Dinner for the family

I decided to cook dinner for my family this past weekend. I don't normally do a lot of cooking since my husband, boys and I live with my parents - my Father is a great cook and usually does all of the cooking. So, I cooked this weekend. I had been looking at food blogs all week and picked a few recipes from some of the blogs that I had read. Enjoy!!

The first one comes from http://dinnersforayear.blogspot.com

Barbecue Mini Meatloaves

about 1 1/2 pounds ground beef (85/15) and ground turkey or use all ground beef
2 eggs
3/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs
3/4 cup crushed potato chips
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup barbecue sauce plus extra to slather on top
2 tablespoons mustard

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Form meat mixture into 6 mini loaves and place on baking sheet.

Bake for about 20 minutes and then slather each mini loaf with barbecue sauce. Continue baking mini loaves an additional 10 - 15 minutes or until loaves are cooked through.

Remove from oven and serve.

(I used 2 lbs of ground beef.)

These were really good! I ended up using 2 lbs of ground beef, but didn't adjust the amount of other ingredients that I put in. While the flavor was really good - I kept thinking that it could have used more spice. I am a big fan of meatloaf anyway, but this was super yummy! I absolutely loved the barbcue sauce in place of the usual ketchup. Low and behold - the family loved it too!!

The next recipe I got from http://annieseats.blogspot.com/

Sautéed Mushroom Orzo with Cheese

Ingredients:
2 cups uncooked Orzo pasta

3 Tbs. cold butter

2 cups Italian Six Cheese blend shredded cheese (or cheese of choice)

5-6 tsp. minced garlic

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 cup mushrooms, chopped

1 Tbs. butter or olive oil

Cook Orzo according to package directions.

In food processor combine cheese, 3 Tbs. cold butter, garlic, salt and pepper.
Process until smooth.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt remaining butter or olive oil and saute' mushrooms until tender.

Drain pasta, add to mushrooms and stif.

Gently stir in the cheese mixture. Stir until cheese has melted. Serve

I also tried to make homemade bread. I didn't want to spend all of the time mixing and kneading and everything, so I put the ingredients into the bread maker. The only problem - we only had self-rising flour. Once the ingredients were in the bread maker - I put it on the dough setting and waited. When it was done - the dough was extremely sticky and shiny and I knew something was wrong. After prying it out of the pan I managed to get it on a baking sheet and let it sit there to rise. After 45 minutes it had doubled in size, so I put an egg yolk wash on it and baked it in the oven. It came out okay - it was a little dense, but still pretty good.