Cheating with Your Wood Cookstove: Gooey Butter Cake

A quick internet search reveals that Gooey Butter Cake is a pretty common recipe, but I didn't know that several years ago when I found this recipe in the back of my mother-in-law's mini-van.  It had been written on a fancy recipe card and then photocopied onto an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper.  It was attributed to someone named Hilda and neither Leona nor anyone else in the family knew where the recipe had come from.  No one knew Hilda, and no one even recognized the handwriting on the recipe card!

I made this according to the recipe the first time, but I wasn't that impressed.  I tweaked it just a bit this time, and the reviews are better, but I still wouldn't call this a stellar dessert.  However, if you need something a little exciting but don't have much time, this could do in a pinch, and because it is so rich, a little goes a long way.

For the bottom layer, here is what you will need:

1 chocolate cake mix (this is why I call this recipe cheating)
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp. vanilla

The original recipe called for a yellow cake mix, but my first change was to use a chocolate one.  I would say that yellow cake is probably my favorite, and if given a choice, chocolate cake is the last thing I would take. However, the bottom layer of this cake has kind of a brownie texture, so I opted for a chocolate cake mix, and that suits my eaters much better.   Lately, I've taken to putting about a tsp. of burnt sugar flavoring into brownies, so I also added that.  If you are unable to find burnt sugar flavoring, you can fairly easily make your own burnt sugar syrup.

As always when baking in a wood cookstove, the first step is to build your fire and begin heating your oven to the desired temperature.  You need a moderate oven for this cake, and I think it is best to shoot for around 325ºF.

While your oven is heating, begin melting your butter over the coolest part of the cooktop.

Combine the melted butter, cake mix, eggs, vanilla, and burnt sugar flavoring.  This could be done by hand, but I used an electric mixer because the mixture is so stiff.

Once everything is thoroughly combined, transfer to a greased 9"x13" baking pan.

Press the mixture into the bottom of the pan, spreading evenly all the way to the edges.  Buttered fingertips make this process a bit easier.

For the second layer you will need these ingredients:

1 pound of powdered sugar

8 oz. softened cream cheese

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

Combine all of these ingredients until smooth.  Again, I used an electric mixer.

Spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the cake mixture.  I am careful to not let it touch the edges of the pan.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 40 minutes.  "Hilda" forbid me from peeking during this time, but I did take a gander in the oven at about thirty-eight minutes.  I think it is generally bad wood cookstove practice to never peek.  Mind you, I'm not advocating opening the oven door every few seconds, but we have to be reasonable.  When Meme taught me to bake, she never used a timer for anything.  In fact, she didn't even own a timer. Instead, we would take casual looks at the kitchen clock and rely on the sense of touch and sight.

I used to have a blind friend who could tell whether something was done baking by the smell of it.  However, wood cookstove ovens are not vented into the kitchen, and the Margin Gem even has a gasket around the oven door, so you can rarely smell baked goods until you open the oven door at least a crack.  

What Gooey Butter Cake looks like when it is done baking.
If you look closely at the oven thermometer, you can see that
the oven was running at about 325ºF.  I wouldn't go much
hotter than that.

Remove from the oven and cool completely.  You could eat this cake at this point, but I have to say that I think this one benefits quite a bit from being covered very tightly and refrigerated for at least a day.

These are extremely rich, and I find that a 1"x1" square is plenty to satisfy my sweet tooth for quite a while.

I hope you enjoy them!

Cheating with Your Wood Cookstove: Broccoli Rice Casserole

I'm totally embarrassed by the recipe that I'm sharing with you today.

It is not healthy.

It is not original.

It is not from scratch.

It is not one made from all homegrown foods.

You've probably all seen it before.

But .  .  .

It tastes SOOO good!

This 1970s-era recipe was one of only two casseroles that my mom could get the three of us kids to eat while I was growing up.  We all loved it, and it was frequently requested on our birthdays when we got to choose what we ate for all three meals that day.  I still really enjoy it, and because of the cooking method, it is extremely well suited to being made on a wood cookstove.

You are going to need the following ingredients:

1/4 cup butter (I usually reduce this to 1 or 2 TBSP.)

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 can cream of mushroom soup

An 8 oz. jar of Cheez Whiz (GASP! I'll talk more about this later.)

10 oz. frozen broccoli

1 cup instant rice

Here is what you do:

1) Build your fire so that eventually you will have a moderate oven.

