Posts Tagged ‘cheese is a food group

11
Sep
13

bread and meat.

By Uncle Crappy 4 Comments
Categories: Food and Recipes
Tags: , , ,

As we packed up after the Buffalo game, I asked Fred if he could come up with an idea or two for the following week’s party. And when he emailed me a couple days later with suggestions for Italian-style sandwiches and Muffulettas.

I think Fred viewed these, which he pulled from Google, as possibilities. But they sounded good to me, and I viewed them as the menu for the San Diego State game.

sammiches

Fred’s notes on the Italian sandwiches:

Italian-Style Sandwiches

• 1 (5.3-oz.) container spreadable goat cheese

• 2 tablespoons refrigerated pesto with basil

• 1 (12-oz.) package ciabatta rolls

• 1 pound variety meats

• 1 1/3 cups firmly packed arugula

• 1/2 cup jarred roasted red bell pepper strips

• 1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced

Wasn’t in the mood for onion and decided to use the full loaves instead of rolls. Also, used mixed greens instead

of only arugula.

Fred found delicious stuff at Costco for these, not the least of which was the amazing crusty bread he used for both. The pesto on these, the Italians, also made these stand out.

Fred found delicious stuff at Costco for these, not the least of which was the amazing crusty bread he used for both. The pesto on these, the Italians, also made these stand out.

And then there were the Muffulettas. The olive spread meant that I wasn’t trying these — olives are one of a few foods that I really wish I liked — but everyone loved them. Here’s what Fred did with those:

Muffulettas

• 2 16-oz. jars mixed pickled vegetables

• 3/4 cup pimiento-stuffed Spanish olives, chopped

• 2 tablespoons bottled olive oil-and-vinegar dressing

• 12 small dinner rolls, cut in half

• 6 Swiss cheese slices, cut in half

• 12 thin deli ham slices

• 12 Genoa salami slices

• 6 provolone cheese slices, cut in half

Used Costco Muffuletta spread instead of making my own. Used provolone only (because I forgot to buy

swiss). Used the same rustic loafs that I used for Italian sandwiches.

Olive-y goodness.

Olive-y goodness.

A couple of other tips from Fred:

  • Best secret in making sub-style sandwiches: Slice open and hollow out the top of each loaf, hollow top slice and the fixins fit much better.
  • Went to Wasserstrom Restaurant Supply for foil bins (used for serving) and beautiful bamboo toothpicks.

The next game is a noon start, which means it’ll be tough for Mrs. Crappy and me to cook. Anyone have any suggestions?

Heh.

19
Sep
12

we punted.

By Uncle Crappy Leave a Comment
Categories: Recap and Recipes
Tags: , ,

Yes, we’re late. That’s mostly my fault, as a cold has kept me nailed to the couch for most of the week; Mrs. Crappy did her part, filing this on Monday. Whoops. As always, my comments are in italics. -UC

Week three of the 2012 season found the Buckeyes on a beautiful Saturday playing not-so-beautiful game against the California University at Berkley, who came very, very close to winning, but I’ll leave the game analysis to Uncle Crappy.

Just win, baby.

As for the food analysis, Sept. 15 proved to be an odd day, as the Crappy parents were out of town all week and I had to work late Friday. So early on in the week, we decided to let someone else do the cooking, an option that most of our tailgaters picked as well.

By Friday, we had a count of 15 for the party (very glad to have Aunt Mary up and around again!), so Uncle Crappy had to up our takeout order from City BBQ in Columbus with their “Pig Up and Go” party packages. Our preferred location is on Henderson Road and you can check out the menu here. We got the BP7, which includes, 5 pounds of meat, two 2 1/2 quart sides, sauce and buns. Pulled pork, beef brisket, cole salw and baked beans were the fixings we picked. Crappy Dad looked at it all and told Uncle Crappy there would be tons left over. Yeah, he ended up with enough meat for a sandwich of each. We love our barbecue!

