Sunday, March 22, 2009

You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to

Okay. Another round of potato recipes.
My favourite thing to do is to make stuffed potatoes. Cheap, easy, and filling.
Take the size of potato you figure you will be wanting to eat as a meal. You aren't going to want a small one this time, because you need to be able to cut the top off and get the insides out.

So...pick your potato, poke it a couple times with a fork. Put it in the oven at 400F (yes, you heard me right) for between 1 and 2 hours, depending on how crispy of a skin you like. Take it out and (wearing your oven mitts), slice off a thin slice from the top. Scoop the insides into a bowl, and then do one of two things:
If you are picky about the beauty of your meal, mix the scooped out potato with a bit of margarine, spoon it back in, and add toppings.
If you are not picky, mix the potato with margarine and all the fixings you plan to use, then spoon it back in.

I will give you my favourite stuffed potato recipe, but you can create your own. I have a cookbook called Stuffed Spuds in my cupboard...I recommend looking it up if you want more exotic versions than what I make. I will type up a few of the more fun ones another day, ones kids would like.

But as I was saying, my favourite stuffed potato...taco stuffed potatoes.
You need: salsa, sour cream, taco beef, cheese (lettuce and tomato if you want).
As I said before, once you have the scooped up potato mixed with margarine, you can either pile all the above on top,and enjoy, or if you are like me, mix the potato with the salsa,sour cream, taco beef, and cheese, and then put it back in the shell, and top with diced fresh tomato (or I suppose you could even mix that in), and if desired, lettuce.

One I tried recently was a stuffed potato that was essentially scalloped potato with cheese. Cook the potato, scoop it out, mix it with sauteed onions, garlic, and margarine, put it back in, sprinkle (or bury) with cheese, put it back in the oven until the cheese looks as brown as you like it. Enjoy. Or I suppose even mix the cheese in with the potato and then put back in the oven for 15- 20 minutes.

Just a side note: My potatoes are almost gone already! I will have to order more this week. A good sign is that when I mentioned this to my family, they did NOT groan and beg me to stop with the potatoes. They seem to be enjoying this as much as I am.

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