 

2) While the oven is heating, gently sauté the onion and celery in the butter in a very large frying pan.  I like to use my Magnalite chicken fryer for this because it has much taller sides, and that prevents spillage on the cooktop. I usually add a sprinkling of pepper to this mixture, too.

 

3) Once the onion is translucent, add the rest of the ingredients in the order given, stirring after each addition.  You may need to add a little water if the mixture doesn't flow freely, but don't do this until the broccoli has thawed so you know how much moisture it will release.

 

4) After the mixture has started to bubble a little, pour it into a greased 7" x 12" casserole dish.

5) By this time, the oven should be running at about 350º.  Pop the casserole into the oven for about a half hour.  It should be bubbly around the edges and beginning to brown a little on the top.

 

6) Remove from the oven and serve.

 

My mom always served this with our homemade applesauce, and I think this is an excellent combination.  When I was little, Mom would always make hamburgers (sans bun; we never had hamburgers with buns) to go with this as our meat.  Later on, she began to put a pound of cubed ham into the casserole.  This adds a lot of flavor to this and makes it a one-dish meal.  That is my favorite way to make it, but I didn't have any ham to put in it this evening.  If you do put the ham in it, you'll need a bigger casserole dish.  I often use a 9" x 13" dish then.

I have made this casserole with home-canned broccoli quite successfully.  It is a good way to use up a vegetable that many don't find very good when canned.

Now, about that Cheez Whiz.  You can substitute other cheeses or other cheese sauces here as you see fit and your taste permits.  You could also make your own mushroom white sauce and parboil regular rice, and then this recipe is no longer cheating.  It's still a great cookstove recipe, though, because you take advantage of the hot cooktop while your oven is heating to bake the casserole.

And since I'm so embarrassed that I like this dish so much, let's just agree to not talk about it anymore. 

Thanks.  I knew you'd understand.

Cheating with Your Cookstove: Using the Warming Oven to Make Rice

I have always liked rice.  I can remember it being one of my favorite foods when I was very little, perhaps because Mom started feeding it to me shortly after I was weaned from rice baby cereal.  On Mom's side of the family, both my grandma and Aunt Meme made it.  It was always served as a starch in place of the usual potato, and it was sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.  At school it was served the same way, only they put raisins in it too.  I wonder if this is a regional thing because I remember talking to a lady from Southern California when I was in college, and she thought I was crazy when I told her about putting sugar and cinnamon on rice.  She said that she grew up eating it with salt on it.  Maybe you readers can clear that mystery up for me.

Anyway, with my new schedule permitting me to be home more often for noon dinner, I have sometimes resorted to using instant rice as my staple.  The way I always used to make instant rice was by bringing the designated amount of water to a boil in a saucepan that has a tight-fitting lid.  Then, I would add an equal amount of instant rice, cover the saucepan tightly, remove it from the fire (or slide it as far away from the firebox as possible), and let it stand five minutes.

However, I'm really pleased with my new method.  It takes advantage of both the warming oven and the ever-present teakettle.  The first thing to do is put the teakettle directly over the fire so that the water is boiling.  Then, half fill a clean pint jar with instant rice.

The teakettle boiling directly over the fire with
the instant rice ready in the pint jar in the
warming oven.  A hamburger steak is frying to
the right of the teakettle.

Pour a cup of boiling water over the rice in the pint jar.  Make sure to stir the mixture a little so that all of the rice has been exposed to the water.  Then lay a canning lid over the mouth of the jar, put it into the warming oven and close the door.  (I keep a stash of clean, used canning lids on hand.)

The instant rice and water mixture just after being put in the
warming oven.

Of course, all that is to be done now is to let the rice stand in the warming oven for five minutes.

The finished rice ready to be served.

This method of preparing instant rice has a some advantages:

a) A little time is saved by not having to bring water to a boil in a saucepan (although, if your teakettle is hot, you could save time by pouring boiling water into the saucepan).

b) If your cooktop is small and cluttered with other cooking vessels, your rice at least won't be taking up any precious cooking space.

c) If you don't eat all of the rice, the leftovers are already in a container that can conveniently go in the refrigerator.

d) I think the canning jar is easier to wash than a saucepan.

If you have a warming oven and have occasion to prepare instant rice, give this method a try and let me know how it works for you.  I've classified this as a "cheating with your cookstove" post because instant rice is definitely "cheating" in my book.  Sometime I'll have to share Nancy's and my favorite way to prepare rice.  It is definitely not instant, and the result is much tastier than this, but this does in a pinch.  We all get into cooking pinches due to time constraints sometimes, and I just want to show that a wood cookstove can be the cook's best friend even in one of those pinches.

