Weekend Cooking- A Diner Food Kind of Week

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I didn't cook much when we were in Longboat Key last week, so I made up for it this week. My husband loves what he calls "Truck Driver Food" or "Diner Food", so I pulled out my old cookbooks and found some things I hoped he would like.

First up was Mr. Food's Oven Beef Stew, which I used to make for the family during those long, cold, Central New York winters. I found the recipe in my old standby cookbook, the St. Joseph's School Cooking With Class Cookbook, which was a fundraiser for my sons' Catholic elementary and middle school back in the day. The convenient thing about that cookbook is that I gave them a lot of my favorite recipes and now I have them all collated in one place for easy reference.

It's an easy dish to make, but it takes a good couple of hours in the oven so this is something I make on my day off.

Mr. Food's Oven Beef Stew (photo from Mr. Food's website)

Mr. Food's Oven Beef Stew
2 lbs. stew beef
4 medium potatoes, cut into 1 inch chunks
6 medium carrots, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 medium onion chopped
2 cups of tomato juice
 1 cup of water
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
3 Tbsp. quick cooking tapioca

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9x13 pan with non-stick spray (coat well!). In the dish, combine the beef, potatoes, carrots and onion, mix well. In a large bowl, combine tomato juice, water, sugar, salt, pepper and tapioca. Pour over beef and vegetables, cover tightly with foil and bake for 2 hours or until beef and vegetables are tender. (This can be put together ahead of time and refrigerated. Bake 2 1/2 to 3 hours.) You can also brown beef before you put into casserole dish if you prefer. We serve it over rice.
The link to the recipe on Mr. Food's website is here.

On Tuesday I made another standby from the cookbook (but not one that I gave them), Chicken Supreme, which I hadn't made in forever. It was a good dish to make on a workday because it only takes an hour in the oven and the prep time is five minutes. It uses a can of cream soup, which I'm not crazy about, but it works for this dish.

Chicken Supreme
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup white wine
4 slices of swiss cheese
Box of stuffing mix (Pepperidge Farm, Stove Top, etc.)
1/2 cup of butter, melted

Directions:
Place chicken in a baking dish. Cover each piece with a slice of cheese. Mix wine and soup together, pour over chicken. Put stuffing straight from the box on top of it all, top with melted butter and bake at 375 degrees for one hour.

The last truck driver dish I made this week was a new one- Slow Cooker Salisbury Steak. Again, it was perfect for a workday meal. I stopped on my way home to my favorite grocery store, Agata & Valentina, picked up a container of homemade mashed potatoes,  grilled asparagus and a strawberry millefoglie for dessert and it was simple meal that my husband raved about. There's even leftovers for Saturday's lunch. I found this one on Pinterest, from Saved With Pennies.

Slow Cooker Salisbury Steak

Do you have any diner food recipes you enjoy? Share them in comments below.