Meatball Subs

A few weeks ago, I made a big batch of meatballs and threw a bunch in the freezer. It was so handy to have them there for a quick and easy lunch after church on Sunday.

Meatball Subs
20-24 meatballs (3-4 meatballs per sandwich)
1/2 jar BBQ onion sauce (or any type of bbq sauce)
1/2 jar pizza sauce
Mozzarella cheese slices
Sub buns

1. Pour both sauces over meatballs in a medium sized pot. Stir to coat. Heat over medium heat until meatballs are hot and sauce is bubbly. Arrange meatballs on buns and top with cheese. Enjoy!

Serves 6.

Barley Lentil Salad

This recipe is healthy, inexpensive and most importantly, delicious! What a great combination.

Barley Lentil Salad
4 cups water
8 cubes vegetable broth (I think this is about one cup)
1 cup green lentils**
1 cup pot barley**
1-2 tsp ground ginger
1-2 tsp garlic powder
Dash of salt
Dash of pepper
1/4 cucumber, finely chopped
1 tomato, finely chopped
2-3 green onions, chopped (red onion is also good)
1 cup cooked garbanzo beans
1/8-1/4 cup feta cheese
Parsley, for garnish

For dressing:
Just less than 1/8 cup olive oil
1/8 cup lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger
Salt and pepper, to taste

** you can use all lentils or all barley if you dislike one or the other.

1. Wash and rinse lentils and barley.

2. Place water, broth, lentils and barley in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 45-60 minutes, until soft but not mushy, adding more water if necessary. Drain and rinse with cold water. Remove bay leaf.

3. Place lentils and barley in a large bowl and allow to cool.

4. Add cucumber, tomato, chickpeas, onion and feta cheese (I didn't have any onion which is why it's not seen in the picture but it really does add a lot to the salad. And the chickpeas were frozen which is why they look like that). Mix.

5. For dressing, add all ingredients to a one cup measure and whisk to combine. Or, if you wish, you can also use any oil based bottled salad dressing. Greek feta with oregano, sun dried tomato and Italian work well.


6. Pour over salad and mix. Cover and chill in refrigerator for a few hours or overnight.

Serves ... a lot. This will make enough for us to eat with dinner one night and then in our lunches for a few days. It is a really nice summer salad to serve with any grilled dish or on its own.

Calzones

Calzones - modified from America's Best Breadmachine Baking Recipes

For dough:
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup milk powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 cups all purpose flour (or bread flour)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp yeast

For filling:
1 jar pizza sauce
5-6 slices bacon, crumbled
6-8 slices salami
1/2 cup spinach, torn finely
1 cup mushrooms, broken into small pieces (or 1 can mushroom pieces)
1/2 green pepper, finely chopped
**Pick whatever pizza toppings you like to fill the Calzone.

1. Add all dough ingredients to pan in the order listed. Select dough cycle. When cycle is complete, turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Cover and let rest for 10-15 minutes.

2. Divide dough into 10 equal portions. Roll each portion into a 6 inch circle. Cover half the circle with pizza sauce followed by other toppings. Fold empty half of dough over toppings and press edges to seal. (Sorry my pictures are all blurry - I don't know what happened with them).

3. Cover and let rise for 20-25 minutes, until doubled in volume.

4. Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes until browned and hollow when tapped. Store in an air tight container for up to one week in the fridge or one month in the freezer. Makes 10 Calzone.

Hot Pockets

I had some puff pastry that had been living in my freezer for way too long so I decided it was about time that I did something with it. I remembered having seen this recipe a while back and decided to try something similar.

Hot Pockets

3 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
6 slices deli meat (I used rosemary ham)
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 pepper, finely chopped
1 can mushroom pieces, drained (Clearly I would have used fresh but I did not have any)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 cup cooked black beans
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup grated cheese (I used a combo of cheddar and mozzarella)

1. In a skillet, sautee onion, mushrooms, peas, meat, pepper, beans and garlic until warm. Season with salt and pepper. Add any other filling you think you might like such as pizza fillings, other meat.


2. Meanwhile, place one sheet of pastry out on clean surface.

3. Roll pastry until it is quite thin (as thin as you can get it).

4. Cut sheet into three sections, like so.

5. Place rectangles on baking sheet and add cheese and filling to one side. I did cheese, filling and then more cheese. I had a jar of pesto in the fridge that I was considering putting in some of them because I wasn't sure if I should have some kind of sauce. The original recipe used mustard, but I am not a fan. I decided against the pesto and I'm glad I did because they are delicious just as they are. Fold the empty side of the pastry over and pinch the edges to shut.


6. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes until pastry is fluffy and lightly browned. If necessary, flip the pockets over and broil for 2-3 minutes to make the under side crunchy (I did not need to do this, they were fine).

If you are making these ahead of time, you can either freeze them individually and heat them in a toaster oven or microwave for 45 seconds or you can store them in an air tight container for up to one week and just heat them up as you go. If you use the microwave to heat them up, they may get a little soggy. I would recommend a toaster oven.

Makes 9 pockets. The filling that is listed would probably be enough to make more like 20 pockets but I only had three sheets of pastry and so that's all I could do. You may want to decrease the filling or get more puff pastry to make more.

Breadmaker Pizza Buns - Easy Lunch

Check out what I got from my in laws for Christmas! I'm in love with it.

Here's what I made today. Don't they look delicious?

There is a bakery in town here that I love and every once in a while I treat myself to pizza buns to have in my lunch when I'm at school. I'm not a huge fan of pizza, but I sure do love these guys. So, I decided to make my own. I used this recipe for pizza dough. I only did two things differently than the recipe. First, I didn't have any of this so-called pizza seasoning, so I just threw some spices into the dough. In fact, I had a tiny bit of a Victorian Epicure dip mix in the cupboard that wouldn't be enough to actually make dip, so I used that. It gave the crust I really nice flavour. Secondly, after the bread rose on the counter for 30 minutes I kneaded it and broke it into small pieces rather than rolling out one large crust. I ended up getting 12 pizza buns out of this recipe but I think I could (should) have gotten about 18-20 because some of them ended up being quite large. The dough rose much more than I expected in the bread maker and since I had to do two batches of pizza buns because I only have two stoneware pieces, the second round rose even more on the counter and so those buns could have easily been split in half.

I didn't get too creative this time ... just pizza sauce, pepperoni and cheese. I wanted to be sure I'd like the way they turned out before going too hog wild. Next time I'll be a little more adventurous with my toppings.

After they came out and cooled, I wrapped them individually in saran wrap and then placed them in two freezer bags. I would normally put them in sandwich containers but my tupperware cupboard is a little scarce right now as my fabulous dude is hoarding them in his lunch room at work. Whenever I want one for lunch, I can just grab it and go. They are delicious cold or heated up. Doing things like this takes the pressure off when I'm in the midst of a busy semester. This way I have something on hand for the days when I forget to think about what I'm going to eat. Check out The Grocery Cart Challenge for some really great recipes.

We just got home last night from 2+ weeks of vacation for the holidays. Today we've been busy with unpacking, reorganizing, tidying up and getting prepared to get back into the swing of things starting tomorrow ... oh yeah, and making pizza buns and chicken soup and taking care of dear Caley who is sick and also has no water at her apartment ... the poor dear. I am hoping to take some time tomorrow to post about our holidays and share some of our favourite pictures.