Mac & Cheese Eastern Style



Mac and Cheese ~ Eastern Style

3 cups pasta shells/macaroni

2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups milk

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 medium onion, caramelized^☼

1 cup chopped ham

Salt & pepper

Cook and drain pasta according to package directions.  Combine milk, eggs and parmesan cheese and add to pasta; mix well. 

Layer pasta in 2 quart greased casserole dish pasta, shredded cheddar and ham; do this two times ending with pasta. 

Spread caramelized onions on top and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Bake in 350º oven for 30-40 minutes until top of casserole is brown and bubbly. 

Let cool five minutes before serving.  My mother always says to serve macaroni and cheese with beets but I served with homemade pickles.

^☼   To make caramelized onions, add 2 Tbsp. butter to cast iron fry pan and melt; add sliced onions for 5-8 minutes, tossing often, until onions are tender and brown.

© Crackerberries 2011

Writing On The Wall

          I was tidying up my desk/office area before I opened up word to start typing and I had to flip the blotter paper on my desk.  I always say “don’t start work in a messy work space”.  I hate a messy blotter.  I used to tell my kids all the time, in fact I would write across the top of the blotter “DO NOT WRITE ON THIS BLOTTER!”  It never worked.  I would forever start my paperwork and look for a note I had written earlier to remind myself about something and see signatures of my kids all over the blotter.  Just their names signed a hundred times over.  They are all grown up now so there are no signatures on the blotter. 

Now I find my notes that I have jotted down for myself amongst my husband’s chicken scratch of part numbers and passwords to new accounts and websites that he wants to look at or has looked at and wants to remember them.  Once in awhile as I’m looking up a word in the dictionary or my thesaurus I’ll find a piece of scrap paper with one of the kids names scribbled across it and it reminds me of them writing on my blotter.  I hope one day they have kids and a blotter on their desk that their kids can mess up like they did to mine so often.  J

          You know, once upon a time, my husband used to have very nice “girly” penmanship.  I used to be so jealous because his homework always looked so much prettier than mine; funny how things change as you go through life.  If you don’t practice things you do well, eventually you won’t do as well at them as you used to.  Writing the old fashion letter is one of my favorite things to do and it is such a lost art these days.  I think my penmanship is nice... "girly" nice.

Writing on the wall is a thing of the past.  Labor Day weekend hints that summer is a thing of the past and it is back to school and pencils and books and teacher’s dirty looks.  Okay, maybe teachers don’t give dirty looks anymore (baa!) and there are no pencils and books because everyone has laptops and tablets and notebooks and probably things I’ve never even heard of.  Writing on the wall has become another sad thing of the past for most, but not for me.  I'll keep my pencil, thank you.

© Crackerberries 2011

Southern Yankee Quesadillas

So my husband says the south thinks that us northerners are rude because we give a yes or no answer and don't elaborate.  My husband and I are from the north, Maine to be specific.  Now we are from the south (home is where your heart is, right?)   I think the south has stereo typed the north and the north has stereo typed the south.  I think I should have been from the south because I have never been good at just "yes" or just "no" ... I always give way more information than is necessary.  Do you see what I'm saying here?  Anyways, here's today's recipe... I call it southern yankee ... as long as it tastes good, does it matter what came first? The chicken or the egg?

6 flour tortillas (I make my own so I can make them thicker than the ones bought at the store.

1½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

2 cups chili pepper in adobo sauce

1 lb sirloin tip, sliced into ¼ inch strips

1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, sliced

1 medium green pepper, julienned

3 cloves garlic, minced

1½ tsp fresh ground black pepper

½ cup teriyaki sauce

3-4 shakes angostura bitters

Combine teriyaki sauce and angostura bitters and pour over sirloin.  Let stand at room temperature for 30-45 minutes, marinating. 

Preheat large electric fry pan or griddle to 400º.  Cook tortillas 1-1½ minute per side to brown.

