Hot Sauce Potato Hash

Men are stereotypically called “meat and puh-tay-tuhs” types. Or at least that is what we call it back home. I would have to agree that such a hearty combination is still a man’s meal on a college campus. Most meals using this simple formula are well received by more than just men, I would argue. I loved the salty, spicy taste contrasted with the creaminess of cheese and sour cream. I am slightly tempted to call this “Baked Potato with The Works, featuring Eggs”. The descriptive title is spot on, but admittedly it does not roll off the tongue well.

A traditional winning breakfast combo: eggs, hash browns, bacon, cheese, with a twist. It’s made like a casserole. You might be skeptical, as you tend to like everything separate and dedicated to its specific place on the plate. This versatile dish will become a repeat guest in your kitchen for breakfast, lunch, or dinner – sure to please at all occasions. The potatoes, slightly undercooked, coupled with the crispy bacon crunched in your mouth and cheesy egg mixture gave it the fluff factor. You can leave out the hot sauce if you have tender taste buds, but the type I used greatly added to the full body flavor. At the table, I drizzled a bit of hot sauce, scooped a dollop of sour cream on top and sprinkled playfully with salt and pepper.

Although you might be starting to lament the waning days of summer, you can still enjoy this heated hash.

Hot Sauce Potato Hash

Ingredients:

1 large baking potato, shredded

½ onion, chopped

5 strips of bacon

1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

4 eggs

¼ cup hot sauce

[I used Bufalo Picante: Salsa para botanas]

Salt and pepper

Sour cream, for serving

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400˚ F.

2. In a skillet, fry bacon strips. Remove and crumble. Reserve about 1 T of the bacon grease for cooking onions.

3. Add chopped onions to hot bacon grease, cook until translucent – about 3 min.

4. With a cheese grater, shred the potato and cheese [if needed].

5. Beat eggs, hot sauce and salt and pepper. Add in cheese.

6. In a medium sized Corning Ware dish blend potato and egg mixture. Fold in crumbled bacon.

7. Bake in oven for about 45 min – 1 hr.

8. Add more hot sauce to your liking!

A Diamond in the Ruff: Orange Fluff

Reminiscent of drawing on place mats and molding play dough into multi-colored blobs, here I am in college scooping heaps of “orange fluff” into a bowl. Mountains of sweet, lush orange cream, dotted with bubbles of tapioca and hunks of mandarin oranges makes for a light dessert or late-night study snack. The “instant” labels on these ingredients signify the simplicity of the dessert, perfect for students working with a limited time frame, all you need is patience when letting the puddings cool. But you can always counter this with sampling your ingredients! The taste of the final product will have you convinced that this pudding-like dessert should have a special place in your personal [not community] fridge.

While it may sound like a mystery dessert, I assure you that the only mystery is why you haven’t tried it earlier. It is often difficult to find instant tapioca pudding, but in that case, just buy the Minute brand of tapioca and combine with milk, sugar, egg and vanilla for your tapioca. Once you make and cool this, just add it to the mix. Don’t let one ingredient get you down.

Issues also arise when questioning the taste of orange Jello in their dessert, but it is not an invasive taste. On the contrary, there is so much pudding and fluff that it is more like the creamsicles you chased the ice cream man down the street for. Chase no more! Now you can have the taste of creamsicle for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, okay that is a little much – this would be too much of a good thing I’m afraid. And this recipe does make enough for your army of hungry college friends. For the occasional dessert partaker however, this is a heavenly orange dream where the clouds are made of cool whip and the rain is tapioca falling from a bright orange Jello-colored sky.

Orange Fluff

Ingredients:

3 cups water

1 small package instant orange jello

1 small package instant French vanilla pudding

1 package instant tapioca pudding

8 oz cool whip

15 oz mandarin oranges

Instructions:

1. Boil water in medium sized saucepan. Add jello and pudding mixes, stirring constantly with a whisk or spoon for about 3 min.

