Arlene Makes Meatcakes, Mashed Potatoes, and Imitation (Red Lobster) Cheese Biscuits!

Well, hello and welcome to At Home. It’s always nice to have you with us particularly when maybe at this time of the year you’ve been vacationing and you’ve missed us for a couple of weeks, well, we want you to know that we missed you. We knew you weren’t there. Not really, but I’m sure that this time of the year with vacations and finally the family’s all together to take that long waited vacation. You deserve it. We missed you, but we’re glad you’re back. Today we’re gonna be preparing an entire menu for you, something that you can have for a quick dinner for your family and get it on the table quickly, no long and very hard, difficult, lengthy instructions for these recipes. These are all very easy. Well, before we get started, I want to share a letter or two with you. This one says, “Dear Arlene, I really enjoy your show whenever I get the chance to see it. You encouraged me on your show last week,” which is really several months ago now, “to get back to church and to make it a weekly habit. I had been away from church for about a year after some very rough personal events had occurred in my life. I felt the need to get back to worship, but just never did. I attended services this Easter Sunday along with my husband and I felt wonderful. I really enjoyed the fellowship and getting back to church. It was a void in my life that needed to be filled. Thank you for your wonderful program. Keep encouraging people. I just needed that boost to get going.” And she signs her name Corrine. I appreciate that. That tells me that you’re hearing what I’m saying and not only watching what I’m doing but you’re hearing when I ask you and kind of advise you just to get back into church and fellowship, because it really is important. And this lady, and really, man, they’re from New Hope, Pennsylvania says, “I just found your show on my TV and I love it. Last week, I remembered the cabbage and the rice and the lasagna dish and made it with great success, but I can’t remember exactly the beef dish, so I’d very much appreciate the recipe for that one.” She says she watched the one about the pies and these are her husband’s all time favorites. “But to treat him I’ve always bought them because I was afraid to try. I do bake and cook a lot because I need dinners for aides for friends, and it’s an organization for helping shut-ins.” She says, “We serve 1,200 people a week, seven days a week. It’s all volunteer work and we are dedicated to feeding our friends. Please keep your show going. I love you all.” And this is God bless Gladys. We appreciate. This is a lady who has taken valuable time in her life and offered it as a volunteer to help someone that’s not as fortunate as she, or maybe you or me. Where would the world be without volunteers who care about other people? We’d all be in a mess. I know right here at Cornerstone Television our volunteer staff is very, very, very important to us. We couldn’t do what we do. I have a lady that helps me with my correspondence. She and I talk about what we want to say. When you write to us, you have specific questions. She does all the typing. She’s a very special lady to me, and that’s just one volunteer. We have other people come in and help us at different times when there’s something special, candy and cookies and things we’re making they’re involved and we need extra hands to help to make everything go smoothly. We appreciate volunteers, and I appreciate Gladys. And I wanna personally thank you, Gladys, for what you do to help feed 1,200 people a week. God bless you. We appreciate that. And we appreciate you. If you’ve got some extra time we want you to think about volunteering for an organization that could use your hands, maybe your feet, or maybe just all of you. We’ll be right back in just a minute to begin today’s program, stay tuned. Here’s a special hint just for you. Here’s today’s At Home Hint. A jar of marmalade is perfect in recipes that require orange peel and makes a delicious glaze for pork chops or chicken. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Please send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. Well, we’re back in the kitchen and we’re gonna make something called Meat Cakes today. And you can stuff these or make them plain. We’re just gonna start out with some ground round and I’ve already minced a clove of garlic because that’s a good flavor to get going with ground round all the time and any time. I’m gonna add a couple of beaten eggs. Now you say, Arlene, this is very similar to a meatloaf. And yeah, it is. It really is. Except that we like to put cracker crumb and things like that in with meatloaf. I don’t do that with this. I use instead, just some cubed bread and just let it air dry out a little bit. And honest, this is about three slices but I probably won’t use all that, probably two slices would be enough. We’re gonna add… Now I have some green onions and I’m gonna add those to the mix. Honest, this is one of those recipes you kinda do your own thing. You can add whatever you like to flavor the meat. That’s what you need to do. I’m gonna add some pepper, some finally chopped peppers. And we’re gonna mix, except