Curried Turkey Dinner

This recipe makes a nice, light meal for those end-of-summer-but-still-hot summer days. It’s also a good one to have on hand after Thanksgiving, when you are burdened with a superfluity of turkey leftovers! It has curry, one of those rare spices that has a name that has actually been converted into a verb. (Think about it, do we say “Cinnamoned Bread” or “Adoboed Chicken”?!). Curry is rather strong– I used to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, nicknamed Little India. Every morning, right around 7am, the pungent odor of curry would rise from the restaurants below up to my 7th floor flat. :-p I guess living there was better than living next to a bunch of San Jose motorcycle accident attorneys in their condos… but it took me a looooong time before I could make myself cook with (and endure) curry. So adjust the curry to your liking. I will say that curry IS good for you, so maybe that will help you persist!

Curried Turkey Dinner
Serves 4-6

2-3 pounds of fresh broccoli florets, washed and cut into chunks and cooked until tender (you can use frozen broccoli if you want)
3 cups cooked, diced turkey
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup low-calorie mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder (to your taste)
1 1/2 cup seasoned croutons

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a bowl, combine and mix the mayo, soup, lemon juice, and curry powder. Let sit for a moment.

Place your cooked broccoli into a medium-sized casserole dish. Add the turkey on top.

Pour your mayo/soup mix on top of the broccoli/turkey, making sure that you cover the broccoli (so it doesn’t get crispy or burn in the oven). Sprinkle the croutons over the top of everything.

Place the casserole in the oven, and bake for about 25 minutes. Serve immediately, with Basmati rice and a fresh-green salad with carrots. Yum!

Zucchini Casserole

We did a little experimenting this weekend with some zucchini, seeing we have a massive zucchini population explosion going on here at the Mecomber homestead. I posted about my Stuffed Zucchini recipe here, gushing about how versatile it is, etc etc. Well, my beloved daughter yanked herself away from her stereo cabinet and computer for a little while to treat me by cooking dinner for 10! She took my Stuffed Zucchini recipe and tweaked it a little. This is what she made.

Basically, she used the same ingredients (massively increasing the measurements to feed 10, of course) . Instead of making boats, she diced the zucchini and made a casserole. Oh my word– it was soooo good!! All of the kids ate it except the Picky One. They kids even had seconds! This is a great recipe. If you have extraneous zucchini, I suggest you give it a go.

Crockpot Macaroni & Cheese

I do crockpot meals once or twice a week, because I babysit a bunch of kids, and have to serve meals for 10 (yes, 10!!!) four times a week. With the crockpot, I can throw everything into the pot at 10am, and LEAVE IT BE allll day. Wow, let’s give some hearty huzzahs to the dude who invented the crockpot!

But the troops are getting tired of the same old chili, stew, and chili-with-stew recipes. I found a terrific Macaroni and Cheese crockpot meal at Frugal Upstate. For 10, I’d have to double it. Also, the recipe looks a wee bland (these kids like spicy foods), so I’d probably perk it up with Cajun seasoning or garlic. You can also add extra doodads for kicks, like cooked ground sausage (yum) or sliced kielbasa or broccoli. If you do, I suggest you add a little bit of water to the pot, lest the extra ingredients dry out the pasta too much.

Crockpot Macaroni & Cheese
serves 5-6

16oz cooked and drained pasta (elbows, shells, whatever– you can even used leftover pasta if you have enough)
3-4 cups shredded Cheddar Cheese
1 12oz. can of Evaporated Milk
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons flour
2 Tablespoons butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning or cayenne pepper (optional)
1 teaspoon garlic powder or 2 teaspoons minced garlic (optional)

Grease the inside of your crockpot with butter or margarine. Mix everything together and pour into Crockpot. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. Don’t stir, it will firm up as it cooks. In the final few minutes of cooking, you can add bread crumbs or sprinkle some dried parsley on top.

Photo is from Kitchen Wench, who, incidentally, has a spectacular Mac and Cheese recipe at her site, too. Be forewarned: it’s loaded with heavy ingredients. She calls it Mac Heart Attack n’ Cheese!

Wow Chow Chili

This is not your average American-style chili recipe. I actually made it up when I was out of a certain number of ingredients (isn’t that how all recipes are eventually created, lol?). Wow Chow Chili, as most of my recipes are, can be completely customized according to your likes. I like my chili only a *little* on the spicy side, so this is a milder recipe. Feel free to add your own toxic spices to make this a hottie. Here’s how I do mine:

Wow Chow Chili
serves 10

• 1 large can (28 oz.) petite-diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 green pepper, seeded and diced
• 1 white onion, diced
• 1 can beef broth
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 4-5 pounds beef or pork, cubed into bite-sized pieces (I used both uncooked beef cubes and some leftover grilled pork steaks, cubed)
• 3 cans black beans, drained
• 2 Tablespoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• salt

Throw everything into the crockpot and stir well. Turn on HIGH for 6-8 hours (or LOW for 10-12).

Serve with rice and a little cheddar cheese sprinkled over the top.

If you want to add some heat to the recipe, you can add tabasco sauce, or something like hot pickled cherry peppers. I always have a can of these on hand for my Chicken Riggies recipe. My kids don’t like spicy foods, so I don’t make them (not too often, heh heh).

Hybrid Lasagna

We LOVE lasagna. But it is so time-consuming to make. And you have to pre-cook the lasagna noodles just right, or they turn out too chewy or too mushy. I’ve tried those “oven-ready” lasagna noodles, too, and I can’t stand them. I want to eat my lasagna, not chew it like cud! Plus, lasagna just takes too long to fuss with– all the layers, stacking the noodles just right, etc. Who has that kind of time? Not me!

I made up a pseudo-lasagna recipe, using ziti for the pasta. I call it Hybrid Lasagna, because it is a mixture of a lasagna recipe and a baked ziti recipe. The kids love this stuff! It keeps well, and you can make it early in the day (or a day before) and throw it in the oven later. It’s also great as a “full” meal- contains vegetable, meat, dairy, and carbohydrates. And, like most of my meals, it is “fully customizable,” that is you can eliminate an ingredient or substitute an ingredient. I make this stuff in huge quantities, and for when I’ve got a full house or when I want to serve it again another day.

Like most Italian dishes, this requires a lot of cookware and dishes for the prep work. I hate doing dishes! But the nice thing about this is that you can prepare this early in the day. Whch means that the cookware gets dirty early in the day, and you have all afternoon to wash it. I like that. I don’t know about you, but after dinner, I am tired and the last thing I want is a huge stack of dirty cookware to clean! OK, on with the show:

Hybrid Lasagna

Serves 10!

1 pound ground beef or ground sausage, cooked
2 boxes ziti
1 large white onion, diced
2 28oz. cans petite tomatoes
1 28oz. can spinach
3 eggs
1 tub (32oz.) small-curd cottage cheese
1 jar spaghetti sauce (leftover sauce does well)
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Dried basil
Dried oregano
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper
Aluminum foil
A GREAT BIG casserole dish (or several small ones)
A cookie sheet
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