Spaghetti alla Mozzarella

2 large tomato, cubed
1 ½ c mozzarella cheese, cubed
2 grated garlic cloves
½ c fresh basil
1 t black pepper
½ t salt
2 green onions, chopped
¼ c olive oil
¾ lb. spaghetti, cooked

Mix all the ingredients except the spaghetti, then toss well with the spaghetti. A great late summer dish - no cooking and a use for all of the extra tomatoes from the garden!

Creamy Pick-Your-Favorite-Seafood Pasta

1 lb. crawfish tails, shrimp, or lump crabmeat
1 stick of butter (Do not use margarine.)
1 pint of half-and-half
1 good-sized bunch green onions, chopped
3 - 10 cloves garlic, chopped (to your taste)
Cajun seasoning to taste (or 1 - 2 tbsp)
1 lb. cooked fresh pasta (Rotini is preferred, but use your favorite shape.)

Cook pasta according to the directions on the package. Drain, then rinse under cool water. Drain again, thoroughly.

Melt the butter in a large pot and saute onions and garlic for 3 minutes. Add the shellfish and saute for 2 minutes. Add the half-and-half, then add several big pinches of Creole seasoning, tasting before the next pinch until you think it's right. If you've boiled your own crawfish, save the fat and add it in as well.

Cook for 5 - 10 minutes over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Add the pasta and toss well. Let it sit for 10 minutes over very low heat, stirring often. Serve immediately.

Notes: This is one sauce you really can't get wrong. If there's a little too much of something or not quite enough, it still tastes fabulous. The one trick is to NOT boil the cream sauce.

Sun-Steeped Iced Tea

Take a jar - any jar- that is clean and has a lid. Fill it with water, add black tea bags, top with the lid and leave it in full sun for at least six hours. (I usually put it out in the morning and leave until mid-afternoon) The sun will steep the tea for you and give it a unique and delightful taste.

For a mayonnaise sized jar, one tea bag will do. For one of those gigantic jars you get bulk ketchup or pickles in, try four tea bags. While there are fewer jars to clean with one big jar, I've often found the 5-gallon jars difficult to fit inside the refrigerator as well as tricky to pour from. Having just come into a small inheritance of 1-L canning jars via Freecycle, I'm giving them a try.

Bring your jars inside to chill in the refrigerator. Once that's done, you need to add sugar obviously and probably lemon juice too. Fresh lemons sliced and placed in the jar while the tea is cooling is my favorite, but failing that a few drops of concentrate will do. As for an amount of sugar, start at a 1/4 cup and add until it's at your sweetness level.

There's even room for experiments! For instance, to enjoy mint from the garden, I clip a fresh sprig and add it with the tea bags at the beginning. The same can be done with any lemon flavored herbs - lemon grass/lemon balm - instead of adding the lemon juice.

You're so lucky. I learned this precious method after years of back-breaking and arduous study at the right hand of my father in the backyard vegetable garden. :P

Menu - Week 2

1. Baked chicken on the Grill with Potato pancakes and Fried cabbage

2. Dad’s Seafood Pasta
3. Barbecue Hamburgers with Broccoli salad
4. Spaghetti alla Mozzarella
5. Two Pierogi pizza
6. Macaroni and cheese with tomato and sausages
7. Chipotle pork chops with Sweet potato fries

8. Steak and Baked potato on the barbecue

My goal in publishing these is to A. have it in a place I won't lose it and B. to eventually have a small archive of menus that I can come back to and use in a busy week. Hopefully storing them means I can come back to them and save myself some time, instead of the chicken-scratch on a random piece of notepaper that disappears into the void never to be seen again.

p.s. Some of the recipes I'm listing are in my own personal collection. I will be working on getting those online as I put up the menus. :)

Tell me if you like it

Just today I found Blogger in Draft and all of its fun new features. One of them is just perfect for a recipe blog - a star rating!

Do you see the stars outlined in purple at the bottom of this post? Those are the ones you click to tell me how many stars a recipe deserves. The cumulative votes then appear in the stars to the left as an overall rating for the recipe. Sweet!

I'll give this post 5 stars so we can both see what this looks like. What a bright shiny new toy!

ps. No worries. It only lets ya vote once. hehe

Recipes must add up

My mission here at Mere Recipes is to share recipes that I have both tried and loved. Where-ever they come from, they aren't going anywhere here unless they add up.

Nothing irritates me more than having put my energy and time into planning a menu, making a complete list, shopping for the best deals, then coming home to a supposed fail-proof recipe only to have it flop in my hands when it's late and we're hungry and the kids are exhausted and there is flour all over the floor. You have those moments, and so do I.

Now I can't be blamed for substitution issues of your own choosing, but many of the recipes posted here are adapted. And by that I mean that I have adjusted the seasonings, ingredients, directions or whatever so that the result is greater than the sum of its parts. I would like to help you make a beautiful meal.

I'm setting my goals high, but I love my family and know how much of our life revolves around a healthy center. So, this adventure called Mere Recipes is to eliminate the guesswork, feed my family well, teach my children how to cook, pass on my favorite recipes, make lots of memories and share life.

Lasagne Roll-ups

Adapted from the recipe by the same name in the More-with-Less Cookbook
Yields 7-8 servings

Cook and drain according to package direction: 12 lasagne noodles

Filling

Steam until limp:
2 bunches fresh spinach, Swiss chard or turnip greens, finely chopped
or simply crumble and stir in 1/2 frozen block of spinach

Add and mix well:
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 large tub of cottage cheese
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup onions, diced

Topping

3 cup grated Mozzarella
4 cup pasta sauce

Spread cooked noodles with filling, roll up and lay in rows of three in greased 9 x 13 baking pan. Pour sauce over all and bake covered at 350 for 30 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake 30 minutes until cheese is melted and browning. Allow to stand five minutes before serving.