maybe I’m gonna do the Worcestershire sauce. Worcestershire, Worcester sauce. Worcester, there we go! We’re gonna put about maybe a tablespoon of that. They always correct me and I always get it wrong. You know, I mean. I keep working on it, and a good, healthy squirt of ketchup. All right. Let me see if I have everything. We need a little salt, not too much. Okay. And some fresh ground black pepper. This makes a good flavor. Now we have our skillet going. We have a little bit of oil. You don’t wanna put too much oil in a skillet because you won’t need to. This is ground round and this is nice and lean, but you need a little that to flavor it. So just be… Don’t put too much in the skillet because you don’t need it. This will cook out. And we’re just gonna mix this very quickly. They’re laughing because it’s making squishing sounds but it always does because it has to. Now, I make this sometimes if we’re doing a cookout, I’ll make the regular ground meat. take the regular ground round and flavor it and season it. And then I will saute some onions and mushrooms and peppers together in a little bit of butter or something. Or you can just take a handful and do it raw, any way you want to. That’s the versatility of this recipe. There’s no set absolutes. It’s what you enjoy, what you like. You need the egg though, that has to hold it together. ‘Cause I tell you, it’s a binding agent, when you put it in, it will hold it together. So, you need that because if you’re gonna stuff them, then you’re always gonna have to have something that’s gonna hold them together. And what you do really, is take a nice flat hamburger like that patty, and you just sprinkle some… Put your some mushrooms in there and then you put some on top and you keep working with this until you have this patty, you have the mushrooms hidden, and you can make this fun with the kids because then you say to the kids, “Oh, there’s surprise in that meat cake for you and I bet you don’t know what it is.” And of course they don’t and it will encourage them maybe to eat. I’m gonna put this on and just let them brown in the skillet. Go ahead and get that going so it’s nice and warm. You can just… You can make them like this and put them in a muffin tins and bake them in the oven. That’s another easy way. You can make it just a plain patty like this and go ahead and cook it any way you want to because then you can make a gravy for on your potatoes. Or if you’re not having that kind of potato you could just brown up some additional peppers and onions and just put them over the top of it. And this is one of those versatile things, I keep saying that word because that’s really what it is. Some are full of mushrooms, some aren’t. Some just have the mix that we have created here, the flavor, and it’s… You’re gonna like it any way you do it. Other things you could add is chunks of cheese, you could put that in the middle. You could put… Makes a bread stuffing, instead of using the cubes of bread, go and make the stuffing like you do for a chicken, if you’re gonna stuff a chicken, make some of that and again, make your patty flat, put your stuffing in the middle of it, roll the patty up around the stuffing. You’d wanna make it with the butter though, so it would season a very well, and let’s put another… No, let’s put some of these in here and some more mushrooms. And then you have to be sure to roll the patty up. I always put a little bit of additional meat over the top of it to get it started, and then just kinda form it around until it’s completely covered. There’s your meat cake. I’ll tell you, your family is gonna enjoy this because you can put these on the grill, if you wanna do an outdoor thing, you can make them like that. Or you can boil them indoors in the oven. I kinda like to do them in a skillet though, because depending on the additional accompanying vegetables that I have with it, like if I do mashed potatoes, there’s wonderful flavor with all the vegetables that you have in this, like the peppers, the onions, the parsley, when you have all of that in there that gives wonderful drippings to make a very thin gravy for your mashed potatoes or whatever. So, this is one of those that you can make to your specification. You can see they’re browning beautifully, and you’re gonna be careful that you’re gonna want to keep turning these so that they brown evenly. And I like chives in this. You could put some fresh dill in this mixture. You could use a basil, if you really like basil, you could do this and pour some tomato sauce over the top of it. A lot of different ways you could do that. Put the tomato sauce over it when they’re completely and fully cooked. Add a piece of mozzarella cheese on top of that, you could have a pizza burger. Just a variety of ways and they’re all good and good for you. Now, we’re gonna make sure that these are browning and you wanna be watching them because they should be getting brown just like that. But to keep a careful eye, I really need a little spatula for this ’cause they’re… There we go. Let me get my spatula here. You want to… I tend to like to have beef cooked well but a lot of people don’t. So, these you can cook according to your own specifications. That’s important to do. Some people just