The pictures you see are from the preparation of my noon dinner today.  Marjorie was very busy since the day was largely spent making different things for Christmas.  My niece Josie came over and we made our traditional recipe for fudge and then tried a vintage recipe for orange fudge, which didn't turn out too well.  I was also boiling cider to make a pork loin for Nancy's family's Christmas. 

In an idle moment, Josie snapped a picture through the kitchen window of my brother's cattle, and she was dead set on me sharing it with you in this post.  Hope you enjoy it.

Cheating with Your Wood Cookstove: Creamed Chicken over Biscuits

I don't remember exactly when my mom started making creamed chicken over biscuits, but I remember that I was not a little kid anymore, that it was an instant hit, and that I wondered why she hadn't tried it on us earlier.  Of course, maybe it was all very strategic.  If she had served it to us too early, our palates wouldn't have been developed well enough to fully appreciate the pleasure of this stick-to-your ribs dish, and we might have summarily rejected it as we did with several more "grown up" foods that she tried on us.  She likes to tell people how long her list of recipes-to-try-again-when-the-kids-are-gone was when we were young.

At any rate, it was Mom who initially got me hooked on this entree.  My mother-in-law also has her family hooked on her version of Creamed Chicken over Biscuits, but her method for making it is entirely different.  Both recipes are delicious, but in this post I'm going to share my mom's version.  

You can see from the labels on this post, that this is a dish made from leftovers.  Therefore, prior to this meal, you need to have roasted a chicken (to read about one way to do that in a wood cookstove click here) and made gravy from the drippings.  We had several people in my family as guests for a Sunday dinner back in August and served a roasted chicken with all the trimmings.  After the meal, Nancy picked the leftover chicken off the bones, and we saved the leftover gravy too.  A few days later, we made Creamed Chicken over Biscuits.

The first thing to do is to build a really hot fire.  Biscuits bake best in a quick oven, and so I always use a lot of little sticks, or "biscuit wood," to accomplish this.

The hot fire built of "biscuit wood" in the Margin Gem wood
cookstove.

 

To make biscuits, I used to always cut the shortening into the flour, but I've taken to a different method of incorporating shortening that my friend Leah told me about.  Now, while the oven is heating, I melt my shortening on the stove.  Sometimes I use the warming oven, other times the lid of the reservoir--wherever I think the heat will be sufficient.  This time I used a very small saucepan on the top of the stove.  I melted perhaps a 1/3 cup of Crisco.

While the shortening is melting, sift two cups of flour into a mixing bowl and add around a tablespoon of baking powder to it.  At this point you might sprinkle a little salt in too if you wish.  Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Once the shortening has melted, pour it into a heat-proof measuring cup. Then add enough cold milk or buttermilk to make one cup altogether while stirring constantly.  The coldness of the liquid causes the shortening to congeal again, thus allowing it to be evenly incorporated into your flour. Brilliant!  (I hate washing the pastry blender.)

Pour the buttermilk/shortening mixture over the flour mixture and toss lightly to mix.  Don't work the dough too hard as that will make for tough biscuits later!

Turn the dough out onto a floured board.

Knead the dough a few times, then pat out until it is about an inch thick.

Cut the biscuits in the shape and size you desire.  For many years I cut biscuits with an old metal drinking glass that Gramps kept by the utility room sink when our house was still his home.  The problem was that cutting the biscuits resulted in compressing the air in the glass, and sometimes it would "burp," causing the biscuit to become misshapen.  Last year, one of the fundraisers at school had a set of biscuit cutters on it, and I'm very pleased with my four various sized biscuit cutters.

Six beautifully cut biscuits and one not so beautiful because
it is the trimmings patted together.

Let the biscuits rest for at least five minutes.  The baking powder will cause them to rise a little, and they will be nice and light.

The next step is to put together the creamed chicken.  Here is where this recipe really qualifies as what I would call "cheating."  To whatever leftover gravy you have from the roast chicken dinner, add a can of cream of chicken soup.  Add whatever leftover chicken you have to the gravy/soup mixture.

Pop the biscuits into the hot oven now.

Put the chicken/gravy/soup mixture on the stove to come to a boil.  You probably won't want to put this right over the firebox since your fire will be so hot for baking the biscuits.  You can see in the picture below that mine was closer to the reservoir than to the fire.

