Lisa' Cousins are coming over in a few weeks

[La Lioness Priyanka]

can someone help me think of basic american food i can make w. maybe some variations.

i get very flummoxed when i have to cook w.out much spice

[LaydeeBug]

1. baked chicken always seems to do teh trick.

I'd serve mashers and maybe the veggie medley of your choice. Or maybe rice and asparagus?

None of those things are too spicy. :hi:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. thanks you. i will do a roast but i have served them roast chicken before

[IndianaJones]

3. boil up some hotdogs. nt.

[mnhtnbb]

4. Spaghetti and salad and garlic bread.

[Mabus]

5. If want to go really American, make frybread

You can make frybread tacos, fry bread meat pies, fry bread for dipping in honey or frybread to accompany a simple bean soup.

Here's one recipe for fry bread
2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
Oil for frying

Sift dry ingredients together. Lightly stir in the milk. Add more flour as necessary to make a dough you can handle. Knead and work the dough on a floured board with floured hands until smooth. Then pinch off fist-sized pieces of dough and work them into a flat, disk shape.

For Indian tacos, make sure the disks are flat. You could even shape them to have a bit of a depression in the center. Fry them up in a skillet (about 375°) or in a deep fat fryer. You'll have to flip them over to make sure they're golden on both sides. Then put them on some paper towels to cool. Top them with some hamburger or chicken, drop some lettuce on them, add some tomatoes and some salsa.

If you want, instead of layering the taco fixings on top, you can them on the fry bread dough and then fold them over and pinch/seal them shut before frying. Then, after the first bite, you can pour a little salsa into the opening.

Fry bread is also good hours later or the next morning. You can dip them in honey and you have a nice tasty treat.

Finally, I grew up eating them with along with soup, especially bean soup.

Fry bread was one of my mom's favorite things to make. It is really versatile and easy to make. As a matter of fact, we had fry bread tacos earlier this evening. My husband loves them.

[Kali]

8. actually, no

wheat flour came over with Europeans. But frybread: YUM!

[Mabus]

10. Well duh, but Indians made fry bread with cat tail flour long before wheat flour

and still do. It's a sweet flour. You can't buy it very many places. In fact I haven't seen it since I was a kid and even then most people made their own. My great-grandma is the one who taught me how to make it when I was a kid. You make it with youngish roots so you have to get them at the right time. You peel the roots, cut them and then let them dry. Then you pulverize them and you have flour. fwiw, you can also use the head of cat tails to make a pollen flour. That's better for stuff like pancakes and, of course, you have to wait until the cat tails mature.

When commodities came, fry bread was made with wheat flour. Before that, we used a lot of stuff for "flour".

:hi:

[Kali]

13. my fave: corn.

Never had any kind of cattail cuisine, but I have read of uses.

[Mabus]

14. For fry bread?

;) Personally I only like corn on the cob slathered in butter, in corn muffins or as caramel corn (and I've got a great recipe for that too). I've never had fry bread made with corn flour. I do like potatoes which are also American in origin - much to my dear evlbstrd's and my husband's collective Irish chagrin - and have used potato flour mixed with wheat flour to make fry bread. As for the cat tail flour, I think some other Indians I know add sweeten condensed milk to their fry bread is because it makes it taste more old school (like cat tail flour).

fwiw, my husband sometimes makes fun of me and calls me Euell Gibbons because when we go for walks he sees the beauty of nature and I'm checking out the flora for lunch possibilities. I used to give tours of a wetlands area and taught others about the plants and how to prepare and use them as both medicine and food.

[Kali]

17. no, unless tostadas count - heh

but other "breads" made with corn - tortilla types of things, gordas, tamales etc

Now my Navajo recipe for frybread calls for a little powdered milk. Obviously I'm in a drier climate all around - I would really have to hunt to find some cattails:P

[PeaceNikki]

6. Pot roast

with potatoes and carrots!

[XemaSab]

7. Why not cook Indian for them?

Make some simple chicken, a slighty fancy-but-mild curry, and rice. :shrug:

At least for one night. :shrug:

[Kali]

9. I'm kinda with XemaSab on this, unless there is some reason not to?

Cook what you are good/natural at. Yum!

[NewJeffCT]

11. how about treating them to the local Olive Garden?

j/k

spaghetti & meatballs?

that's pretty easy.

if you like fish, get some cod, roll it in breadcrumbs and bake for about 12 minutes at 450. I use milk to make the breadcrumb stick to the cod, and then drip a bit of butter on top.

[Kali]

12. not cornflake crumbs?

:hide:

[LaydeeBug]

15. Welp, there's nothing more American than pork chops and apple pie.

Maybe with some roasted fennel? Serve the apple pie a la mode.

[Ohio Joe]

16. One of my favorites

Take roast beef hash and fry it up, add a few eggs, spaghetti sauce, mushrooms, onions, mustard powder, garlic, black pepper. Heat it up and serve on top of shell pasta. yummy!