Microwave Mac ‘n’ Cheese - Cooks in Training #3
Whenever there’s a microwave recipe, I usually shy away from it. Here’s the reason. It’s because of my microwave… sounds like a good reason, huh? My microwave is a half-pint. I can’t fit a 9×13 pan in it and when my girls were babies on bottles, I always had to lay the 8-oz bottles down to warm up the milk because they wouldn’t fit in there standing up. The size isn’t the only reason. The other reason is that it takes SO long to cook stuff in it. We joke that the microwave has only one setting and that’s DEFROST. True, it does have only 1 setting, but it is a bit hotter than defrost. It takes forever to boil water and it literally is faster to throw a pan of water on the stove rather than do it in the microwave, like when I make finger jello. But the microwave works great for warming up serving-sized portions and thawing meat, but other than that, I don’t use it for general cooking. Oh, I guess I do cook half a bag of frozen veggies in there sometimes.
But, you can’t beat the deal we got on it. We got married about 12 years ago (in fact our 12th anniversary is in a couple weeks) and a little bit after we got married, we realized we need a microwave, so we found one at a pawn shop for $25 and it’s still the same one we use today. Not sure why it doesn’t give out! Here it is:
Anyway, having said all that, I decided to try a microwave dish. For the Cooks in Training foods, I don’t like to use the stove because my little cooks might burn themselves, even with adult supervision, but the microwave is fine. So, here you go, a food that kids like… and made by them.
Microwave Mac ‘n’ Cheese …taken from the 2000 Quick Cooking cookbook
2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
2 cups hot water
1/3 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup chopped onion (I had to do some fast talking to get that in there because I couldn’t sneak it in! I said we wouldn’t put in as much as it says, we only put in a couple tablespoons)
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. ground mustard
1/3 cup flour
1 1/4 cups milk
8 oz. process American cheese, cubed (we used Velveeta)
Hmmmm, I may have to outlaw the aprons! We don’t really plan ahead and suddenly decide to cook or bake and away they dash for the aprons, putting them over whatever clothes they already have on! In this cooking session, Tiffany’s combo clashes even more than usual. 
In a 2-qt microwave-safe dish, combine the first 7 ingredients. Cover and microwave on high for 3 1/2 minutes; stir. Cover and cook at 50% power for 4 minutes or until mixture comes to a boil, rotating a half turn once. (I didn’t rotate at all because my fashionable microwave has a turntable, and it still works.)
Combine flour and milk until smooth; stir into macaroni mixture.
Yeah, I was watching this process very closely, and it was one of my duller knives. Velveeta is soft… a butter knife may have even worked.
Add cheese. Cover and cook on high for 6-8 minutes or until the macaroni is tender and sauce is bubbly, rotating a half turn once and stirring every 3 minutes. Yield: 4 servings.
This was really good, although I’ve tasted better made-from-scratch macaroni and cheese. I missed the buttered crumbs that are usually on top of macaroni and cheese. This definitely beats the stuff from a box though and got rave reviews by the girls. Plus, Lexi thinks it’s more fun to eat food that they made themselves.
Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas, only 4 ingredients!
The title actually sorta gives away what most of the ingredients are! Cheese (actually a can of cheese soup), chicken, and if it’s quesadillas it’s gotta have tortillas, and water. I got this recipe off of the soup can. Southwest Style Pepper Jack soup.
It was kind of hard to find… have you ever stared and stared at shelves, just knowing it was there, but you couldn’t lay your eyes on it? I did that with this. I did it in the jello section looking for watermelon gelatin too just lately, but that’s for another time and another post. There is a difference though… with the watermelon gelatin, I was only hoping it was there, with the soup, I knew it was there.
The reason I knew it was there is because my sister-in-law Liz makes these quesadillas and she said Marketplace has the soup, but Walmart doesn’t. After I finally found the soup, I immediately looked on the label to see if the recipe was there and sure enough, it was. Then, I wondered HOW, out of all the soup can labels there, Liz found this soup and tried this recipe. And it was a hit with the family! Wonder how much more I’m missing out on by not trying other soup can label recipes.
