Easy Minestrone--originally from "Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook

1/4 cup butter or margarine

10 ounce package frozen peas and carrots, thawed

1 cup diced celery

1 cup diced onions

1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

1 teaspoon  dried Italian seasoning

1 28 ounce can Italian tomatoes

1 can tomato paste flavored with basil and garlic

1 - 13 3/4 oz cans chicken broth (or vegetable broth), prepare to can directions

1 box chicken stock

1/2 cup shredded cabbage

1/2 lb zucchini, sliced thin

1 can green beans

1 16 ounce can kidney beans, add liquid to pot

1 16 ounce can garbanzo beans, add liquid to stock

1/2 cup dried pasta 

Grated parmesan cheese to taste

One hour before serving: In Dutch oven over medium heat, melt butter or margarine and saute peas and carrots, celery, onions and parsley for 10 minutes. Stir in all other ingredients and bring to a boil. Add pasta. Reduce heat, simmer 30 minutes. Serve with parmesan cheese and croutons.

Edited to add: roasted, chopped garlic or bottled minced garlic in oil improves the flavor

Pasta may be prepared separately and stored separately to add to warmed soup to keep the pasta from absorbing liquid. If that happens, add water to soup when reheating leftovers.

from Dromedary Chopped dates and Fleischman's yeast pamphlet

from Bisquick recipe pamphlet

Impossible Ham and Swiss Pie

2 cups cubed, fulled cooked smoked ham

4 oz shredded Swiss cheese

1/2 chopped onion

1-3/4 cups milk

4 eggs

1 cup Bisquick baking mix

1/2 teaspoon salt 

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Directions: Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease pie plate 10-1-1/2 inches. Mix remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour into prepared pie plate. Bake until golden brown and set, 35-40 minutes. Cool 5 minutes before serving. 6-8 servings.

Recipe from "Food.com",

Copycat Cracker Barrel Baby Carrots

2 pounds baby carrots

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons butter

Place baby carrots in a pot and add water to cover carrots. Bring to a boil, cover pot, lower heat, and simmer 30 minutes until carrots are fork tender. Remove from heat. Pour off half to three quarters of liquid and add remaining ingredients to pot. Stir.

Baked Ham

5 lb Cook's Brand Less Sodium Fully-Cooked Ham

Whole Cloves

Dark Brown Sugar

Remove packaging from ham. Place ham cut side down in a large pot. Cover ham with water. Place over high heat until boiling. Reduce flame to medium and simmer pot for 30 minutes.

Remove to aluminum broiling pan lined with foil, putting brown sugar on bottom of prepared pan to coat cut side. Score checkerboard pattern on outside of ham. Insert whole cloves into scoring points.  Pat brown sugar on fatty parts or make a glaze of water and brown sugar and pour over ham. cover with foil and seal sides. Poke holes in foil to vent. Bake 45 minutes at 400 degrees to seal in sugar.

Pineapple Stuffing - from   baking moment.com/pineapple-stuffing

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened 

1/2 cup granulated sugar 

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 

4 large eggs 

20 ounces of crushed pineapple and juice

5 slices soft bread, ( brioche, white, potato bread or Hawaiian bread or rolls) torn into chunks 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly mist a 1.5 quart casserole dish with cooking spray. 

In bowl of electric mixer, mix butter, sugar and salt until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs to bowl, one at a time and mix until each egg fully incorporated before adding next egg. 

Scrape sides of bowl with spatula and fold in pineapple and juice, mixing by hand until smooth. Toss in bread chunks and mix until bread is coated with pineapple mixture. Transfer to pregreased casserole/baking dish and bake one hour until top is golden and bubbly.

Serve warm with ham.

https://www.thekitchn.com/grandmas-potato-salad-recipe-review-23048168

My Grandma’s Been Making This Potato Salad for 50 Years and No Other Recipe Tops It

byKELLI FOSTER

published JUL 19, 2020

It’s impossible to even think about potato salad without my grandma’s version immediately coming to mind. It’s been a mainstay at nearly all family functions for as long as I can remember. Picnics and cookouts, lazy summer days by the pool, Easter dinner — you name it, potato salad was on the table. Since I have a big extended family, it wasn’t out of the question for my grandmother to make upwards of 10 pounds for these events. And she always tucked an extra container away in the back of the fridge for me to take home.

