Homemaking Tip—Hod Podge

Calvin checking on a prime rib before a meeting a few days ago. 

Calvin is not easily daunted. He and a few friends are cooking 200 pounds of brisket for a wedding reception tomorrow night. I was cleaning house on Tuesday and as I was getting ready to wash cupboards and throw the kitchen rug in the washer I thought of the upcoming brisketfest and decided to wait until it was over. I needn’t have waited. He prepped everything outside. I’m always happy to clean up behind him, but I am quite glad a hose suffices this time.

Along the same line, my favorite way to have friends for supper is when it is unplanned. There is no time to fret and worry about whether or not it will taste good or be fancy enough, it is what it is. Tonight was one of those nights. Two different families brought roaster pans over for Calvin to put brisket in and joined us for supper at the last minute. I just added more sauce and meatballs to the pot of spaghetti and we squished all the skinny bottoms onto one bench. It worked perfect.

After reading one of the quarterly Craft-Food magazines, I’ve started adding dry stuffing (instead of crushed crackers or breadcrumbs) to hamburger to make meat loaf. My, it’s good. It’s also cheap. A bag of stuffing at Grocery Outlet was only 25 cents a few weeks ago. That’s a whole lot of meat stretching with good flavor for not very much.

The other night Ande and I made chicken pot pies. She made the pie dough (she makes great crusts, I never fight with her dough) and I made the filling. Not surprisingly they were the best chicken pot pies we’ve ever made. After I boiled the potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions in chicken broth, I drained them. It bothered me to let all the nutrients go, but sometimes consistency and beauty demands it. Then I stirred in a can of cream of chicken soup and a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise. We poured them into the unbaked pie shells, added top crusts, and baked them for an hour at 350-375 degrees. We made three big pies and four little individual ones so we’d have plenty to share. With the scrap dough I made peach dumplings. I’m sold on pie dumplings because you don’t have to be great with pie dough to have a good pie-ish experience. You just roll your dough out in a circle, put your filling inside of it, gather the dough together like a bag, pinch/twist it closed, and put it in a ramekin to bake. Grace, Ray, Calvin, Ande, and Cali wished I’d have made more than three.

Ounce per ounce body-wash is often more expensive than shampoo, at least Suave shampoo, so I refill the sturdy, body-wash, pump-bottle with Suave shampoo. It’s nice because it cuts down on the containers in the shower too -- one bottle cleans head, shoulders, knees, and toes.