don’t like it well done. Some people don’t like it when they cut into them and they’re rare, that doesn’t turn them on. Well, if it doesn’t, then just make sure that they’re cooked to the person’s specifications. We like to do these on a picnic because this is an easier way to fancy up a plain old hamburger and the flavor, you can control the flavor totally by the way you prepare. So, we’re gonna let those cook for a little while until they get done. I’m gonna put the lid on so that they start to cook through now that they’ve browned. All right. The next thing we’re gonna do while these are still cooking is we’re gonna make cheese biscuits. Now, I’m gonna ask you, have you ever been to the Red Lobster? I mean, that’s a chain of restaurants that we have here in Pittsburgh. I know they’re about all over the country. Do you ever eat those little cheese biscuits that they serve? Ugh! I found this recipe when I was looking through a magazine, it’s so easy, I had to… I just have to share it with you. You wouldn’t believe what they’re made out of. It’s not complicated. It’s Bisquick. So, you take two cups of Bisquick and two thirds of a cup of milk and half a cup of cheddar cheese. It’s too easy, isn’t it? It’s just too easy. Now, what you’re gonna do with that is stir it. We’re gonna stir it up. And the secret to this is after you stirred it up, then you have to beat it vigorously for 30 seconds. Because I think that that’s what makes it really good because when you beat it up and you stir vigorously for 30 seconds, it must add air to it or something. But apparently, I’m having a little problem stirring this with this spoon. Let me get this off. What you do with these after you have beat the dough up real well, then you drop them by tablespoons onto an iron grease cookie sheet and you bake them at a very hot oven, which is about 450 degrees. And you wanna make sure that oven’s good and hot before you to start these, all right? And you bake them for eight to 10 minutes and that’s all. Once they’re done and bring them out, take a half a cup of melted butter with garlic powder in there, and you just brush them over the top. That’s the cheese biscuits that you enjoy at the Red Lobster. Can you believe that? This makes about a dozen. Just spoon them out, just like this. And I’ll tell ya, those are one of the things I enjoy most when I go to the Red Lobsters is biscuits. Don’t eat them very often because I have a note on what the nutritional value is and this may make you change your mind about making them very often because they do have quite a bit of calories and quite a bit of grams of fat. I’m gonna go ahead and get these in the oven. We’ll be back right after this really important message. Well, we’ve just put our biscuits in the oven and now I’m taking a check on the meat cakes, look at that. I want you to know too, that when those brown drippings keep browning in the bottom, it’s gonna make a wonderful base for some gravy for some mashed potatoes or just over the meat cakes as you begin to prepare them, that for the final, for your completed meal. We have some potatoes that we have been taking care of here. They’ve been boiling during the whole program. And what I wanna do, is make sure that they’re good and soft because I’m gonna show you how to mash potatoes. I know that that’s something that a lot of you have written to me. The first time we did that, you were surprised and shocked at how you actually make mashed potatoes. But if you make them this way… The letters that I’ve read from you say, “You know, when I make them like that I used to wonder why in the world do I get these big lumps? Why do I get these big lumps?” But, if you make them like this, I’m gonna promise you, you will not get big lumps because there’s a procedure that you have to do, and if you’ll follow that, it will not be lumpy. All right. Our potatoes are nice and soft. That’s the first thing. Don’t try to mash a potato that’s hard. You have to be able to push… Well, here we go. You have to be able to push the mixing blades, mixer blades down into this. Okay, we got a problem here. See here. Now we’re all right. First thing you wanna do is add a piece of butter. Then you’re gonna add some salt. And you don’t wanna get carried away with the salt. So, just do it sparingly ’cause remember, there’s people who can’t eat as much salt. Maybe it’s what you like to do. And I’m gonna start now, don’t add the milk, don’t add anything until you have all of the lumps out of these potatoes at this point. If you mash them with adding milk or adding sour cream or adding anything else, you’re in trouble. I mean it, you are in trouble at this point. You can’t do it. Those potatoes will never… The lumps will not come out. You are mashing them and then you’re gonna whip them. If you try to whip them before you’ve mashed them, you got a major problem, you can’t do it. So, you just gonna go round and make sure all the lumps are out. Be careful. Looks pretty smooth. Okay? You can usually tell because the beaters will hang up on the lumps. All right, that looks pretty good. Now, we’re gonna use some sour cream. You could use heated milk, but we’re gonna use some sour cream in this. And I’m gonna put some fresh parsley, not too much