If you’d been in my kitchen yesterday afternoon you’d have seen me opening various cupboard doors, hoping something would jump out at me hollering, “Make meeeeee for dinner!” And whaddaya know, something did.

I found a bag of tater tots in my freezer, along with some ground beef and frozen peas and corn. I always have onions and condensed cream-of-mushroom soup in the pantry, and cheddar cheese in the fridge. It was time to go back to my roots, time to make one of the most hard-core Midwestern meals out there. It was hotdish time!

I grew up eating hotdish mostly at church suppers. Another common name for it is tater-tot casserole. There are as many different recipes as there are cooks, but it generally involves ground beef, condensed cream-of-something soup, canned or frozen mixed vegetables, and tater tots. Sometimes there is cheese in there somewhere too. Often it’s eaten with ketchup. It’s easy to prepare, and can be varied according to the tastes of your picky eaters (different soup, different veggies, no veggies at all, skip the cheese).

In other words, hotdish is pretty much the ultimate comfort food. With ketchup. Yum!

Hotdish

1 lb. lean ground beef or turkey
1 small onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper
2 c. frozen peas
2 c. frozen corn
2 cans condensed cream-of-mushroom soup
2 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese
frozen tater tots to cover the top

In a large skillet, brown the ground beef, adding the onion, celery, garlic and bay leaf. Continue cooking over medium-low heat till the vegetables are soft. Season with salt and pepper as you like. Remove from heat. Drain off the fat, remove and discard bay leaf, and set aside to cool slightly.

Spread the meat mixture in the bottom of a 9×13 casserole pan. Cover with frozen peas and corn. Spoon the condensed soup on top, spreading it around to cover all the vegetables. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the soup. (If you’re preparing this dish ahead of time, at this point you can cover and refrigerate the casserole till you’re ready to bake it.) Cover the cheese with frozen tater tots.

Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 60 minutes, checking at 30 minutes to see if the tater tots are browning too quickly. If necessary, lower the heat to 350 for the remaining 30 minutes. When the topping is brown and crispy, the hotdish is done. Remove from oven and allow to sit for five minutes. Serve with ketchup.

Yesterday, there were a couple of ballerinas running around the place. After some dancing out in the yard, they were hungry and wanted to make cupcakes. We said, how about some rainbow-lime cupcakes? They said, yes please!

The rainbow effect isn’t an original idea. I was inspired partly by justJENN’s zebra cupcakes, and partly by Do Better’s rainbow jello (via The Crafty Crow). But adding lime zest to the cupcake batter and making lime buttercream frosting? That was all my idea.

Okay, that’s probably not an original idea either. Though lime cupcakes aren’t common, I doubt I’m the first person in history who thought of adding 2 teaspoons of grated lime zest to a basic yellow cake recipe, and making vanilla buttercream with 1 teaspoon of grated lime zest and lime juice in place of the milk. (I used a lime picked from the lime tree in our backyard, by the way! We definitely need to water that tree more; that was the driest lime I’ve ever juiced.)

As for the rainbow part, that was actually pretty easy. I just divided the batter into four portions and used a few drops of liquid food coloring in each one. We spooned red batter into each cupcake liner first, then yellow, then green, then blue. We used about a tablespoon of each color per cupcake, maybe a bit more. We didn’t spread the batter around or anything, just spooned the colors on top of each other.

This was sort of a test recipe, as I’ve been recruited to make a tall green layer cake next January for a certain green-loving toddler. Brenda and I were trying to figure out if the cake should just be colored green or flavored something that is green, and then Brenda got a magazine clipping from her husband’s stepmom in the mail: a recipe for key lime cupcakes with lime cream-cheese frosting! We didn’t have that recipe with us when we made these cupcakes, but we figured it couldn’t hurt to do a little experimentation and see if lime-flavored cake would be worth trying.

The verdict: yum! Yeah, we’ll definitely be making lime cupcakes again.

I made a frittata this morning for breakfast. I started out with a recipe, but I didn’t have all the ingredients so I substituted with reckless abandon, hoping it would be okay. And it was delicious! Every time I make a frittata (which is an Italian omelette) I wonder why I don’t make them more, because they’re so easy and yummy.

Ham, Onion & Red Pepper Frittata

• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• half a red pepper, seeded and chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• freshly-ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 5 large eggs
• 2 Tablespoons half-and-half or milk
• 1/2 cup plus 1/4 cup shredded extra-sharp cheddar
• 1/2 cup chopped ham

Melt the butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet. Add the vegetables and garlic and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and thyme. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, till onion and pepper are very soft, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, stir eggs, half-and half, and 1/2 cup of cheese together. When vegetables are ready, add the ham and cook for a minute more, till ham is heated through. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet, stirring gently a couple of times in the first minute. Then let the mixture cook undisturbed till the bottom is set, about 5 minutes.

Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese over the top. Transfer to a 350F oven and cook for 6-8 minutes until slightly puffed up. Remove from oven. Cover, and let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!