Along with everything else, I used frozen broccoli chops and some cooked but unseasoned pulled pork meat I had frozen. I pre-cooked the broccoli, peas and carrot shreds in the microwave. I guessed at the exact proportions making more than the recipe called for. Though it was good, even the recipe amounts seemed a bit heavy with the veggies (and mine with the pork as well) to the rice proportions. I guess homemade should be loaded. I covered this to keep warm in my cast iron skillet while I finished cooking other stuff and it seemed to steam more than be fried. Mine was very moist and pretty rich for fried rice. I blame my pork to some degree. The pulled Boston butt being a fattier meat than the loin would have been. As the recipe mentions it is good base recipe for chicken or shrimp too. However, restaurant style always seems drier, with more rice and only a few veggie accents. I would make this again but probably as an Aisan inspired, skillet entrée and not so much a sidedish. I know you can scale, but this recipe would be better written in family style or pot luck size proportions.

After fainting at the price of buying grocery frozen I am a first timer for making egg rolls. I re-rolled my first one several times before I got it right. I got faster after that. If you try to roll the filling up fairly tightly the first point of the wrapper (toward you) inevitably gets tucked and folded over (also toward you) inside. Your first roll over has to have wide coverage of the filling and the edges of the wrapper sides, the envelope style folds, must overlap the center somewhat to hold in the filling. I didn’t bother with the flour paste glue, just used a little water to stick the last point down. The wrappers are pretty easy to work with after you get the hang of it. I used pre-cooked pork butt I had (a lb. seemed like too much though, used about 1/3 lb. and mine still made 9 rolls in the end) and and added some sesame seeds to the filling and a little soy sauce to the rest of the basics (not enough to make it overly wet) and was impressed with the restaurant flavor of the filling. I rolled them ahead, covered and refrigerated them until time to fry. Edible but not restaurant suitable was the color and texture of my fried wrappers. Dark brown, not golden, and a bit chewy. I will tinker with my frying next time. Oil temp may have been too high. Used veg oil but I would like to try peanut next time. Those little extra special flavors make it truly restaurant worthy when it is not something you usually do at home. Not the recipe’s fault but didn’t care for my Kikko

Forewent the oil browning all together since I used already soft cooked canned yams. Even though the title of the recipe is about cinnamon I simply used brown sugar alone and didn’t think I would like cinnamon. To retain their moisture I baked the yams dotted with pats of butter with the brown sugar. Leary, I even did the drizzle of lime juice at the end just because I had some on hand. Didn’t think it did much for it either way. Hubby likes the buttery sugary yams and baking them was better than the microwave sugary version I usually do. I am not a health nut but this is an easier and healthier way to go than the cream and marshmallows loaded sweet potatoes. Leave out the oil bit and use healthy margarine and you’ve got something acceptably tasty and acceptably healthy.

First of all Bill …LOL …terrible name for a recipe! I am no purist and will shamelessly sneak faux into just about any dish. But, my goodness, I do have my pride and couldn’t hardly get myself to try something that starts out with fakery blatantly advertised in the name! I think I will rename it to something more elegant for further personal use. I want to pretend to like sourdough bread but every time I buy store bought I am disappointed at the wang in it that isn’t that appealing to me. But I do always like the sourdough breads they often use, toasted, on pricey burgers. Couldn’t resist trying this since I didn’t need a starter. Used all bread flour, mixed sour cream with warm water to expedite, as someone else suggested, and added finely chopped onion at my BM “fruits and nuts” add beep, as another reviewer did. While it was in the machine I was anxious the bread wasn’t going to rise enough but slowly, toward the end of the cycle, it came to life and rose to a perfect size and height. I am always leery of recipes that use 1 ½ tsp of jar yeast instead of the equivalent of an envelope; RapidRise says this is 2-¼ tsp. But I did use exactly the amount in the recipe. It smelled great with the onions (don’t recommend adding them if you have French Toast in mind though, pretty strange) and recipe made great bread, but like others it wasn’t the sourdough I was hoping for. Nice and soft though. Putting this one in my BM recipes notebook to use often. By the way Allrecipes doesn’t

