Today’s feature recipe isn’t so much a recipe as it is an American icon: the hamburger. Most of the beef recipes I’ve stumbled across are things like tenderized beef tips with caramelized onions or sirloin steak with apricot glaze or…some other equally fancy (and equally appealing) name. I love me some beef tips and sirloin steak, don’t get me wrong. I’m just having a big crush-fest on the homely hamburger today, and it’s time to give it some blog love.

Hamburger Recipe(Do we really need to have a recipe?)
Ingredients

• Ground beef (duh?)
• Seasoning salt
• Pepper to taste

I like to grill my hamburgers, but I don’t have one at the moment. It’s also winter, and I live in north Idaho. I’m not hardcore enough to be the one standing in the snow grilling burgers. I wish I could be that person, but I’m just not. So I tossed my hamburger in a pan, draining off the fat every so often.

When I’m pan-cooking my hamburgers, I like to toss a little seasoning salt in the pan beforehand. My only other seasoning is pepper, but only on one side – two is too much. I like to bite into a hamburger and have it taste like ground beef, not 80 different seasonings slathered on it.

As you have probably noted, this photo is of a cheeseburger. If a hamburger is the American icon, the cheeseburger is its well-known sidekick. I toasted my bread, a little hickory barbecue sauce, and an entire plate full of heaven is waiting for your tastebuds.

Beef Brisket Pot Roast
This delectable recipe from Simply Recipes for beef brisket pot roast is a little more upscale than my cheeseburger above, but it looks delicious. It’s beef; how can it not be? Besides, it’s on a blue plate. I’ve always been partial to food placed on blue plates.

Beef Brisket Pot Roast from Simply Recipes

Pizza Casserole
There are probably a million recipes out there for pizza casserole. I bet some of them even have more creative names and fancy sounding cheeses in them than mine, but I am a plain-jane type of cook. I don’t have time to make pinwheelie thingers or towers of perfectly cubed fruit. I like steak. I like potatoes. I like chocolate cake.

And I like pizza casserole.

Ingredients:
1 pound of ground beef
Pasta
Half green bell pepper
Chopped black olives
Chopped pepperoni
1 can diced tomatoes
Pizza sauce, variety of your choice
Cheese of your choice

1. Brown ground beef. I forgot the onion in mine, but if my brain hasn’t fallen out the next time I make this, I would throw it in with the beef. Cook pasta just til tender. Overcooking it will equal major pasta mush after baking the casserole. So unless that’s your thing…

2. Combine browned ground beef, cooked pasta, and the remaining ingredients into a mixing bowl. Stir thoroughly. The amount of pizza sauce is up to you – use at least enough so the pasta doesn’t dry out in the oven.

3. Put in greased 9×13 baking dish, cover, and bake for 30-45 minutes or until edges are getting juuuust slightly crunchy. Remove cover, sprinkle with additional cheese and return to oven for 10 minutes.

* This was a great dish to freeze leftovers for work lunches. I still have one container to feed future me!

** Sorry, no other recipes this week for the Recipe Round-up. I will hogtie three of them in 30 seconds for next week. I promise. Mostly.

It’s Christmas Eve. It only makes sense that this week’s Recipe Round-up would include *drum roll* the infamous Cream of Christmas Eve Soup! I don’t know when this tradition started with my mother, but it’s one that simply will not die. Far be it for me to deprive anyone else who might by longing for a little cream soup the night before Christmas though.

Cream of Christmas Eve Soup
Carrots, diced
Potatoes, diced
Water
Cream of celery soup
Milk
Cooked ham, diced
Cheese
Salt, pepper, seasonings of choice – to taste

Bring diced carrots and potatoes to boil. Cook. Do not drain, and add can of cream of celery soup. Add milk to desired amount of soup. Add diced ham. If a thicker soup is desired, utilize a corn starch/water mixture. Bring to light boil and then simmer for awhile. Add cheese of your choice and salt, pepper and other seasonings of your choice to taste.

No, there are no measurements other than if you want more soup, use more ingredients, and if you want less soup, use less ingredients. Super scientific, huh? But not as scientific as the directive to “simmer for awhile”. And if you’re going for the less, trust me, you will always end up with more. Plenty more. For many days of leftovers.

I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures of this better-than-earthworms-worse-than-fruitcake wonderfully traditional Christmas Eve dish. Annnd I suppose it really isn’t all that bad. Just one of those things as a kid that I didn’t enjoy as much as, say, the 10 years of torturous piano lessons. At least now I look back and am incredibly thankful for my piano abilities. I can’t say the same for Cream of Christmas Eve Soup.

Merry Christmas, and thank a farmer and rancher for the bounty I hope is on your tables!

I have just a few moments before I get to work, but I’ve got a couple recipes to throw your way.

This Doesn’t Have a Name

This is a dish I threw together this weekend. It doesn’t have a name, though I’m sure there are probably 180 recipes very similar to it floating around in kitchens everywhere. It was tasty, easy, and utilized my favorite kitchen ornament of all time: the crockpot! I do apologize for the lack of exact measurements; I’m a “throw-as-you-go” type cook.

Ingredients:
1 lb. hamburger
1 onion, sliced and sauteed
Pasta (enough to balance out the hamburger)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can diced tomatoes
Seasonings (I used garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper, but you can use whatever you like.)

Brown hamburger. Saute onions. Cook pasta al dente. Throw in crockpot, add soup, tomatoes and seasonings. Mix thoroughly and cook on high for 2-3 hours. Serve with cheese sprinkled on top!

Candy Cane Kiss Cookies

My favorite part of the holidays is all the amazing food. Yum! I stumbled across this recipe for Candy Cane Kiss Cookies from Jenna at Petit Foodie. I am a chocolate lover, but these cookies look like a delightful break from chocolate world. Can’t wait to give them a whirl.

Happy baking and cooking!

I didn’t have time to cook this weekend like I’d planned. I had visions of beef chili, homemade pizza and chocolate chip cookies dancing in my head. Work roped me in, however, and when I did swing by the grocery store to pick up a few things, every woman in town had decided that was the day to force her husband, kids and pet iguana into contributing to the weekly gathering of food.

In the absence of sharing my culinary amazingness simple, down-home cooking that usually tastes pretty good if I’ve done the “please-make-this-turn-out-okay” dance, I’ve gathered up a couple recipes from the corners of the internet to share with you today.

Swedish Meatballs

Photo of Swedish Meatballs from Elise at Simply Recipes

This is probably one of my most favorite dishes ever, because I never have it. Elise at Simply Recipes has a tasty-looking recipe I’m itching to try. If I can ever hit the grocery store when there aren’t 90 hundred thousand people there.

Black Forest Pot Roast

Photo of Black Forest Pot Roast from RecipeGirl.com

I am a huge crockpot fan. There’s nothing better than tossing a bunch of goodies in the pot and coming home from a long day at work to a tantalizing kitchen. RecipeGirl.com has a recipe for Black Forest Pot Roast. While I love roast, I’m not an aficionado in the roast-cooking department. But how can you screw up crock pot roast? Especially one that looks as good as this one does?