Hamburger steak, twice-baked potatoes, and green beans -- a meal fit for a queen! Or maybe an empress. Or maybe just us.

One of the recipes in Tales of Symphonia is steak with onions. I had a pound of hamburger meat thawed, and time to work on a Tales recipe, so I decided on that Southern classic: hamburger steak. At least, I think of it as Southern because my grandmother makes it pretty often, and I tend to see it in home-cooking restaurants in my home state of Mississippi. So, what did I do first on that Sunday that I decided to make hamburger steak for the first time? I called my grandmother, of course. In any case, here’s Granny’s recipe for hamburger steak:

Ingredients:

1 lb. hamburger meat

Some oatmeal (the real stuff, not the instant)

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbsp steak sauce

1 egg

Salt & pepper to taste

3 Tbsp chopped onion

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together. Make into patties.

2. Cook slowly in a frying pan until they are done.

3. Pour off some of the grease, chop onion, and add a little flour to remaining grease to make gravy, or simply slice onion and bell pepper and sautee in remaining grease instead. In either case, cook until the onions are translucent.

And here’s how I actually did it (and then wondered why hers tastes so much better!)

Ingredients:

1 lb. hamburger meat

1 Tbsp of extra thick Worcestershire sauce

Salt & pepper & garlic powder to taste

3 Tbsp chopped onion

the rest of half of an onion, chopped

1/2 red bell pepper, sliced

1 Tbsp flour

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together. Make into patties.

2. Cook slowly in a frying pan until they are done.

3. There wasn't much grease left, so I just added a tablespoon of flour and the rest of the chopped onion I had... yeah, turns out I don't really know how to make gravy ... so I added about a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and kept using my wooden spatula to scrape up the thin roux (I think that's what it's called) that tried to stick to the bottom of the pan, and proceeded to cook chopped onions and bell pepper slices. 

 

Next time, I think I'll make brown gravy from a mix and sautee some sliced mushrooms and pour that over the top. My favorite hamburger steak (from a restaurant) is at the White Star Cafe in Water Valley, MS. Yum... brown gravy, mushrooms, and lots of black pepper. That's the trouble with moving to a new state. You have to find new favorite restaurants that don't break your budget. :-) 

On the side with the hamburger steak, we had twice baked potatoes and green beans. Here are the recipes: 

Twice-Baked Potatoes for Two 

2 medium russet potatoes 

1 tablespoon light ranch salad dressing 

shredded cheese (We like the "Mexican" blend that we get at the Hy Vee, which is similar to Wal-Mart's "fiesta" blend.)

1 chopped fresh Roma tomato 

cooked and chopped bacon would be good, but I thought of that one too late to add.

1. Scrub potatoes and then poke holes in them with a fork. Cook in microwave until they've softened a bit. It took about 5 minutes total in my microwave. 

2. Cut open potatoes and scrape out most of the insides. Mix the inside of the potato with salad dressing and a little shredded cheese. Here's where you would also add chopped cooked bacon if you thought ahead.

3. Spoon filling back into potatoes and top with shredded cheese. 

4. Place potatoes on a cookie sheet and bake until the cheese is melted at 350 degrees F. 

5. Put potatoes on plates, and sprinkle chopped tomato on top.

6. Enjoy!

I'll be honest, I'm about the pickiest person on the planet when it comes to how canned green beans are prepared. I like the way my grandmother makes them (complete with bacon fat), and I like the way I make them. 

Green Beans

1 can French-style green beans

black pepper

garlic powder 

1. Open the can, drain the green beans, and then rinse them at least three times to get rid of the taste of the can. Double Luck brand green beans are the best, but I don't even know where to begin finding that brand now that I no longer live in the South. 

2. Pour in half a can of water with the green beans and cook over medium heat until the water has evaporated. Sprinkle garlic powder and black pepper to taste. Personally, I love black pepper and garlic powder, so you may see a trend in this blog. :-) 

Enjoy the Southern classic, blogged far from home.

Dwarven Vow #1: Let's all work together for a peaceful world.

In the spirit of working together -- and producing a palatable product on a day where I worked two four-hour shifts at two different jobs in retail for the third day in a row-- my husband put his Polish (well, quarter-Polish) hands to work making stuffed cabbage. Yeah, so we definitely went with the default recipe without adding the Tales-inspired ingredient cheese. Sorry, Genis. Your cooking ideas were odd, and practice makes permanent. We did add the mushrooms, though.

Here's the family recipe we used:

1 head of cabbage (boiled whole)
1 lb. hamburger meat
1-2 cups rice
2-3 slices of bacon, fried and chopped up finely (oops, forgot this one)
a few mushrooms, cut up and sauteed (Tales-inspired ingredient not found in the original recipe) 
2 cans tomato soup

1. Boil the cabbage until it is boiled through. This will take a long time.
2. Cook rice according to package instructions. 
3. Sautee mushrooms in a little butter while rice is finishing up.
4. Cook bacon, then cut it up finely. (Traditionally, you're supposed to use salt pork, but bacon is what we have at my house.)
5. Mix together bacon (including fat that cooked out of it), hot rice, mushrooms, and beef. The heat from the rice, plus the time spent baking in the crockpot should cook it through. If you're squeamish, though, go ahead and cook the hamburger meat at least partway in the bacon fat and mushrooms.
6. Peel off cabbage leaves carefully. The first couple will probably fall to pieces, but you should have a relatively sturdy, pliable leaf soon enough. Spoon filling into a cabbage leaf, and then fold the leaf around the filling carefully. Place folded-side down in the crockpot or slow cooker.

7. Be sure to get a full layer on the bottom of the crockpot, and then pour one can of tomato soup over the stuffed cabbage. Then, you can use any weak or easily torn leaves as a layer before putting in the next layer of stuffed cabbage leaves. The better the cabbage and/or the better job you did boiling your cabbage, the fewer leaves you will have that fall apart.
8. Top the whole thing with the second can of tomato soup, and then cook in the crockpot. If you use the low setting, it'll take 6-8 hours. If you cook it on high, it'll take about 3 hours. Sure, it's labor-intensive, but it's good and relatively cheap meal.

9. If you want to top it a la Tales of Symphonia, sprinkle cheese on top, but when I mentioned this to my husband, he looked horrified. I think it would be good, but, then again, I forgot to add it to mine. Guess I'll have to try to remember the cheese with the leftovers sitting in my fridge. :-) They do reheat well!

The trick to good stuffed cabbage (AKA cabbage rolls) is a good cabbage. I apparently do not have a discerning enough eye to pick a good cabbage. Either that, or we over-boiled the leaves. In any case, the leaves weren't strong or sturdy enough to really wrap around the filling.

Oh well, at least stuffed cabbage has the time-honored family tradition of being hard to mess up if you follow directions, it reheats well, and OH MY GOSH it makes a lot of food. For the two of us, at least. Two or three rolls are enough for a pretty substantial meal for me and my short, mid-twenties self. If only life were so simple, you know? Then again, if life could be lived by a formula beyond love God, love others, and take care of business, it'd be a lot less interesting. It probably wouldn't have very many good stories for the video games. :-)