It's time for comfort food

I love when the weather turns chilly, because most good comfort foods are better when it's cold out.  Yes, I've been known to make chili or mac and cheese when it's pushing 90, but it just tastes better when it's pushing 50.

The Brit and I are trying to get back on the home-cooked food wagon and since I had today off before starting a five day streak, I played Suzie homemaker for the afternoon.  Okay, Suzie probably wouldn't have made muffins from a box mix but hey, it's been in our cupboard for weeks.  Hopefully the Trader Joe's Triple Berry Bran Muffins will be a good breakfast alternative to all the coffee shop fare.

His next request was a lunch item, namely tuna noodle casserole.  My last attempt was okay but a bit blah, so I found a new recipe today.  I love anything with less than ten ingredients!

The recipe came from Pinch My Salt and I think my only edit was to double the recipe and cut back on the bread crumbs because I did it in a deeper dish with less surface area.  We haven't tried it yet but it smells delicious!

My cooking isn't done for the day.  We were up north at the cabin for the weekend and Mom sent us home with s beautiful salmon filet.  So despite the fact I just made a casserole, I'm actually cooking the salmon for dinner.  The casserole will become instant leftovers.  A bit crazy but we just can't waste this salmon!  I've been doing a lot of salmon with dill lately and wanted something different so I found a recipe with a brown sugar and soy sauce glaze.  Will let you know how it turns out!

Well, that sort of worked

I tried the "light" sloppy joes and while they were okay, they were missing something.  I just can't put my finger on what.  They certainly needed salt, which is odd for a soup recipe.

Like many family recipes, I don't know where this originated.  It was called sloppy joes, or even stranger, "barbeques."  It resembles barbeque about as much as I resemble Angelina Jolie.  Less maybe.

Here is the original recipe:

1-1.5 pounds ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
1 can chicken gumbo soup
1/2 can water
1 TBS ketchup
1 TBS yellow mustard

Stir all together.

Complicated right?  I didn't take a photo of the finished product because a) I was hungry and b) some foods just don't photograph well.  Stews, curries, and most things with "sloppy" in their name.

I do have one trick for the recipe.  It's really a trick for any ground beef recipe.  When I brown the beef, I like to start with it all on a big hunk (or medium sized hunks) so I can get a really good sear on the outside.  That extra browning adds a lot of flavor and you can't quite get it if you break the meat up first.

I will keep hoping for the original chicken gumbo soup to return, but I'll probably try this a few more times and try to tweak it.  It would be a shame to lose a meal that brought me so much comfort growing up, so hopefully I won't!

What's for dinner?

I have some fresh fettucine (not homemade, Buitoni), garlic, cream, prosciutto, and frozen peas.  Surely I can come up with a way to blend these into something delicious?

Oh, and a couple of cherry tomatoes that need using...the few that survived the storm.  With the pasta or in a salad?