We are thankful to have excellent barbecue options in Pittsburgh; I think City holds up to any of them.

The vinegar-based cole slaw, however, was not a favorite of the crowd and we ended up bring a whole quart back to Pittsburgh, where we plan to make grilled Rachel sandwiches for dinner Tuesday night (Thanks to my illness, we waited until Wednesday night. Totally worth the wait, by the way). Since no one cooked this weekend, and grilled Rachels are easy to make on a Coleman griddle at, say, a tailgate, here is the recipe:

Grilled Rachels, aka the Roasted Turkey Reuben

  • Use either deli turkey or leftover roasted turkey, say after Thanksgiving
  • Deli or marble rye bread, although Martha Stewart recommends sourdough (Martha Stewart would be wrong about that one.)
  • Butter or margarine
  • Coleslaw, whatever kind you like — creamy or vinegar-based (But the vinegar-based one we had was excellent.)
  • Thinly sliced Swiss cheese
  • Russian or Thousand Island dressing

Butter one or both sides of each slice of bread. You pick how much butter you want. Heat frying pan or griddle, like you would for making grilled cheese sandwiches. Spread schmear of dressing on one or both slices of bread. Put one slice butter-side down, on griddle or pan, layering Swiss cheese, turkey and cole slaw on slice. Top with other slice of bread, butter side out, and grill until cheese is melty and the bread is as toasted as you like. Avoid burning bread and feel free to mush down on sandwich with a spatula or to use one of those weights used to make bacon cook flat. You could also use a panni or George Foreman grill. Cut in half and serve with additional dressing if you like extra (and I like extra!)

Deeeelicious.

We also had Suzanne’s cheese dip, potato chips and, this week’s bonus recipe, pumpkin roll.

Easy Pumpkin Roll

  • 3 eggs or 3/4 cup egg substitute
  • 3/4 cup canned pumpkin (not the pumpkin pie mix stuff)
  • 1 cup boxed spice cake mix (preferably a kind with pudding or that says super moist)
  • powdered sugar
  • 1 can creamy style cream cheese frosting at room temp or little warmer

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with a mixer on high until they are thick and yellow – about 2 minutes (or just shake the container of egg substitute really well). Mix in the pumpkin. Mix in the cake mix.

Spread in a 10 x 15″ jelly roll pan lined with greased wax paper or foil. Bake for about 10 minutes at 375.

Remove from the oven and turn out onto a cotton kitchen , not terry cloth, towel well dusted with powdered sugar. Roll the cake up in the towel and let it cool on a wire rack for around 1/2 hour with seam down. Unroll and spread with the cream cheese frosting. Roll it back up without the kitchen towel this time. Sprinkle with more powdered sugar, roll in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator. Chilling helps to keep the roll shape.

Or you can make your own cream cheese spread:

  • 1 (8-oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
  • 1/3 cup real butter, softened
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Blend cream cheese and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; add remaining powdered sugar and vanilla, blending well.

So here comes University of Alabama-Birmingham at noon on Saturday. Uncle Crappy and I are going camping and leaving Crappy Dad in charge of tailgate. Will report back on the game and the food next week. Until then — Go Buckeyes! P.S. — I hope we learned how to tackle during the week! (Yes, that would be good.)

10
Sep
12

sweet and hammy.

By Uncle Crappy 1 Comment
Categories: Recipes
Tags: , ,

Mrs. Crappy returns for the second installation of what it was we ate on Saturday. These things were freaking delicious and easy to make, so thanks to her for finding the recipe. As was the case a week ago, I’ll add some notes in the photo captions and the text in italics. And finally — bonus points to whomever gets the reference in the headline. -UC

The second week of the 2012 season versus the University of Central Florida Knights gave us a chance to try out a recipe I’ve had my eye on for a while. I found these Hawaiian Sweet Roll Ham Sammies on Pinterest, as all things are these days, by way of beyerbeware.blogspot.com.