If the gravy was quite thick, you may need to add a little water or milk. Don't do this until you've had a chance to warm the gravy/soup mixture, though, because leftover gravy congeals in the refrigerator and may look deceptively thick until it is heated through.

The soup/gravy/chicken combination coming to a boil over
gentle heat.

Once the creamed chicken has come to a good boil, move it to a place where it can be kept hot while your biscuits finish baking.

The biscuits finishing up in the oven while the
creamed chicken is staying warm on a simmering
pad on the back of the range.

To serve, pour the creamed chicken over the biscuits and enjoy.  I like to drizzle a bit of honey over the top of it all.

The finished product.

Notes:

 

1. You could make your own white sauce instead of using the can of cream of chicken soup.  Then this recipe is no longer cheating.

 

2. My favorite side dish for this is peas, which I like to mix into the creamed chicken mixture.  Peas are not Nancy's favorite side dish, though, so you don't see them in the picture.

 

3. As with most chicken recipes, turkey can be substituted in this dish, and this is one of our family's favorite post-Thanksgiving meals.

The Height of Irony: Frozen Pizza Cooked in a Wood Cookstove

Tonight's supper: frozen pizza.  It got a little more brown than
we might have liked because we were glued to kmaland.com while
we followed the local high school football scores.  Go Vikes and Eagles!

Q: What do a tired teacher and his wife have for supper on the last day of the first quarter of school?
A: Frozen pizza.

Yup.  It's sad.  Very, very sad.

However, this English teacher's mind appreciates the irony of cooking the quintessential modern convenience food in the appliance which symbolizes the kitchens of a century ago.  I can't help but smile whenever I think about it.  Weird, I know.  I never have claimed to be normal.

I told Nancy that I'd been wanting to blog about cooking frozen pizza in a wood cookstove for quite some time, but I was a little ashamed to do so.  She--ever the pragmatist--said that it would be a good post because it shows that wood cookstove cooks can be regular people too.  Pretty wise sometimes, isn't she?

The Margin Gem is particularly convenient for baking a frozen pizza on a busy night because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it is so easy to get the oven hot in a hurry.   To do so, I just build the fire with a lot of small pieces of wood--usually nothing larger than two inches in diameter. 

I've discovered that the thermometer in the oven door is not only inaccurate, but it is also slow.  The oven thermometer that is to the right of the pizza in the picture above seems to be very accurate, and it shows that as the oven heats, it is always hotter than the thermometer in the door indicates.  This proves true that some wood cookstove thermometers merely measure the temperature of the oven door rather than the oven.

Once the oven has reached the appropriate temperature, you want to back off on adding so much fuel because you don't want the temperature of the oven to continue to climb.  In fact, depending on how much fuel is in the firebox and at what phase of combustion it is in when the oven reaches temperature, I can just close the drafts on the Margin Gem, and that will maintain the oven temperature for the short amount of cooking time that a frozen pizza needs.

My mother always served homemade applesauce on pizza nights, and now both my brother and I (and maybe my sister too, but we haven't discussed it) feel like pizza has to be served with the wonderful stuff.  I didn't know that he had this same penchant until his wife mentioned how strange it seemed to her.

When we have frozen pizza, however, it is a last-minute, when-we-don't-have-a-better-plan event, so there is rarely defrosted applesauce waiting in the refrigerator.  This used to mean that we'd have to negotiate thawing a tub of it in the microwave or chip away at it and eat it as slush.  Now, I just put a container of it in the warming oven as soon as we are beginning to heat the oven for the pizza.  By the time the pizza is cooked, enough of the applesauce is thawed to be able to serve it with the pizza.

Well, there you go: the ultimate "cheating with your cookstove" post.  If you would like to comment, please be gentle.

Oh, and please don't tell me how evil frozen pizzas are.  My imagination is probably more vicious than the facts.

Poor Man's Chicken Monterey

Perhaps a better title for this dish would have been "Hurried Man's Chicken Monterey."  Either way, this is not the elegant and involved sort of Chicken Monterey that you can find on other Internet sites. This is just one of those quick main dishes that a person can make when one hasn't even had the time to defrost the meat before preparing a meal.  Unfortunately, with my busy schedule this happens sometimes, and "Poor Man's Chicken Monterey" can be a delicious solution to the problem.  I think that this recipe would be handy for unexpected company, too.

