Julie's Phenomenal Corn Bread Casserole

Well, folks, without much further ado, here it is: Julie's phenomenal corn bread casserole recipe that has been delighting the whole family for many years:

Corn Bread Casserole

2 large onions, chopped
6 Tbsp butter
2 eggs
2 Tbsp milk
2 (17-oz) cans cream-style corn
2 (1/2-lb.) pkg. Jiffy corn muffin mix
1/2 pint dairy sour cream (1 cup)
2 cups shredded sharp cheese cheddar cheese (8 oz.)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F ( 220 degrees C). In a medium skillet sauté the onion in butter until golden. Set aside. In a medium bowl, mix eggs and milk until blended. Add corn muffin mix. Mix well. Spread corn bread batter into greased 13' X 9" baking dish. Spoon sautéed onion over top. Spread sour cream over onion. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake 35 minutes or until puffed and golden. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting into squares. Hey, you've done it! Yum and enjoy!!

Potato and Celeriac Purée

Well, folks, without much further ado, here it is: Julie's phenomenal corn bread casserole recipe that has been delighting the whole Nyberg family for many years:

Corn Bread Casserole

Ingredients:

2 large onions, chopped
6 Tbsp butter
2 eggs
2 Tbsp milk
2 (17-oz) cans cream-style corn
2 (1/2-lb.) pkg. Jiffy corn muffin mix
1/2 pint dairy sour cream (1 cup)
2 cups shredded sharp cheese cheddar cheese (8 oz.)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F ( 220 degrees C). In a medium skillet sauté the onion in butter until golden. Set aside. In a medium bowl, mix eggs and milk until blended. Add corn muffin mix. Mix well. Spread corn bread batter into greased 13' X 9" baking dish. Spoon sautéed onion over top. Spread sour cream over onion. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake 35 minutes or until puffed and golden. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting into squares. Hey, you've done it! Yum and enjoy!!

Slow-cooker pot roast

There must be a myriad of ways to cook a pot roast and when looking up different recipes I find the variations are pretty close. There always is the meat, a variety of vegetables, some liquid, and seasoning. It is rather easy to make a wonderful pot roast on the stove top or by combining stove top browning followed by slower oven roasting. The whole process will take a few hours. Even though the roast can be left alone to cook for most of the time, I usually feel that I can't leave the house with the oven on.

Using a slow cooker to finish a pot roast meal might be just the right answer when you have to be away from home most of the day. I have to admit that I have never been truly impressed with the quality of taste of slow cooker meals. Somehow, many dishes I've tried had this distinct "crockpot taste." The only two dishes I've ever been happy with from the crockpot is a split pea soup that I've been making since I got married and a recipe for French dip sandwich meat that I got from a church cookbook. Other than that I've been rather disappointed by many meals.

There are days, however, when the kids come home after swim practice or an afternoon of piano lessons and are so famished that it's nice to have dinner already prepared. So I will begin a challenge for myself to use one day a week, the day I'm pretty much gone all day, and use the slow cooker to work on dishes that taste like gourmet food. Is there such a thing as gourmet crockpot food? We'll see what I can do to liven up the fare to keep my finicky taste buds happy. Today I will begin with a pot roast.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. canola oil

3-4 lbs. beef chuck

1 large sweet onion, coarsely chopped

2-3 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

3/4 cup dry white wine

salt & pepper

Preparation:

Heat 1 Tbsp. canola oil in a large pan and brown meat over medium-high heat, about 5 minutes per side or until nicely browned.

Meanwhile, peel and chop onion and carrots, and mince garlic. Place all the vegetables in the bottom of the slow cooker.

When the meat is browned, remove it from the pan and generously sprinkle each side with salt and pepper. Place on top of the vegetables in the slow cooker.

Deglaze the pan with 3/4 cup of dry white wine until all the browned drippings from the pan are dissolved and pour all of the liquid into the slow cooker.

Turn slow cooker to high and cook for 4-6 hours until the meat is tender. The roast can also be cooked on low for 8-10 hours.

Fabulous Quinoa Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh is a favorite salad in our home that also makes wonderful portable brown bag lunches. Made from fresh ingredients, it tastes particularly good in the summertime when there's a bounty of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. Tradionally made with bulgur wheat, I've lately started using quinoa, an ancient grain that is gaining more and more popularity because of its versatility, easy digestibility and high nutrient content. Quinoa cooks in 15 minutes, but can also be sprouted, which takes a little longer and requires some forethought. It can be served as a breakfast cereal, used as a side dish, or become the foundation for any number of salads. It has a slightly nutty taste that can be brought out further by toasting the seeds prior to cooking. In short: it's a real winner as far as staple items in the pantry go. I recently dished up this tasty version of a tabbouleh salad. Check it out!

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa

2 bundles parsley, finely chopped

1 packet fresh mint (about 1 oz.), finely chopped

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced

2 tomatoes, seeded and diced

2-3 scallions, chopped

1/3 cup lemon juice (approx. 2 small lemons)

5-6 Tbsp. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

optional: crumbled feta

Preparation:

Rinse the quinoa well in a fine-meshed sieve to remove the naturally occurring saponins surrounding the grain. If this step is left out, the quinoa may taste a little soapy. When the water runs clear, the quinoa is sufficiently rinsed.

