Little Molly Mess Maker

Rial and I have been in the kitchen all afternoon making blue cheese burgers for his birthday party on Friday. While in the middle of it, he said, “I’m going to go get the camera, you can put this on your blog.” Why yes, I can. And so I am.

Blue cheese burgers are so yummy. They have the cheese built in and just enough tang to jump out and surprise your taste buds. They are also surprisingly easy to make. 

We’re making a whole lot of them because of the party, but we’ve reduced the ingredients enough to make 12-16 burgers. If that’s too much for you, remember you can always cook a few and freeze the rest to have later.

Here’s the recipe:

4lbs. Ground Beef

1 Cup Blue Cheese

3/8 Cup Steak Seasoning

1/8 Cup Black Pepper

1/4 Cup Dales Steak Seasoning

1/4 Cup Balsamic Vinegar

First, crumble the blue cheese. If you bought crumbles, forget this step. The easiest method to do this by far is to put the block of blue cheese in a mixing bowl and use a pastry cutter to create perfect-sized crumbles.

In a LARGE mixing bowl combine all the ingredients. You may need to run to the sink several times to run your hand under warm water to thaw it out. I thawed mine about forty-three times. Knead the ingredients together until everything is pretty evening spread out and there aren’t large clumps of blue cheese or seasoning. 

Form the meat into approximately 1/4lb. patties. The way we did this is I made a ball that was the size of my hands cupped together (I have kind of small hands) and he used a really neat Tupperware gadget (seen here) to make the patties. Right now they are going into the freezer until it’s time to grill them. 

 I’ll be sure to make another post showing the finished product soon!

-mds

I kind of just invented this last night using ingredients we had in the kitchen.

For the insides: 

1. Put a pot of water on to boil. I used two bags of the boil-in-a-bag brown rice, but I’m sure you could just make rice the old-fashioned way, too.

2. Brown about half a log of sausage (like you buy in the grocery store) or about half a pound. 

3. Chop up on medium onion and place in a large bowl. Also, chop one tomato and put in bowl. Combine with rice and sausage. 

4. Pour in a small can of pizza sauce or tomato sauce. We had pizza sauce and it was nicely seasoned so that was good. Stir this all together and add the spices of your choice. I used Cajun spice, lime pepper, and chili powder.

Next, cut the peppers as you would a pumpkin at Halloween and scrape out the insides. Fill the peppers with the stuffing and put in a baking dish or casserole dish. Put a sprinkle of cheese on them and then put the lids on the peppers and sprinkle olive oil. I made 4 peppers (red, orange, green, and yellow) but the stuffing could have easily made 8. We’re saving the extras for tacos or something later in the week.

Um. Wow. These were truly amazing. I was worried at first making cupcakes from scratch, especially using a recipe calling for buttermilk. So so good. The cupcakes were just a White Cake recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. The frosting I adapted from a recipe I found online.

1. Simmer 1 1/2 cups of blueberries in a saucepan until they explode with goodness. Smush them up and put them in a bowl to chill for at least 30 minutes.

2. Cream a stick of butter (softened) with about 3 cups powdered sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon vanilla.

3. Pour in blueberries and mix on low or medium. Pour in more powdered sugar until icing is as spreadable or as think as you would like. Voila!

Husband rating: 9/10

This recipe is adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book:

Prep: 10 minutes     Bake: 18minutes     Makes: 12

1 3/4 Cups All-Purpose Flour

1/2 Cup Sugar

2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

1/4 Teaspoon Salt

1 Egg

3/4 Cup Milk

1/4 Cup Cooking Oil (I always use Canola Oil)

1 Cup Fresh Blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a muffin pan. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

2. In a separate bowl, beat together egg, milk, and oil. With a wooden spoon stir egg mixture into flour mixture and add blueberries. Don’t overmix, the batter should be somewhat clumpy.

3. Fill muffin pan 2/3 full. Cook in 400 degree oven for 18 minutes or until tops are golden and can easily be removed from pan. 

4. Let cool and enjoy!

*Note: husband rating doesn’t apply because he didn’t care for them. I thought they were delicious. Try it yourself and then let me know how you feel.

What should I make for dinner tonight?

Tonight for dinner we had a completely healthy vegetarian meal…not. While it was vegetarian, it wasn’t so healthy. Initially we were going to just do tomatoes on the side, but I got creative and decided to fry everything in my kitchen. Here’s how I did it:

1. Slice tomatoes, pickles, squash, anything you want.

2. Place 1/2c All-Purpose Flour, 1/4c Milk, 2 Eggs, and 2/3c Cornmeal in separate shallow dishes.

3. Take your veggie from one dish to another in that order. (Flour, Milk, Eggs, and Cornmeal)

4. Here you can either just fry them in a pan using about 1/4c olive oil, or take the ultra-fatty route of deep frying them…that’s what we did. Ours were fried in canola oil for about 4 minutes and then transfered to a paper towel-covered plate. 

Husband rating: 8 out of 10

Sorry I started this and then haven’t posted. House is a mess and trying to get everything set up for a food blog. I’ve been cooking believe me. Made BBQ pizza, cinnamon rolls, and more. Tonight I’m making one of my specialties- Provolone stuffed meatballs with angel hair pasta and marinara. I’ll post the recipe as well as photos later tonight! (I hope). Remind me around 5:40 if I haven’t already. Until then!

-mds