Skillet Lasagna

Place half the spagetti sauce on the bottom of skillet. Place uncooked noodles followed by roccota, browned seasoned meat, and veggies. Use other half of sauce and repeat layering process. Sprinkle cheese on top.

350 til click then 180 for 20-30 minutes were the instructions. Mine needed to cook for over 45 mintes. I think next time I will pre-cook the noodles for 5 mintues simply to speed up the cooking time.

Vacationing with Saladmaster Skillet

We have a time-share condo. We love going on vacation with the amenities of home that a condo provides. It always seems like the kitchen, specifically the pans, are always horrible. I couldn't bare to leave my Saladmaster pans home. So, I took my skillet on vacation with us. It was amazing. We plugged it in and cooked our eggs in the morning and our meals at night. We made skillet lasagna. It was so nice to have the ease and convenience of only needing one pan for so many things.

The Teenager's Perspective.

So, this would be the almost 15 year old (there are 8 days left until my birthday. I refuse to say 14 at this point) who had her first experience with the new toys my mom bought today. I love to make homemade Mac & Cheese (it's way better than the box stuff) and I was kind of forced to use the new kitchen stuff today since my mom got rid of the rest of our pans. It was scary! Just kidding! My mom told me to try making my sauce in the fancy new blender. That didn't go so well... It really does have a setting for sauces believe it or not (there is nothing this blender can't do) but I ended up with froth.... Meanwhile the noodles cooked so fast! It was fantastic! I bake it before we eat it and I was so excited that I only had to dirty one pan! It was great! I will admidt my favorite thing was shredding the chesse with the new Magical Cone Of Slicing (I'm being informed it's called a salad master, but I personly like this name better). It ended up shredding the whole rest of the block which resulted in a very big bowl of shreded cheese. =) It was very entertaining and I didn't want to do my homework. So I baked the Mac & Cheese in our suprisingly normal oven (I'm taking bets on how long until we get a new fridge, oven, and microwave) and when I started to serve it, it was very watery (well more milky since there is no water in it). I figured this was because I didn't cook the sauce in a pan so none of the milk evaporated off. So now you know that my mom isn't lying about the great quality of her toys. =)

Steak and Mashed Potatoes in 30 Minutes

Tonight was one of those crazy nights when every second is scheduled. We got home from parent teacher conference and I had 40 minutes before we had to leave to go to church. Thank goodness I had a plan. I had bought steaks this morning. As soon as I walked in the door I used the No. 3 FF cone to cut Yukon Gold potatoes. I rinsed them, put them in the inset, added an inch of water to the 3 Quart sauce pan, placed the inset into the sauce pan, covered and turned it to medium-click low 15 minutes.

Next, I got the steaks out and put a little grilling seasoning on them. I followed the directions on page 6-2 & 6-3 for pan broiling meat. After the skillet was at 375 I put the steaks on and set the timer for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes I turned down the skillet to 275 and cooked them for 5 minutes more. I partially had them covered while they cooked.

They were very tasty but they were a tiny bit over done. I should have turned it down as soon as I put the steaks on. No one even got any steak sauce out.

While they cooked I made a salad. By the time we got everything on the table, everyone to the table and our prayer said the potatoes were ready to mash. I dumped out the water from the sauce pan and put the potatoes into the pan. I added some seasoning salt and mashed them.

New Pan Salmon

When Jason delivered my new cookware he cooked the best pesto salmon. On Friday I decided to cook it again. I haven't seen a recipe for it in the cook book so I thought I would post it here.

Line the bottom of the skillet with fresh spinach. Place the salmon on the spinach. Spread pesto sauce on top of the salmon. Rinse and put grape tomatoes around the salmon. I cut zucchini with the crinkle cut cone and put it over everything. I probably used 2 cups of zucchini or more. Then place the lid on the skillet. Turn it to 350 until it clicks and then turn it down to 180 for 20 minutes. I am telling you, this is the best tasting salmon ever! My salmon was frozen so I had to cook one of the pieces for a few minutes longer.

Crisp Herbal Tea

I have several things to blog about, but I only have time for a quick post. I can not describe the clean crisp taste of herbal tea when you heat your water in Saladmaster cookware. It truly is Divine! I found a new flavor of tea from Bigalow, Spiced Apple Cider. I have always loved herbal tea but it has never tasted this good! You really have to try it. Heat your water in the smallest piece of cookware. I have been filling it all the way up and then steeping my tea for 10 minutes right in the pan. Then I have enough for two or three cups. It is a new fall favorite!