Heat oil in large skillet; add garlic first and cook 2-3 minutes then add onion and green pepper and cook 2-3 minutes longer.  Drain off any liquid from sirloin and add meat to skillet; cook 5-8 minutes until there is no pink left.

Place three tortillas on cookie sheets side by side.  Distribute meat mixture onto each tortilla.  Sprinkle with cheese and spoon 1-2 tablespoons of sauce over each.  Top with remaining tortillas.

Place in preheated 400º oven and cook for 8-10 minutes.  Remove and cut into fourths; serve with leftover chili sauce, sour cream, ranch dressing, etc.

© Crackerberries 2011

Sausage & Zucchini Stuffed Pork Loin Roast

1½-2 lb Pork Loin Roast

½ lb bulk sausage

2 cups bread crumbs

1½ cup shredded zucchini

½ cup chopped onion

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350º.

Cook sausage and onion in large skillet until sausage is no longer pink; add zucchini and cook 3-5 minutes longer; do not drain.  Add bread crumbs, garlic powder and thyme and mix well.  Let cool slightly.

To butterfly pork roast place fat side down; starting at the thickest edge, slice horizontally through the meat stopping 1½ inch from the opposite side so that the roast will open like a book.  Pound the open roast with a mallet to flatten to about 1½ inches and remove any fat.

Spread cooled mixture evenly on cut side of roast; roll starting with long end, jelly roll style.  Secure with string.  Rub roast with olive oil and sprinkle with onion powder and Italian seasoning.  Place in lightly greased roasting pan and bake at 350º for 1½ hours.  Cool slightly before slicing.

© Crackerberries 2011

Time for Friendship?

            I like to write my first drafts on paper and then transfer to the computer, but lately I have found I can save more time if I just do the first draft on the computer.  Anything I can do to save time.  I want to save time and I look for time and sometimes I try to buy time but that doesn’t make time and pretty soon I am out of time.  I have come to the conclusion that I need to take my time and do what I have time to do in a timely fashion and stop doing things that are a waste of time (i.e. Facebook). 

I deactivated my Facebook account almost a year ago.  I gave it up mostly because it was causing me to sin.  Mark 9:43 says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.  It is better for you to enter into life maimed rather than having two hands to go to hell into the fire that shall never be quenched.”  I’m not saying Facebook is sinful to everyone, that’s between them and God. 

At first I thought wow, look at all my friends … look at all the people that are befriending me.  I didn’t know I had so many friends. After awhile I became a nosey little busy body wondering what everyone else was doing.  Snooping was taking up way too much of my time and it was causing me stress.  Once I deactivated the account I waited to see how many of all those friends I had would contact me.  It was a sad shocker to realize I didn’t have as many friends as I thought I had.

True friendships are not found on Facebook.  They are not found at the workplace or at school.  How many people do you call your friend on Facebook, in the workplace or at school can you call at 3AM and get this response: “I’ll be right there”?  A sad truth we find now is churches try to lead people to believe that small group is the answer.  They try to create first century community in a twenty-first century society.  It doesn’t work.  You cannot put people together and expect them to jive.   We were in a small group once.  Actually we were in a couple of small groups.  Take a guess at how many people from those small groups contact us now.  The gloomy fact is if you are not right in someone’s face, being valuable to them, you are not important.

Society has become so self-centered and narcissistic they confuse friendly people with friendship.  The Facebook community gives a false sense of “friendship security” because people tend to applaud each others endeavors, making them feel important.  People in general are lonely.  God made us that way so that we would need each other. Pretty soon the secret will be out: Facebook is not the cure all for loneliness. 

True friendships take time.  One must be disciplined with the time we are given. I read somewhere once that disciplined people have much more time than do undisciplined people.  God has given each one of us a certain amount of time.  One true friendship that has been nourished by time is worth more than a handful of friendly acquaintances.    Ephesians 5:15-16 “See then that you walk cautiously not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

© Crackerberries 2011