Okay call me cheater. Instead of peeling and slicing fresh apples I used 2 cans of Lucky Leaf apple pie filling. Sure was a lot easier though! I adjusted the sugar and flour because it is already sweetened and thickened. I used about ¼ cup more brown sugar and only about 1 tbsp. flour. And I left out the lemon juice too because the filling evidently already has something like that in it to keep the apples from turning brown. There’s no cinnamon or nutmeg or any spices in this brand so I gather you are supposed to add your own anyway. In a bowl I stirred the brown sugar, flour, spices and sour cream into the apples. Ha, ha, I also melted the butter for the apples in the microwave and then forgot it was there so it got left out. Pie still came out great so I didn’t blab my mistake. I made the crumb topping with brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. I watched my baking time since the apples were already mostly soft cooked from the can but it took about the same time until it was hot and I even added another 10 mins. to crisp up my topping a little more. I froze this pie for a few days while we finished another I had made and thawed it overnight in the fridge. Quite successful and just like fresh especially if you microwave the pieces to warm them a bit for serving.

Like the call that others heard, this recipe did whisper, “This sounds like it would be good with a pork roast.” After Thanksgiving our small, “just the 2 of us” turkey leftovers were gone but, as usual, the sides lingered. Half a can of jellied cranberry sauce is always a challenge to use. I used a little pork tenderloin roast from my freezer I could serve the leftover mashed potatoes and even the cornbread dressing. I started out with the pork mostly frozen, only thawing a bit to remove the vacuum wrap. I did slice the cranberry sauce and lay the slices over the top of the roast. It looked prettier loading the crockpot, but one lump or slices, if left in the pot undisturbed, the cranberry doesn’t really melt. It gets really soft though and is then easily stirred into the onion soup and meat juices in the bottom. I used the whole envelope of onion soup thinking that, with only ½ cranberry, it wouldn’t be as sweet as some who thought it too much. I thought the onion gravy was very tasty. Kind of tangy, but no one would guess the cranberry addition. I didn’t add the butter or any thickener at all, it was a pretty nice sauce / gravy consistency as it was. I wouldn’t buy cranberry sauce simply to make this recipe again, as I have other favorite ways of making pork roast, but I’d make it again with leftover cranberry.

You really need the 3 cans of beans. The French cut style are more compact than the whole cut ones. To those who had a runniness problem I squeezed the excess water out of the beans in addition to simply draining them. I think I actually like them better than the whole cut green beans. I wanted to do something a little dressier with the GB casserole this holiday and I love sour cream so I figured that (1/2 cup) would be good. I used only 2 cans of beans and a whole can of mushroom soup since I hate using partial canned goods in recipes. I always end up wasting the unused portions. I used a tsp. of soy sauce because the traditional recipe uses it according to the Campbell’s site and I like soy sauce. I know the cracker topping is the highlight of this recipe but I had the FF onions (and no crackers) and I like them, so I used them. The sour cream and French green beans made this for me though. The casserole was eaten and was better this way but (personal opinion) I’m still lukewarm on whether this requisite holiday dish is as great as its reputation. I’ll make it again for regular fare but may try something snazzier next Thanksgiving.

Had a bit of a menu malfunction the day before Thanksgiving. I had planned to use up an old can of pumpkin, for a pie, and it was ruined. Had a big 29 oz. can of new Bruces Yams for a casserole but most years I get lazy and never make the casserole or get the marshmallows and pecans bit together anyway, opting for a little butter and brown sugar on the naked yams. I decided to forgo my lackluster yams with dinner (all the other stuff would be plenty anyway) and use them for this pie. Never had it until I moved south, but I found I do like SP pie better than pumpkin anyway. (Sorry, lifelong comfort food friend but you’re history.) This made a very full deep dish pie with not enough left for another regular shallow pie. Cook time was fine with the deep pie so watch shallow ones from burning. Beware it is pretty sweet and I used only 1 cup white and ½ cup brown sugar. Hubby loved it that way. I think it’s the first SP pie I ever actually made and didn’t buy from the store. Texture is not as smooth as store bought but flavor is outstandingly homemade.

