Continuing from Runnemede Remembered

Earlier today (August 16, 2008) I wrote on Runnemede Remembered concerning some questions a friend of mine sent that she wanted answer on my BLOG. So here's another one. What are my favorite recipes and why?

Always the why? Which is a question I can't answer because I love food, and I especially love food that I make. It's just that cooking is so painful (physically) for me any more. The preparation of the food, standing at the counter, chopping veggies, mixing, etc., is very hard on my very sore knees.

So, while I really love to cook, I hate to cook. But I do cook. And I love to eat what I cook, most of the time. In fact, I prefer my cooking to the food on cruise ships, much of the time. I just don't do the really fancy stuff you can get on a cruise, so I do enjoy those things live lavender ice cream or basil ice cream. Now who would spend time making those treats?


I used to religiously watching the cooking channel on Saturday and Sunday to get ideas and then I would actually cook several of those recipes during the week following. When I had the sciatic nerve problem a couple of years ago, and was on my back in terrible pain, and the doctor's prognosis was that this was something I would have to endure the rest of my life, my first regret was that I wasn't going to be able to cook again, and I had just gotten a new set of stainless steel cookware like the kind they use on HGTV (I love my pots).

To make this more relevant to today -- Tori (my oldest granddaughter) and I went out shopping again, and we stopped in TGIF's for lunch. They have a new dish on their menu -- at least new to me since I haven't been to TGIF's for a couple of years -- and it is beef stroganoff, and they promised it was low carbs. I'm thinking it will probably taste terrible, but the waitress said it was really good, so I ordered it, expecting it not to meet my standards. I was surprised. I loved the dish. In fact, I wish I could have had more. It was really good and tasted almost exactly like the way I make it.

Before you all go bonkers and say, well, how DO you make it, I'll tell you.

2 cans of CAMPBELL's golden mushroom soup -- it must be GOLDEN mushroom
1 can french onion soup (I prefer Campbell's)
1 pound or more, depending on how many people you're serving, of GOOD beef (not stew meat). I usually get a thick cut round stake, and then cut it into one-inch cubes.
1/2 cup of sour cream

I sear the meat -- I don't cook it all the way through, just enough to get it browned. And I sear it in butter, not oil. The meat should be salted and peppered to taste before searing.
Then I just dump in the two cans of mushroom soup and the can of onion soup and 1/2 cup of sour cream and stir it all together. I let it simmer for 15 minutes while the noodles cook, and then it's ready to go. Talk about 30 minute meal! It's that fast. I put on the water for the noodles before I sear the meat, so by the time the meat is seared and all the other ingredients are in the pot, I can dump my noodles in salted boiling water.

I don't mix it all together as they did at TGIF's, but I do top the noodles with the stroganoff like you would put spaghetti sauce over spaghetti. The more sauce you like the more you spoon over the noodles.

I always serve a mixed salad with this and make a balsamic vinaigrette dressing for the salad.

That's one of my favorite recipes anyway. I have a lot more, one of which, spaghetti with sausage, we are having tonight. But I'll save that recipe for another time.

TTFN