I've HAD it with Meat & Potatoes

When I approached my sister-in-law with the idea that we do a meal together with recipes from MCC:FFR, her response was, "That would be GREAT! You know, I never really learned how to cook meat and pototoes recipes - like potroast." She is a northern Arizona girl, the daughter of a restaurant manager, and her cooking skills are phenomenal. So it just goes to show that not many food connoisseurs are into old-fashioned cooking anymore. Thankfully, I'm not the only one.

I decided to run a trial test of my theory that MCC recipes are meant to be eaten together (see What Exactly Is Hash, Feb. 28). While most of the foods from MCC are not something I would crave, or even seek out, they are also not foods that are difficult to palate once made. Mostly they are just boring. I looked over my list of potential recipes and picked out Pigs in the Blanket, pg. 65, along with Potato Salad, pg. 182, for dinner.

One for two isn't that bad. The Potato Salad was yummy - although Joe and I have been spoiled by my Aunt Rachel's salad, and he says "we can never go back." While it was good, it probably won't be something I fix again. It was a lot of chopping and generally labor-intensive.

The Pigs in Blanket were sadly bland and bready. I fixed the Bisquit recipe on pg. 12 for the "blanket," mixed the ground beef for the "pig" filling, and then attempted and failed to make nice little pockets out of my obstinate bisquit dough. I thought they were supposed to wrap neatly around the blobs of meat, forming little rectangular meat pockets. But the dough refused to seal shut around the meat, which was too greasy, and even the small portions I could fit in the dough wouldn't cooperate (I ended up having half the meat leftover). Then I put it in the oven for the 40 minutes that Mary Emma recommends. Peaking in at them 20 minutes later, they were already a golden brown and starting to burn on the bottom. Out they came. They taste alright with lots and lots of ketchup, but otherwise they were like eating crumbling over-baked bisquits with a small bite full of meat in the middle. After eating two of them, Joe stated that he wants to go on record as saying, "I think the Mennonite Community Cookbook should be subtitled A Collection of Bland Recipes." Sometimes he's too harsh of a food critic, but in this case I have to say I agree with him.