Her version is no-frills, with just the right balance of celery and onion for crunch and flavor, a couple of spoonfuls of spicy brown mustard for zip, and a dusting of paprika and dried parsley to make it look nice. It’s not far off from the thousands of other recipes out there for classic potato salad (in fact, Kitchn’s recipe is pretty close), and yet no others have ever quite matched up. My guess is because they’re missing the love and nostalgia that come with my family’s version.

I knew I needed to get the recipe, but it wasn’t as easy as simply copying it down — my grandma always made it from memory, eyeballing the ingredients and tasting as she went. Years went by without me mentioning anything, but over time, my grandma started to become a little forgetful, and then her memory got fuzzy, and eventually she entered the early stages of dementia.

In the larger scheme of things, potato salad seemed so trivial, and yet it was so much a part of her and something that connected us. I’d been eating it for well over 30 years (it became the marker for which I judged all other potato salads), and I was worried the recipe was forever lost. But last month, a miraculous thing happened: My mom decided to give her best shot at recreating it for my son’s first birthday, and my grandma came into the kitchen and more or less took over. Here’s the thing: While her short-term memory is poor, her long-term memory is sharp, and every so often she surprises us.

As she got to work, I paid very close attention — I wasn’t about to miss this opportunity to finally learn the ropes. I also finally learned the origins of the recipe: My grandma started making it more than 50 years ago when she and my grandfather owned and operated a deli!

How to Make My Grandma’s Potato Salad

Just like my mom, my grandma isn’t one for following recipes or measuring ingredients. She’s more of an “eyeball everything, toss it into the bowl, mix together, taste, and adjust as necessary” type of cook. Nailing down the recipe took a little bit of back and forth, with a lot of questions from me to flesh out specifics, like my grandma’s preference for cooking the potatoes whole because she feels like they hold too much water and get soggy when chopped first (I know there are plenty of recipes that say otherwise and that it’s faster to cube the potatoes first, but this is what my grandma prefers). Here’s how to make my grandma’s classic potato salad at home.

Place 5 pounds whole Yukon Gold potatoes in a large pot, cover with cold water, and simmer until tender, 30 to 40 minutes. Drain the potatoes. When cool enough to handle, peel them and chop them into bite-sized pieces. Place the chopped potatoes, 4 chopped celery stalks, 1 small chopped yellow onion, 2 cups mayonnaise, and 1/4 to 1/3 cup spicy brown mustard in a large bowl and mix together. Add kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight before serving. Top with a sprinkle of sweet paprika and parsley (chopped fresh or dried) for serving.

At Kitchn, our editors develop and debut brand-new recipes on the site every single week. But at home, we also have our own tried-and-true dishes that we make over and over again — because quite simply? We love them. Kitchn Love Letters is a series that shares our favorite, over-and-over recipes.

Kelli Foster

FOOD EDITOR, PLAN & PREP

Kelli is the Food Editor for Plan & Prep content for Kitchn. She's a graduate of the French Culinary Institute and author of the cookbooks, The Probiotic Kitchen, Buddha Bowls, and Everyday Freekeh Meals. She lives in New York.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/231645/pizzagaina/

Pizzagaina "Easter Pie" from Allrecipes.com

(I changed recipe in link to make one pie instead of two pies.)

2 unbaked pie crusts

1-- 16 ounce container whole milk ricotta

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella

1 egg

1/4 lb sliced pepperoni

1/2 lb capicola, chopped

1 egg white, slightly beaten for top crust.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Press one pie crust into pie pan, reserve second for top crust.  Mix cheese, egg and meats in a bowl and place in our pan. Top with crust, crimp, brush with egg white.

Bake in preheated oven 50-60 minutes.