This has been a weekend for comfort food. Dear Husband is off to sail the south end of Lake Michigan, and we girls, and Ed, are bach-ing it. I started Saturday out with a big bowl of Cheerios. I haven't eaten cold cereal in a long time, and it brought back memories of school days.
Elegante Mother, who will be 90 in December, has had a change in her eating habits. She's eating less at meals and snacking more between meals. Dinner gets pushed around the plate, but she never ends dinner without having ice cream or some sort of dessert. I worry that she's not getting a balanced diet.
Last night we made a meal that we haven't cooked in close to forty years. When I was a kid, Mother would cook breakfast sausage links, and roll out a dough made of Bisquick. She would lay half the dough in the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan, set the cooked links on it, and then use the second half of the dough as a cover. We made half a recipe last night, and had half of it left over.
With the fat left in the pan from cooking the sausage links, you make a gravy to spoon over the baked casserole. We call this dish as "Pigs in a Blanket.
EM and I started dinner together, and realized that neither of us quite remembered the recipe. She cooked the sausage while I rolled out biscuit dough. We jointly made the gravy, with her adding flour while I stirred.
It turned out well. We needed to salt and pepper the assembled meal, but otherwise it tasted like the meal I remembered. It was an interesting trip back to my youth. Dear Husband would have enjoyed the meal, but this is another meal in the category of comfort food that he should no longer eat. We make things on the weekends when he is away that he would love to have. I do my best not to taunt him about the meals he misses when he goes off to sail.
EM is asking for my homemade macaroni and cheese. I make a white sauce, add shredded sharp cheddar to it, and add that to boiled shell or elbow macaroni. It's baked for 30 minutes, and then Durkee onion rings are scattered across the top, and baked for another two to three minutes to crisp the onion rings. This meal gives me heartburn, so I try not to make it often, or try to have an alternate available when I do make it.
Something else Elegante Mother has asked for is the tuna casserole made with wide egg noodles, tuna, peas and white sauce or mushroom soup. We add crushed potato chips to this casserole the last few minutes. Can you see where her tastes are going? Old-fashioned food that is high in fat. I don't cook that way any longer, and she misses it.
We have a box of Tilapia fillets in the freezer. The other night after physical therapy, I needed to pull together a very quick meal, and I chose to make Parmesan Encrusted Tilapia fillets. After you cook the tilapia in a sauté pan, you remove it from the pan and keep it warm. Then, you add olive oil to the pan to cook a minced clove of garlic. When that's soft, you add white wine, lemon juice and chicken broth to the pan and reduce it by half. The last step is to add a pat of butter and whisk it into the sauce. It was wonderful! It's really too bad EM won't even try a taste of it. She refuses to eat it because it's farm raised.
So....We are all yet living....getting ready to face the coming week. I hope you have a good week. If you're in the awful heat, remember to stay hydrated!
Comments (16)
this all sounds wonderful buffy. we call sausages in bread rolls pigs in a blanket so its interesting to hear your take on it.
i dont know what talipika or whatever is. canyou enlighten me?
Posted by bod | July 31, 2006 1:46 PM
Posted on July 31, 2006 13:46
Tilapia is a farm raised white fish that has become very popular in the United States. I'm not sure what to liken it to. It's thinner than cod, and sturdier than sole. Maybe one of my other readers may have a suggestion.
Posted by buffy | July 31, 2006 11:11 PM
Posted on July 31, 2006 23:11
Never heard of it - we New Englanders stick to the basics; lobster, clams, oysters, shrimp, shark (none of which are fish) and the occasional cod or scrod.
Posted by bogie | August 1, 2006 3:51 AM
Posted on August 1, 2006 03:51
Fish is fish. Tilapia is delicious--as is every other type of fish that I've ever tried. I did not, however, realize that it is only farm raised. Is it a hybrid?
Posted by Cop Car | August 1, 2006 7:53 AM
Posted on August 1, 2006 07:53
I'd be very happy to have a surfeit of lobster! We eat it very rarely here, except for Elegante Mother who would probably eat it every day if she could....with LOTS of hot butter!
I love shrimp, clams in New England Clam chowder and cioppino, and scrod broiled with mushrooms, bacon and Cheddar cheese on top!
Cop Car, it's SO nice to see you again. I hope your work in KC was fulfulling and successful. It's nice to have you back.
