Grandma's Meat Stuffing

Grandma’s Meat Stuffing

My grandmothers traditional stuffing she served at Thanksgiving. My family is Italian, but this is a common French Canadian recipe as well.

Bao Bun Sloppy Joe

Bao Bun Sloppy Joes

A spicy sweet sloppy joe served on a soft lotus leaf bao bun with cucumbers and slaw

White People Taco Night

White People Taco Night – The Best You Have Ever Had

Making white people style tacos for my friends in college is what originally formed my love of cooking. I started with the taco kit, and got so excited seeing my friends enjoy the food so much. After a while, I started playing around with the recipe. Add some onions, add some garlic. How about adding…

BBQ Shortrib Shepherds Pie

3 Pies in a row? This is an over the top version of shepherds pie I made this past weekend. The idea was to combine the flavors of an end of summer backyard BBQ, pulled pork sandwiches, and shepherds pie. It was a complete success and I suggest anyone to try this update on an old recipe. My only complaint was that I didn’t get to keep the leftovers!

Cubano Burgers

Cubano Burgers

Hello! Hello hello, sorry I’ve been away so long! I never meant to leave you… I have to admit, I got the idea for these burgers from Throwdown. You know, Bobby Flay’s show where he challenges people at their own specialty? I normally don’t like the show very much, but there was nothing on, and it was a burger challenge. If anyone can do burgers, it’s got to be Flay. The competitor was pretty interesting too. I kept the channel on and was pretty happy with all the burgers they made. My favorite was the one Bobby made to be the burger version of a Cuban sandwich. His method of pressing the burgers with a brick right on the grill was pretty neat. I liked it too because when cooking burgers for a bunch of people, normally everyone wants their bread toasted and it is kind of annoying keeping track of everything. This way you can build all the burgers on the grill and just hand them out to people.

Italian Beef Sandwich

Chicago Style Italian Beef Sandwich

We wanted to make many different things for this party but a lot of the ideas fell through. One of the ideas was cheesesteaks but we didn’t want Mandi to be on the grill all night. We were watching Man v. Food on the travel channel (have you seen it? Think Diners Drive-ins and Dives minus awful catchphrases, frosted tips, and backwards sunglasses, and plus a fun eating challenge) and they were in Chicago (another plus to MvF, one city at a time.) On that episode Mandi and I saw a sandwich we had never seen before. It was called the Chicago style Italian beef sandwich. One of the things that attracted us to this sandwich (besides the fact that we were drooooling at our TV) was that it sits in a gravy and not only CAN be made a day in advance, but NEEDS to be made a day in advance! Like most regional food we make, we like to have someone from the area to vouch for authenticity, especially in a case like this where we have never been before! Our friend Mike was more than happy to be a taste tester.

Lasagna

Give the Gift of Lasagna

OR

HOW TO MAKE AN AWESOME MEATSAUCE



I am sure right about now you are saying to yourself… “But Dannnnnn didn’t you just recently make manicotti which has practically the same ingredients as lasagna? And didn’t you also already show us how to make sauce in that very same blog entry? What can I possibly gain from reading today’s post?!?” This may in fact be true, but looking back I noticed that the pictures and instructions I gave you last time for my sauce, well they just were not that good. And it wasn’t even my perfectly ideal sauce variation anyway. I make about 5 or so different tomato sauce varieties, this one is similar to the manicotti sauce. And although lasagna does share many of the same ingredients as manicotti, it is different and special and it deserves its own post! I also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that lasagna makes a great gift. It is easy to make a few at a time and then give one away. It tastes GREAT right from the freezer, it is fairly cheap, and people will always be grateful!

Pasta Fagiloi

Pasta Fagioli

This is the way my Grandmother made Pasta y Fagioli.  It\’s not traditional, but it\’s what I grew up with.