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Enchilada Casserole

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  I skipped ahead to the International Cuisine section, mostly because I was going to make enchiladas as a weeknight meal anyway and thought I could click off a recipe if it's in there.  Sure enough, there was a recipe from Diane Larson for Enchilada Casserole. Mexican food is my favorite.  In another lifetime I lived in Central America; I just know it.  So I cook a lot of Mexican cuisine, and let me just say THIS IS NOT MEXICAN CUISINE!  It's 100% totally a Midwest casserole that has the teeny-est, tiny-est hint of south of the border flavors.  And just like the quiche from earlier this week, it was bland as hell. The first flag came with no spices in the meat and bean mixture.  Usually my enchilada mixes include a lot of chili peppers or powder, cumin, maybe some veggies like corn or chopped zucchini or bell pepper, and hot salsa.  This recipe calls for salt and pepper. The second flag was the bechamel cheese sauce.  What?  I'm all for...
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Country Vegetable Quiche and Orange Juice Muffins

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  This meal came from the Complete Meals section again, courtesy of Wanda Osolkowski.  What can I say about Wanda's country vegetable quiche?  Not much.  It was healthy, until I added almost an entire block of swiss cheese.  And it was bland as could be.  And those muffins?  Seriously should be used for skeet shooting targets, ugh. I was a little excited about using Bisquick.  I have never bought or used the stuff - and the idea of having all my dry ingredients pre-measured was kind of fun.  Maybe I'll stumble on a baking shortcut for years to come!  Think again... They were dry and crumbly and hard as rocks, with almost no flavor.  I squeezed my own orange juice, so many they would be tasted better with ready-made oj.   As for the quiche - I thought I would buy a refrigerated pie crust to save time.  The pandemic gods told me this was my opportunity to practice pie crusts, as the store was sold out.  For someone...
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Spiced Waffles with Hot Honey Butter

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  The first complete meal is - no surprise - a breakfast meal.  We love breakfast for dinner, so I jumped right in with the first recipe.  What's on this complete meal menu? Spiced Waffles with Hot Honey Butter Bacon Strips Fresh Fruit Cups of Choice Hot Coffee So fancy, Lois!  😁 We skipped the coffee because it was dinner.  I bought keto bacon which fried up into more of a crumble than a strip, and instead of a fruit cup I opted for satsuma mandarins, which just arrived at my grocer this week for the first time this season.  Yum. We have waffles about once every six weeks or so, and I usually use a buttermilk recipe.  I liked this recipe's addition of spices, although we more than doubled the amount of cinnamon.  I was unsure about the amount of honey in the syrup - one full cup???  My family barely uses syrup on their waffles, so I modified by using only 4 Tbsp butter and 1/2 C honey.  Result: 👍  Would make again.    W...
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 Introduction Going through a pandemic as an ambitious creative type is a challenge.  I have always relished my time in my beautiful kitchen.  I love researching new recipes and planning weekly meals, and most of all I love cooking and baking.   But lately I have felt flat in the kitchen.  I've tried new recipes and baked through the mandatory sourdough starter phase.  I need something to get me more excited about cooking again. I've decided to cook my way through one of my cookbooks that my mom gave me.  It's one of those wonderful, community-written, midwestern town cookbooks that was published in 1977 and contains all the recipes that my husband and I grew up either eating or knowing about. What I know about this cookbook: not much.  It's from the Coulee Region chapter of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, which is the region around LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  My aunt is a nurse in Racine, and I'm 99% certain this cookbook ca...
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