2. Remove from heat. Place in pan of ice water to help it chill faster.

3. Once pudding mix has come to room temperature, fold in cool whip and mandarin oranges.

4. Chill in fridge for about 2 hours.

5. Best eaten cold and fluffy.

Pasta Primaver-y-good

Tonight on my plate sat a medley of vegetables over pasta to accompany my medley of homework over the weekend. Let you in on a secret though – the dinner was better than the homework. Showcasing vegetables is what pasta primavera does best. Fresh and crisp, this dish left me feeling full, but not bloated with carbs. It was wildly colorful with an assortment of peppers, carrots, squash and onions – any fresh produce you can find and if not, try the frozen section. Without a heavy sauce covering up the flavor, it felt clean. With the bite of freshly grated parmesan and voluptuous taste of herbs de provence, it was just what the college student wants on a Sunday night.

Start to finish, this meal took about 25 minutes. Time can be a deal breaker in college between getting off a shift at work and catching up on that pile of reading in the corner. This dinner gives full enjoyment without requiring a full commitment. Plus, this makes just enough for a lunch tomorrow. Perfect, in my case, because my creative cooking juices haven’t started flowing at 8 AM when I wake up for class. Ideally, I’d love to make something fresh every day for lunch. Realistically, I don’t have that kind of time. Therefore, having the ability to reheat something great for lunch that I had for dinner is a perk in itself.

[And this pepper was telling me to eat. NOW!]

Pasta Primavera

Ingredients:

Handful or so of pasta [traditionally use farfalle, but I used angel hair]

2 T olive oil

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 small zucchini, chopped

½ onion, chopped

½ green pepper, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 small tomato, chopped

Salt and pepper

Herbs de provence

Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Instructions:

1. In medium sized pot, cook pasta.

2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in frying pan over medium high heat.

3. Once hot, add carrots, zucchini, onion, and green pepper. Cook for about 3-5 min – once onions start to turn translucent.

4. Add garlic and spices, cook for 2 min.

5. Drain pasta, add to fry pan.

6. Mix in tomato and grated parmesan.

7. Eat!

Curry Wheat Berry Salad

I was imagining whole wheat…strawberries? No. Blueberries? Definitely not. Okay, so it’s actually the flower of a wheat plant. How I got a hold of these is one thing; how to cook said “berries” was another. I would liken them to something such as barley: tons of natural fiber, a bit lacking in the flavor department. Like beans, they had to be soaked overnight and then boiled for a good while over the stove to achieve an edible tenderness. Add to the mix a slew of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and a tart dressing and we had ourselves a full bodied salad.

Mind you, I was skeptical. It sounded a bit “crunchy granola” for my tastes, but I figure give everything a go, at least once. I was pleasantly surprised by the unique and healthy salad that resided in my dinner bowl. While it’s no main course dish, it is definitely one to accompany a barbecued, pulled pork sandwich and some buttery corn on the cob. The acidic tones will please the palate when balanced with something savory or sweet. Bold enough to spark conversation at dinner, this nontraditional salad won’t replace mac n’ cheese, but it will speak volumes for your creative abilities.

This recipe was adjusted from the Lower Byrd Farm’s, an organic farm in Virginia.

Curry Wheat Berry Salad

Ingredients:

1 ½ c wheat berries

1 apple, peeled and diced

1 cucumber, peeled and diced

½ green bell pepper, diced

1/3 c Craisins

1/3 c almonds, chopped

1/3 c olive oil

¼ c apple cider vinegar – CRUCIAL, don’t use regular vinegar

3 T honey

2 T shallots, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 T lemon juice

1 T curry powder

Salt and pepper

Instruction:

1. Soak wheat berries overnight in water.

2. Bring to boil and simmer for 45 minutes. Drain and chill.

3. Combine wheat berries, apple, pepper, cucumber, almonds and raisins.

4. In a separate bowl olive oil, vinegar, honey, onion, garlic, lemon juice, and curry powder.

5. Pour over wheat berry mixture and stir to combine.

6. Chill and serve.

Make Your Own Rice-A-Roni: Homemade Asparagus Rice-A-Roni

Usually on the same aisle as Hamburger Helper and other highly processed, low budget foods, Rice-A-Roni has been known to find a home in many college kitchens. When I first tried the stuff out of the box I conceded that, for the price, it seemed like a mildly satisfying college meal. Then I took a gander at the nutrition facts. One box contained nearly my entire daily amount of sodium and would set me back over 600 calories! What had come in such a tiny box would take a large toll.