Uncle Crappy’s mom Pat has a similar recipe using regular grocery store sandwich rolls instead of the sweet sandwich rolls; Uncle Crappy made them for us years ago. They were very good, making individual sandwiches that are then frozen for future use, but the recipe makes like 40 sandwiches and there were only two of us. Sort of like the first time we went skiing in Snowmass and Uncle Crappy took me to the top of the mountain after four skiing sessions in a county park with a hill (Whiner.).

Anyway, here’s the recipe for Hawaiian Sweet Roll Sammies:

1 package of 12 King’s Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (Distinctive orange packaging. Uncle Crappy found ours in the deli section of the grocery instead of bread section. After much searching.)
1 onion minced
1 stick of butter
3 tablespoons of Djion mustard
2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce
3 teaspoons of poppy seeds (Remember, these can sometimes trigger false positives in urine drug tests, so leave them out if this is something you need to worry about.)
3/4 pound shaved ham (We used Giant Eagle Market District Ham Off the Bone. Good, not overly salty to counter the sweet rolls.)
8 slices of Swiss cheese

Sweet merciful crap, did this smell good.

Melt butter in a small skillet and add onions. Medium heat. Let saute for a few minutes to soften onions, but don’t brown the onions. Mix mustard, Worcestershire sauce and poppy seeds into onion and butter. Simmer for a few minutes, until the onions are soft.

Note that there are a couple different kinds of rolls in those pans. I couldn’t find three packages of sweet rolls in the two stores I visited, so I did some improvising, using the sweet deli buns as well. Didn’t notice a difference at all.

Slice rolls as a slab (not individual rolls) lengthwise, and place bottom in an aluminum foil lined 13′ x 9″ baking pan. Spread 3/4 of onion mixture on roll bottoms, then layer ham and cheese on top. Place top of rolls on the pile, spreading the remaining onion mixture over the top of the rolls. Cover with foil and refrigerate until ready to bake.

This is the butter/mustard goop spread on the bottoms of the buns. Make sure you hold back enough to coat the tops, too.

The finished sammiches, ready to be baked. Under the bun tops are layers of ham and Swiss cheese. Note: I got three packages of bread for two casseroles. I also fudged the amount of ham and cheese upwards a bit.

Bake covered with foil for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

And they’re done. A little sweet, and meaty and goopy with cheese. This recipe is a keeper.

Uncle Crappy put two of these casseroles together on Friday and then we baked Saturday morning before going to tailgate. Refer to last week’s entry about how we transport hot things to the tailgate. We were warned when we got to Columbus that we might have six additional tailgaters, so we whipped the Eggless Sausage Casserole from last weekend out of the freezer and cooked it too. Good thing, too — with 15 very hungry people, we came away with about a quarter casserole of the sammies, which Uncle Crappy and I ate for dinner Sunday.

Not the most artful shot of the cake — sorry ’bout that — but hooboy, was it good.

Additional food included: Chilled Cajun shrimp, which I’ll get the recipe for, and My Grandma’s of New England Coffee Cake, which is honestly the best coffee cake I have ever had and will be ordering for Christmas presents this year! We had the plain coffee cake, but we all want to try the other flavors too, especially the blueberry. Interested? You’ll find all the info here.

And the bonus recipe this week is for Suzanne’s Jarlsberg Cheese Dip — 2 cups chopped red onions, 2 cups mayonnaise, 2 cups shredded Jarlsberg cheese, mix together in a dish. Chill and serve with crackers. Now, in looking up this recipe, I found that it is meant to be baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes and served warm. I have never had it that way and it is one of those that you can’t stop eating cold, so I wonder what the warm version is like. My cousin also makes it cold, but loads it with fresh cracked black pepper, which is yummy. Someone out there, bake it and report back what its like warm.

Now looking forward to Saturday’s match up with University of California Golden Bears, and wondering what we’ll eat! Go Buckeyes!

07
Sep
12

disaster narrowly averted.