Yummy and easy. This is a cinch if you pre-cook your broccoli and onions in the microwave and then finish up the simmering in the crockpot on High. Stir often though or thickener will settle on the bottom. You can even melt the cheese in the mike if you really want to speed this up more. I used a half recipe using a little extra cheese, butter and milk and an extra handful of shredded Mexican blend cheese I had. This gave it restaurant style flavor twist instead of ALL Velveeta. I did add some salt to this too. It would have been sinfully great with half and half! Tip: Velveeta slices and cubes better, without being as sticky, if at room temperature. (Aside: My dad, an avid cheese, and Velveeta connoisseur, always claimed the flavor was fuller at room temp too. He never refrigerated his Velveeta.) Reserved broth works or you can also dissolve the cornstarch in your cold milk to cut the water out. The intro mentions it is made with broccoli florets but the recipe calls for chopped broccoli. For those who may never have noticed, there are differences in broccoli. All frozen bagged versions are technically chopped up (not whole) but most stores carry 2 types: “Broccoli Florets” only and “Chopped Broccoli” (or maybe called” Cut Broccoli” or “Broccoli Cuts”). The Chopped, or Cut, is a little cheaper but includes the chunkier, less tender, stems. The Florets, in most circles, are considered the more flavorful, tender and desirable part of the broccoli. Incidentally, fresh broccoli

This makes a lot of beef barbeque. Mom never made it, but up North we used to have it every now and then for school lunch. I live in the South now, where pork barbeque is king and chicken barbeque comes in second and beef barbeque is rare. But I had a chuck roast I wanted to do something different with so I thought I’d cook some up. Southern hubby gobbled it up. It was great as sandwiches on hamburger rolls. I made this just as written (including open crock sauce thickening and dipping the bun tops) except left out the celery since I had none. I did add 1 tsp. celery seed for a touch of the celery flavor though. I used a good Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. I only had a 3 ½ lb. roast, but even so, the recipe makes a lot of sauce even if it had been the 4 lb. one specified. Tasty and hearty beef barbeque, all around. Not too sweet, not too spicy. I thought, just about right for the beef. I might tweak it with a little liquid smoke next time. Not hard to make at all. Don’t let the long list of ingredients intimidate you. All are pretty common things you probably have on hand. It really only took me a few minutes to measure out all the stuff in the sauce and you only have to chunk / chop up one onion. I served this with my favorite “Taste of Home’s Creamy Coleslaw” (from this site) that I whipped up in no time. This is a good meal for a day when the family is on the run. Leave the slow cooker on warm, set the package of hamburger buns out on the counter, and let everyone serve them

Had some good Nathan’s Kielbasa frozen and then cabbage went on sale. I used the regular kind of cabbage. Had this very dish a few months ago when a neighbor shared with us. Hubby gobbled it up, but probably wasn’t aware it was Kielbasa. He’ll devour any kind of sausage but wrinkles his nose at ones with foreign names like bratwurst and kielbasa. It’s a head thing, not a taste thing. Made this about as written except used only 1lb. sausage to 2lbs. cabbage. I like a lot of cabbage. Didn’t sauté the onions or brown a thing. (The kielbasa was fully cooked anyway.) Threw it all in the crockpot. I mixed up melted butter, the red wine vinegar the salt, pepper. The red pepper flakes as some others mentioned were a nice addition for a kick too. Poured the seasonings over everything in the crock. I added quite a bit more water for the crock to cook all day. Also I’ve got nothing against potatoes, but I left them out, cause try as I might, with corned beef and cabbage and the likes, I am always disappointed with the dratted starchy flavor, texture and taste they impart to my beloved, melt in your mouth, cabbage. Guess I’m a purist. It was easy and delicious. Hubby loved it too. Good comfort meal. Good with cornbread to sop up the juices.