A challenge arose: could I make it myself and cut down on the bad while increasing the good in my own kitchen? Rice-A-Roni has a nice combo going on – rice AND pasta, both common staple foods, make the dish stretch further for cheaper. Rice-A-Roni has the aisle-side appeal of easy, and on sale, but homemade versions will always allow you more control on taste, texture and other additions. In fact, if you want to give your dish some texture diversity then fry your spaghetti in butter until it is golden brown and crisp, then separate and add at the end to your cooked rice for the perfect contrast between crunchy and fluffy. For variations on flavor you can use beef or chicken broth, add other types of veggies, maybe even some nuts.

My rice-a-roni was delicious, buttery and light – a perfect use of the asparagus that went on sale this week. The asparagus was just fork tender so that it still had a little snap when you took a bite. The vegetable broth is the key for depth of flavor in this dish. I made my own, but feel free to pick up your favorite brand of broth on the soup aisle. Overall, it’s an easy, tasty dish that’s a far cry from bland, boring or boxed.

Homemade Asparagus Rice-A-Roni

Ingredients:

2 T butter, unsalted

1 oz angel hair, broken into ¼ths

1 small onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

½ cup rice

1 cup vegetable broth

¼ lb asparagus

Instructions:

1. Melt butter in medium sized saucepan over medium heat.

2. Once butter is hot, add in angel hair and fry until golden brown and crispy.

3. Add in onions, cook for about 3 min. Add garlic, cook for another 2 min.

4. Add in rice, cook for about 5 min. Add in vegetable broth, bring to a boil.

5. Cover, cook for about 15 min until rice is cooked and liquid is absorbed.

6. Meanwhile, in another saucepan, boil about 1 cup of water; steam asparagus for about 3-5 min or fork tender.

7. Add asparagus to rice. Dig in!

Makes about 2 large portions.

Long Time Since I’ve Had Shortcake: Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberries happened to be on sale today. They also happened to be sold in two pound packages. The plan was to enjoy their natural sweet succulence as a tasty snack. It didn’t take long after dinner to decide that dessert was a must. I wasn’t feeling like anything chocolate, amazingly. I wanted something light and summery. Shortcake! Not that artificially sweetened sponge Hostess labeled as ‘shortcake’. True shortcake is a sweet, crumbly biscuit; a ‘scone’ if you are British or just real classy.

This delicious impulse was well worth the two trips I had to make to the grocery [you can’t have strawberry shortcake without whipped cream!]. While making the dough I discovered that it was quite a tasty batter and since there are no raw eggs in it, had my fill before the baking. But nothing beats them fresh out of the oven. Luckily it didn’t take long for them to cook – about 15 minutes to be exact. They were so warm and crumbly, even a bit crispy with the sugar-coated outside. It was summertime bliss in my kitchen. They were definitely good enough to eat on their own – perhaps at breakfast?

Putting the strawberries and whipped cream on top was, figuratively, the ‘icing on the cake’. I sat down on the couch with a heaping bowl of this, enjoying not only the creamy, crumbly taste, but also the lingering scents of baked goods. It’s a natural air freshener, don’t you know? It’s my preferred one.

So if you are back at school already and looking for a great way to entertain others or just enjoy it yourself, strawberry shortcake is waiting.

Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

¾ tsp salt

1/3 cup sugar

4 T butter

¾ cup half and half

Melted butter to brush cakes, sugar to sprinkle on top

Strawberries

Whipped cream

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400˚.

2. Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl.

3. Cut in butter [*meaning cut up the 4 T into smaller pieces and press combine the butter into the flour]

4. Add half and half, mix well. Dough will be shaggy.

5. Make into large balls, drop on cookie sheet.

6. Brush with butter, sprinkle with sugar.

7. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until browned.

8. Best eaten warm, served with strawberries and whipped cream. Nommmm

Makes about 8-12 cakes, depending on size.