in there. And if you want it to put pepper, this’ll be a good time to do pepper. But now we’re gonna whip them. This is whipping. See how creamy they get? They’ll get creamy when you whip them. When you mash them you take the lumps out and then you whip them when you put the milk and your other seasonings in. What you wanna do too is be sure that you scrape around the edge of that bowl to get all the other little goodies. There we go. Okay. These are about there. And you’re gonna want to keep these hot until you’re ready to serve. Put them back on the stove where it’s kind of warm and where they’re gonna stay hot without even having to heat them up in the microwave again. All right, now we’re gonna make a dressing for our romaine lettuce salad. It’s a wonderful dressing. It’s a sweet and sour hot dressing that my mother-in-law always made. And she could do this dressing better than anybody I know. Just take some pieces of bacon and you’re gonna let these cook in a heated skillet ’cause they’re gonna render their fat. Okay? They’re rendering the fat out of this and ’cause that’s gonna be the basis for your dressing. The ingredients in this is to let your bacon get cooking and nice and brown. You’re gonna add some vinegar to it, to make it sour, and then add some sugar to it, to make it sweet. And I have my bowl of greens here that I’m… And I would suggest that really, start using the other varieties of lettuce besides iceberg. There is other varieties and this romaine is absolutely wonderful, more vitamins in it, more nutrients in it than iceberg lettuce. And we’re also gonna use a red onion. And I kinda put the rings in because there are some people that don’t like onion. You can break up some pieces, but put them in rings so that if people don’t prefer not to eat it, well, they don’t have to. Tell you there’s nothing better than a good, fresh onion though. When vidalia is are in season, that’s the onion for me. I like the vidalias. And you can put some small pieces in just to flavor the whole dressing, if you’d like to. All right. The bacon’s really cranking here and it gets nice and brown, has to get brown. Then we’re gonna add our vinegar to it. What I would serve as an accompaniment with this, I would steam some broccoli, have our mashed potatoes, have a good salad. And I would even take our meat cakes which are just about done. They’re not too far from being done. You can see the wonderful juices at the bottom of this pan. You put some, just some flour in there and let it soak up the flour and kinda make what they call a roux, which is a grease in a flour together, and then pour some, either beef broth or just plain water because this flavor is so good. It will make a wonderful, wonderful gravy for your meat cakes. All right, now we’re gonna add, let’s add some of our… This again is according to what you like. Stand back when you do this, because the vapors and the fumes that come off of vinegar will take your breath away. So, just stand back. Depending on how much you need to make and then you’re accordingly gonna add the sufficient amount of sugar. Well, while I’m doing this, so this is gonna dissolve then we’re just gonna pour it over top of our lettuce. I want you to listen to this important message on how you can get today’s recipes. We’ll be right back.

[Narrator] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped self addressed business sized envelope to, At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy issue number with your request.

Well, we’re here at the table with all the good things, I hope you’re gonna think they’re good when you try them, that we’ve prepared for you today. There’s our meat cakes there. We’ve just made the thin gravy like I mentioned to you and put them on the platter decorated with a little bit of tomato and some parsley. Next to it are the mashed potatoes, the smooth creamy mashed potatoes with parsley on top. Then coming back is our salad with the wilted salad. See how that dressing, it just wilts down the romaine and I’ll tell you, that’s gonna be something that your family is gonna enjoy. Next to it, we’ve steamed some broccoli like I suggested, because it makes a nice color combination with the brown of the meat and the potatoes and the salad, and here are the biscuits. Don’t these look like the Red Lobster biscuits? Of course you have to cover them when they come out. As soon as they come out and they’re best to eaten hot, you have to cover them with some melted butter that you’ve put some garlic powder in. I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna try it. Believe it or not, this tastes like we’re sitting at the Red Lobster. I hope you’ll enjoy it. We always enjoy coming into your home. Don’t forget to write now for those recipes that are really important. You’ll get all of the instructions for everything you’ve seen today. And we hope we’ve been a blessing to you. Don’t forget to see us the next time. Be sure to join us because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here At Home. See you then.

[Narrator] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholey. Your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less from Wholey Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.