I found this recipe searching for sloppy Joe with chili sauce. I think it’s key to any proper Joe, but unused in so many Joe recipes. This is easy, as the name implies. Few ingredients too. Sweet is fine and I expect some in my personal Joe preference. Sorry to say, that’s where my kudos end though. First of all, 3 lbs. of ground beef for 6 servings? Wow! I like to eat heartily, but still, I made this recipe with only 1 lb. and got respectable helpings on 6 open face bun halves. (I left out the celery too, had none.)This 1lb. could also translate into, at least, 3 very, very generous closed bun Joes (probably a little too much for children’s portions.) It would also be 6 reasonably portioned closed Joes when served with sides. If you can stand a little more math, this 3lb. recipe should yield at least 9 super-sized to, perhaps, 18 sensibly served sloppy joe sandwiches, on normal sized hamburger buns. Also I used over ½ a bottle of chili sauce for my 1lb. I used the appropriate scaled amount of vinegar with 1 Tbsp. of Worcestershire sauce. What little sauce there was, seemed watery. The chili sauce added flavor and colored the watery sauce, but disappeared into the meat, instead of making a thick, sloppy sauce. It needs tomato sauce or ketchup or something. Note; more, and thicker, sauce would also add further volume to the portions.

I always think I like Sauerkraut on hot dogs but then it always seems to disappoint; being kind of tart. Make no mistake, this recipe is still sauerkraut but dolled up some making it a little special and less like bitey than plain old sauerkraut. Oops I just realized I didn't rinse and drain the kraut. I wonder if it makes much of a difference. Sauerkraut doesn't usually have much liquid anyway. I used a good brand called "Bavarian style" that already had caraway seeeds in it so I only added 1/2 the caraway called for. Did everything else the same and it was very good. Takes the tart bite off the kraut. Gives it a little sytle. Easy to make especially if you just microwave it to heat.

Some things are just memorable. About 25 years ago a lady brought a similar salad to the office. I always meant to try it but there are always so many delicious leftover turkey dishes and never enough leftover turkey. I finally made the effort to make this. Wonderful change of pace. Light, sophisticated, summer fare with amazing flavors. Marked my rating down though because I do think the terminology is confusing and the proportions are off in the recipe as written. I adapted but some people can’t. Only a cup of turkey and 2 celery stalks (I guess that is what is meant by a “rib” of celery) seems like more celery than meat. Anatomical increments used instead of standard measurements can also vary widely from, say, stalk to stalk, or rib to rib. I eyeballed it to taste instead. I thought ½ cup each of the grapes and apples to the 1 cup of turkey was also too much. Although I probably used ½ cup of the fruits, I did use about 3 cups of turkey. I felt that it required chilling to meld the delicate flavors and I wanted more than a single meal, (maybe the next day too,) out of the salad. But anything with apples would need a splash of citrus juice over the apple chunks, before adding to the salad, to keep them from turning brown so quickly. I used whole grain flat breads for wraps. Red seedless grapes seem to be a little sweeter and added nice color. I ended up with a hearty turkey salad with a bit of a sweet fruit element and a subtle walnut crunch. Just what I wanted. This salad

Wonderful banana pudding recipe. My kind of recipe, very easy and fast to make and not a ton of complicated ingredients or instructions. Tastes great. I used 2 small, 3.4 oz., boxes of vanilla pudding instead of one larger one. Stayed with the same amounts of milk, sour cream and cool whip. It was a little thicker but I actually liked the neat servings out of the bowl being less sloppy than your usual puddings. My mistake: I whisked the pudding, sour cream, cool whip and milk but discovered that some of the pudding mix was on the bottom and didn't get mixed in until I was pouring the last layer. I mixed it in as best I could but had a bit of a lumpy super thick last layer. No one noticed though as they were too busy gobbling it up. Even if you don't use this recipe, I highly recommend using any recipe calling for the vanilla pudding in the banana pudding dish and NOT banana pudding mixes. Banana pudding mix has sort of an artificial banana flavor but the real bananas and the vanilla pudding make it perfect.

This is the first BBQ Sauce recipe I have saved in my keepers file of sauces and dressings. I love this one. Fantastic base recipe. I typed in “BBQ Sauce” in the site search and that’s exactly what I got, plain and simple. Really easy and I always have the common ingredients. Base sauce is pretty ketchupy so you may want to flavor it up a little. But this is just about the perfect recipe to start with and toy around with. I like that it’s not like most other BBQ Sauce recipes that are somebody’s secret formula and throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Those are just too complicated and I’m not that much of a BBQ Sauce connoisseur. I just want some sauce for some meat for Pete’s sake! I don’t want to cook it and simmer it and muck around all day on the sauce! It was never so simple to impress your friends and family that you made your own “secret” BBQ Sauce! I like my sauce on the sweet side so I used brown sugar and about ½ of the white sugar and some honey too. It’s still pretty tangy but with all that sugary stuff I think I’ll get the sticky factor I wanted. I reserved adding the water to see how thick it would be at the end. I ended leaving it thickish (it’s not that thick after adding the vinegar) and NOT adding any water but that does add to the tang since the vinegar doesn’t get diluted. I added a little onion powder too since I often seem to reach for the bottled sauces that have onion. I did make a double batch. Base recipe doesn't make tons. Thanks, LAFLINT, I’l

