No, I don't think she got asked to the Prom...

She was kind of a Plain Jane. Every one's friend, no one's girlfriend. You know, like 'always a bridesmaid, never a bride" type of deal.

I failed miserably at my attempt to clean out my pantry. I had made a 'resolution' to use up what was in my pantry and freezer, only buying fresh ingredients and those staples that I needed on a regular basis-flour, sugar, tuna. I failed. I have this odd neurosis-I am afraid we are going to starve. I really don't know if this is somehow attributed to the stories of my youth about how there wasn't enough food to go around when I was really young. How my Mom would sit out on the porch with a cup of coffee, while my Dad and sister ate, and I picked through the few things I liked.

I don't really remember those times. I remember bits and pieces of life before, say, 7 years old, but not very many things. I remember bugging the crap out of my Mom to let me open a birthday present before my Dad got home from work. I must have driven her crazy, because I remember her letting me open a pair of musical spoons. Do you remember those? They were two spoons with the rounded sides facing each other, and the handles were cemented into a piece of plastic. You would hold them in one hand, slap them against your knee while holding your other hand above them. They would slap between your hand and your leg and make magical noise.

I remember waiting for my Dad to come home from work. He worked at Ford Motor Company in St. Paul. At this time we were living in Baldwin Wisconsin. It was probably 50 miles away. He would come home and strip down to his skivvies and undershirt and I would strip down to my undershirt and panties and on special days he would bring home a little smoked salmon. We would sit on the couch and I wanted to be just like him in my t-shirt and underpants and watch TV. We had an old Black and White console, that had a record player and radio on the other side of the television.

I remember the television repair man who was crippled. I don't know if he had arthritis, or some other illness, but I remember him being nice.

I remember Susie and Sally, the twins that lived across the street, across the open field. They were blond and so pretty.

I remember being at their house and seeing the moving van in our front yard. No one had told me we were moving-the van was just there, and people were moving our few belongings into it and soon we were on our way to St. Paul-to a house that was finally ours. No more renting. We had a yard and my Dad built a sandbox and bought us a Jungle Jym. And I never moved again until I was almost 18 years old and moved in with my Mom.

I never remember us being poor.

In my adult life, we haven't been poor. We haven't had to use an emergency shelter, or use a food bank. We have been broke and couldn't afford things, but we could always make our house payment and all the regular bills we had. We had setbacks. Dude lost his job of 18 years and all of a sudden, I was the primary breadwinner, making a whopping $14 an hour. We had two teenagers, orthodontist bills, clothes, sports equipment, insurance, cell phone bills. We made it through.

I lost my job. Dude was a temporary employee at the cereal plant. We had no health insurance, I willed that my kids wouldn't get sick and we did without presents at Christmas with the exception of a few for the girls.

I am now sitting here wondering if I will lose my job due to my elbow. I know that sounds like I am paranoid, but there has been weird conversations and innuendos and, well, just stuff.

I am now successfully making due with the pantry. I have had to buy some meat, but only on sale.

I have never made pasta sauce before. For two bucks, I could buy a jar of pasta sauce. Work is done, and sometimes it is cheaper than making from scratch. I looked in the cupboard and found many cans of whole, peeled tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato paste.... and on and on.

I stood looking at the cupboards at 3 PM. Dude was on his last week of day shift as his wrist had healed and he was headed back to nights. Drama Queen was working at the dry cleaners and would be home in a couple hours. Think, Tami, think.

I saw tomatoes, paste, some pasta. I had some cooked ground beef in the fridge. I dumped some stuff together and prayed for the best.

She was a little plain, but she filled our bellies with warm food.

Baked Pasta

1-28oz can of San Marzano tomatoes

1-15 oz can of tomato sauce

1-12 oz can of tomato paste

1/2 cup water

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 TBSP sugar

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp red pepper flakes

pinch of salt and pepper

1 pound ground beef, browned and drained

1/2 pound cooked mostacciola (I think that was what it was)

1 cup shredded cheese-your choice

In saucepan, combine tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, water, garlic, sugar, basil, oregano, onion powder and red pepper flakes. Crush the tomatoes down with potato masher. Simmer over low heat for 1-1/2 hours. Stir in ground beef and simmer for half an hour. Pour cooked pasta into an 8x8 or 9x9 square glass pan. Top with tomato sauce mixture and shredded cheese. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes or until cheese is golden brown.

Serve with a green salad and bread.

It wasn't perfect. To me the sauce was too tomato-ey. Dude said I was crazy as that was what it should be like. Maybe all those years of jarred sauce makes me crave a little smoother, sweeter sauce.

I shall play with this recipe. But we went to bed with full bellies and that is what it is all about.