The first thing to do is melt a little butter (about a Tblsp.) in the bottom of a skillet for which you have a tight-fitting lid.  If you are a conscientious objector when it comes to butter, you could use a little olive oil or (gasp!) go completely rogue and use a modern non-stick pan without any fat.  Do this right over the firebox.

Next, place pieces of boneless chicken in the hot butter.  Ideally, you would have had time to defrost these, but I've made this several times when that wasn't the case, and everything works just fine.  Sprinkle the tops of the chicken pieces with the seasoning of your choice.  I was in a hurry and unashamedly used Mrs. Dash.

Frozen pieces of chicken placed in the hot butter and seasoned
with a little Mrs. Dash.  These are boneless thigh pieces that
we buy in bulk at Sam's Club.   Did you notice my well-loved
Magnalite skillet?  It belonged to Great-Grandma Gladys.  She
died before I was born, but I have a few pieces of her cookware.

Leave the skillet over the fire and cover it tightly.  The chicken will begin to cook, thawing as it does so, and the steam trapped in the pan will speed the process.

At this point, you could begin to fry one slice of bacon for each piece of chicken that you are cooking. In the pictures below, we used pre-cooked bacon which had been given to us.

A glimpse of the chicken after the lid has been on for awhile
and it has been turned once.

Turn the chicken so that it can brown a little on both sides, watching carefully that it doesn't get too dry.  I add a little hot water from the teakettle every once in a while to make sure that there is always plenty of steam to speed the cooking.  You don't want to flood the chicken because then it won't brown at all, and you want the subtle change in flavor that browned meat gets.  However, you really aren't out to fry the chicken either.

Once the chicken has browned a bit on both sides, you can move the chicken away from the fire to a much lower heat to continue cooking until it is done, keeping the lid on the skillet.  For the boneless thighs that you see in the picture, they were basically cooked by the time they had gotten to this point, but keep in mind that they were considerably thinner than what a chicken breast would be, for example.  I always cut into the thickest piece of chicken to see if the juices run clear in order to tell whether it is cooked.

The chicken is completely cooked and has been moved over
to the coolest part of the cooktop near the reservoir.

Once the chicken is completely cooked, place quarter-inch slices of Monterey Jack cheese atop each piece. 

Thick slices of Monterey Jack cheese on each piece of chicken.

Replace the lid on the skillet to let the cheese begin to melt.  Once the cheese has started melting, place strips of cooked bacon on top of the cheese.

Cooked bacon strips added to the top of the chicken and cheese.

Return the lid to the skillet long enough to let the heat and steam inside of the pan heat the bacon and let it stick to the cheese.  This takes very little time.  The chicken is now ready to be served.



Poor Man's Chicken Monterey, a brown rice and mushroom pilaf
that I concocted (which Nancy tasted and spit out and I considered
delicious) and fresh pineapple wedges: our noon dinner two
Sundays ago.

Here are some variations of this dish that we think have been successful:

1. Instead of bacon, sliced, canned mushrooms make a delicious and low-fat (but not low-sodium) substitute.

2. When they are in season, a slice of ripe tomato between the chicken and the cheese is very appetizing.  Wait to put on the cheese until the tomato has cooked a little, though.  I have also used home-canned, whole tomatoes in the same manner and had good results.

3. I have eaten a similar, fancier version of Chicken Monterey that was cooked under a broiler where slices of artichoke hearts were put on top of the chicken with the slice of fresh tomato.

As I've done it here, this dish is embarrassingly easy, but it is a tasty main dish for a busy day.

Cheating with Your Wood Cookstove: Shrimp and Broccoli Alfredo

I hadn't planned on writing a "cheating" post quite so soon in my blogging experience.  I had thawed a beef roast today, intending to post a blog about one of the ways that I like to fix a beef roast on the cookstove, but life got in the way.  I didn't get the roast started early enough because I was working on getting ready for the family reunion that we will be hosting in a little less than two weeks.  Thus, when Nancy called to let me know that she was on her way home from work and that she was too hungry to wait for a roast, I had to resort to plan B.

Plan B was what I call cheating because it was a combination of ready-made foods.  Hey, it happens sometimes! 

The reason that I want to include these cheating recipes on the blog, though, is to drive the point home that cooking on a wood cookstove doesn't necessarily mean that every meal is going to take an eternity of prep time.  I read somewhere that cooking on a wood cookstove tends to draw people toward cooking meals that generally take more time than usual just because of the nature of the stove.  This may be true, but it doesn't have to always be that way.  My approach to living with a wood cookstove is that I want this beast in the kitchen to do what I want it to do, and occasionally that means that I need a meal in a hurry.

