Super Easy Garlic Buns

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a son like one of our great nephews when he was young, you are going to end up with extra hot dog buns from time to time. When Nate was about nine, he stopped eating most things. Meat was especially out of the question and he had never liked vegetables anyway.

What he did like was hot dog buns covered with ketchup, and that’s what he ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He drank milk, so his diet included four of the five food groups: grain (flour), legumes (soybean oil), fruit (tomatoes) and milk. His parents took this dietary phase with equanimity, and after a year or two Nate one day decided to add white chicken to his list of acceptable foods which had already grown to include hamburger buns and plain white bread.

When I heard of this preference for white foods, I wondered if he had been mistakenly swapped with a Scandinavian baby when he was discharged from the nursery. If he had insisted on mayonnaise with the buns, that might have been the explanation, but his preference for ketchup ruled that out.

Anyway, Nate’s mother did not have to worry about what to do with leftover hot dog buns. With Nate around, there never were any leftover buns. He was a growing boy with a healthy appetite.

However, like many people we know, we often end up with extra hot dog buns. We usually buy three dogs at a meat market or one pound packages of hot dogs at the supermarket. The packages we buy today have two separate pouches with four dogs in each, so we can toss one in the freezer.

Buns, alas, are always sold in packages of eight or ten. One can freeze buns of course, but they take up lots of space in the freezer and are often forgotten by the husband who is sent out to buy hot dogs for supper. Contrary to what one might suppose, frozen hot dog buns do not last forever. They really are not very good even after only six or seven months.

Here is a quick way to turn those extra hot dog buns into a delicious appetizer that you and your friends will enjoy.

INGREDIENTS:

Hot dog buns
Butter
Powdered garlic
Dried basil
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Grated Parmesan cheese
Dried oregano

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 350º and melt a tablespoon of butter.

Separate and brush the buns with the melted butter and put them on a plate or other work surface. Sprinkle them with garlic powder, basil, and shredded mozzarella cheese. Top with a little grated Parmesan cheese and finish with a light sprinkling of oregano.

Put the buns on a baking sheet and bake them for about twelve minutes or until the cheese begins to brown.

Serve the buns warm from the oven.

NOTES: You can substitute olive oil for the butter. There are of course other ways to use the extra buns. For instance, you can dry them and make bread crumbs to top your next casserole or add to the hamburger when you make a meatloaf, but you won’t have any leftovers if you make garlic buns.

Mushroom, Spinach, and Sausage Penne

When I was growing up, every kid I knew loved Popeye the Sailor Man. We followed the comic in the Sunday newspapers and roared with our friends when a Popeye cartoon came on the screen before the matinee at the theater Saturday afternoons. When we tried to cadge a Coke at the drug store, we loved to promise, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday,” but since the soda jerks knew us we were less successful than Wimpy who loved to beg for hamburgers.

Adults liked the comics ands cartoons too. By 1938 Popeye was a more popular cartoon character than Mickey Mouse. He got his strength from eating canned spinach. When his girlfriend Olive Oyl was in danger from the nasty Bluto, Popeye needed only to gulp down a can of the green stuff to get the best of his foe.

Popeye was capable of great things. One miraculous thing he did was to increase the consumption of canned spinach in the US by nearly a third during the 1930’s. The most popular brand was Popeye Spinach, which was the kind my mother forced us to eat at least once a month. “It’s good for you, it has lots of iron to make you strong like Popeye.” I figured that he had to be strong to eat the stuff.

After we were married, Jerri continued the torture. Every couple of weeks she served canned spinach with a chopped hardboiled egg and vinegar. Though it’s still not my favorite, her recipe for canned spinach made it palatable if not exactly a gourmet food.

Then one day I discovered that I liked spinach, fresh spinach to be exact. A friend sneaked some into a salad and when I asked what the dark green leaves were that tasted so good, she told me that it was spinach from their garden. I have been hooked ever since.

The recipe below is further evidence that lightly cooked fresh spinach is a food of the gods.

INGREDIENTS:

1 T olive oil
1/2 lb. breakfast sausage
8 oz. penne pasta
Water and salt to cook the penne
8 oz. mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
12 oz can cream of mushroom soup
2 – 3 T dry white wine
2 – 3 cups chopped spinach
Grind or two of black pepper

PROCEDURE:

Start warming the water for the pasta over low heat.

Clean and slice the mushrooms and put them into a medium bowl.

Wash and coarsely chop the spinach.

Put a tablespoon of olive oil into a large skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and break it into small pieces. Cook it until it is no longer pink, seven to eight minutes.

Remove the paper from the garlic and mince it. Add the mushrooms to the sausage and cook them for four to five minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook for another two or three minutes.

Bring the pasta water to a boil while the sausage is cooking. Add a teaspoon of salt and the penne. Cook until it reaches the al dente stage, about ten minutes, then drain it.

Add the cream of mushroom soup, wine and Parmesan cheese to the sausage and stir for two or three minutes. Turn the heat to low and add the spinach and pasta. Grind some black pepper into the mixture and stir to mix well until the spinach has wilted.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

NOTES: Spinach may not make you as strong as Popeye, but it has significant amounts of vitamins A, C and K, so it really is good for you.

We use either sauvignon blanc or Chardonnay wine. In a pinch you could use vermouth, but avoid any of the sweeter wines like Riesling or Gewürztraminer.

This recipe benefits a lot from the spinach, so don’t be afraid to add a generous three cups of it, but if you are cooking for people who announce that they don’t like spinach, use only two cups and tell them that the green stuff is kale. If they say that they don’t like kale either, you might offer them peanut butter sandwiches.