Over the past week we've been taking photos of all of the dinners we've been eating. I wonder if any of these meals are unusual to you in America?
Chicken Pot Pie
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Friday night is movie night here and we always have a finger food type picnic in the lounge room. Here we have a fruit platter, kabana, cheese, crackers and grain-wave chips.
Sausages on bread with salad. The sausages have tomato sauce and grated cheese on top.
Cereal - our 'we've all had an exhausting day' meal.
Chicken burgers with beetroot, pineapple, tomato and lettuce.
Pancakes. Dad had to stay back at school to do some marking and whenever he's away for dinner we have pancakes (he doesn't like pancakes so we take advantage of his absence). These ones have choc chips in them. The girls don't have black eyes - they got into my makeup and had fun with the eyeliner!
Meat pies, mashed potato, vegetables and gravy. This is Dad's favourite meal and we had it for his birthday on Sunday.
Dad sure does love pies, he requested apple pie for his cake. He loves to drown it in vanilla custard too.
We would like to challenge you to try burgers with beetroot and see how you like it. They can be beef or chicken burgers - the beetroot has to be of the canned and sliced variety. I personally think it tastes really good when the beetroot is cold. Let me know if you can't find canned beetroot and I'll think of a different challenge. Happy tasting!
Hmm...canned beetroot? Okay, we'll give it a try! I like to make turkey burgers, but I usually just put lettuce, tomato, cheese, and red onion on mine. It will be an adventure...
ReplyDeleteWe make a version of chicken pot pie- but we make it in the crock pot and put biscuit dough on top like dumplings. Spaghetti and meatballs is a pretty typical meal for us, and we also have movie night on Friday nights! But what is kabana? The sausages on bread with salad looks interesting....
I LOVE cereal and would gladly eat it for every meal; sadly, none of the kids do! And it's such a great meal when you don't feel like cooking... ;-)
We love pancakes- we have afternoon church, so we do pancakes for breakfast every Sunday morning. When we have mashed potatoes and veggies we usually eat them with meatloaf, not meat pie.
Apple pie is an American favorite! Though it's not really a family favorite (my husband loves pumpkin pie). We usually eat our pies with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Is vanilla custard like pudding? Is it a recipe or pre-made?
Okay, so we were trying to think of a challenge for you- one of our favorite meals is Taco Soup, but I'm not sure if you'd have all the ingredients there- like dry Ranch dressing powder? Taco seasoning mix? Also requires canned Rotel tomatoes (diced tomatoes & green chiles), great northern beans, pinto beans, black beans, and vegetarian baked beans (all canned).
Another option would be beans and rice- super simple: dice up an onion and sautee it in olive oil, then add some diced up sausage (like the ones you served on bread- I use polska kielbasa) until browned, then mix in 1 can of kidney beans. Serve it over jasmine rice (well, any white rice will do but I personally like jasmine). It sounds boring, but it tastes really good!
I could also share my meatloaf recipe, my recipe for teriyaki chicken, or sweet & sour meatballs. Let me know what sounds good to you! :-)
Wow there were so many things that I thought would be just regular food in America, I didn't realise they would be so new to you. Kabana is like a cold spicy 'ish' sausage found in the deli. Custard is sort of like pudding but a bit more runny. It can be made from scratch but I'm lazy and just get it in a carton at the shop. Hmmmm, maybe if you can't find beetroot then I could get you to try making some custard? Or else there are a few other recipes we love that are a bit different. Porcupines - meaty rice balls in tomato soup, Pumpkin Soup, Mince Triangles - sort of like meat pie but in puff pastry triangles, or Toad in a Hole - I know it sounds gross but our version is pretty much bread with a hole in the middle and you fry an egg in it :) .
DeleteI wish we had biscuit dough here, it would make cooking so much easier! We don't have dry ranch dressing powder but we do have taco seasoning, regular canned tomatoes, pinto beans, black beans and some other sorts of canned beans.
I'm thinking the meatloaf recipe would be really good. We've only ever had it once and it came out dry so having a good recipe of that would be excellent!
I would love to try to make custard! We do love our sweets around here. Pumpkin soup also sounds really good- we're coming into pumpkin season here!
DeleteOkay, here's the meatloaf recipe for you- the only tricky thing is that it calls for an envelope of dry onion soup mix- do you think you'll be able to find that? It's 1-2 lbs ground beef (or you can use ground turkey if you'd like to avoid red meat), 1/3 cup ketchup/catsup, 1 egg, 2 slices of bread turned to crumbs (I do this by kind of rubbing it between my hands) and 1 envelope dry onion soup mix. Just mash it all up together (can be fun if you use your hands!) and then shape it into a loaf and put it in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour, or until the middle is no longer pink.
Ok so this is my pumpkin soup recipe. I don't really measure. I use the slow cooker but it could be done in a pot too. We only need to use 1/2 a pumpkin. I chop up the pumpkin and take the seeds out. I leave the skin on for this bit until the pumpkin has softened because it's so hard to cut the skin off! haha ...
ReplyDeletePut the pumpkin in the slow cooker with 3 quartered potatoes.
Add 3 cups or so of vegetable stock.
Add these spices to your liking: pepper, cumin, onion flakes, garlic powder, nutmeg. Put the lid on, let cook on low for 3/4 hours until the vegatables are soft.
If you have a hand mixer then blend all together (make sure the skin off the pumpkin is off) or I scoop it out into my blender in batches and whizz it up.
Pour back into the slow cooker and stir in 150ml or so of cream (until it looks and tastes nice).
We serve it in bowls with cracked pepper and grated Tasty cheese on top and some yummy bread on the side.
Here is a custard recipe too if you'd like to try it http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/21331/vanilla+custard
We're going to try the meatloaf tomorrow night for dinner!
That looks like a perfect fall recipe- can't wait to try it! The only time I cook with pumpkin is when we do Dinner in a Pumpkin- I do it every Halloween. I also have a great recipe for perfectly roasted pumpkin seeds. :-)
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