns right ways.

The end result is yummy!

Learning how to make bread from scratch

About 6 months ago, when I attended a healthy eating class at church, I decided to make homemade bread from scratch. I wanted the bread to be preservative free and healthy, which my mama also reminded me of when she came to visit. My mama was shocked to see a whole wheat bread stay so soft with no mold for 3 weeks.

I contemplated for several weeks before deciding to make whole wheat bread from scratch and couldn’t wait for Daniel to try it. Well, the first loaf that I baked in the bread machine turned out ok, but not as soft as I have hoped. The second loaf I cooked in the pan in the oven also did not turn out as good as the bread we buy in the grocery store. Just when you think “third time is a charm”, I was very disappointed when my bread did not cook all the way. Perhaps it was because I pulled it out of the oven before it had time to bake all the way. So I gave up.

My idea of saving money and baking healthy bread was thrown out of the window, until I came a cross this link http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com. I ordered my books online and when I return home from Spain, I will try to make artisan bread. Based on the book review and comments that I found online, the bread suppose to be super easy to make and it will taste just as good as any bread in the bakery department. I am drooling right about now…nice fluffy bread with crusty cust. Trust me I have read plenty of bread baking blogs and watched plenty youtube videos to hope that this time around my bread will turn out delicious. I can’t wait to share my journey with you all.

Have you tried to make homemade bread? Do you have any tips?

Pelmenu/Vareniku

When I was a little girl, my mom would buy pelmenu (like dumplings filled with meat) from a grocery store. I liked them boiled and pan fried. When I moved to the US the only way that I can satisfy my craving for pelmenu is to make them myself. I was too chicken to follow the recipe with Russian measurement by myself, so I waited for my mom to come over and we made pelmenu together. Ohhhhhh…the homemade pelmenu taste sooooooooo much better than store bought.

Ingredients:

3 drinking cups of flour (In Belarus we do not have measuring cups, thus we use any drinking cup. We then use the same cup to measure the rest of the ingredient in proportion)
¾ of the same drinking cup of fridge chilled water
2 eggs
salt to taste
ground beef/turkey
finely chopped onion (to taste)

Add salt to the flour then lightly beaten eggs and water

Then let your hands go to work and start mixing all the ingredients together until the dough is no longer sticking to your hands.


Once the dough ball is formed, cover it with a lightly wet napkin and let is rest of 30 minutes.


While you are waiting on the dough, mix finely chopped onions and ground beef together in a bowl.

When the dough is ready, cut a little piece of the dough and roll it out.

Using a cup, stamp circles and fill the circles with meat mixture.

Then using your fingers connect the ends of the circle together to keep pelmenu from opening up when cooked.


You can either cook all pelmenu right away or freeze them. We made enough for me to freeze several batches.

When you ready to cook pelmenu, fill up the pot with water and let is come to a boil. Drop fresh/frozen pelmenu and let them cook for approximately 7 minutes. Serve them hot with melted butter or you can deep them in a sour cream. I prefer melted butter.



While we were making pelmenu, we used the same dough and made vareniku (dumpling filled with fruit). The process is the same, only you fill the dough with spoonful of berries and half a spoon of sugar. Boil vareniku and eat while they are hot.

Hope you will enjoy it!