Things change. Today you can buy hummus in Climax Springs. That’s something I wouldn’t have believed when the kids were little, mainly because when the kids were little I didn’t know what hummus was. As time has passed, we’ve tweaked some of our favorite meals from those days to make them a little healthier and less processed. This has taught me that evolution is not necessarily the same thing as progress. Let’s be honest—you can’t really improve on hamburger in cream of mushroom soup plopped on mashed potatoes. But sometimes, you can make things better. These are some of our efforts.
SOUP & SAMMITCH
There was nothing wrong with the soup and sandwich of my childhood. But things have gotten better.
The Neanderthal version
Tomato soup Are you feeling flush? Buy a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and follow the directions on the side of the can. Take advantage of the option to use milk instead of water. Things a little tight? Buy the generic or whatever’s on sale and mix it with water.
Grilled cheese Butter white sandwich bread. Use two slices of packaged American cheese per sandwich. Grill it on a cast iron skillet until it’s golden brown on the outside and melty on the inside.
The evolved meal
Smoked Gouda & Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Bisque
Ingredients:
10 to 12 Roma tomatoes OR 2 14.5 oz cans fire roasted tomatoes
2 red bell peppers OR 1 12 oz jar roasted red peppers
3 cups chicken stock
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons dried basil
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons butter
8 oz smoked gouda cheese, grated
½ cup half and half or cream
Fresh basil for garnish
Directions:
Saute the onion and garlic in butter.
If you’re feeling ambitious, preheat the oven to 450 or fire up the charcoal on the grill. Cut the peppers and tomatoes in half and put them skin side up on a pan in the oven or skin side down on the grill and drizzle them with olive oil. Roast the peppers and tomatoes about fifteen minutes until the peppers are blackened. Remove the peppers and return the tomatoes to the oven for another ten minutes or so. Put the peppers in a ziplock back or covered bowl and wait ten minutes. Peel the skins off the peppers and put the pepper and tomatoes (and any pepper or tomato juice that collected) in a stock pot OR
If you’re not feeling ambitious, open a jar of roasted peppers and two cans of fire roasted tomatoes and put the peppers and tomatoes in the stock pot.
While the tomatoes and peppers are roasting (or before opening the jar of peppers and cans of tomatoes, if you’re a slacker), saute the onion and garlic in butter.
Put everything but the cheese and cream in crock pot/stock pot and cook on low 4 hours
Blend until smooth—we bought an immersion blender, which is awesome for this. The first time I made this soup, before we had the immersion blender, I tried to blend it in our blender and painted the kitchen red.
Add cheese and cream and cook on low another hour.
Garnish with fresh basil.
Inside out grilled cheese
Ingredients:
Sourdough bread
Butter
Gruyere cheese
Parmesan cheese
Directions:
Grate a bunch of cheese. Put a blob of butter in a skillet over medium heat. After the butter melts put two slices of bread in the pan, making sure the butter covers each slice. Put a pile of grated gruyere on one slice of bread, then cover it, unbuttered side down, with the other slice. Sprinkle a little grated parmesan on the top piece of bread. Flip the and sandwich and sprinkle parmesan on the new top side. Grill until the bottom piece of bread is golden brown, then flip again and grill until that side’s golden brown. If you’re in a show offy mood, you can cut a sandwich into small squares and use them as croutons for the soup.
SUPERMAN SUNDAY
When I was growing up, Sunday night was church night, but, Praise the Lord, Ann was Methodist and Methodists honor the fourth commandment by remembering the first half of the Sabbath, keeping it holy through kickoff at noon when the TV gets turned on for the game. So for us, instead of Training Union and evening services, Sunday night was family night, and of course family night was food. We gathered in the living room, plates piled with fish sticks, tater tots, ketchup, and applesauce to watch “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” Good times.
The Neanderthal version:
Fish sticks: Follow the directions on the package of the cheapest box of fish sticks you can buy. Don’t worry about the quality of the fish—all the kids will be tasting is the sea of ketchup they’ll be swimming in.
Tater tots: See fish sticks.T
Ketchup: I assume that Ronald Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable because he saw the way our kids ate it. Buy good ketchup by the crate. Apply liberally.
Applesauce: Here’s where you prove you’re a concerned, health conscious parent. Buy the all natural, no sugar added applesauce.
The evolved meal:
I made this once as an experiment to see if I could recreate our Sunday nights in a form an adult could eat. Other than the apples, which were great, it was pretty much a total failure, but I think that was my execution, not the quality of the idea. I’m going to try this again until I make it work.
Almond crusted salmon sticks (from wishful chef.com/almond-crusted-salmon-sticks)
Ingredients:
16 ounces skinless salmon filet
3/4 cup course ground almond meal
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra for dribbling
Directions:
Preheat oven to 425°F. Stir the almond meal, paprika, salt and pepper together on a plate.
Cut the salmon into strips. Rub olive oil on each strip of salmon, then roll the salmon in the almond mixture until it is well coated.
Place salmon sticks on a baking sheet and drizzle them with olive oil. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until golden brown and crisp on the outside.
Sweet potato tots (based on a recipe at laurafuentes.com/sweet-potato-tater-tots-recipe that has beautiful pictures that look nothing like the abomination that I made)
Ingredients:
3 or 4 sweet potatoes (enough to make 3 cups diced sweet potatoes)
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Extra grated parmesan
Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray baking sheet with no-stick spray or line it with parchment paper. Peel and dice 3 cups of sweet potatoes.
Boil the sweet potatoes until they’re softened but not yet tender. Mix the sweet potatoes and 1 cup parmesan in food processor until the potatoes are broken up, but still chunky and the cheese is mixed in with the sweet potato.
Form the sweet potato/parmesan mixture into tater tot shapes, then roll them in parmesan to coat.
Bake 12-15 minutes, turning them part way through.
Sauce
Ingredients:
1 cup Greek yogurt
¼ cup Franks’s RedHot sauce (or your favorite sauce—I’ve been thinking Adam’s sauce might work with this)
2 Tablespoons horseradish mustard
Directions:
Mix ingredients. Chill. Eat. If you have the good fortune to be eating this while watching the Chiefs play in the Super Bowl, scrap the sauce and hope you bring Mahomes some good mojo by eating your tots with WhatABurger ketchup.
Applesauce
Ingredients:
4 cups chopped peeled apples (about 3 ½ pounds)
½ cup apple cider
Juice of ½ lemon
¼ cup brown sugar
½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
Directions:
Cook apples, cider, lemon juice, brown sugar, and cinnamon over medium low heat for 30-40 minutes until the apples are tender. Stir in the vanilla and mash the apples to the consistency you want.