Comfort Foods and Indulgences

It's burger season. I don't care if it's cold out or a 100 degrees... it's time to enjoy some summery meals and eat outdoors. The weather here has been decent (knock on wood). Our summers in the Pacific Northwest often don't begin until July 5th, but I have my hopes up. We've already had our first 90-degree day....kind of amazing for these parts.

Anyway, with Father's Day coming up it's time to start getting some of my husband's favorite recipes and food together. And for him, that means lamb. The hubby couldn't be happier, it's his absolute favorite.

In order to make a juicier, more complex burger, I paired together three different types of ground meat; chuck, lamb and pork. I call it the meat trifecta and it's the perfect combination for a juicier burger. And if you love lamb, the flavor comes through nicely and doesn't disappear within the other meat.

After returning from a two-week holiday stay with family in Rhode Island, Jeff and I were in a bit of a funk. San Diego suddenly seemed too quiet, too sunny, too bland. We missed the crunch of snow beneath our feet, the hearty bowls of quahog chowder and the sight of a pink and orange Dunkin' Donuts on every street corner. More than anything, we missed the accents.

Sunday evening always marks the end of a weekend. And whatever the weekend was filled with, Sunday evening is the time to finally relax.

My weekend was a busy one. I was away from home from early Friday morning until late this afternoon. After several hours in the car, I was ready for some home-cooked food that would bring warmth and contentment.

It took only about 45 minutes to put together a pot of Thick and Hearty Soup. It could probably be called a thick Italian-style stew, as it is rich with tomato, pasta and Italian seasonings. Earlier in the week I was in Minneapolis and stopped at Trader Joe’s where I picked up some fully cooked chicken and turkey spicy andouille sausage. I sliced it up and sautéed it with some chopped vegetables before pouring some chicken broth, crushed tomatoes and tomato puree into the soup pot. Little shells of pasta simmered in the pot for the last 20 minutes, thickening the soup as it cooked. I used a blend of Italian seasoning to flavor the soup. You can use your own favorites – oregano, basil, rosemary, sage or thyme are all nice choices.

Silly words that came from car-time with my grandchildren resulted in a new cookie called Shoogie Dadders. The cookie dough is loaded with oatmeal, sweet-tart grated Haralson apple woven through and little chunks of Sugar Babies that turn to taffy in the oven. The baked cookies are sweet and chewy. They got a thumbs-up from my granddaughter who rolled the funny words “shoogie dadder” off her tongue and out of her giggling mouth.

After turning some of the third batch of dough into cookies, I got tired of baking. I covered the bowl of remaining dough and stuck it into the refrigerator. A few days later, as I was thinking of Thanksgiving, I thought about baking pumpkin-pie filling in a Shoogie Dadder crust.

I patted some of the cookie dough into a 9- x 13-inch pan, covered it with broken, toasted pecans and baked it for about 10 minutes before pouring the pumpkin filling over the top. Once baked, the filling was creamy and the crust was soft and easy to cut.