If you start with a cold stove, the meal in this post can be completed in less than an hour.  If the stove is already going before you start, this meal could be complete in about a half hour.

With a hot fire in the firebox, I start with my pans arranged in the manner that you see above.  The large pot in the back is water coming to a boil for the pasta.  The saucepan to the right has about a half inch of water boiling in the bottom to steam broccoli.  The frying pan in the front has a couple tablespoons of butter melting in it to saute the shrimp and mushrooms.  Once again, the coffee pot and teakettle are filled with cold water to just absorb extra heat since our summer days are still climbing into the nineties with high humidity.

I add a good two cups or so of uncooked bowtie pasta to the boiling water.  I'm sorry about the vague measurements; I'm just that sort of cook.  You'll have to be patient with me.

If I were a good Italian, I suppose that I would have added a little olive oil and salt to the water.  You can feel free to do so, but I'm not a good Italian.  I'm not even a bad Italian.  I'm mostly German, but that has nothing to do with anything.

I tend to not salt much while I'm cooking because my mother didn't salt much when she cooked.  Furthermore, since there is a purchased jar of alfredo sauce coming up, I can depend on it to have plenty of sodium for me.  I also figure that people can salt their own plates at the table so that they get the flavor that they desire.

 I then put a lid on the pasta.  This may seem like a gratuitous picture, but I want to take this opportunity to talk about the importance of lids while cooking on a cookstove.  When I'm cooking on an electric or gas stove, I usually use lids because of the energy savings that they afford.  The same is true on the cookstove.  Since a wood-fired range generally provides a less intense heat than a gas or electric range, the lids can help ensure faster cooking.  The other reason that I am a proponent of using lids on a cookstove is because sometimes it is necessary to add fuel to the fire while you are cooking.  I tend to feed the fire through the front top lid, and occasionally small pieces of bark, splinters, dirt, or fly ash will land on the cooktop as a result of this.  The lids make sure that none of this debris lands in your food. 

Just being honest here, folks. 

I can hear my mother's voice right now, saying of the debris (of the skinned knee, of the bug you accidentally swallowed as you were walking up to Gramps and Gran's, of the manure you fell into, etc.), "It won't kill you."  She's right; it's not a big deal, but I want to be a clean cook.

I put frozen cooked shrimp into the butter to begin cooking.  I think that we put about two cups in this batch because we are shrimp lovers. 

Opened the firebox for this shot just to prove that we are indeed cooking over a wood fire.
I get tired of seeing posed shots on the net where pots, pies, and loaves of bread are put
all over the cooktop of a wood cookstove in a vain attempt at making the stove look
like it is really in use.  Nothin' but the real thing here.

Unfortunately, you'll have to click on the pic to see that I've added a drained can of mushrooms to the shrimp in the frying pan.  About two cups of frozen broccoli are steaming in the saucepan behind the shrimp.  You'll note that the pasta pot has been moved off the firebox because it was boiling too hard while it was directly over the fire.  Moving a pot to the right (or away from the firebox) is the same as turning down the heat on a modern range.

Once the shrimp was thoroughly heated and the broccoli had steamed long enough to be hot, I scoop the broccoli out of the water and put it in with the shrimp and mushroom mixture.

Then I poured in a jar of alfredo sauce.  You can use homemade alfredo sauce at this point, too.  Do what you want here.

I let this cook together, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is finished cooking.  Usually, this is only a few minutes.

I put a bed of pasta on a plate, and pour some of the shrimp alfredo mixture over the top, and supper is served.

Shrimp and broccoli alfredo, a quick wood cookstove meal.

Shrimp and Broccoli Alfredo

2 good cups uncooked bowtie pasta

2 T. butter

2 good cups frozen cooked shrimp

1 can mushrooms, whatever size you want

1 jar alfredo sauce, or about a pint homemade

2 cups frozen broccoli

1. Bring sufficient water for cooking pasta to a boil.  Add pasta to boiling water and reduce heat to simmer.

2. Saute shrimp and mushrooms in butter.

3. Steam broccoli in about a half inch of water until hot.

4. Remove broccoli from steaming water and add to shrimp and mushroom combination.

5. Add alfredo sauce to shrimp and broccoli and let cook together until pasta is finished cooking.

6. Drain pasta.

7. Place a bed of pasta on each plate, pour shrimp alfredo mixture over the top.

Yield: Four servings.