When I was growing up, homemade pizza was the Friday night tradition. It didn’t feel like Friday night if we weren’t all crammed in the kitchen throwing pizza together. So when I was watching a friend’s girls, I offered to make pizza on Friday night. Felt like old times.

Mom’s New Pizza Dough
Mom’s original pizza dough recipe takes forethought. It has to raise for a couple hours. This new one is still yeast-based but soooo much quicker.

2 Tbsp. yeast
2 c. warm water
2 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp vegetable oil
5 c. flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add rest of ingredients. Mix thoroughly, turn dough out on floured surface, knead, and let rise for 5-10 minutes. Spread dough out into crust. (Covers 2 jelly roll pans.) Top with pizza sauce, desired toppings, and bake for 10-15 minutes.

* I usually mix up the dough, and then let it rise while I’m browning the hamburger for my toppings.

We made hamburger, pepperoni, and canadian bacon pizza, and it was beyond delicious. Plus, making pizza from scratch is a great way to get the whole family in the kitchen for some fun family bonding time!

I’ve been in the mood to bake the last couple weeks. Banana chocolate chip bread, regular bread, pumpkin chili, chocolate chip cookies. I’ve even done laundry and cleaned the house – twice! Apparently Laura Ingalls and Betty Crocker took over my body when I wasn’t looking.

Canollis are something my mom used to make when I was growing up. We packed our lunches to school, and these were the envy of everyone in the cafeteria. However, Adult Me has realized how finicky they are to make so they don’t happen very often.

Essentially, canollis are homemade hot pockets. Exactly, what’s not to love?

Roll out a chunk of dough. The recipe says “golf ball size”. Who has time to be that precise? By the way, this rolling pin? Heavy. Duty. I could take out a whole load of bad guys in a dark alley with this thing.

Place filling in center. I used a mixture of ground beef, onion, green pepper, and pizza sauce. Sausage and pepperoni make good fillings or a vegetarian mixture would work nicely as well. And cheese. There must be cheese, or they aren’t really canollis.

Fold sides over and pinch ends. Basically you smash the dough on top of itself and pray it stays. Sometimes it takes a lot of prayer.

If there was a contest for messiest baker west of the Mississippi, I’m pretty sure I would win. That’s why I employ an assistant each time I bake. He’s always happy to oblige, and he never asks for a raise.

I must not have dropped anything for awhile; he’s yawning. Or laughing. I’m not sure which.

Here they are. Ready to bake. Ideally they should be of similar size so they bake more uniformly. As you can see, ideals don’t seem to live long in my kitchen.

And here they are in all their canolli-goodness! Excellent piping hot, and they freeze well.

Canollis
Ingredients
3/4 c. milk
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/4 c. margarine
1/2 c. warm water
1 pkg. yeast (~2 1/4 tsp.)
1 egg
3 1/2 c. flour

Scald milk, stir in margarine, sugar and salt. Cool, dissolve yeast in warm water, add to milk. Add egg and 2 cups of flour. Beat til smooth. Stir in enough flour to make dough. Cover, and let rise.

Follow the steps pictured above, filling with whatever strikes your fancy, and bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

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!