Easy Kids Meals

Another different topping pizza tonight; Sloppy Joe.

The recipe was interesting called salsa and grape jelly.  That combination seemed off, so in my usual fashion I substituted my homemade spaghetti sauce for the salsa and used the grape jelly.

• Pizza Dough (I promise I will post my recipe one of these days)

• 1 lb of ground beef

• 1 medium onion chopped

• 1 cup spaghetti sauce

• ½ cup grape Jelly

• ½ cup ketchup

• Mozzarella Cheese

1. Brown the ground beef

2. Add the onion cook till tender

3. Add the spaghetti sauce, grape Jelly

4. Season with garlic powder, salt

5. Cook beef mixture till thickened (about 6 minutes)

6. Heat oven to 450 F

7. Spread out Pizza dough

8. Cover with ground beef mixture

9. Top with Cheese

10. (I wish I had fresh tomatoes, I think they would have a made a nice addition to the pizza giving it some color)

My kids love chutney, we normally have it with rice but I saw a chef making turkey burgers on the Today show on NBC and I thought I would give it a try. Chutney is truly the secret ingredient in this easy dinner.

• 3 lbs turkey

• ½ cup finely chopped onion

• ½ cup chopped fresh parsley

• olive oil

• Worcestershire sauce

• Salt

• Black pepper

• Lettuce leaves

• Baked ham

• Mango chutney

• Slices of Swiss cheese

1. Mix the turkey, onion parsley, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper gently in a large bowl

2. Make 8 patties or in my case 6 larger and 4 smaller ones

3. Preheat grill (I have a George foreman Grill)

4. Cook burgers 8 minutes a side or till done

5. Add Swiss cheese till it melts

6. Assemble burger by placing the lettuce on the bottom, followed by the ham, burger then 1 tablespoon of chutney

Enjoy!

Today we were daring and decided to make homemade pasta.  It seems like an awful amount of work and I thought it would take forever.  The whole process lasted an hour and it lasted that long because of mishaps on my part.  But the fresh pasta was delicious, it didn’t need a heavy sauce, we tossed it in butter and garlic and it was perfect.

• 3 ½ cup flour

• 3 eggs

• 2 tablespoons of water

• water

Put all the ingredients into the mixer and made a hard dough

I have a kitchen aid pasta roller which I used.

Tips – don’t make dough too tough

This seems to be the week of leftovers, so it’s important to disguise the foods so the kids do not realize that they are eating leftovers. I added simple dumplings to our after thanksgiving turkey soup. The original turkey is brothy and has a lot of meat in it. Adding dumplings to it turns it into a richer and completely different tasting soup.   

• 1 cup of flour

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• ½ diced onion

• milk

• 1 tablespoon parsley flakes dried

• 1 egg

1. Break the egg in a half-cup measuring cup

2. Add milk to bring the milk/egg mixture to ½ cup

3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients

4. The mixture will be stiff.

5. Drop the dumplings into your heated soup a teaspoon at a time

6. Bring the soup to simmer for 5 minutes with the lid on.