Recipes that require only a few available ingredients.

[keljonma]

Butter Pie

Potatoes
Onions
Butter
Rolled out pastry for bottom & top pie crust
Salt/pepper

Roll out pastry and line the bottom of a pie dish.

Fill with alternate layers of thinly sliced potatoes and onions. Add little chunks of butter to each layer as you go. Also season each layer lightly with salt and pepper- maybe a bit of onion powder or Mrs. Dash too if you like.

Put a pastry top on the pie. Make a hole for the steam to escape.

Bake this in a wood cook stove or oven set to 425F. Bake until the potatoes are soft when you poke a knife in it. You may need to cover the crust with foil if it's getting a bit too brown.

Just as good served cold. Serve with a couple of slices of bacon and peas or corn.

Meat (pre-cooked) could be added to the ingredients before baking.

 

[keljonma]

Homemade Hot Pockets

Make your usual pizza dough.

Take part of it and roll it out thinly, and put a small amount of filling in the middle of one side.

Fold, pinch closed, and bake at 400 for 10 minutes or so.

Fillings are endless; cheeseburger, breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausage, onions, and peppers) chicken salad, pizza

 

[keljonma]

Raisin Nut Loaf or Poor Man's Fruitcake

I found through research that this is considered to be a Civil War era recipe. Although, it is possible that it is older than that. This recipe was also very popular during World War I and World War II.

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups raisins
1 tsp salt
3 cups water

Bring to boil in a very large pot. Let boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Cool completely to room temperature.

Sift together over cooled mixture:

1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 Tb baking soda
3 cups flour

Mix well. Stir in 1 cup chopped walnuts.
Pour into greased loaf pans.

If using large pans, this makes 2 loaves; a smaller loaf pan will give you 3 loaves. The mini loaf pans will yield 5 loaves from one recipe.

Bake at 300F for about 1 hour, until tester in center comes out clean. This cake freezes well.

 

[keljonma]

Simple Root Soup
2 parsnips, cubed
2 onions, chopped
2 carrots, cubed
2 potatoes, cubed
3 pints stock or broth or water
Butter or oil
Herbs
Salt and pepper

In a large pot, fry onion in butter or oil. When soft, add rest of veggies. Cover with stock, broth or water. Add seasonings and herbs. Simmer until veggies are soft.

Serve as is or blend a portion or all of the soup with an immersion blender. Taste for seasoning. Serve with crusty bread.

Can be made in large batches and frozen. Can used as be the basis for a variety of soups.

 

[patandchickens]

This is all pretty much pantry staples (if you are a molasses person anyhow, and have some nuts on hand, although the nuts could be omitted and it'd still be decent) and is quite good:

Molasses Nut Bread

(makes 2 rather flat loaves)

1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c molasses
3/4 c milk
3/4 c cold water
1 c white flour
2 c whole-wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 c nuts (original recipe calls for walnuts, but almonds etc are good too)

Preheat oven to 275 F; lightly grease TWO loaf pans. Mix first four ingredients together well, then add dry ingredients and nuts, mix well, spoon into loaf pans. Bake 2 hours at 275 F. Remove from pans and cool on racks.

It comes out somewhat flat-shaped, a little bit like gingerbread (b/c of the molasses) but not really -- quite good. Note the absence of any butter/oil/shortening/eggs.


Pat, bugged into making this yesterday with 4 yr old son and munching on a slice right now

 

[me&thegals]

Butternut Squash Custard Cake
2 cups cooked squash/pumpkin
2 eggs
2 T butter, melted; or 2 T oil
-1/3 cup sugar
cup white cake mix (I keep one opened in my cabinet just for this cake)
pinch salt

Place all ingredients in a blendernot mixerand blend well. Pour into buttered pie dish and bake at 350 degrees for 45 min. Test with a toothpick. It should come out clear. May also add a dash of nutmeg and teaspoon cinnamon. Great with whipping cream!