Super Simple Hamburger Pie, with Crescent Roll Crust

This was an old recipe from Tony's mother's collection, and even though I am not a huge fan of hamburger meat dishes, I thought this seemed very good. Because it was so good and became an instant hit in my house, preserving its spot in our dinner rotation, I thought I would share. It only takes 10 minutes of prep and 20 minutes to bake. Perfect timing for a non-crockpot recipe and a home by 5:30pm mom. Plus I love crescent rolls, yum.

1 lb hamburger meat
1 small diced onion
1 can of crescent rolls (8 count)
1 8oz can of tomato paste
1 packet of taco seasoning
2 cups of shredded mozzerella
1/2 cup of shredded parmesean

Preheat oven to 400.
In a skillet, brown hamburger meat with the diced onion.
Pull apart the crescent rolls and place in a 9" pie pan. Flatten the triangles so that they join together to form a crust and leave about a half an inch hanging over the pie pan.
Once meat is thoroughly browned and the onions are stir in tomato paste and taco seasoning.
Sprinkle the crescent roll crust with parmesean cheese
Place half of the meat mixture in the pie pan and cover with 1 cup of mozzarella cheese and then repeat one more time.
Take the excess crescent rolls and fold over the meat mixture to make a crust similar to a crostata.
Bake for 20 minutes.

I put some salsa and sour cream on mine but no one else did and they loved it. Anna wanted some for lunch until I asked if she was sure. She decided that leftover taco soup was a safer choice.

How We Celebrated the Bailout

We might not have spent $442,000 on a spa weekend but we did see a booth that had spas.

And some lovely couples looking at spas. That grey haired person is a man and yes, he is wear shorts over leggings!

We even saw some seals. I bet those AIG executives didn't have the nature show I did while they were having massages and facials at St. Regis Hotel in Dana Point. Nothing is more relaxing then communing with nature.

I even spotted some Okies in their native dress.

But this is how other Okies dress and for just under $100 we celebrated the Bailout in style at the Tulsa State Fair. None of us took out a sub-prime loan to buy our houses. In fact, all of budget our money and practice self control for things we can't afford. But hey, we celebrated paying more taxes for us anyway!

Mostly because instead of riding one single ride, we spent most of our evening in the Beer Garden.

During an excursion into the midway looking for a bathroom and the monkeys that take your change, we played a friendly little game of skeet ball.

Where Sonja won a Husky! Thank goodness because her husband, much like the AIG execs, recklessly spent his cash by paying off an 8 year old so that all of us could play together and so it could be one of us that would win.

But having the ability to frivolously spend $100 for a chance to win a stuffed animal, get a free t-shirt, and consume copious amounts of crap on a stick? That my friend eased the pain of being royally screwed by our government.

Birthday Celebration

We had Anna's birthday party last weekend. We rented a room at the Embassy Suites and invited some girls from her school and her day care. The birthday package included swimming, pizza, pop, movie rental, popcorn, a disposable camera, and a made to order breakfast for everyone. All I had to bring was the cake, perfect.

The girls loved swimming, and so did the birthday girl's parents. The water was warm and the kids had a blast.

Anna had asked for a cupcake cake. I checked with a brand new cupcake shop in town and they do not make one. I checked with a very popular bakery and they make one but it is just one giant cupcake not individual cupcakes. So I did some internet searching and was able to find several pictures of cupcake cakes.

I used a boxed cake mix and filled the cupcakes all the way to the top of the wrapper because I wanted a slight overflow, similar to a muffin. There were seven people all together so a flower design worked perfect.

I found this frosting recipe on line. It was delicious and super easy to spread but not too thin because it held together perfect where there were slight gaps between the cupcakes. I found some cake decorations that I think I bought when I hosted a shower in, get this, 1994! Thank goodness I have a little bit of my mom's pack rat gene in me. I let Anna tell me how to decorate the flower design and she put on the sprinkles.

After swimming and eating and then swimming again, the girls decided they wanted to get ready for bed and watch a movie. I said goodbye to my husband and stepson and braced myself for the slumbering part of the party. It was not bad at all. The girls all slept in the two double beds in the bedroom and I slept on the pull-out in the living area. At eleven o'clock I had to tell them to quit jumping and banging on the the walls. (I actually have no idea what they were banging on, I just kept telling myself that it was not my home so who cares) Apparently, jumping and banging around was what kept them awake because in just a few minutes I heard nothing. The birthday revelry had come to an end.

