Beef Bone Broth, Gourmet Scrambled Eggs, And Cuban Sandwiches

As in the past, when our neighbors had their beef processed, I ended up with tail pieces (ox tails) and bones which I like to use to make broth and this was the day.  I had 7½ lbs. of bones and I began by roasting them at 400F for an hour.

Then I added them to my 16 qt. pot and added water to about ¾ full.

I cooked them on very low for 21 hours to get this very rich broth.  I had planned to add onion, carrot, and celery to the pot but forgot until too late.

Then I removed the bones and meat (separated it for the dogs) and let it set until the fat hardened on top and removed it.

Finally, it was strained and water added to get enough for 8 quart plastic bags.  But as we bagged it, two of the bags had a pin hole leak we could see and a third one leaked out in the sheet pan that I was about to freeze them on.  I don’t need this frustration so I’ll be buying beef broth from now on.  Since we cook chicken regularly for the dogs, I may still bag up and freeze these small batches of chicken broth.

Gourmet Scrambled Eggs

Recently, we had Creamy Lemon Garlic Salmon & Shrimp And Creamed Asparagus and we had both of the creamed sauces leftover which I used to top scrambled eggs for a delicious breakfast on two separate mornings.

Cuban Sandwiches

Remember our recent Mojo Pork meal, well we had plenty of leftover pork and opted to invite our neighbors down for Cuban Sandwiches.  I made the sandwiches as I had done previously using my yet-to-be-patented panni press.

We served it with the mojo broth from cooking and we thought they were better than the local Cuban restaurant - the mojo pork made a big difference.

Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/25-5/2/25 event dates

Slow Cooker Mojo Pork, Cuban Black Beans And Rice, And Cindy Flowers

Before I get into the food, Cindy likes to make flower arrangements so she picked the flowers from around our place and made this very pretty one.

Creamy Lemon Garlic Salmon & Shrimp And Creamed Asparagus

When I saw this recipe on Facebook, every word of the title appealed to me and I knew we needed to try it especially since we love salmon and I still had shrimp in the freezer that I wanted to use.  There was no link to another site so I just did a copy and paste of the recipe but changed the salmon amounts.  Since Cindy wanted to cook again, she took over the kitchen and followed the recipe as written.  

At Cindy’s request, the fish came beautifully packaged from the store.

Muffaletta/ Primavera Pasta Salad And Bev Birthday/Pat's Knee

I made a double recipe of this dish six years ago  for a dock party and it was a major hit with our guests – some called it the best ever, so I decided it was time for a rerun but just a single recipe this time as shown below. When I was at the Food City deli ordering the meat and cheese the way I did, the clerk guessed that I was making pasta salad.

Lemon Butter Shrimp with Bacon & Cheddar Grits

We really like shrimp and grits so since I had some shrimp in the freezer and Karen recently posted her recipe for Lemon Butter Shrimp with Bacon & Cheddar Polenta on her “Backroad Journal” blog, a plan was born.  Since Cindy had been wanting to cook, she took over those duties and followed Karen’s recipe except we had no cornmeal and I didn’t want to make a store trip, so we used Quick Grits and made extra to ensure leftovers.  Plus we served more smaller shrimp to use what we had.

Creamy Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake

If you’ve been reading this blog awhile, unlike many of you who create dishes, you know I'm pretty well just a recipe follower with the occasional light recipe adaptation until this meal.  Dennis recently posted the recipe for Creamy Chicken Alfredo Lasagna on his “Ask Chef Dennis” blog and the ingredients appealed to me.  We had ricotta, spinach, and chicken that all needed to be used but I didn’t have enough noodles to make lasagna and wasn’t willing to make a store trip so I used on hand ingredients and heavily adapted his recipe.  As it turned out, we had 24 oz of ricotta, only half a bag of spinach (I thought we had 1½), and no mushrooms so the recipe below was born.  You can get the original recipe and pics by clicking on the above link.

Creamy Tuscan Shrimp For Easter Dinner & Romeo

I’m aware that ham or lamb with sides make up the typical Easter meal, but for past several years I haven’t been inclined to go with a traditional meal for certain occasions plus I had some shrimp in the freezer that I wanted to use.  So, I opted to make Creamy Tuscan Shrimp that we had raved about several years ago  and I made extra sauce so we could have it over pasta.  Eliza's family and Cindy's friend Ernie joined us to make a party of eight.