Oreo Cooking Blog

FAUX BEEF BROTH: Carrot intense pulp with spinach & cabbage & mushrooms, ground savory, sage, onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, black pepper, & soy sauce.

Micah and I are back in Iowa now, and are able to shop at our favorite Fareway, a Christian grocery store. This store has class, employees are required to wear white shirts & black ties..they even take your groceries out to the car for you & load the car. They have the most marelous meat department where they wrap your purchase in butcher's paper! What's not to love?

So, my dear hubby got us some wonderful thick cut bacon. We're talking real bacon here folks...no doubt from Iowa pigs...not that paper thin stuff you can just get anywhere.

I love the smell of bacon frying in the skillet. It reminds me of overnight stays at my Grandma J's. If you got up early in the morning with Grandpa Doyle, a horse breaker by trade, then you got fried bacon, eggs fried of course in bacon grease with the wonderful crispy edges, & toast. If you slept in, you got cereal with my aunt MaryLee. Needless to say, I woke up before the sun as soon as I smelled the bacon drifting through the farm house.

So tonight I tried a new recipe for pizza crust mainly because our standby pizza recipe is burried inside the mountain of boxes that is now our garage. I used Valentino's Pizza Crust off of allrecipes.com but I doubled the recipe an used the flour that we had open...which was whole wheat and self rising white. Anyway, the recipe doesn't call for the dough to be rolled out or anything...so we just patted it down like it said. This produced a very thick biscuit like crust for our pizza. The picture is of the calzones that I dropped as they came out of the oven...so tomorrow I get the pleasure of cleaning out the oven. All still edible but not so pretty. Pizza is a little harder to get a good blend of cheddar & mozzarella when the cheese shredder is lost in the mountain of boxes as well. All in all it was not too bad of a fix for left over meat sauce from the night before...which is a
story in itself. I think overall this recipe would have been better if we would have rolled it out thin.

Do you want the perfect summer afternoon lunch? This is an invention that my husband came up with the other day. It was marvelous. We took Sweet Italian Turkey Sausages, and uncased them and fried them up in a pan with some onions and bell peppers (green and red)and melt some cheese in with all of it. We used some velveeta slices because that's what we had on hand. Then load into a toasted hot dog bun. Serve with sliced garden fresh tomatoes and cottage cheese! Serve with a nice tall glass of Iced Tea. YUMMY!

Do you ever just want to get a little creative with your KFC left overs? Here's an option we had never tried before. First start out with making some potato pancakes with your left over mashed potatoes. Then put those on the bottom of the plate...They are not as firm as most potato pancakes, but they do get a nice crust on them when fried in butter. Then as you are warming up your gravy in the microwave, shred up your leftover extra crispy chicken or original. Put the crispy skin on the side (you may want to heat to eat) Or chop to sprinkle on top. Then scramble a few eggs and toss your shredded chicken and eggs into the skillet. Layer your eggs and chicken over your potato pancakes, and cover with gravy. Serve with a side of left over coleslaw, and wash down with a glass of Pepsi. Who needs to wait for lunch to enjoy your KFC left overs. A biscuit with honey would be an excellent addition to this meal...if they make it past the first night.

1 whole rotisserie chicken (I usually buy pre-made from the supermarket)