Jello Dessert

For Sunday dinners or other family get-togethers, Mom often made this jello dish which seems to me like a dessert, but which Mom always served during dinner. What's not to like about having dessert during dinner?

Nowadays, Mom makes jello for "the babies." In recent years, "the babies" means the cluster of five grandkids all born within a few years. But, now that there is a new baby just born, it might not be accurate to call a group of five- to eight-year-olds "babies." Still, the babies like this jello dish, so Mom will keep making it for them.

If you can make jello, you can make this dish. The only difference is mixing in thawed cool whip into the jello before putting it in the fridge to cool. Be sure to mix it well so that the cool whip dissolves. As the jello sets, it will separate with the cool whip will rise to the top, but with the jello mixed in. The picture shows how the final jello dessert has two layers: the bottom is just jello and the top is jello-infused cool whip.

Jello Dessert

Dissolve 3 ounce package (any red flavor) and ¼ cup sugar in 1 cup boiling water. Add 1 cup cold water. Chill until slightly thickened. Blend 1 ½ cup thawed cool whip into gelatin. Chill in 1 quart or 6-8 individual molds until firm (several hours). Enjoy!

Sausage Pie

When we were kids, Mom made Hamburger Pie. It was this recipe here, but with ground beef instead of ground pork. This recipe is essentially a quiche, but Mom said that if she called it quiche, none of us would eat it. But, by calling it Hamburger Pie, it became a family favorite. I vaguely recall putting ketchup on it as a kid. But this sausage pie does not need ketchup; it is perfect on its own. Of course, you could substitute any meat in this recipe or completely leave out the meat and just add an assortment of vegetables. You could also substitute the parsley with another herb. This pie is flexible and easily adaptable.

For this pie, I used pork sausage. Also, while any pie crust would do, I used Mom's pie crust recipe that I previously posted about in the Apple Pie post. This Sausage Pie was very good. My taste tester approved, so perhaps this pie will become part of our regular rotation.

 

Sausage Pie

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 6 ounces shredded cheddar 
• 2 Tbsp. flour
• pie shell
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 2 Tbsp. parsley flakes

Preheat oven to 375. Brown the sausage. Then, drain well. Combine sausage, onions, cheese and flour; mix well. Spread in an unbaked pie shell. Beat eggs with evaporated milk and parsley. Slowly pour over sausage mix. Bake pie for 35 to 40 minutes or until filling is set. Enjoy!

Mississippi Mud Cake Version 2

So, after I made and posted about the first Mississippi Mud Cake, Mom informed me that I left out the marshmallow fluff. So, I just had to make this delicious cake again, only this time with the marshmallow fluff. The recipe is just the same, only this time with fluff layered into the cake before baking.

As with the original version, I did not add nuts to this cake. Mom never put nuts in this cake because us kids would be outraged to find nuts ruining our cake.

I think that the next time I make this cake, I will also swirl some marshmallow fluff into the frosting. Whether you make this version or the other version, both are delicious.

Mississippi Mud Cake Version 2

Cake

• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup self-rising flour
• 6 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 jar (7 ounces) marshmallow fluff

Cream sugar, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs until just blended. Stir together flour and cocoa and add to the butter mixture. Mix well. Spread in about half in a greased and floured 9x9 pan. Then add the fluff (you may not need to use the entire jar) and blend in. Cover with the rest of the batter. Bake at 325 for 30-35 minutes. Cool completely. The fluff will mostly be on top of the cake.

Frosting

• 4 tablespoon butter or margarine
• 2 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 4 tablespoon cocoa
• 2 tablespoon milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Beat butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add in powdered sugar, cocoa, milk and vanilla. Add in additional milk, if needed to make frosting spreadable. Spread frosting on cooled cake. Enjoy!

Ham and Egg Combo

This recipe is a great use for all your Easter Dinner leftovers. It includes ham, cheese (Mom always had cheese on hand for ham and cheese sandwiches), and hard boiled eggs. Being Easter, our family had always dyed a number of hard-boiled eggs, so this dish was always a little more colorful than expected. Eating hard-boiled eggs that have had some coloring bleed into the egg itself is perfectly safe, but perhaps a little disconcerting.

This meal is easy to assemble after Easter because the main ingredients are all leftovers. This meal is also very easy to make, especially on a busy weekday night.

For me, I particularly enjoy the English muffins served with this dish. There is just something unique about English muffins. With this dish, the English muffin is both an edible plate and also used to wipe the real plate clean.

