Canned Bonanza

Weenies and Beans is a fairly classic staple, bringing forth the mental image of cowboys and miners.  But what can be done if you're willing to up the number of cans going into such a dish?

Ingredients:

1 package of hot dogs

1 can of baked beans

1 can of diced tomatoes

1 can of corn

Instructions:

Cut up hot dogs

Add everything to the InstantPot

Cook on manual for 8 minutes, allowing for natural release

Serve alongside a salad

This was alright.  I had been hoping that added ingredients would elevate the dish more than they did in the end.  In the end this would up being slightly differently textured weenies and beans, and not something I''d go out of my way to make again in the future.

Buffalo Chicken Pizza

In my experience, getting a buffalo chicken pizza results in getting a regular pizza, with chicken as a topping, and some buffalo sauce drizzled on top.  In my opinion, this is really leaving a lot on the table, as it's failing to truly incorporate  that heat.  So why not attempt to bring it fully into the recipe?

Ingredients:

1 Pizza Crust

2 Chicken Breasts

Frank's Buffalo Sauce

Italian Seasoning

1 bag Mozzarella Cheese

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Chop Chicken in Chunks

Fry in a pan with oil and Italian Seasonings

Spread a layer of buffalo sauce over the pizza crust

Add chicken to the pizza

Top with cheese

Bake for 20 minutes

This initially didn't turn out great.  The buffalo sauce was too thin, the cheese wasn't firmly enough anchored, and the chicken was way too big.  Luckily, the pizza crust I bought came in packs of 2, and I bought an excessively large bottle of buffalo sauce.  So I opted to give it another shot.  I mixed the buffalo sauce with some bleu cheese dressing to thicken it up, cut the chicken finer, and made sure that the cheese went past the sauce to the crust itself.  These alterations allowed it to hold together considerably better.

Spaghetti and Meatball Salad

Pasta Salad is food that is almost totally dominated by a handful of pastas.  Rotini, Penne and Bowtie seem to have the market cornered, except for Macaroni, which has elbowed out of the market altogether and started it's own salad racket.  Why is Spaghetti, the cornerstone of American pasta habits, so unjustly underrepresented in the salad game?  

Ingredients:

1lb Spaghetti

1lb bag frozen meatballs

Italian Dressing

Lettuce

Instructions:

Cook Spaghetti according to instructions on the box

Add to a bowl and mix in some Italian Dressing

Add meatballs and some dressing to a pan and cook over medium heat until browned

Stir meatballs into the spaghetti

Put bowl into the fridge for a few hours

Serve with lettuce and dressing

This turned out pretty well.  The spaghetti is a bit cumbersome, but not really any moreso than how it normally is.  There are a few things I would do differently though.  The meatballs are a bit on the large side and I should have used a smaller sized meatball so they could be eaten more easily with the spaghetti and lettuce.  Additionally, I'm not sure that I would add the dressing while cooking the meatballs, as it was fairly poppy, in a not great way.