Quick, Mama, I'm Hungry. What's For Dinner?

When you have children with busy lives, who flit in and out of the house at all different hours, it becomes a tad challenging to be able to prepare a meal on their very important time schedule, so you can accommodate them and their agenda.

Yeah ... What's wrong with this picture?
I am nothing if not trainable.

So, back to the diner and my life as a short order cook.
Youngest Hawthorne appears, with a friend, of course, both seriously hungry.
They need to eat. Now.

So, let's see what Rosie can whup up in 10 minutes or less.


Earlier, Rosie had seen a recipe for a cheese dipping sauce in the local paper and was already preparing that. With certain tweaks and adjustments, of course.

The recipe called for:

2 cups Cheddar cheese, grated
2 cups pepper Jack cheese, grated
1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
2 TB butter
2 tsp garlic
2 tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded, and diced

2/3 cup heavy cream

Dixie's nose was working overtime what with the cheese on the counter.

I halved the recipe. First, I grated cheddar and mozzarella cheeses (I had no pepper Jack) and added 1/2 a packet of the Ranch dressing mix. Whoot! A seasoning packet. And if I really wanted to semi-Ho this arrussuppee, I could've used the pre-grated cheese packages.

Mince your garlic. Of course you could use jarlic.
Peel your tomato.

I cored, seeded, and diced my tomato.

Saute the garlic and tomato in a bit of butter for about a minute.

Add in the cheese.

Pour in the cream.

I had gone outside earlier and found these lovely asparaguses (asparagi) ready to be picked.

So here are my dippables.
Asparagus, broccoli, and carrots.
But really, you could use anything you have.
Smelly gym socks, oily rags.
Really, anything in your pantry.

M. Hawthorne and I test tasted the dip and found it to be somewhat lacking.

So, we added some Golden Velvet Cheese.

Ok. Ok. Velveeta.



I don't know what it was doing in my pantry.
Someone must have put it there.

Then, I added a bit of cream cheese, some cumin, chili powder, cayenne, salt and pepper, heated it all through.
And it is palatable.

It was at this point that Youngest Hawthorne came in with an appetite.

I quickly fried a tortilla shell.

I nuked my leftover chili and beans.
Poured it over the tortillas with the cheese sauce and some sour cream.

Then topped with shredded lettuce.

Total time from whining to dining?
Maybe 5 minutes.
And they cleaned their plates.

Now, on to the adult meal.
Good neighbor Bob had kindly brought over some flounder fillets for us the night before.
Mr. Hawthorne seasoned them with salt and pepper, drizzled a bit of olive oil over top, and added a few veggies.


A quick bake in the oven.


And top with the cheese sauce.

Not bad at all.