I'll have to surf on "tilapia" now to find out more about it.
Posted by buffy | August 1, 2006 1:49 PM
Posted on August 1, 2006 13:49
Thank you, Kitty. My service in KC turned into continued service in STL. I was with FEMA in the response to storm damage in STL (FEMA's regional office is in KC, so we stayed there until they were about ready to start recovery operations--in STL.) It was a marvelous "first deployment" assignment. Service in "my" specialty area is also completely different from most Red Cross assignments. It is in a white collar environment!
Posted by Cop Car | August 2, 2006 7:12 AM
Posted on August 2, 2006 07:12
I WONDERED what was going on in KC! NOw I know.....nothing! lol
I'm sure the people of St. Louis appreciate your efforts on their behalf. I'm really glad your first experience went well.
Posted by buffy | August 2, 2006 4:46 PM
Posted on August 2, 2006 16:46
Buffy, them comfort foods sound very good. I like things like that, but too... like you I'm changing to lower fat, lower cal foods... so that I may stand a chance of growing older like your dear Elegant Mother.
Posted by Desiree | August 3, 2006 1:06 AM
Posted on August 3, 2006 01:06
Bod, I meant to tell you that Dear Husband thinks hot dogs in roll dough are "pigs in the blanket," and that seems SO odd to me! *G*
Des...yeah...it's time to get serious about the rest of our lives. I just don't get enough exercise to justify the percent of fat in my diet. So, it's a darned good thing that Dear Husband hasn't been gone every single weekend this summer! When I cook for him, I cook a much more low-fat diet. I hope that will be my saving grace.
Posted by buffy | August 3, 2006 4:25 PM
Posted on August 3, 2006 16:25
Buffy--Do you and Dear Husband have a glass of wine, each day? I'm not into wine, but Hunky Husband is a big believer. (Actually, he just likes wine!)
Posted by Cop Car | August 4, 2006 8:26 AM
Posted on August 4, 2006 08:26
Cop Car....I keep BUYING wine...but I forget to serve it. There's a lot of good research out there to support the habit of a glass of red wine (or grape juice)each day for better health. A glass of wine in the evening is worth the 90 calories to me when I'm dieting, because I get so loopy that I'm not interested in snacking! *G* So....if HH would like to come along for the week, he's welcome, and we can accomodate his wine fetish. What's his favorite type of wine?
Posted by buffy | August 4, 2006 3:43 PM
Posted on August 4, 2006 15:43
There is no chance of HH's coming along; but, thanks for the invitation. He'll be pleased that you asked. He drinks a Beringer Gamay Beaujolais. BTW: Grape juice, according to the medical advice that I have heard, does not substitute for wine. It is, seemingly, the alcohol, itself, that is beneficial. Who would have thought?
Posted by Cop Car | August 4, 2006 9:24 PM
Posted on August 4, 2006 21:24
I haven't tried that particular wine, but I like gamay beaujolais. Tell HH that I would be pleased to share a bottle with him one day. That's good to hear about the grape juice. I don't like it! Bring on the WINE!! (Tell HH, we're sorry that he won't be able to join us, please)
Posted by buffy | August 5, 2006 3:33 PM
Posted on August 5, 2006 15:33
HH asked me to thank you for the invitation, Buffy. I happen to love grape juice--concord grape juice, that is; but, it is difficult to find--at least around here. The stuff at the grocery store is cut with other grape juices (shame on Welch's!), the concord grape juices from the health food store aren't very good, and it's difficult to find kosher foods since Wally World quit carrying them. I usually settle for sipping a mix of cranberry juice and iced tea while HH is having his pre-prandial wine.
Posted by Cop Car | August 5, 2006 6:02 PM
Posted on August 5, 2006 18:02
We have a wonderful place here called "Whole Foods." Lets plan on spending a morning or afternoon wandering through it. We might just find the concord grape juice you prefer, and you can stock up!
Elegante Mother thinks we need to make a trip to our favorite fabric store, too.....perhaps on different days.
Posted by buffy | August 6, 2006 3:14 PM
Posted on August 6, 2006 15:14
I second EM's suggestion of our hitting your fabric store. It occurred to me that I had not included that in our quests; but, I meant to!
Posted by Cop Car | August 6, 2006 5:54 PM
Posted on August 6, 2006 17:54