Meat Rolls

When I studied abroad during college, I went to Australia.  Many of the other students ate meat pies, sausage rolls, and the like.  I have to admit that I never tried one.  They just never appealed to me... until yesterday.

I make a monthly menu every month so that I'll have an idea of something I can make every day of the month.  But, I often veer away from that at the last minute.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I opened up America's Test Kitchen's Lost Recipes cookbook, an out of print ATK cookbook that I found at a book sale.  I found a recipe for Runsas and thought it might be worth a try.  My family ended up loving them!

They weren't as hard as they sounded, but having a breadmaker make the dough does help.  I did forget the cabbage when I went to the store, though, so I substituted 4 oz. steamed spinach and 2 cups of carrots (sauteed) for the cabbage.  I also substituted mozzarella for the American cheese.  Two of my three kids had them for lunch today, which says a lot in my family!

Here's a link to the recipe for the Runsas...  http://www.food.com/recipe/runsas-386848

My son has already asked me to make them again!

Tonight I attempted challah bread and Caribbean Black Bean Soup with Fruit Salsa.  The challah was a salvaged disaster!  The author of the bread cookbook hadn't doubled the recipe correctly and the dough came out of my bread maker as soup.  Well, you win some and lose some!  I pulled it out and dumped a ton of flour on it.  Then, I had to add extra yeast dissolved in water with some sugar to it because the multiplication hadn't been done correctly.  Then, more flour.  My bread didn't turn out to be challah, but in the end it did turn out to be edible and I'm thankful for that.  The soup was more of a success as two people at the table ate seconds and it will definitely be made again in the future.  I couldn't find this recipe online, though, so I can't link to it...

I like making new dishes, but sometimes you never can tell how they're going to turn out!