There are 4 more recipes on the back (you have to cut the paper off of the can on the specified line and flip the paper over to see them, this is not something you should be doing in the store before purchasing). I think it’s the manufacturer’s trick to getting you to buy more… you can’t see the other recipes till you get home and cut the paper off of the empty can before throwing it away. Then some of the recipes grab you and ”Southwest Style Pepper Jack soup” goes right back on your shopping list. The other recipes are: Nachos Grande, Cheesy Pepper Jack Tacos, Mexican Meatloaf, and Cheesy Southwest Potatoes. I’ll bet some of those would be good too. Especially the nachos, meatloaf, and potatoes. They all have 5-7 ingredients. The reason you don’t need many ingredients is because this soup has got LOTS of flavor and kick.
Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas
1 lb. boneless chicken breast halves, cubed
1 can Campbell’s Southwest Style Pepper Jack soup
1/4 cup water
8 flour tortillas (8″), warmed (I used 9″ tortillas, and only 6 of them)
Preheat oven to 325. Cook chicken in nonstick skillet until done and juices evaporate, stirring often. Add soup and water and heat through. Shannon grilled the chicken on the grill while I mixed and heated the soup and water. When the chicken was done, I chunked it up and mixed it into the soup.
Spoon about 1/3 cup chicken mixture on half of each tortilla to within 1/2″ of the edge. Moisten edge with water.
Fold over and seal. Place on 2 baking sheets (or 1, in this case). Bake 5 min. or until hot. I baked them for 7-8 minutes, until I saw a bit of browning.
Cut into wedges and serve with salsa. And/or sour cream. I ate mine with sour cream. It was spicy enough without the salsa.
Just delicious for something so simple! If you have a full-time job and need to come home and make supper, this would be a good thing for the main dish! It takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. For a quick idea of something to serve with it, how about tortilla chips and applesauce. Or peanut butter pie (I’m so hungry for peanut butter pie!). Or ice cream. Or something else cold and creamy to cool the mouth. Tiffany’s take on the quesadillas after a couple bites was, “I don’t wike da spicy.”
Memorial Day, Charcoal, Cheeseburgers and Gold
Hey! We’ve got a guest writer! Since I am not the griller around here (thankfully!), it seems fitting that I also shouldn’t be the writer of the grilling posts, right? So, here is my husband Shannon:
Did you read in the news this week about the restaurant on Wall Street in New York that serves a $175.00 cheeseburger? Yup, you read right, $175.00! It is Kobe beef topped with foie gras, exotic mushrooms and golden truffle mayonnaise. Golden truffle mayonnaise is made from chopped black truffles, truffle oil, and gold flakes. Gold as in “silver and gold”. So let me get this straight… Some chef in New York decided it would be a good idea to make his gold watch into Miracle Whip? Wow. Remind me not to leave the Midwest.
This is not that burger.
Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial line between spring and summer (or if you are from up here in Wisconsin, the line between winter and summer).
Cheeseburgers sizzling on the grill… What could be a more sure sign of summer than that?
Cheeseburgers are such a basic food that you don’t even need a recipe. But here is my recipe, just the same.
Ingredients:
2 pounds fresh ground beef. Not too lean, 80/20 would be good. I used 85/15 this time. If they don’t have enough fat, they will fall apart on the grill.
1/4th cup chopped onion.
1 chopped jalepeno. Use as much as you like. We like a bit of kick.
BBQ sauce. Your favorite brand.
Lawry’s seasoned salt. Put in as much as you prefer, but don’t be scared to use quite a bit. I use about 2 teaspoons (that is completely a guess, I have never measured). 
1/4th teaspoon coarse ground pepper.
Combine the ground beef, onion, jalapeno, 2 tablespoons BBQ sauce, Lawry’s, and pepper in a mixing bowl.
Shape into patties. This is hand work, no Pampered Chef burger shooter or other cheating! This is a cheeseburger, keep it simple. I made 4 patties this time, but that makes pretty big burgers. Depending on your group, you may want to make them smaller.
