Recipes You Learn Along the Way...

Going through life and minding your own business, you sometimes pick up useful tidbits from unlikely places. When I was in high school for instance, I was madly in love with this guy (which by the way I was scheduled to marry him in June of 2001, but that is a train-wreck for another time).

Anyway, I would go over to his parent's house and try to be as helpful and pleasant as possible. There were 5 kids in this household in a pseudo-Brady Bunch situation, and me being frequently-visiting type I am made it six. His mom's pantry was always full of tasty consumables, but trying to have a proper sit down meal around 6 teenagers was near impossible. She did eek it out sometimes to the tune of this cheap recipe. It could be served as any meal, and none of us complained when it was breakfast the next day. (not that I ever had it for breakfast at that time. I had to be home by midnight on Friday and Saturday thank you very much!).

Today's lesson, kids, is how to make Stromboli a la Bobby's Mom:

You will need:
1 package of frozen self-rising bread loafs (the kind I buy comes 3 to a package)
non stick cooking spray and saran wrap
1-2lbs. of breakfast sausage in your favorite flavor  (substitute chopped ham lunch meat for a healthier version)
1 large pack of shredded cheese that you like

Distructions:
Depending on how hot your kitchen is, you will need several hours to rise the frozen bread dough. Some people, who live in really well insulated homes, put it out before they go to work and it's risen enough to get by when they return after work. Putting it out about lunch time is average. Place the loaf in a well greased bread pan. (1 loaf feeds 2-3 people so rise the number that you need accordingly.) Spray the top of the loaf with more cooking spray, and loosely cover with a large piece of Saran-wrap. This will prevent the dough from drying out and/or sticking as it rises. Let the dough rise until it is about an inch over the edge of the pan.

When the dough has risen, or nearly risen, go ahead and fry up that breakfast sausage. One pound is enough for 2 loaves.When the sausage is sufficiently browned, for the love of God let some of the fat drain off on a few paper towels while you do the next step. Your heart will thank you later.

Pour some of that shredded cheese on a prep-plate, or just have it ready to get out of the bag, whatever.

Now this next bit might seem a little counter-intuitive after the whole, wait 10 hours for the bread to rise bit, but hear me out. The next thing you do is pop the dough and make a little trough in the middle like so:

Pop!

n' trough

 The next step is laying down a layer of cheese, followed by a layer of meat, then more cheese.

 

Okay. The next two steps are tricky, so pay attention Myrtle. You are going to now seal up the loaf so that its guts are neatly encased. Simply fold over the edges and pinch them together. Gently now, don't get too rough:

Pinchy, pinchy

Now, if you're a bit lazy like myself, you can just pop it in the oven as is, and cook according to the bread bag's suggestions (usually like 20 minutes). But if you are a Polly Perfect and want to impress your son's girlfriend with your culinary skills, you can do the flip. Very carefully and oh so quickly, slide your hand under the entire loaf and flip it over so the pinchy side is down. Behold:

Now is not the time for pinching.

Flop! *raspberry noise*

Bake immediately as the teens are probably growing restless and pilfering bits of dough and cooked sausage. When it's done, slice it into pieces like any old loaf of bread. If you're a natural, it will look something like this:

I suppose could have put peppers and onions and other veggies in there if you like.

As a mom, you can try to do the respectable thing and serve this with a salad or something green, but let's be honest here, we're Americans. Grab a coke from the fridge, sit down in front of the tv, and enjoy the stromboli for what it is.

Being Chastised at Whole Foods: An Embarrassing way to Spend Your Saturday

Saturday morning I had a wedding dress fitting, after which I had to kill like 5 hours before a spa appointment. Well, I had no idea what to do because I thought the fitting would take much longer, and the spa would not budge on my appointment time. (Which I found out was due to the fact that it wasn't really a spa, but a house converted into a business, which consisted of exactly 1 parking spot.)

When driving around the rich people neighborhood of River Oaks and drooling over the houses I could probably never afford in my lifetime (not the McMansions, but the charming older homes resembling cottages from Lord of the Rings and are expensive by proxy), I decided a short trip to Whole foods was in order. Silly me though, usually I only buy meat, dairy, and other perishables at Whole Foods. There was no way I was going to buy that stuff today, because it would spoil between the walk from the entrance to the car in Saturday's heat. No way could it last til after the spa. So I contented myself with grazing on samples and getting a few not-so-perishables.