Ham and Egg Combo

• Ham, cubed
• 1/2 cup mayo
• 1/4 cup flour
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups milk
• 1/4 pound cheese
• 1/4 cup minced dried onions
• 1 1/2 cup cubed ham
• 4-6 hard-boiled eggs, cubed
• English muffins

Blend mayo, flour, salt and pepper in a sauce pan on low heat. Gradually add and blend up to 2 cups of milk. Add cheese and onion. Heat until cheese melts and is well-blended. Add in ham and eggs. Heat thoroughly. Serve over toasted English muffins. Enjoy!

Party Punch

Having a party? I recommend serving Party Punch, especially if there will be a lot of kids. The best part of this punch is just after the sherbet is added, the ice cream melts and becomes foamy, as you can see in this photo. When serving myself, I am sure to get mostly sherbet.

John and Laura brought the ingredients and made this Party Punch for our Easter dinner party. They had remembered this punch from years ago, but it had not made a recent appearance at family parties. I am grateful to John and Laura for recalling this punch and bringing it to the party.

This particular punch was a big hit with the young kids. After drinking some punch, all the kids were running around like they were crazy. But now that I think about it, that is how they usually are, so maybe this tasty punch had nothing to do with their energy. Still, this party punch will have to make a regular appearance at family parties again. MDS's only complaint about this punch was that he did not get enough. He should know the Buckley way by now--once food is available, it is every man for himself. Next time, MDS will have to push past the kids to get to the punch bowl first.

Party Punch

• 2 liter bottle Hawaiian Punch
• 2 liter bottle Ginger Ale
• Frozen Sherbet (orange or rainbow)

In a large punch bowl, mix the Hawaiian Punch and Ginger Ale. Add sherbet and mix gently. Enjoy!

Eggs Newport

Eggs Newport is a classic Easter dish, and something that Mom only made on Easter. The primary reason for this dish's annual Easter appearance is its use of hard-boiled eggs. Just before Easter, we would dye Easter eggs all sorts of fun colors. We would then have an Easter Egg hunt on Easter morning. One year, an egg was not found for months (or so the story goes) until the smell got so bad. I would suggest counting eggs before and after an Easter Egg hunt.

Every year, there were always so many eggs, that Mom had to be creative to use them all. So there were many Easter dishes that featured hard-boiled eggs, and as you can see here, colorful hard-boiled eggs when the dye leaked into the eggs. Easter dinner always featured potato salad and Eggs Newport with these colorful eggs.

Eggs Newport produces mixed results from the family. Some love the once-a-year appearance of this Easter delicacy. Others look at Eggs Newport with a distrusting eye toward something that only appears once a year and never made it into Mom's regular rotation. Whether you love or hate Eggs Newport, it is one of Mom's Easter classics.

This year, MDS and I hosted Easter. We loved having everyone over and were grateful that the weather was so nice that everyone could enjoy being outside. Some of our guests even took a walk to Wrigley Field to check out the Cubbies. They won.

Because Easter dinner would not be complete without Eggs Newport, we asked Mom to make it here with us. Megan and Jenny were also on hand to assist. To be honest, this might be the first recipe posted on this blog for which I played no real role in actually preparing.

Eggs Newport

• 6 to 8 hard-boiled eggs
• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup milk
• pepper (to taste)
• 1 Tbsp. dried minced onion

In a bowl, blend condensed soup with mayonnaise. Gradually add milk; stir until well blended. Add in pepper and dried minced onion.  Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

In a one-quart baking dish, layer the sauce with the eggs in several layers, finishing with the sauce. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Enjoy!

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Every Friday during Lent we had fish for dinner, and even when it was not Lent, we often had fish on Friday. I recall that fish sticks were a common Friday dinner, but there were other Friday specials, including Tuna Heroes and today's dish, Tuna Noodle Casserole.

This casserole is made with simple ingredients, but what I always loved was the potato chips on top. There was something special about having potato chips at dinner when I was young. Now that I am old and can anything I want for dinner, I don't really want to eat potato chips for dinner. Mom usually bought a box of Jay's potato chips. In the box, there were two bags of chips. While Jay's chips are still available in the Chicago area, I have not seen them packaged in a box in a long time.

A warning about this casserole: it is very large. If there are only two people in your house, it will last a week. When we were young, there were so many of us that I suspect this casserole did not last long.

Tuna Noodle Casserole 

1 pound elbow noodles, cooked

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup

2 cans tuna, drained

6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Potato chips, crushed

Mix the noodles, soup, tuna, and eggs.  Pour into a greased 9x13 casserole dish. Bake for about 20 minutes at 350. Sprinkle crushed potato chips on top to cover the casserole. Bake a few minutes more. Enjoy!