Way To Go, Joshua!

Joshua Cookingham writes:

"I have graduated from Dutchess Community College. I now have a Associates in Communications and Media Arts."

And you can see that he's happy...



Here's hoping, Joshua, that you get over that cold quickly and enjoy the summer!

The Squirrel Can Cook - Meat Rolls!

My high school had the best cook! While so many other kids were complaining about the food at their schools, we were all looking forward to lunch at ours. Shortly after I graduated, she left the school and opened a restaurant. Now it’s a burger place, and she’s retired. Oh, well.

Anyway, one of my favorite things that used to turn up on the lunch menu was meat rolls. When I started writing the Squirrel Can Cook features, I knew I had to do those meat rolls. It took a few tries to get it right, as I’m not really a baker, but I think I’ve got ‘em down.

As I said, I’m not a baker, so I used frozen bread dough. Let it thaw and rise per the package directions. (8 hours, for the brand I used.)

Our other ingredients are:

A small roast (see below)
Powdered brown gravy mix – 2 envelopes, if you don’t buy it in bulk jars, like I do
A medium onion

Meanwhile, let’s get that meat filling ready. Get yourself a small roast, just a couple of pounds, and not a real expensive cut. There are a couple of ways that you could cook your meat. For example, you could braise it. This would result in excellent flavor. It’s time consuming, but, since you’ve got to wait for the bread dough to rise, you’ve got the time.



Or, you could do what I did, and put that puppy in your pressure cooker. 20 minutes, and it was falling apart, which is just how we want it, because we’re going to shred that meat up. Put the cooked roast on a cutting board, and go to work with a pair of forks. (You’ll need to do this while it’s still hot. If it cools, the gelatin will stiffen up, and that’s not what we’re looking for.)

We only need about a pound (pre-cooked weight) of meat, but our roast is about 2 pounds, so after you’ve got it all shredded up, stick half in a baggy in the fridge. It’s great for taco meat, or sloppy Joes, or just about anywhere else where you’d otherwise use a pound of browned burger.



Chop the medium onion really fine, toss it in a sauté pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and a little salt, and sweat it until it’s translucent in color. Remember, you’re sweating it, not sautéing, so if it begins to brown, your pan is too hot.

Prepare 1/2 of 1 of your envelopes of brown gravy per directions. (1/2 envelope & 1/2 the water. Save the other half of the envelope for later.)



(If you’ve ever made cinnamon rolls, you know this technique.) Take your bread dough, which is now all nice and puffy (or should be) and roll it out until it is an even rectangle about ¼ to ½ inch thick. Mix the shredded beef, the onion, and the ½ recipe of brown gravy together, and spread evenly over the bread, leaving about an inch at the far side free of filling. Then roll it up, with the meat mixture inside. Wet the edge that you left free of filling, and seal it really well. You now should have a meat filled bread log.



Now, take a piece of string and begin cutting the rolls off of the log. Cut the log into about 2 inch segments. Lay the segments down, about an inch apart, on a lightly greased jelly roll pan. Cover the pan with a tea towel, and allow the rolls to rise for an hour. They should about double in size.





Bake your pan of rolls, per the directions for your bread dough, until they're a nice golden brown. Prepare the rest of your brown gravy (your 1 ½ envelopes). Top rolls with gravy, and enjoy! Serve with the veggie of your choice. Feeds 4-6.



The Squirrel shall not live by bread alone!

The Squirrel's Nut Cache - 6/4/09

The Nut Cache - a collection of recent things I found interesting, or amusing, or nutworthy.

Note: Today's Nut Cache will be slightly larger than usual, since we missed last week.

(Fred mentioned this on his blog last week) Lady Thatcher once said that Socialism’s biggest problem was that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money. There’s no doubt that, given the opportunity, the people with the money will also take steps to hold on to it. Looks like Maryland's millionaires are moving away to flee from higher taxes. Socialists are silly to resent rich people. I've never gotten a job from a business owned by a poor person.

Here's an update on this story from the April 9 Nut Cache. It seems that the funeral home in question has lost their license. Well, Duh! I gotta admit that I'm sort of ambivalent regarding the whole funeral home business. It's way too expensive. Stories like this don't improve my opinion any.

This is a great story; touching, nostalgic, heart warming. Now, my first car was a 1974 Ford Pinto wagon. Mom and Dad gave it to me for my 16th birthday... the engine caught fire as I was driving it home from the dealership. DO NOT try to track it down for my 50th birthday! OK? Everybody got that? Good!

Y'all knew I couldn't ignore this one! Squirrels are natural patriots. They know that flags make great decorations, and the 4th of July is coming up quickly. The only reason they steal the flags is that nobody sells to arboreal rodents. You walk into a store to buy something, next thing you know, the shopkeeper is chasing you with a broom; makes it hard to complete a transaction.

Another update, kinda. Good news, curry lovers! Seems it's good, and good for you. Maybe now, you'll visit the McCurry near you more often, huh? No McCurry nearby? Fear not, I'll post a curry recipe soon.

Staying with food, seems Aussies are sissies when it comes to food. "He ate what was set before him," used to be a sort of unofficial soldierly motto, but not for the Australian armed forces, it seems. Note to moms: make the little crumb-crunchers eat what they get with thanks, or go hungry. Then, one day, when there all grown up, they won't be embarrassing their nation by turning up their noses at someone else's cooking!

Final food story today. This isn't quite enough for a Squirrel Can Cook segment, but it is worth bringing to your attention. Yeah, it's a squirrel thing, and, since y'all are all hanging with me, I figure you should know these things.

When Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians 5:15, he was talking about people NOT snakes. Just so you know. Another problem with paganism.

That's the Nut Cache for this week. It looks to be a beautiful day here in Western Montana, and I hope it's just as nice where ever you are.

The Squirrel Returns: Better, Faster, Stronger

After a frustrating weekend of trying to load Windows XP on a machine that is just too new to run it, I took the plunge and installed Windows7 Release Candidate 1 on my laptop yesterday.

I've got to tell you, this may be the best version of Windows ever. It always seemed like Microsoft launched Vista way to early, the OS just wasn't ready. XP was working very well, at the time, and didn't seem dated at all. I never could understand why they launched Vista when they did.

Well, Windows7 is what Vista should have been. The "every other Microsoft OS" rule still applies. I wonder how much market share Microsoft lost during the Vista era? The commercial release version of Windows7 is scheduled to go on sale in October 2009. If you need a new computer, hold on until then.

If you're a techno-geek, go ahead and try Win7's RC1. You'll be glad that you did!

Thank you to everyone for your suggestions and advice.