Cooking with Braddy: Glazed and Confused

Money’s going to be a bit tight this week, so I decided I would try to cut back on food expenses. Yesterday, rather than whip out one of the big fancy recipes I’ve collected over the last months, I whipped up a quick batch of Pasta Roni Shells in White Cheddar. I lived on this stuff in college, and loved it, too. Easiest thing in the world to make – boil noodles in water, add a packet of powdered cheese, and serve immediately. Once you’ve got it all done, toss it in the bin. Seriously, this stuff was NASTY. Burned my tongue, too.

Learning to cook real food has ruined frozen meals for me forever.

I’ve given two new recipes from Desperation Dinners a try recently. First up, we’ve got Apple-Glazed Burger Steaks.

I’ve never bought ground meat in a tube before. It was kind of traumatizing. The ground turkey gets mixed up with an egg white, a couple of different spices, and two tablespoons of applesauce. Cook the burgers in a skillet, and then make gravy from the juices.

The result looks a lot like a Swiss steak. Easy to cook, and easy to eat. I expected a much sweeter end result when I read the recipe title. It was almost disappointing to only use two tablespoons of applesauce. Still, this dish was a nice contrast to usual beef burgers. Whether it was the applesauce or the turkey, though, I can’t determine.

I spent all last weekend baking (and eating) cake bites. Come Sunday evening, I just was NOT hungry. So I made myself Buttered Rum-Glazed Ham, just to be an idiot. A FAT idiot.

I had to speak to the woman at the grocery deli counter to get ham steaks the right size for this recipe, which… man, I may have to do that more often. Grocers are great people. Seriously, have you thanked your grocer today? You should. Go do it now.

The glaze was made with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and rum (flavoring – I’m a good Mormon boy, after all). I stuck it all in a measuring cup and microwaved it. Brown sugar and butter make a crazy combo – they boiled up even after getting pulled from the microwave.

The recipe calls for raisins, but, if I make this dish again, I’ll probably leave the raisins out. They absorbed a lot of the glaze in the broiler, and reconstituted grapes are kind of gross. Otherwise, though, this dish was really quick and tasty. Portions wound up being pretty small, though.

One of these days, I should really practice putting together a full meal with side dishes and everything. Maybe.