Mothers Know Best

I have moved this Apple/Potato Peeler from South Carolina to Oklahoma and then to Chicago, where it never came up from the storage locker in the basement of my apartment. I repacked it into another box when I moved to California and was charged $25/box by the moving company. (I threw away my lampshades on that move because I thought I was saving money, completely unaware of how much lampshades actually cost when I went to replace them.)

I left California and moved to Oklahoma, where this peeler remained unopened in three, count them, three different kitchens. But now in its fourth kitchen, and almost fifteen years later, I have broken the seal, removed the plastic, and used this incredibly efficient and time saving device. So thank you Mom, thank you for this wonderful housewarming gift you gave me when I moved into my first apartment. You knew it would come in handy one day just like the antique steamer trunk you gave me for my sixteenth birthday, every 16 year old's dream present, an antique steamer trunk!

When I saw this Apple Cake recipe on Smitten Kitchen yesterday I was compelled to make it, immediately. After work I sent Tony and Anna to the store to get the apples and more eggs. While they were gone I hunted for my never used, brand new, fifteen year old apple peeler. What a time saver! Before we sat down for dinner I had this cake in the oven. It takes quite a while to cook, mine took almost an hour and fifty minutes. During the last half hour our dog was going over to the oven and licking the side of it.

What a perfect breakfast! My mom makes a pretty awesome apple cake but I really think that this recipe is even better. Due to the fantastic turnout of this cake my Apple/Potato Peeler has a permanent home, smack dab on the counter. At least until I find a more convenient and accesible place for the best housewarming gift a twenty-three year old could ever have.

Eight Years Ago Today

I was positive I was going to never have my baby. I had missed my due date by almost two weeks and my co-workers were taking bets behind my back on when I would deliver. When I found out one of them had bet on the 28th day, I thought I would literally be the first woman to die from the sheer agony of carrying a baby for 42 weeks. A little melodramatic, I know, but I was desperate, and a tad hormonal.

On the 19th, I had tried to induce myself into labor by drinking 3 ounces of castor oil mixed into a Braums milkshake. I have not had a milkshake since. And let's just say, one week later, still no enema was needed. Which is also not surprising since my acid reflux was so bad I could eat nothing, and yet, I would still spontaneously puke egg yolk. I won't even go into being nine months pregnant in August, in Oklahoma. Total strangers would come up to me and say oh honey, I am so sorry.

Have I been able to convey how miserable I was? I had even tried attaching my electric breast pump to the only thing fabulous about my pregnancy, my large breasts (I would love to have those babies back because they were, SPECTACULAR). Instead of starting contractions as it did for my high school friend's sister, Julie, (who ended up having an emergency c-section that we all secretly thought was due to messing around with the breast pump) I was only able to get a jump start on my colostrum. And the humiliating and awkward crab/squatting tribal woman walk? nothing, but I was so hopeful. I remember crawling around my living room during an entire episode of Oprah.

But when the time to deliver actually did arrive? Whoa mama! I woke up at 1:30am with a pain that went around the front of my stomach and felt like I was tying a knot at my spine. I thought oh wow, this really is it. Five minutes later I was laughing that I had even confused Braxton-Hicks for labor contractions. I woke my mom up who told me to get into the shower. She woke up my dad, and after driving me three times to the hospital just to drive me back a few hours later, went back to sleep. I remember taking my shower and thinking how pathetically huge I had gotten that I couldn't even control my bladder. I started crying and when my mom asked, in a panicked voice, what was wrong, I cried that I could not stop peeing on myself.

By the time we got to the hospital, only a couple of miles away, I was having contractions about every two minutes. I think my mom was a little freaked out and my dad could not understand why I insisted on crawling, on my hands and knees, to the hospital doors. (you know what I just thought? why didn't he drop me off at the door?) Anyway, after stopping every minute to rock back and forth while moaning on my hands and knees, I was now in a labor and delivery room.

My friend, and constant support even during my hormonal rages, LouAnn, had told me to opt out of painkillers before my epidural. She had told me that it would just make me feel out of it. So when the nurse said I needed to take some Demerol because they needed to slow down my contractions, I tried to say no; but no matter how much Lamaze breathing I did, I could not get on top of them. The nurse went ahead and gave me the Demerol and then told me that I would have to wait almost four more hours for my epidural because the doctor didn't come in until 6 am. I didn't really care. I was more focused on the fact that it felt like I had a gigantic wooden corkscrew, like the kind they used to use to raise and lower orchestra pits in a theatre, being turned every few minutes and consequently spreading my hip bones apart.