Using a brush, brush a light coat of BBQ sauce on the patties. This is not for flavor as much as to carmelize the suger in the BBQ sauce for a nice “crust”. It may actually work better to do this step just a minute before they come off the grill.
Grill on a charcoal grill. I almost don’t want to put times here because each grill will differ in temp. I grilled them for about 6 minutes on each side. DONT LEAVE THEM ON TOO LONG! Seriously, the most common way to ruin a good burger is to overdo it. A little pink in the middle is perfect.
Put cheese on. Leave on grill for an extra minute to melt the cheese. I used provolone cheese. The buns must be grilled.
Dress to taste. I like tomato, lettuce, Bread and Butter pickles, ketchup, and mustard.
Ah, now that’s a “God bless America” cheeseburger! Serve with extra napkins.
While you are enjoying your good honest cheeseburger this weekend, remember to feel sorry for some guy out in New York whose self esteem is so low that he needs to eat a $175.00 cheeseburger with jewelry in it, just to prove he can.
Me again: Well, after a grilling post like this, I’m going to close my kitchen for the weekend and be outside. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! See ya Tuesday!
Chicken Squares, er, I mean Rounds
At least mine didn’t turn out square! And there’s nothing else square about them except the chunked up chicken, so I’m pretty sure the ending shape was supposed to be square. But, I don’t want to get hung up on trivial details. The taste, of course, is what’s most important and that passed with flying colors! Although, depending what you’re talking about, square versus round would not be a trivial detail… for example, the tires on your car or the boxes you’re stacking.
Three things were just going on in my kitchen simultaneously (none of which were the chicken squares, so why am I writing this?)… I just got done doing the first major step of this week’s ”Out of My Comfort Zone” recipe that I’ll post Friday p.m. or Saturday a.m. (by major, I don’t mean major like butching a chicken). I also just got done making layered finger jello for the school picnic tomorrow. And I just got done making a pumpkin roll, also for the school picnic. We’re supposed to bring 2 things and the hot dogs and hamburgers will be provided. If we’d have a beautiful warm day tomorrow like today was, that would be so perfect. Can you believe that we’ve already had to cancel the school picnic ball game because of snow?! And then the next year, we go home sweating and sporting sunburns! That’s Wisconsin weather for ya!
Now, back to our chicken squares. This recipe is taken from the 500 Years in the Kitchen cookbook. Isn’t that just a catchy name for a cookbook? I’d say they added up a group of women’s years in the kitchen. Or maybe they figured up how long it took to make each recipe, added it all together, and discovered that if you’d make every recipe in the book, starting with the 1-2-3-4-5 Spare Ribs on page 1 and ending with Vanilla Foaming Bath Oil on page 136, that it would take you 500 years. Ok, just kidding on that one. It would make more sense that the ladies’ years of cooking would be added up because it was compiled by the Badger Women’s Club from Hayward, WI. Wisconsin is called the Badger State, if you didn’t already know that. I know it because I live here, but I might not otherwise. I know a few others too though, like the Sunshine State and the Buckeye State and the Keystone State, but that’s pretty much it. I’d do better on states and capitals, just so you know I’m not a total geography dropout!
Chicken Squares
1 3-oz pkg cream cheese
2 Tbsp. butter
2 cups chicken, cubed
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
2 Tbsp. milk
1 Tbsp. onion, chopped
1 8 oz. carton crescent rolls
3/4 cup seasoned croutons
Tip: Fry the chicken rather than cooking it… tastes better.
Mix together everything except the crescent rolls and croutons. I mixed everything else first, then added the chicken.
Separate rolls into 4 rectangles. Press perforations to seal. Spoon a half cup of meat mixture onto each rectangle. Or just divide it out evenly among them, that’s easier.
Pull the 4 corners of each rectangle together and twist slightly to seal.
Brush tops with melted butter.
Dip in crushed croutons. Huh?! Dip them? Wouldn’t the chicken stuff fall out? Sprinkling worked great.
