Feb 122014
 

I originally wrote this post way back in June of last year before life decided to take a tailspin and I completely forgot about it until tonight, when I decided to make it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

:::

A while back I posted about a recipe that I thought was the one I was looking for but actually wasn’t but that was OK because it turned out pretty good and passed the “Rick will eat this” test.

But then I stumbled upon the recipe that I was really looking for and decided that I had to make it to relive that childhood memory of my Mom’s cooking and savor in the wonderful flavors from way-back-when.

Because nothing in life is better than that.

Except maybe chocolate.

And “New Baby Smell”.

Pizza Hot Dish

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb hamburger
  • Onions to taste
  • Green Pepper (optional)
  • 1/2 tsp oregano
  • 1/2 tsp garlic salt
  • 1/2 tsp onion salt
  • 2 cans tomato soup
  • 6 oz egg noodles (cooked)
  • 1 can mushrooms
  • 1/4 lb (4 oz) cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Brown meat, onions and green pepper.  Add spices and tomato soup, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Grease 9 x 12 pan and place noodles on bottom.

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Pour sauce over noodles, cheddar cheese next, and mushrooms on top.  Sprinkle with Parmesan.

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Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes (covered) and 10 minutes (uncovered).

* Mom’s note:  You can use Pizza Sauce instead of soup.  Use any kind of cheese you have.

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Oh so easy and oh so delicious.  And yes, it tasted exactly as I remember!

It also made the “Rick will eat this” list, which didn’t really surprise me.

After all, where do you think I learned to cook from?

 

 Comments Off on The Real Pizza Hot Dish
Jul 292013
 

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:  we have some truly wonderful people in our lives.

When Rick broke his wing a couple weeks ago we knew that we would have to find someone to finish siding the studio, and it didn’t take long before that help arrived.

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Chris and his wife Bonnie have sided houses before, but working with Cedar is a new medium for them.

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They are such a fantastic team, and they make sure that their son CJ learns the trade right along side them.

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And I’m always in awe of a woman who isn’t afraid to climb up that ladder and get the job done.

(I, on the other hand, am deathly scared of heights, which gets a chuckle out of Rick every time he makes me climb higher than 4 feet to help him.)

Not only have they been kicking butt on the siding, but their son even mowed our lawn.  With a push mower! (We have a BIG yard)

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And if you thought that just because Rick broke his wrist that he wouldn’t try to help in some way, well you were soooooo wrong.

I busted him a couple times cutting wood.

I swear that man is trying to give me grey hairs.

 

Jul 152013
 

As usual, things are going great guns on the studio.

The electricians made it over last week to get the lights hooked up as well as all the electrical outlets.

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I now have an outdoor light for those late nights of jewelry making, and I took full advantage of it over the weekend.

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I just adore the main floor light that we picked out!  It gives off just the right amount of light for the small space with a touch of elegance.

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Since the pitch of the roof is kinda wonky due to the loft, we had to find a pretty small fan/light.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so small but it kicks out the jams in the light department and throws a bit of air around.

Just what it’s supposed to do.

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Rick also got a start on the siding.  We were lucky to get this nice cedar siding from an online auction at a fraction of what it would have cost to have bought it from the store.

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It really should have been a 2 person job, and I helped when he needed me to snap lines and I even got up on the planks despite my fear of heights.

I’m a real trooper I tell ya.

Unfortunately everything came to a standstill Sunday when I heard a gawd awful crash.  I know the sound of ladders being moved, but this sounded more like a crash and I B-lined it out of the house with my heart racing.

As the wife of a semi-retired carpenter, I always worry about accidents, especially when your husband thinks he has the agility of a monkey scampering from tree to tree and he has performed death-defying feats hundreds of times with no incidents what-so-ever.

Yes, I’m married to such a man.

But when I rounded the corner and saw ladders and planks askew and our friend Mainard leaning over my husband sprawled on the ground, well let me just tell you… I was as scared as I’ve ever been in my life.

Rick was conscious and doing his own little assessment of what hurt.  Despite me wanting to call an ambulance, Rick wouldn’t have it.  Mainard helped him up and I toted him to the ER.