After the Demerol kicked in I no longer cared about the pain, I still felt it but I had calmed down. I panted and focused while my mom rubbed my back. After a series of particularly hard contractions, I told my mom that this was just like having an orgasm, but not quite being able to get there. She pretended to not hear me, and I will always thank her for that.

Then came the checking and the rechecking. Apparently, my baby was facing the inside of my leg. I had so many different people checking me that I just hoped they all actually worked at the hospital. There was one petite nurse, I really liked her, when she would check me I would have dilated to a seven and then an eight. However, when my big burly man doctor checked me he pushed it back down to a six.

Finally, after nine months of hell, and as my mom so clearly remembers, two remaining months of depression and misery, my beautiful baby girl was born, at exactly 9:30 A.M. on September 26th of 2000. I remember my mom and I both looking at her and then at each other. My mom said it first, oh my goodness, she looks just like Mark (my soon to be ex-husband). But from that moment on all of my worries, all of my hang ups about being a single mom, and most importantly, my anger disappeared. She was absolutely perfect and she was ALL mine. I am still amazed that this was eight years ago, it really does seem like it just happened. Happy Birthday baby girl!

*A side note regarding having a baby in the small town you grew up in:

Go through your yearbook and familiarize yourself with the people and faces. You never know who your nurse will be that will help you to the toilet, kneel down in front of you to look at your stitches in order to tell you how to perform a sitz bath. Because as my recovery nurse was kneeling in front of me and squirting water on my stitched up waa-waa, I was reintroduce to Julie Laramore, from junior high. They should have a sign at the entrance of the maternity ward, "Check all modesty and pride at the door".

Ageism in the Produce Aisle

Since when did I become someone who looked old enough to be asked, isn't this a great price for bell peppers? and can you remember when peppers were this low? The lady asking me had to have been ten to fifteen years older than my mother. She was serious too. It wasn't like she was making idle chit chat it was more along the lines of remember when Kennedy was shot? My own mother is not convinced of my maturity she still thinks she has to call to remind me of doctor appointments or to call my grandmother.

What's next? yelling Turn That Music Down? I have accepted the 3-5 day hangover and the dry scaly hands but those were personal and I thought hidden signs of no longer being 29. But to now suddenly jump to discussing the price of produce? Oh no she didn't!

Crockpot Israeli Orange Chicken and getting back on track

What a great dish! Sweet, spicy, and my daughter said, a little sour?? (I am sure she said that just because I said it was sweet. The sky is not really blue either, by the way) My husband said he would like to use the sauce as a marinade for brisket and I liked it because it was simple.

The last couple of weeks shook my routine up. I am not sure if it was the twice weekly soccer practice, the ragweed swirling in the air, or the incredibly cumbersome amount of homework and flashcards my second grader has. Whatever it was I found myself letting my husband and daughter fend for themselves for dinner or trying to make them forget that it is dinnertime, that actually worked once. In an effort to get back on a routine, I decided to go back to planning a weekly menu, this means Get Out the Cookbooks and Try Something New. Enter Israeli Orange Chicken from the 1983 Bishop Kelley cookbook, Calling All Cooks.

I switched some things up because I wanted to use my crockpot and frankly I just don't have time to bake, turn, and baste. Be sure to serve this over rice. We had noodles because I mistakenly mentioned I love rice so now my daughter thinks rice is gross and will make her sick. She ended up leaving the table, without finishing her dinner, anyway; for her own safety.

The Ingredients (printable copy here)

2-3 lbs boneless Chicken, I used thighs because I had some but breasts would be great too.
2 tsp Garlic Salt
2 tsp Paprika (I love to use the HOT Hungarian brand)
1 tsp Pepper
1 tsp Dried Tarragon
1/2 tsp Dried Thyme (mine is s powder)
1 1/4 cup Orange Marmalade
1/4 cup Lemon Juice
1/2 can of Orange Juice Concentrate
1/2 cup of Water

Place chicken in Crockpot and sprinkle all the seasonings over all. Spoon the orange marmalade and place on top of chicken in various places. Do the same with the orange juice concentrate. Add lemon juice and water. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 if chicken was frozen, but note that with all the sugars in the marmalade and concentrate there might be some carmelizing the longer this cooks. But is this a bad thing?

And don't try to make nice by serving with noodles use rice, it will soak up the juice so much better. If I had known this was going to be so good I would have taken pictures but a scratch and sniff webshot would be better. And yes, I do realize that I named myself Crockstar and yet I haven't posted a recipe in a couple of months, but that is because I am just recycling the same recipes. How many times should I post Chicken Burritos or Creamy Chicken and Noodles?

Want to see my Weekly Menu? (September and October)