Test subjects? Maybe!

Some of the people who attend the weekly potluck/game day at my church on Fridays ask me if I like using them as "test subjects". Why yes. Yes, I do. Ha Ha! I am always looking at recipes, whether online or in one of my numerous cookbooks. If I see something I'd like to try, I (more often than not) will make it for the potluck. Sometimes I'll make it for my dad and I and if my dad likes it, I'll make it for potluck at some point.

Sometimes at gas stations, I'd see burger dogs cooking alongside the taquitos. In case you didn't know, a burger dog is a hot dog shaped hamburger. My dad and I were curious about where the stations got them, but I haven't asked yet. I did, however, find a burger dog mold on Amazon! They make pretty good-sized dogs. So, I made some with just burger and some shredded mozzarella. But they kept sticking to the rollers on my hot dog cooker. It was very frustrating. I got to thinking that maybe I should have frozen them first before putting them on the cooker, but my dad thought they'd burn before they were done cooking. I do have some that I put in the freezer so I may try my theory out and then I'll see which one of us is right. I did find a version where they can be cooked in the oven so that's an option too. Most recipes had them being cooked on a regular grill.

So, I didn't make any burger dogs for potluck this past Friday. I did take some out and made something else with them, though. I made burger stuffed biscuits, also known as Pirozhki. I found the recipe on the King Arthur Baking website (www.kingarthurbaking.com) but I tweaked it just a bit. I didn't make my own dough but used Grands regular buttermilk biscuits instead. I cooked up the burger dogs (crumbled up and cooked like regular ground burger - think sloppy joes), added some pureed red chili and onion to the burger/cheese combo. It looked like sloppy joes but without the tomato sauce. Then I rolled out the biscuits to be thinner (not too thin!), put a good amount of filling on it, then topped it with another rolled out biscuit. I sealed them nice and tight (or so I thought) and baked them for roughly 23 minutes. While some of the biscuits split at the seams, it wasn't bad and they all stayed together pretty well. I didn't add any salt to the filling, but they went over great at potluck so I was happy. Some people used ketchup and/or mustard as they ate them. The chili I used (roughly 1/3 cup or so) was mild so they were only slightly spicy. Definitely something I'd make again, and I may tweak the filling somewhat. Maybe add some relish or bell peppers. Who knows?

I also made a recipe I found called 25-minute Sweet Potato Hash. I've come to like sweet potatoes over the past few years. I don't like them in the typical fashion, with sugar and marshmallows. I like them plain, with some low salt butter and sour cream. Sometimes I'll add some of Benson's salt substitute (found it on Amazon). I think sweet potatoes taste better without all that added sugar, but that's my opinion.

This particular recipe I found on the website Our Salty Kitchen (www.oursaltykitchen.com). I left out the salt and pepper and I used pre-cut diced onion along with pre-cut fajita mix (found in the produce section at Wal-Mart). I didn't bother measuring the garlic either. I usually just add however little or much I want. I used avocado oil when cooking and, after dicing the sweet potatoes (smallish in size), I boiled them just a bit in the frying pan. Threw everything else in there and fried it up. Very simple. Very easy. Really good! There is another lady there who is a type 2 diabetic like me and she loved it. Sweet potatoes have a low glycemic index so they're a good substitute for regular potatoes for a diabetic. I used them to make baked potatoes a lot too!

A few weeks ago, I made my first Jello dessert using a silicone mold. I was very nervous, but it turned out great, so I was encouraged to try another Jello-like dessert.

This time I used a heart shaped silicone mold (Friday was Valentine's Day, after all), but I did have to tweak the recipe I used slightly because my mold wasn't a ten-cup version (meaning it couldn't hold ten cups of filling). I found this awesome dessert on the A Cozy Kitchen website (www.acozykitchen.com) and it's called Duvalín Jello. According to the creator Adrianna Adarme, it is inspired by the Mexican candy Duvalín. It is a layered dessert with strawberry, vanilla and chocolate layers. Since my mold was smaller, I eliminated the vanilla layer. So, I said my dessert was more like chocolate covered strawberries.

Now I know I said it was a Jello dessert but that's not 100% accurate. What I mean is that it was not made with flavored Jello, it used unflavored gelatin. It was like Jello but not exactly the same. Does that make sense? I did the step of dissolving the gelatin in water twice because it didn't look right the first time, but it worked out fine on the second try. The strawberry layer had the sliced strawberries pureed with half and half and sugar then heated on the stove. Now it's not boiled, just heated to be slightly hot, enough to dissolve the solidified gelatin. Then you remove it, pour it into the mold and chill it for about an hour or so to slightly firm it. Like I said, I eliminated the vanilla layer and just did the strawberry and chocolate layer. The chocolate layer is just heated Nutella and half and half with the solidified gelatin added after it is heated enough. It needs to be cooled before added it to the layer in the mold. Mine came out a little interesting. I guess there must have been some gaps around sections of the strawberry layer because I didn't end up with perfectly even layers. The chocolate layer kind of leaked and made it look almost like it was trying to cover some of the strawberry layer. That's why I joked it was like chocolate covered strawberries. The dessert went over VERY well, and it tasted really good. I might have to try to find a bigger mold and try it again, this time with the vanilla layer added. My hat is off the Ms. Adrianna, the creator of the recipe, because it was amazing and, though time consuming, not hard to make.

Major kudos to all the creators of the recipes I tried. I hope anyone who tries these recipes likes them as much as I did.

God Bless!