Dear Mothers of the Kitchen,
I have written some cooking ideas before but I will write them again for the newcomers.
I like my fried eggs or scrambled to taste buttery. But if you fry stuff in only butter, sometimes the butter burns and that's not good. You could use margarine, too. One idea is to put about a Tbs of oil in the skillet and then about a Tbs of butter. This way the butter will float on the oil and it gives the eggs a buttery flavor. This is good also for fried potatoes. I wouldn't recommend doing this when frying pancakes as your skillet has to be real hot. Eggs should be fried on a medium heat. Also if you are having trouble getting your fried eggs done in the middle? At the end, just add about a fourth cup of water to the skillet and let it baste a bit with a lid on it. For fried potatoes, sometimes it's hard to get them all done, too. So at the end of the frying, just add a bit of water and fry this until the liquid is gone. Keep the lid on. You could use chicken broth, about a fourth cup.
Another idea for a large family meal goes like this. Take a 9 x 13 pan and just take your thawed out hamburger and press it all down in the bottom of the pan. You would need about 2 pounds. Then salt and pepper this and bake it. When it is mostly done, cut it in squares and drain out the fat. Just cut it like a cake. Spread the squares out a bit and put some onion on each square. Then maybe some green beans over that and some diluted cream of something soup and then mashed potatoes on the top, and bake it until the potatoes are a bit brown. Instead of mashed potatoes, you could use cut up boiled potatoes or tater tots. You could use any layer of veggies you may want to use. The old time Mothers used to make meals like this that were layered. You could use tomato soup or cream of chicken. Then put cheese on the top layer of potatoes if ya got it.
You can also crumble up and fry beef in a skillet, take it out, and fry potatoes with onions. Then when the fried potatoes are done, layer the hamburger on top and then put cheese over the top of that.
In the old days, I would fix fried potatoes for my hungry children for breakfast. If I forgot and didn't fry enough potatoes, I would then mix eggs up in them and fry them like scrambled. Also if you are frying scrambled eggs and it don't look like you have made enough, just scramble up about a slice or two of bread in the eggs. My kids never knew the difference as the bread looks like eggs. Just tear it up with your hands. Like for 4 scrambled eggs you could use 2 slices of bread. I just added enough bread to have enough. And if it looked too obvious that I had added too much bread, I would put cheese on the top. And that was good anyhow!
Just always try not to break out laughin' when you are hoodwinking the family. Keep a very serious straight face! That's the key.
Love,
Connie
