Most folks love their familiar food. But what happens when you take something familiar and do something different with it? You can almost picture the family dog doing it’s head tilt with the Scooby Doo voice in your head exclaiming “Ruuuh”?
Those are things we love to do with our food. As posted in the Recipes section, the one for taking the raviolis and tuning them into an appetizer, will be a revolutionary discovery for some. For us, it’s a regular thing. We’ve even deep fried ours.
We’ve done our corned beef hash on tatter tots with poached eggs & Hollandaise as well as Rob’s Huevos Roberto. We’ll save that recipe for another day.
We’ll take BBQ pulled pork and make Pho with it, for those comfort food days. Okay – that’s not really a stretch, but still. Making popcorn and using garlic powder & fresh grated Parmesan instead of butter & salt. Making scratch pretzel dough, Kraft Dinner & hot dogs then turning it all into a gourmet pizza for the kids (they were extremely pleased with it!). We shook our heads at first, but the kids brought their creativity to the kitchen that day.
Ponder this: if you’re stuck for something to make for dinner (or breakfast or lunch), ask your kids. Sure there’s Google, but tell them what you have to work with and you may be surprised at what they come up with. It resolves your “I’m so stuck” dilemma and it makes them feel involved. Go one further and ask them to help. Instant quality family time.
Maybe take the mac & cheese you were going to put into bowls and instead of cut up hot dogs, add some bacon. Maybe your inner child wants something more decadent such as corned beef, pastrami or lobster. You can amp the mac & cheese up by turning it into a gooey, messy grilled mac & cheese. Unless your kids are neat-nicks, they will LOVE this.
The vegetarians will love a piece of grilled tofu or eggplant stirred in with the mac & cheese. You can even try grated carrots or zucchini in it.
If it’s around Halloween (or if you still have a bunch leftover), cut those caramels that everyone despises into quarters and mix them into a batch of brownie dough. Top with coarse kosher salt. You’re welcome. How about crispy bacon with Nutella?
The next time you’re looking at ingredients in your cupboards, fridge, freezer or pantry for inspiration, look at what’s next to each ingredient. You may be surprised by what you can make with your familiar food to create something new & exciting.
#FoodPorn