Mix quinoa with 2 cups of water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 15 minutes. Remove quinoa from the heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, prepare the other ingredients and mix the lemon juice and olive oil for the dressing. When the quinoa has cooled, mix all ingredients together and season with salt and pepper to taste. This salad is great stuffed in pita bread for a portable lunch or as a side dish or all on its own. My daughter and I sometimes toss a small amount of crumbled feta cheese into the mix, giving this Middle Eastern dish a bit of a Greek spin. Either way it is a really good and filling summer salad.

Conquering Collard Greens and Kale

Somehow, over the course of two and a half weeks, we've ended up with three large bundles of collard greens and Swiss chard in our fridge. It was clear that I had to overcome my apprehension about how to best cook these greens and have everyone like them. Something had to be done.

I know leafy greens cook down to nearly nothing, so I wasn't afraid by the 12-cup pile of washed and chopped greens. The bigger question was how to prepare them. In order to preserve the maximum amount of nutrients of foods I cook, I like to consult George Mateljan's book The World's Healthiest Foods or his Web site, an excellent reference for the nutritional content of all sorts of good-for-you foods and their preparation. George suggested steaming for no more than five minutes. I also used one of his suggestions for preparing collard greens and kale to make them tasty–with very good results, so good in fact, that my husband and I gobbled down the entire amount of greens all by ourselves, even though the amount I prepared could have easily been plenty for four eaters.

Ingredients:

3 large bundles collard greens or kale

1/2 to 1 cup sliced scallions

olive oil

tamari to taste

Preparation:

Wash greens, cut the thick stem out and chop the leaves into bite-size pieces. Bring enough water in a large pot to a roaring boil. Place greens in the steaming basket and place over the boiling water. Cover pot and let greens steam for 5 minutes – and no more!!

Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a pan, sauté scallions until lightly softened and add steamed greens, tossing them with the onions until everything is mixed well. Serve immediately as a side dish or as a light meal with a poached egg on top.

The Fastest Chicken Noodle Soup Ever

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It still amazes me that you can buy a rotisserie chicken for less than a raw chicken in any super market. With two members of our household sick with colds, I decided the best and most comforting dinner for a sore throat would be chicken noodle soup. I didn't have a lot of time, so a rotisserie chicken from one of our local grocery stores was a good option to speed up dinner prep time. The other ingredients I needed were chicken broth, carrots, celery, noodles, salt and pepper. Ina Garten has a recipe just like mine in one of her Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, the only difference being the addition of fresh parsley in her recipe. I thought fresh parsley sounded like a tasty change from the usual and planned on adding it to my soup. (Although I have to admit that I used twice the amount that Ina uses….) With everything on hand, here's how I proceeded to make a tasty chicken noodle soup almost from scratch in less than an hour.

Ingredients:

6–14-oz. cans low-sodium Swanson's chicken broth

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup sliced celery

2 cups dried wide egg noodles

2 cups diced, cooked chicken meat from rotisserie chicken (keep the rest of the rotisserie chicken for another dish, such as chicken salad)

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation:

Bring chicken stock to a simmer, add diced carrots, celery, and dried egg noodles and cook for about 10 minutes until the noodles are softened. Add diced chicken and chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat everything through and serve immediately. Makes about 6-8 servings.

Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Fresh Parsley

It's been a fridge-cleaning kind of day, and since I found a few more acorn squash left over from last fall's farm deliveries, I decided to try my hand at acorn squash soup. Cooking from the top of my head–without a roadmap, so-to-speak–is always a bit more challenging. Frankly, though, how hard can it be to combine a few simple ingredients and turn them into soup? It's always fun to see what the outcome of a few more-or-less educated guesses on combining ingredients might be when I don't follow a recipe. So, here are the steps I took today and, may I say, the soup ended up being very tasty.

Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Fresh Parsley

Ingredients:

approximately 4 cups roasted acorn squash

2-3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 cups diced sweet onions

1/4 tsp. dried thyme

4 cups chicken stock (or vegetable broth for a vegetarian version)

1/2 cup fresh, minced Italian parsley

salt & pepper to taste

Preparation:

To roast the squash, preheat oven to 400˚F, cut squash in half length-wise, scrape out seeds, brush the outside with olive oil and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet, cut side down. Bake at 400˚F for about 30-45 minutes, until the squash is soft. Let cool and scrape the flesh out of the skins.

In a large deep sauté pan or Dutch oven, heat olive oil and sauté onions and thyme until the onions are translucent. Add the squash and chicken stock and mix well. Heat over medium-low heat for about 20-25 minutes. Add about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. sea salt and pepper to taste. Turn off the heat and add the fresh parsley. Mix everything well. Take about half of the mixture and purée in a blender until smooth. Mix with the remainder of the soup and serve. Number of servings: about six.