Bake 20-25 minutes at 350. And here they are, just out of the oven.
We had sugar snap peas and applesauce as sides.
It bugged me that the ‘cut-away’ view pictures all got blurry, but here is one anyway. I hope it doesn’t make you rub your eyes or squint.
These were great! Just great! My usual How-would-you-rate-this? question to Shannon got a “Make again, for company’ rating. So, come on over, we’ll serve you some chicken squares rounds.
Are you kind of curious about those 1-2-3-4-5 Spare Ribs? Me too. I wasn’t curious about the bath oil recipe since I can buy that at Walmart, plus I don’t even know what glycerin is, but I had to read the ribs recipe… it’s ribs plus 5 other ingredients (sherry, soy sauce, cider vinegar, sugar, and water), which make the sauce. You cook the ribs in the sauce for 40 min covered, then uncover and turn it on High and stir till no liquid remains. Doesn’t say how long it takes till the liquid is gone. Maybe 500 years or so.
Creamy and cheesy - El Paso Casserole
I hope there aren’t alot of perfectionists reading this site… for more reasons than one! I am the total opposite of a perfectionist. This post will be sort of along the lines of playing “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti” on a piano without playing the last ‘Do’. I have progress pictures, but not a finished product picture.
The reason for that is because I don’t make this unless I’m making hotdish for a fellowship meal at church. So, I have pictures of it up until we left for church, then no more. And I don’t have the guts to go in the kitchen and take pictures and get strange looks from the food committee people. I and my family are used to me taking pictures of food. In fact, I literally take more pictures of food than I do of my own kids! The only time most people take pictures of food is when it’s the 4th of July and they just took a mean steak off the grill or when the baby stuffed his mouth too full or got applesauce or speghetti all over the place or when it’s a birthday and your 3-yr-old is blowing out candles on a birthday cake. But wouldn’t you think it a bit strange if you were on the food committee and someone would come to the kitchen, stir a regular ol’ hotdish, take a picture, sprinkle toasted bread crumbs on, and take another picture? It’s not exactly the definition of a Kodak moment.
El Paso Casserole
1 lb. 2 oz. Velveeta cheese
1 1/2 lbs. ham
1 lb. noodles (I use the homemade Amish noodles, as opposed to regular brands)
White Sauce:
11 Tbsp. butter
2/3 c. flour
5 1/3 c. milk (I always use whole milk)
Buttered bread crumbs or cracker crumbs, browned in oven
Cook the noodles and dice the cheese and ham.
Bring the white sauce almost to a boil in a pan. Mix the noodles, ham, cheese, and sauce all together and dump into a 4-qt. crockpot. Fits perfectly.
Turn on High till you leave for church. At church, turn it on Low for the 2 hours till lunchtime, stirring several times. Just before serving, sprinkle browned crumbs over the top. You’ll have to use you imagination for how it looks, but it looks about like it does on the last picture, only the sauce is yellower from the cheese chunks that have melted and been stirred in. Then the crumbs go on top. It tastes really good! And it’s so creamy!
If you want to do it in the oven, bake it (covered) at 350 for 1/2 hour, then stir, put buttered crumbs on top and bake another 10 minutes.
About Me
Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! My name is Kay. I'm from northern WI. I love cooking and baking. Especially baking. It's thereapeudic for me. I'm not a professional or gourmet cook by any means. I'm a Mennonite homemaker who happens to take pictures of some of the food I make. I have 2 little 'helpers'... Lexi (5) and Tiffany (2), who are young cooks in training. I don't do anything on the grill... that's where my husband comes in! He grills quite a bit, especially in the summer. So, sit back and enjoy browsing thro' the recipes. If you try some of them, I'd love to hear feedback on how you liked them!
Blogroll
- Cookie Madness - Great recipes and pictures of cookies that leave you with a helpless craving.
- Mama’s Southern Cooking - Comfy site with good cookin’ and lots of tips.
- The Pioneer Woman Cooks! - Home-cooking, lots of pictures and fun reading
Her Blog Directory