By Uncle Crappy Leave a Comment
Categories: Food
Tags: ,

By now, making the eggless sausage breakfast casseroles should be second nature to me. As Mrs. Crappy explained a day ago, it’s something of a standard dish for us.

And yet, I can’t seem to make them without screwing something up.

Thankfully, it’s a pretty forgiving recipe, and I can get away with making mistakes without you guys ever noticing. Like, say, two seasons ago when we were talking in the kitchen while I was preparing the food — and I realized that I forgot to brown the sausage before mixing it with the potatoes, peppers and all the other delicious stuff. No biggie, though — the sausage was cooked when I baked the casseroles the following morning.

On Friday night, I was dead tired when I started the prep work — but I at least remembered to get out the skillets to brown the meat while we watched Michigan State and Boise State. I diced all the veggies without losing a finger and popped them in the oven so we would only have to heat them in the morning. Dad and Mrs. Crappy both tasted the final product, announced they were pleased and we all went to bed to get ready for a very early start on Saturday.

It was when I was collecting food for the coolers on Saturday morning that I noticed the two bags of shredded cheddar in the fridge. Unopened.

Yep. I forgot to add the cheese.

Fortune continued to smile on me and my breakfast casseroles, though. I had just put them in the oven to get them warm; I got them out, buried the tops of each one with a cup of cheddar, and put them back in to heat. The finished product? The cheese browned beautifully, crusty in some places, melty in others.

Yes, we ran this picture yesterday. BUT JUST LOOK AT THAT CHEESE.

My ass was saved once again.

So when I make these next year, someone remind me to not only put the cheese in the casseroles but to put some on top as well. And to brown the sausage. And to not cut off my fingers.

17
Nov
10

ode to cheese.

By Uncle Crappy 3 Comments
Categories: Food and Recipes
Tags: ,

I know I made a big deal when we started KNT about the fact that we’d post recipes here; I know that some of us *coughmrscrappyahem* haven’t really gotten around to posting about what they’ve cooked.

I have a recipe, used just last Saturday. I’m not sure it qualifies as cooking — and in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Mrs. Crappy actually made this while I was loading the truck Saturday morning — but it was everything I was hoping for and more.

Ladies and gentlemen — the Official Queso Dip of the Big Ten Network:

You take two cans of this:

Dice 32 ounces of this:

And put them all in a bowl in the microwave until it’s all melty. Kind of like this:

Not a picture of our presentation, which involved a crock pot and an open bag of Fritos Scoops sitting next to it.

I wanted to try this for the cheesiness factor alone — not the cheese factor, because, let’s face it, no actual cheese is involved here — and I would have happy with just about any result. But, uh, I can happily report that this was actually good. We broke out the bowl with a bag of Fritos Scoops and the KNTers killed the whole thing in about an hour. The Ro*Tel tomatoes and chilies have a pretty good amount of spice by themselves; unless you really wanted to go big, you don’t have to adjust for that kind of heat.

There is a variation I will likely try for the Michigan game. When I tweeted last week about making this, my friend Jennifer mentioned her standard additions to the standard recipe — a pound of cooked ground sausage and a brick of cream cheese. Dude — there’s no way I’m not going to give that a shot.

Best part? We’ve finally come around to supporting the advertiser that single-handedly kept the Big Ten Network afloat for its first year of existence. And I have a feeling we’ll be doing that again and again and again.

2017 schedule

Aug. 31: vs. at Indiana, 8 p.m.
Sept. 9: Oklahoma, 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 16: Army, 4:30 p.m.
Sept. 23: UNLV
Sept. 30: at Rutgers
Oct. 4: at Maryland
Oct. 7: Maryland
Oct. 14: at Nebraska
Oct. 28: Penn State, 3:30 p.m.
Nov. 4: at Iowa
Nov. 11: Michigan State
Nov. 18: Illinois
Nov. 22: Indiana
Nov. 25: at Team Up North, noon
Dec. 2: B1G Championship, 8 p.m.

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