Perfect Peach Jam

I used my Blentec to mash my peaches. I used the small skillet to heat my organic cane sugar and my Sure-gel pectin. After it came to a boil I poured it into the Blentec and used the pulse button a couple times. I poured the jam into containers where they will sit for the next 24 hours. Hopefully, they will set up! I put some on Dave's Killer Bread for my husband and he said it was fabulous!

Pizza in an Electric Skillet??? It is true!

My son has been dying to make pizza. There is a recipe in the skillet cookbook. It called for prepackaged pizza dough. Well by now you should all know I'm a bit of a pre-packaged snob. I pretty much refuse to cook anything out of a box. It is my husband's fault. I grew up eating everything from a box, but he refuses to eat things from boxes.

I remembered seeing a pizza dough recipe in my Blentec cookbook. I thought I would try it out. It said the dough would turn into a ball... Well it didn't. We made our whole wheat flour, then mixed all our ingredients together and followed the instructions. It looked more like a sticky paste. I had to put oil on my hands in order to work with the dough to put it into the skillet. I greased the skillet while it was cold. Then I placed the dough in and spread it out pushing 1/4 of an inch up the sides of the skillet. I added my sauce and toppings, placed the lid on and turn it to 250 for 15 minutes.

While the pizza cooked I used my Saladmaster to make an apple salad. I used the finest shredding cone to shred and peel a stalk of celery. Then I used the FF cone to cut a Gala apple and a Granny Smith apple. I added half of a can of pineapple and juice and a hand full of Craisins. I had previously put my Saladmaster double walled bowl in the freezer. I put raw spinach, balsamic vinegar, a little olive oil and some garlic sea salad into the chilled bowl. My son was so excited to toss the salad in a cold bowl.

When the timer when off I looked in the skillet and the dough didn't look done. I decided it might need 5 more minutes to cook. (FYI bad idea!) After 5 more minutes I took the lid off and it still looked the same but I thought I would take it out of the pan and see if it was done. I tried to take it out of the pan with two spatulas and it was completely stuck! So I got my metal spatula and tried to scrape it free. No luck. I decided to use my plastic pie cutter to slice the pizza and just serve it from the skillet. Do you remember a few posts ago when I told you Rule #1 was to listen to Jason the Saladmaster dealer? He told me to never use plastic with my skillet... Needless to say I no longer own a pie cutter! I should have listened.

The pizza was great! If I was going to do anything different, I think I would have put the dough in the bottom of the skillet, placed the lid on and let it raise for a few minutes. The crust wasn't really doughy it was just a little dense.

I realized late in the day I wasn't going to have time for my original dinner plan. I decided to use some of my frozen spaghetti sauce and make minestrone soup. I used the slow cooker to brown some meat and then added my other ingredients. There is a minestrone soup recipe in the cook book so I looked at the cooking instructions. It had you cook it at a higher temperature for 30 minutes. I knew I wanted mine to cook longer so I turned it to 180. When we got home the potatoes were still a little hard. I turned it up to 250 but then it started to boil too much. I never did find a good simmer temperature but our soup was done and we were ready to eat. It was very tasty. Next time I'll get the soup on in the morning and let it cook at 150 all day and see how it goes.
The other day, I cooked a roast in the slow cooker for nine hours on 150. It was done but not as tender and falling apart like I expected it to be. This slow cooker might be the hardest thing to figure out. I better get to it though, I used my old crock pot at least 2 time a week in the winter.

Some things are not meant to be eaten raw!

For lunch I thought I would use my nifty Blentec to make some pumpkin soup. It really felt like fall today and what better food symbolizes fall than pumpkin soup. As I understood it, the idea behind the Blendtec is being able to throw a bunch of vegetables in the blender, push the soup button and presto you have healthy soup cooked by only the friction of the blades. Because you don't boil it, you are receiving the full benefits of the raw ingredients. Nice idea, and had I read the Blentec cookbook a little closer I would have realized some ingredients they use are already cooked.

I will spare you the gory details or the ingredients of the pumpkin soup I tried to concoct and tell you I dumped the whole pitcher down the sink. It was not even edible. And for me to say that means it was beyond terrible. Remember I'm the lady who fed my kids burnt Shipwreck mere days ago. I really did give it a go and tried to eat it... It was the most bitter, garlicky thing I have ever tasted. Apparently potatoes need to be cooked before putting them in the Blendtech.