You know that feeling when you realize that you are about to witness a train wreck and there is really nothing you can do to stop it? This was the feeling I got as I strolled down the raw grains aisle. I am about 30 feet from a lovely display of all the shop's flowers, in particular an ill-conceived arrangement. The heavy sunflowers hung precariously over some very expense orchids. I noticed that the sunflowers slowly shifted to one end of their container and were starting to tilt. A light goes off in my head: Go race over there and stop that bucket from crashing! Alas, as I am doing the delicate dance between acting and bystander apathy, the sunflower bucket falls as if in slow motion, crashing into a shelf of other flowers, which in turn knocked over the entire floral display. Now I am doing the delicate dance of turning around and acting like I just didn't witness this, or going to try to help right the situation.  I chose to do nothing. This is not in my nature, but I did not want to be blamed for the avalanche of petals, and thus be held financially responsible for catastrophe. I have learned that when it comes to stores, they automatically assume the person trying to help is the one responsible for the accident. No way I was getting stuck with $1000 worth of organically grown exotics when I was minding my own business in bulk spices.

A gentlemen in my aisle, walks up to me and says, "Don't worry, I'm a witness and you didn't do it." I chuckled uneasily, telling him I meant to try to stop it, but I was just too late. "I'll tell them you didn't do it," he said. He went and got someone, as I was somewhat frozen in place. I can't tell you why. Like I said before, I didn't want to be associated with the debacle, but I was so close to the end of the aisle I had no place else to go. After some of the store authorities jumped in and started trying to salvage the situation, I made a break for it. Later down the next aisle, the man that alerted the crew to the incident jokingly chides me down the whole next aisle about why I had to knock down such a pretty display. So now, everyone browsing crackers thinks I'm the person who did it. I get some dirty looks. Fabulous.

I race off to my favorite area of the store, which is, of course, the cheese display. I think to myself, what a lovely idea for a blog post. Posts are always prettier with pictures, so I whip out my phone for a quick pic. Suddenly, a dude from the cheese counter very loudly exclaims: "YOU CAN'T TAKE PICTURES HERE!" I turned as bright as a lobster because everyone from fine wines, to chocolates is now starring at the bozo taking pictures of Gouda and Drunken Goat. I walk up to the counter and apologize and try to explain that the picture for a blog of little consequence, with a mere readership of perhaps...6 and a half. The CheeseDude says too bad, store policy says that I could be a Kroger-spy trying to copy Whole Foods' proprietary ideas, and all photographs have to be approved by the store's manager. Jeez-Louise! Like Kroger-spies are taking pictures with pink-glittery IPhones. (Kail brought out a point later that if Kroger really wanted to steal ideas from Whole Foods, they would just have to Whole Food's own website and see all the same stuff.) Google was kind enough to provide about 900 million pictures of Whole Foods' cheese display. Apparently, cheese spies are rampant. It's almost a pandemic...

Oh the Horror!

Cheesy-Idea Thievery!

This Just In: Cheese displays photos leaked to media! Whatever will we do!
The displays are only to be viewed by the millions of customers that visit one of our 273 stores the U.S. states; six in Canada; or five in the United Kingdom!

Of course, I'll probably get the pants sued off me by some litigator trying to make a name for himself. I will have it known right now that I did not snap these illicit photos, I merely stole them from some other mischievous, aberrant-minded delinquents that share the same love-affair with cheese as I do.

Shopping at Rich Grocery Store #3 & other things I have to STOP doing!

So in Texas, HEB is the store to shop if you want great food at a low price. Now if you just want a low price you can go to Wal-mart. I am giving them the virtual finger right now.

 (This picture was kindly stolen from another website )

                                                            

Wal-mart, aka poor people grocery store, has the worst produce in the UNIVERSE. If I am going to do this vegetarian thing for Lent, Wal-mart should definitely be something that I give up. So, I head on over to HEB for the good deals and the awesome produce. Well, I thought I was...

The HEB that is closest to me is in that rich neighborhood, a few blocks from the "remarkable" store with the $30/ lb cheap meat cuts. It was like I was walking through the Whole Foods Market with it's wide selection of over priced organic produce, herbal supplement section, and vegan pet foods (for all those dogs and cats who feel guilty about consuming meat/eggs/milk *rolling eyes*). The store was preparing for dreaded Valentine's day by hand dipping strawberries for the rich house-wives who can't melt chocolate (maybe a little too judgmental with that last statement) and dip in clean strawberries. Even I can do this and not screw it up. Jon just doesn't like strawberries, so there.

Still, everything was ridiculously overpriced. I was naturally attracted the wall-long display of cheeses. (naturally I spent the bulk of my time there pining for cranberry-drunken goat cheese and a beautifully crafted English Roquefort.) But I digress as usual. I spent $53 dollars for little more than milk, tomato sauce, a loaf of artisan bread, cheese, bananas, and frozen ravioli...yes also cheese. Oh and some red pepper hummus ($6.99/ lb!!!! ).  So, even shopping like a poor person I spent way too much. When will I ever learn?