Hamburgers....from Scratch!

We both love homemade, fresh, barbequed hamburgers.  We have been making burgers for quite a while now, but just recently we started making them with sirloin... Very good!!

You'll need:

• 3 lbs Sirloin steaks
• 1 lb beef fat
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Worcestershire sauce
• Meat grinder

We start by assembling our meat grinder.  Ours is just the attachment that goes on the end of the kitchen Aide Mixer.  It works great, and does a good job!

Once your grinder is assembled, you can start grinding your meat and fat together.  The reason we add fat is so the burger isn't dry, and rubbery!  You'll need to cut your steaks and fat into strips so they can grind easily.

You'll want to run your meat through the grinder once, and then once again to make sure your fat and steak is mixed well. 

Once you have run it through twice you are ready to start assembling your burgers. 

You'll need to add your bread crumbs, egg, and seasoning and make sure they mix well into your meat.  The meat will be cold, so be prepared for cold hands!

Once you have the ground meat well mixed you can start forming your burgers. We use a kitchen scale and weigh our burgers to make sure they are uniform.  We like our burgers to be 1/4 pound each.

Once they are all formed, you'll want to chill the meat before cooking or barbequing it to make sure the burgers don't fall apart.  Whatever burgers you don't use, you can freeze for another time.  Enjoy!

Greek Salad

My Dad taught me how to make Greek Salad when I was little.  It is my absolute favorite salad!  I have always made my own dressing for it as well.

You'll need:

• 3-4 Tomatoes
• 1 Cucumber
• Feta Cheese
• Extra virgin Olive Oil
• White Vinegar
• Salt

Cut the tomatoes and cucumbers into small pieces.  You'll want them to be just smaller than bite sized. 

place them into a bowl

cut or crumble to feta cheese onto the tomato and cucumber.

Mix all the ingredients together.  Add olive oil and the same amount of vinegar to the salad.  you'll want your salad to be well dressed, and you'll want to be able to taste both the oil and vinegar, but neither of them should be over powering.

Add salt to taste.  Making this salad is so easy!  The taste is so refreshing, and you'll want to eat all of it!

Enjoy!

Mmmm Ravioli!

4 Cheese Ravioli with Tomato and Chick Pea Sauce

We love having pasta in our house, we really love trying new sauces.  We also really enjoy chick peas so, for this sauce we decided to add them into the sauce to see how it turned out.

What you'll need:

• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1 can chick peas (drained and rinsed)
• 4 sausages (you choice of flavor; we used Sweet basil sausage)
• 1 onion
• 4 cheese ravioli

We started by cooking the sausage in the pan first by itself.  once cooked, we removed the sausage from the pan, and then added the onions. 

Once the onions were translucent we added the sausage back into the pan, but we sliced it up into bite sized pieces.

While the sausage and onion were cooking we rinsed and drained the chick peas.

Once the sausage and onions were fully cooked we added the diced tomatoes.  We then added the tomato paste to thicken the sauce a bit.

Once the tomato paste was in the sauce we let it simmer for about 15 minutes.  We then added the chick peas.

 Once the chick peas were in the sauce, we got our water boiling for the ravioli.  Once the water came to a boil we added the ravioli, and waited for them to be ready.

Once the ravioli was cooked we plated our supper.  The sauce tasted great, and the chickpeas added some extra fullness to the sauce.  You could even skip the sausage if you wanted to, and maybe add more chick peas.  Enjoy!

Bacon and Eggs...with a twist!

We woke up Sunday morning ready to have something fun for breakfast.  We knew we wanted bacon and eggs, but we didn't want the same old kind we have every weekend.  We came up with this.

You'll need:

• Bacon
• Eggs
• Cheese
• Greased Muffin Tin

Take your bacon and lay it on a cookie sheet.  Place the bacon in the oven at 350 until it is cooked, but not crunchy (it needs to be flexible).

Once you have your bacon in the oven, you can grab some eggs, about 2 per person.

Crack your eggs into a bowl

Scramble the eggs and add some cream (or milk) to them.

Once the bacon is done, cut each slice in half.  You will then lay each half in a muffin cup in an 'X' pattern, using 2 full pieces of bacon for each cup.

Then using a ladle scoop your eggs into each muffin cup.

Place the muffin tin in the oven at 350 for 20-25 minutes.  The eggs will rise, so I wouldn't fill them right to the top (like we did).

Right before the eggs are done, add cheese to the top of them and cook until the cheese melts.

Once they are cooked and the cheese is melted, pop them out of the tray and place them on a plate!  Enjoy!

Dips

The other night we wanted to have something a little different in the evening.  We decided to make a few different dips.  

The first dip we made was just a simple olive oil and balsamic vinegar dip.  

What you'll need

• Olive oil
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Bread

Pour some olive oil into a bowl

Drizzle some balsamic vinegar into the oil

Add less vinegar then oil.  The two liquids won't mix so when you dip your bread you'll get a little of both flavors on your bread.

The second dip was just as simple to make.

You'll need

• Liver Pate
• Bacon (4-5 slices)

You will need to cut your bacon into small pieces and cook it until it's cooked, but not crunchy.

We then took the liver pate and mixed in the cooked bacon.  It doesn't look too appealing, but it does taste good.

The third dip was a blue cheese, cream cheese, bacon dip. 

You'll need

• Bacon (4-5 slices)
• Cream Cheese
• Blue Cheese

Take the cream cheese and  mix it in a bowl, until it is soft. Take the blue cheese

Cut the blue cheese up into small pieces and add it to the cream cheese.  Mix the cheeses together.

Once the cheeses are mixed well, add chopped, cooked bacon into the bowl.

Mix it all together and enjoy!

The second and third dips can be eaten with bread or crackers.  Pita chips would be nice with them as well.  

Fajitas!

This past week was spring break, so we did a lot of visiting with people, relaxing and of course cooking.  On Thursday we made fajitas. 

You will need:

• Tortilla shells
• Strips of beef
• Spice mix
• Onion
• Green pepper
• Salsa
• Sour Cream
• Cheese

To begin you take some thin steaks.  I suppose you could use chicken, but I've always used beef. 
You slice the steak up into thin, long strips.

Put the steak to the side, and then you can start chopping your vegetables.  We use onion and green pepper.  You take the onion and chop it up into small pieces

After you have chopped it up you'll need to brown it.  You'll want to cook the onion until it is almost translucent and just starting to brown.

We also use green peppers in our fajitas.  Chop the green peppers into similar sized pieces as the onion. 

You'll want to brown the green pepper as well, just until it is tender.

Once you have your veggies cooked, you can start on your meat.  We like to season the meat, you can buy fajita seasoning packs, but we like to make our own.  We use a mixture of spices like garlic, cumin, salt, pepper, cayenne, and chili pepper.

Mix your spices with your meat and make sure it is all coated.  Then fry your meat until it is cooked. 

Once your meat is cooked you are ready to assemble your fajitas!
Everyone assembles theirs differently, but heres is one way.

Spread salsa on the bottom of your tortilla, add some sour cream on top.  Put a few pieces of meat in the center of your tortilla.  Add onions, and green peppers as well, and top with cheese.  Roll up and enjoy!