Craig's Cheesy Bread

Fabulous, easy bread. Goes great with soup, salad and pasta!

I've made this for almost 15 years! Thank you Craig!

6 pc Sliced bread (White, Wheat, Hoagies, Hamburger buns, etc) *
4 T butter *
2 T Parmesan Cheese * (grated)


Preheat the oven to 400 F to heat your oven. You will later switch to broil, but make sure that the oven is hot before you put the bread in the oven.  Lay pieces of bread out on baking sheet. Melt butter in a frying pan. When melted, turn off heat, add the cheese, mix together. Using a rubber spatula, spread the mixture on each piece of bread. Broil on high for 2-3 while watching. When the bread is brown and cheese has browned, remove from the oven. Try not to eat the whole loaf before you serve it for dinner. Beware, its difficult!

*these are estimates--I have never measured using this recipe, but have noticed when I have added too much cheese to the butter, it is difficult to spread and you'll end up having to make more mixture to cover all of the bread. I think that the 4T/2T should be a good ratio, but play with it.

* this is one of the only times I recommend using Parmesan in the can/jar rather than fresh grated. The consistency works better when mixing with the butter.  I had to use the fresh grated tonight (in the pic), but still recommend the can as it makes it more consistent and more delicious the whole way through!

* I don't recommend using heavy wheat, multigrain breads. They detract from the 'flavor' of the cheese!

Cheesy Potato Soup

Cheesy Potato Soup

8 med potatoes; diced
1 onion; chopped
5 c water
6 T butter
6 T flour
2 c milk
1 ½ c grated cheese
1 t salt
1/8 t pepper
2 green onions, sliced
Optional add ins: broccoli, ham, carrots, celery


Combine potatoes, onions, and water in big pot. Bring to boil and reduce heat. Simmer until potatoes are tender (abt. 15 minutes). Do not drain. In separate pan, melt butter, add flour. Stir and cook until mixture bubbles. Slowly add milk while stirring. Cook and stir until sauce thickens. Stir sauce slowly into potato mixture. Add cheese; cook until cheese is melted.  Serve and top with green onions if you desire.

Usually when I make this I add in broccoli.  Last night I decided to cut baby carrots into small pieces and celery finely chopped.  I added them with the potatoes.  I think that it would be really tasty with ham.  I would add it before the cheese (if it was fully cooked already).

Easy Instant Chocolate Mousse

1 package instant chocolate pudding mix

milk

1 tub cool whip topping (thawed)

1 Hershey's bar

Mix pudding and milk as instructed on package direction. Let set in refrigerator.  Add half the tub of cool whip adn mix well.  Let sit 5 minutes.  Spread remaining cool whip over the top of pudding mixture.  Finely grate part of the Hershey's bar over the top.  Serve.

unexpected surprise

I was going through some CD's my husband made me that have info from my old computer.  I put one in and it had all the recipes I thought I would like to try about 5 years ago!  I put them on my new computer and will be trying them out soon.  It was such an unexpected surprise.  I've gotten some really good sounding recipes that are healthy (they are for people with diabetes) that I want to try.  In fact, after looking through them, I saw that my White Chicken Chili recipe comes from them.  I'll have to try some out soon and post if they are good or not.

Apri-Oaty Bars

1 c dried apricots *or any dried fruit
3 T water
2 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. oats
1/2 t. salt
1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter
3/4 c. brown sugar
2 T honey

Preheat to 400. Line 9X9 with parchment. Puree the apricots and water. Set aside. Stir the flour, oats, and salt in a mixing bowl.  Melt butter, sugar, and honey in a saucepan over low heat. When completely mixed, pour over dry ingredients and stir until combined.  Press 1/2 of the oaty mixture in the bottom of the pan. Press flat. Spoon the apricot mixture carefully on top of oaty mix and smooth--leaving 1" border around edges. Press remaining oaty mixture on top.  Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and  leave to cool for 5 minutes. Divide bars into squares and let cool completely in pan, before scooping them out.  Yummmy....

Kids cookbooks

I went to the library yesterday and decided to try looking for kids cookbooks again.  Searching for them on the computer site for the library hasn't been very promising, so I just went looking at the shelves.  The computer said that there are 5 total cookbooks for children in the whole library system.  When I went to the shelves, there were three whole shelves of them.  All kinds of cookbooks: cooking for parents and children, fun kids recipes, cooking by country (foods from Germany, foods from France, foods from Brazil, foods from China, and so on and so on), how to make food fun for kids, recipes made up by children.  It was a wonderful find!  I take a reusable shopping bag that I bought at Target (all the grocery stores have them too) to the library because the bags they provide always break on me.  This time I wasn't able to fit all my books in the bag because I got so many cookbooks!  I've looked through three of them so far and have found that many of the recipes are the same.
  My favorite one though is "Paula Deen's My First Cookbook".  It has many of the same recipes as the others (ants on a log, smoothies, pancakes, pasta with cheese sauce) but there are some good other ones also (Porcupine Balls, Gelatin Blocks, Campfire Stew, Applewiches, Monkey Bread, and Green Eggs and Ham).  Not only the recipes sound good, but I like the way the book is set up.  The first page of a recipe has a picture of everything that you need for the recipe (mixing bowl, utensils, what to cook in, ingredients), the recipes are easy to follow if you want to have the kids make it on their own (if old enough) or help you out.  To make the book fun for kids, all the pictures are realisitc looking cartoons.  It also had a small section for making playdough and bubbles.