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Meat Pie

This recipe started out as the best of intentions to make a tourtiere for the site. However, after I started cooking the meat and onions I realized I didn't have any of the spices needed to make a tourtiere. So this is simple a meat pie, or meat tart, really, since I cheated and used some frozen pre-made tarts I found while digging in my freezer.  The meat pies turned out really well - a total winner with the kids!  They all loved them, so these are definite keepers. There are some ... well, herbs and herb blends that I couldn't identify and that I used on the meat, so it's not a cut and dried recipe, but a bit of a creative instruction.  This meat pie or meat tart also fits in with the $35 per week challenge, which is always on my mind if not on my blog.

A special note about the tortiere this was supposed to be: my mom's original recipe does not use beef. She would be appalled to see I used it at all, but I have 100 pounds of ground beef in my freezer, so I'm going to use it any chance I get!! And the spices I've used have nothing at all to do with a real tourtiere, so don't let them be any sort of guide at all.

Hawaiin Ham, the redux

It occurred to me tonight, as I made Hawaiin Ham, that this is nothing like the Hawaiin Ham my mom made when I was a kid!  So I thought I should take a picture of my variation.  I have posted this recipe before - you can find it here - but I'll post it again with all the additives and changes I've made since the last time I posted it!

My  mom's version of this recipe is completely different than mine.  I actually had to dig up a recipe book she gave me as a bridal shower gift many, many years ago, just to see the actual differences.  I'll post both recipes so you can do your own comparison, but in my own defense, I think I added all the extra veggies both to stretch the dinner, and to make it a little more 'healthy'.  I'm air-quoting that just in case she ever logs in here and reads this.  The veggies make sense though: carrots and pineapple are a great combination, green beans and pineapple AND green beans and pork are great together, ham and pineapple are complementary, and, well, the green peppers were called for in the original, so I had to keep them in.  Take a look, see what you think!

Emergency pasta sauce

Tonight was one of those "oh my god I have no sauce and the pasta is in the pot already" nights.  

I like to have a bag or five of frozen ravioli and tortellini on hand in my freezer, for nights like tonight.  I had school last night until 9:30, a great visit with a friend, then worked all day today, then home at 6:00pm to cook supper for three incredibly  hungry kids.  It's a long couple of days, that's for sure!  And the thought of cooking at the end of them is just not my favourite thing to think about.  It's even worse when I've realized I've dropped the pasta in the boiling water, and there is no sauce to be found!

This is a recipe for a very simple tomato sauce that I made in a hurry for tonight's ravioli. Simple, natural foods are my favourite thing, and I may have just converted my kids from quickie canned sauce to this simple marinara type sauce.  Now, I do have a great meaty spaghetti sauce that I'll never share the recipe for (see mom, I told you I wouldn't), but for a quick weeknight meal, I've always just opened a jar of whatever-was-on-sale pasta sauce.  This sauce tonight was so easy and tasted so good though, that I may just use this from now on!  This is probably a half recipe of it, so just double it if you're feeding more than one adult and three children.

Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins

Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins are sort of a 'creation from leftovers' special.  New Year's Eve here at my house was a family friendly affair, and we made eight different kinds of homemade pizza for all the kids and adults.  One of the pizzas we made was a Hawaiin pizza (we'll talk about the steak dinner pizza later!), and I ended up having a half can of pineapple tidbits leftover.  From the veggie tray, I managed to salvage a few carrot sticks - and the inspiration for Carrot Pineapple Muffins was born.  I added in some whole wheat flour, mainly because I have some lingering around, and I thought it would add some flavour and 'healthy' to a nice treat.  The amount of whole wheat flour can be adjusted up, if you'd like more whole wheat in your muffins, but in my experience, a little white flour is needed to lighten them up. If you do try all whole wheat and they turn out great, then let me know, I'd love to hear about it. To get the crushed pineapple called for in the recipe, I whizzed the leftover pineapple tidbits in my food processor until I had something probably more correctly called pureed or pulverized pineapple, but it worked.

For the New Year's Eve party, we had a Nintendo Wii competition for the kids, and a Playstation2 Sing Star competition for the adults!  I highly recommend Sing Star - what a hoot!  I'm pretty confident saying we all had a great time, and I can't wait for the next party.