Oooey, Gooey, Hot and Chewy

As a child, I was a very picky eater. Years later, well, little has changed. All those foods my friends ate? Not happening on my plate. Mac and cheese? Oh Puh-leeze. Pizza? I think not (I do however really like pizza now). Grilled cheese with a bowl of soup? Send me to my room hungry Mommy. My Mother likes to a story about my eating habits-well, she loves to tell many, but this one she tells often. I was a tall, gangly child with super long legs and big buck teeth (Thank you Dr. Bacalars!!) and she was constantly fretting at the doctor about my eating habits and how skinny I was and she was sure I was malnourished. He patted her arm and told her I would eat when I was hungry. She couldn't leave well enough alone and tried many tricks to try to get me to eat. One of her least effective tricks was to blend my dinner up and try to have me drink it, since I have some issues with textures. It did not go as well as she hoped. Not more than 2 seconds after it landed in my stomach, it took a detour and headed North again, all over her. She pretty much gave up hope after that and just let me eat the parts of dinner I liked. I survived.

To this day I still don't do mac and cheese-odd, since I love pasta and I love cheese, but apparently not together. And I don't like grilled cheese. I do however fancy a grilled ham and cheese. Oh, so melty. So warm. So good.


I blogged a few weeks ago about the Frappe Vino. The frozen wine slush? I had it at a baby shower for a girl I worked with at the bank. It was like a reunion. 20 women who had spent a great deal of time together over the years. We had seen marriages, divorces, babies and death. And we waited many years to celebrate with our dear friend R. Her son is gorgeous and probably the most wanted and waited for baby ever.

I loved these sandwiches so much, I think I had three that night. The girls hosting the party made a smaller version of these but I was feeding several men at our party two weeks ago, so I used bigger rolls. Feast your eyes on these beauties......




Sweet and Savory Baked Ham Sandwiches

2 pounds good deli ham (no water added junk-go for the good stuff)
1 pound baby Swiss, very thinly sliced (from the deli too)
36 buns-I used a sandwich bun from the bakery
3 sticks of unsalted butter
6 TBSP brown sugar
4 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
4 TBSP Dijon mustard
2 tsp onion powder

In a 2 quart saucepan, bring to a gentle boil the butter, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon and onion powder. Stir until it is all melted and combined. Remove from heat and let cool.
Make the sandwiches. I used two pieces of ham and two slices of cheese-but I had it sliced about half the thickness that they normally slice it; you could see through it, and not just because of the holes. Place the made sandwiches in 9x13 cake pans. You need the cake pans or another tall sided pan since you will covering with foil. I used 3 pans because of the size of the buns. When the butter mixture has cooled, pour it evenly over the three pans. Cover the pans with tinfoil and place in the refrigerator overnight. Remove them from fridge a half an hour before baking. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 25 minutes covered. After the 25 minutes, remove the foil and bake an additional 5 to 8 minutes.

Good gravy, you need to make these. These were DEVOURED and I was told by several of the guys that they were sending their wives over to learn how to cook. While that touched the cockles of my heart, I just sent the recipe home with them. Next time I make them, I'm not sharing. Well, okay, I did share with Dude and Drama Queen when I made them a few days later.

I just wanna be a sheep, baa baa baa baa

Okay, it is a totally corny lead in, but the only thing I could think of with Shepard's was either Christmas, or my favorite song the little kids sing in church each year. Just the little voices singing "I just wanna be a sheep, baa baa baa baa" makes me smile every time I hear it.

It was my first day off after my three day weekend, and it is usually a wash out as I'm so tired I just sleep and sleep....and then feel like I have accomplished nothing and then stress out about getting everything done the next day so I can go back to work. I am not trying to complain about working, it is just after a 12 hour overnight, your body just can't bounce back to a normal schedule. I woke up at 11 and decided it was waaaaay too early to get up (since I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to look at the clock) and slept another 2 hours. And then laid back down to take a quick nap. And then I needed a plan for dinner. Since Dude is on light duty, he is working in the office during the day while he recoups. I found a recipe on my desk for Shepard's Pie and saw I had most of the ingredients, so made it up as I went along.

Shepard's Pie (Based on Kraft's recipe)

1 pound ground beef

2 pounds potatoes, cut up to cook and mash

2 cloves garlic, peeled, but whole

3 ounces Philly cream cheese, room temp

1/4 cup heavy cream, warmed

1 cup shredded Cheddar Jack cheese, divided

1 cup beef gravy

1 small can corn

1 small shallot, chopped

1 small carrot, diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Brown ground beef with shallot. Stir in carrot and simmer a few minutes. While ground beef is browning, put spuds in pan of cold water; add the garlic cloves. Boil for 15 to 20 minutes until fork tender. Add brown gravy and corn to beef and simmer over low heat while mashing the potatoes. I took the cloves of garlic out then mashed since DQ isn't a big fan of garlic. The potatoes had a nice, light garlic flavor. Mash the potatoes with the warmed cream, then beat in the cream cheese and a 1/4 cup of shredded cheese. The spuds will be a little stiff. Pour the hamburger mixture into a 9x9 glass pan. Spoon spuds onto the top of the beef mixture, and spread out to cover the beef, edge to edge. Sprinkle on remaining cheese and place in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Turn broiler on low (if you have a broiler function in the oven rather than a separate drawer) and brown the cheese. If not, just leave in the oven a few extra minutes so it is browned and bubbly.

I think I could be a sheep if my Shepard made this for me......