That 20 minute trip seemed to take F O R E V E R!

X-rays, welcoming pain meds and 2 hours later we saw the pictures of his left wrist and he had broken it in several places.

Lovely.

Since Doctors like to torture their patients with making them wait several days to actually FIX the problem (because they want the swelling to go down), he has an appointment on Tuesday in Rice Lake with a specialist and hopefully (crossing fingers) have surgery that day to put pins in his wrist.

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Bottom line:  Rick is out of commission for quite a while and we will have to find somebody to finish siding the building.

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Which frankly, at this moment, I could really care less about.  The guy took a drop of over 8 feet and the worst that happened was a broken wrist.

Good thing I have this week off because I’ll be playing nurse.

Minus the sexy fantasy getup that I’m sure Rick would love to see me in.

His wrist might be broken, but his libido wasn’t hurt a bit.

 

Jul 082013
 

I took last week off for some well deserved R&R.  I was busy, lazy, busy, lazy…

Let’s just say it was a vicious cycle.

There were some very productive sessions that needed to be balanced with sloth-like intermissions, and I took full advantage of both.  My philosophy is “What I didn’t get done didn’t need to be done.”  But some things really did need to get done but I’m not going to worry about it because when the next great energy burst hits me I’ll tackle them.

Probably.

What did get done was some major work on the studio.

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We have floor!!!

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And more trim work!!!

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And we got the pellet stove out of the attic!!!

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Well, first it got stuck.

And Rick got mad at it and started taking it apart to fit through the *!@%# hole.

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Thank goodness Willard was there to help, because that thing was heavy!!

Now we’re just waiting on the electrician and HVAC dude to come and do their stuff.  So while we’re waiting, Rick gave me the green light to start moving stuff in.

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Which I promptly did.

I had to hold back a little since things will have to be moved for the electrician and some minor trim work, but once that’s done I’ll be a crazy woman!

OK, crazier.

Since the inside is 98 percent complete, Rick has moved to the exterior to get it ready for siding.

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As usual, lots of prep work needs to be done before the fun begins.

I’m not sure Rick would use the word “fun,” but I’m trying to keep a positive spin on things.

 

Jul 012013
 

I am happy to announce that we now have trim in the studio!

A couple years ago Rick & I procured some wood from an auction that was pretty unique, and try as we might to keep it from getting wet until we could find a use for it, we failed miserably.

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After 2 years of getting poured on with rain, dumped on with snow and sweltering in the heat of the amazonian summers of the Northwoods, it had started to grow moss and other… things on it’s surface.

But not wanting it to go to waist, we pulled a few pieces out and set them up on sawhorses to dry and then I sprayed the crap out of them with bleach.  Straight up, nothing added.  If that wasn’t going to kill whatever was growing on it, nothing would.

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Worked like a charm!  Unfortunately, it also “bleached” it a little, but I didn’t care.  It was perfect for what I wanted it to do, and that was trim the windows and door in the studio.

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Now here is why I love it so much.  See all those curves and gouges?  This is what Rick & I have dubbed “Wormwood.”  Little wormies and other creepy crawlies got under the bark of these trees and developed these little pathways to do… well, whatever it is that creepy crawlies do..

Here’s what we haven’t found out about it yet:  what kind of wood it is.  It has to be a type of hard wood because we went through 2 saw blades and countless times of blowing the fuse on the table saw cutting the stuff.

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Now tell me that isn’t just downright sexy around those windows!

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It adds a whole new layer of design to the building.  I like using lots of different types of wood… everyone gets to jump in the pool!

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It also played a roll as trim on the outer walls as well as the ceiling under the loft (pictures of that in a future post).

In addition to the windows we also got the door decked out in this marvelous stuff, put in baseboards, installed the ceiling under the loft and put in the flooring.

Phew!

Now we are going to wait for the electrician to show up and finish the writing and get the lights hooked up, get our HVAC guy over to hook up the stove, and start tackling the outside.

So in the meantime, I’ve begun moving items in so I can use the space for what it was built for:  making my jewelry.

And that will happen as soon as I quit doing my happy dance.