Create Food and Water: Savory

Monday, September 19, 2011

Lazy Monday: Mac & Cheese and Sloppy Joe Sandwiches

Mondays are a hard day for me to get motivated to actually cook dinner. I'm sure you know what I mean, you go back to work, all you want is for it to be the weekend when you get done, but it's not. You are all the way at the bad end of the week, and then you have to make dinner.

We have had Pizza Monday for the last few weeks. There is a Fox's Pizza down the street from us and we have been picking up a pizza and then catching up on True Blood. Last Monday, I decided to make dinner, but kind of cheat and not make it really from scratch.

This is not my idea, one of my best friends came up with the idea of mixing macaroni and cheese and sloppy joe together to make delicious sandwiches and we have it sometimes and it's freakin' delicious.

Here are the ingredients (minus the hamburger, I had already put it in the pan):

I am not going to describe too much as to how to make these things. I'm sure you can read the back of the package. But you take your sloppy joe mix:

and you take your macaroni (I think this was before I baked it)

And then you put a spoonful or two of sloppy joe on a hamburger bun, and top it with some mac and cheese. It looks like this:

Yes, it tastes as good as it looks. Make these soon!

Mac & Cheese and Sloppy Joe Sandwiches

1 package macaroni and cheese (whatever brand you like, or homemade!)

1 lb. ground hamburger or turkey
1 packet of sloppy joe seasoning
1 can tomato paste

1. Make macaroni and cheese according to package directions. I used the Homestyle Kraft brand, it was pretty tasty.
2. Make sloppy joes according to package directions. I used tomato paste and a seasoning packet, but you could certainly used canned sauce if you prefer that.
3. Put both on hamburger bun!

4. Eat!

Thanks for reading!

<3, Carly

Blogger Tips - Get This Gadget

Monday, September 12, 2011

Caramelized Onion Dip

Hi, all!

Sorry for a delay in posts, it's been crazy around here and I just got back from a mini vacation at the beach. I have been pretty bad at remembering to take pictures of the dinners I have made recently, so today I am going to share a dip I made for my DnD group a few weeks ago.

I would like to say I made a really good dinner for them using this recipe for Linguine alla Carbonara but I didn't take very many pictures. Jason bought me some delicious hard ciders and that was the night that me, as a rare drinker, had 3 hard ciders pretty quickly and picture taking went by the wayside. By the way, make that. It was freakin' delicious and that is one of my new favoritest blogs.

Back to the dip!

First you are going to slice up some onions pretty thinly. 3 onions in fact. My eyes watered. It looked like something terrible had happened but I was just slicing onions.

Next, you will need to melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. I did mine over medium-high heat because I am impatient, but it might be best if you do it at medium heat.

The rest of this is really a waiting game. You are going smell delicious cooking onions throughout your house and have to wait for them to be done.

This was right after I put them in.

*Sigh* still not done.

I went ahead and mixed up the other part of the dip while I was waiting on my onions to caramelize because it took about 30-40 minutes for that to happen.

You will need to add in 1 8 ounce package of cream cheese, and 1 cup of mayonnaise and stir them together.

That's just cream cheese.

There's the cream cheese and 1 cup of mayo. Oh, yum.

Look! Look! The onions are almost done!

Once they were done I put them in the bowl with the cream cheese/mayo mixture and then I added in 1 8 oz. package of shredded Swiss cheese. And then the 8 oz. package of Parmesan cheese.

Then you are going to mix all that delici-ocity (What? It's totally a word. A word I made up.) together and put it in a baking dish. I used a glass bread pan thing, but you could probably use just about any casserole dish, just nothing too shallow because you don't want it to burn.

Bake it in the oven at 375 degress for about 30 minutes or until it gets that pretty golden color and nice and bubbly from all the cheesy goodness.

Like this:

The magazine that I got the recipe from said that you should serve this with sweet potato chips. It's what I did. I followed the magazine's rules. You might not want to, or at the very least, get some thick sweet potato chips. Maybe pita chips would be good? Oooo or garlic bagel chips! They would also be tasty. But dip whatever you want in this, it's amazing.

So good! Hope you make and enjoy it!

Caramelized Onion Dip
recipe from Gooseberry Patch Halloween 2010

2 tbsp butter
3 onions, sliced thinly
8 oz. package cream cheese
8 oz. package shredded Swiss cheese
1 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1 c. mayonnaise
Dipping implements of your choice (sweet potato chips, pita chips, bagel chips, etc.)

1. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add in onions. Cook for approximately 30-40 minutes or until onions are caramel colored. Make sure you stir them frequently so they don't burn!
2. Combine cream cheese and mayo, then add in the Swiss cheese, Parmesan cheese, and onions.
3. Put in a casserole dish and bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes or until golden and bubbly good.

Thanks for reading!

<3, Carly

Blogger Tips - Get This Gadget