Tuna casserole is easy to make. I used macaroni and green beans instead of noodles and peas because that's what I had. I used about 1/2 cup cubed Velveeta and 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar. I left out the onions but added a few french fried onions and added some more for a little crunch on top. I added a can of extra mushrooms, a little milk and a little butter and a bit of garlic salt. One can of soup seemed like plenty with the milk, butter and cheeses. Not anything you'd want to order in a restaurant. It's just tasty and satisfying home cookin' family comfort food. All beginner cooks should learn to make the quintessential tuna casserole.

It’s not the recipe’s fault but pounding meat, for me, is always disappointing. I use the flat side of an official meat mallet but I always end up with mushy spots and tears making it difficult to “roll up.” Maybe I am pounding it too hard and it requires a more delicate touch. Whenever I go easy on it though it seems like it’s not flattening the meat at all! I used sort of small breast filets thinking I would just fill them with less ham and cheese. But I will use large ones in the future like the recipe recommends. I also breaded both sides of the chicken before rolling it up because hubby likes breaded stuff and it sounded like a good idea from another reviewer. It added a nice flavor dimension but doing that, instead of breading the rolled up package, makes the rolling really messy. I should have breaded the inside only becasue I needed to re-bread the outside of the roll afterwards anyway. I used pieces of rather thick spiral sliced leftover ham and my Swiss cheese wasn’t too thin either. This made rolling even harder. I used the honey mustard sauce from the Aussie Chicken recipe. Hubby likes honey mustard stuff so I knew that would go over well. Presentation wasn’t too lovely but hubby gave the Chicken Cordon Bleu thumbs up so it gets five stars.

Isn’t this the way it always goes? Hubby eyeballs the purchase of a pretty (and expensive) carrot cake, displayed in the grocery at Easter. I veto it, but tell him I would make one. Then I find out he’s not sure if he even likes carrot cake! But he did like this one. It came out beautifully. I don’t do much baking. Sweets as a constant around the house only add to the waistline and the grocery budget these days is better spent on food for meals instead of treats. I made the cake and the icing exactly as the recipe said but left out the pecans. Great recipe, not too difficult, tastes great. Mildly spiced, I personally might try varying it next time using some brown sugar, more vanilla and maybe some nutmeg as others suggested. I was trying to remember that it was carrot CAKE and not a spicy sweet bread like pumpkin or banana bread. Also I don’t usually comment about the timing shown in the recipe because I rarely keep track, always marred by distractions and interruptions and cleanup anyway. For the goof this once I did time myself from greasing the pan to the time I popped the pan into the oven. It was EXACTLY 30 minutes like it says. That included shredding the carrots and almost all the getting out and putting away the ingredients and cleanup of the prep utensils. (Not making the icing though. That whipped up fast and yummy, in no time, later.) I’ll make this cake again. Hubby ate 2 pieces!

I'll make these again. I've been looking for a good HP recipe. In the South here everyone makes their own and (Northerner me) I always made the mixes. They are OK but seems like it couldn't be hard to make them from scratch either. Most have too much cornmeal for me to love them the way everyone says they do. I love this softer, moister recipe. I did use a little cornmeal in place of 1/2 cup of the flour and I did use reg. flour and 2 tsp. baking powder. baking powder. My main gripe is that recipes using canned goods can't be scaled easily. Cut the recipe in half and use 1/2 a can of corn, you usually end up wasting the other half of the can anyway. Don't scale it and it makes a huge batch that you throw out most of anyway. I may try frying the leftover batter and freezing them. Maybe that's the secret.