Do you remember the Life commercial? The one with Mikey, the kids who likes everything? That is a perfect description of my mother. She really does like everything. Now I usually like everything too, but she takes liking everything to another level. That is another story for another day. Well she was over here and tried my pumpkin soup, she dumped hers down the drain too. In fact she called me later this afternoon to tell me again how horrible it was and that it may stay with her for many days to come. Then she said, "I don't think you could have cooked that soup for enough years to make it taste any better!"

Thanks mom! I will forever remember, always cook the potatoes before you blend them into soup.

Mud.. well that's what my husband called it

We have been using our Blentec blender to make all sorts of smoothies and frozen drinks. My husband's favorite is the Pina Colada. Of course it's wonderful it's full of sugar and fat.

The kids love the fruit smoothies. I use several different fruits, frozen and fresh, one cup of milk, ice, water and spinach (shhh they have no idea). I always use some sort of colored berry to cover up the green color of the spinach.

For myself... I will only tell you if you promise to come back to my site even if you think it sounds scary. I do fruit and veggie smoothies. I use one or two pieces of fruit, fresh or frozen, half of a banana, a ton of spinach, a little protein powder (usually vanilla from whole foods) and maybe a carrot or celery. Today we had Saladmaster coleslaw left over from last nights dinner. It was made simply of cabbage, apples and pineapple. Sounds delicious for a smoothie right? I used one peach, 1/2 banana, 1/2 apple, one carrot, 1/2 cup coleslaw, 1/2 scoop chocolate protein, one cup of my homemade almond milk, ice and lots of water. And no it didn't really look like mud, well a little bit. It really was good. It made way too much though. I had some in the morning and some in the afternoon and still dumped a 30oz cup out at the end of the day. It was so filling. How could it not be???

Shipwreck a la Burnt!

I had my nieces and nephews over and was excited to try out my new pans. I found a recipe in the Saladmaster cookbook that sounded kid friendly, Shipwreck on page 6-10. What kid wouldn't like a meal named Shipwreck? Well I will tell you what kind of kid... the kind of kid who won't eat food their aunt burns.

My hamburger was completely frozen. I put an inch of water in the 3-quart saucepan. I placed the frozen hamburger on the inset and covered. Medium-click-low for 20 minutes. I did open the lid and break the meat up. One nice thing was it drained all of the fat down into the water, one bad thing is the meat was very dry.

Next, I proceeded with the Shipwreck recipe. Jason, my Saladmaster dealer had told me to always put my sauce on the bottom. Instead of listening to him, I thought I would follow the cook book's instructions and put the sauce on the top. Bad idea! Rule number one ALWAYS listen to Jason. :-) I very carefully assembled my Shipwreck meal. I used fresh tomato sauce and substituted brown rice. I knew I would probably have to cook it a little longer because of the brown rice. I turned the heat onto medium and waited for my click.... and waited.... after 8 or 9 minutes I really wanted to peek but I was trying to be a good girl. So I continued to wait...until I smelled something burning. Oh boy! I hurried and opened the pan and added some water. Of course the water turned brown from the burnt meat.

Now what to do? I have seven very hungry children expecting a meal any minute now. So I did what any frugal mother would do... I scraped the top few layers off, found the pieces of meat that were only partially burnt and put it into a new pan. I added water because the rice was very crunchy still, and medium-click-low for 35 more minutes. By now the children were starting to look like savages! Every few minutes they kept coming in the kitchen to beg for some morsel of food.

When I finally placed the meal before them... they all hated it, well except for the teenagers (I've heard they will eat anything). Me being the compassionate person I am told them if they ate at least half of my poor, pathetic, burnt meal I would make them a treat. Yes, I used sugar to bribe my poor children to eat my cooking. You would never know, I really am a great cook. The amazing think is the meat that wasn't burnt was very tender and flavorful. The rice, however, stayed crunchy.

I was truly amazed at how easy my burnt pan cleaned up. It looks just like new again!

Yikes, this adventure may be interesting. Jason told me there would be a learning curve. I didn't think he meant I would BURN a meal. I haven't done that in... well never. My family will really appreciate me after this is all over.

NOTES FOR SHIPWRECK RECIPE ON PAGE 6-10:
1. PUT SAUCE ON BOTTOM.
2. A LITTLE MORE SEASONING THAN CALLED FOR IN THE RECIPE. IT REALLY DID NEED SOME SALT (UNLESS YOU ARE TRYING TO STAY AWAY FROM IT).
3. RINSE POTATOES AND BEANS.
4. NEXT TIME I WILL SOAK THE BROWN RICE AND ADD MORE WATER. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH. WHEN I RE-VISIT THIS RECIPE I WILL LET YOU KNOW.