The Adams & Myers Visit Almost Heaven South

We had met Betsy (Joyful Reflections) and George a couple of years ago while RVing in Crossville and of course the Myers are good friends so when Betsy expressed interest in meeting Dave (Big Daddy Dave), we invited both over for an afternoon on the dock.  Betsy agreed to be the official get-together photographer and blogger so I will only post about the food and her post will be up on 9/1 so please drop by her place.  The previous day, I had smoked some ABT’s for our wine group and decided I’d also smoke up some ribs for the dock meal and the menu was:

Appetizer - ABT’s  (stuffed jalapenos)

Main course – Ribs, pulled pork, slaw, chipotle baked beans, buns

Dessert - Tres Leches Cake, provided by the Myers

Our Birds

We have been feeding the birds for many years, but due to our planned travels this year, we didn’t want them to become feeder dependent then quit feeding them.  As it turned out, the travel plans got cancelled so we decided to begin feeding them again.  I’ve always been in awe of the variety of birds visiting Betsy’s feeders (Joyful Reflections), so I ask her to send me some shots of her feeding area then we had a couple of conversations about the details.

Before getting into the songbirds, I’d like to tell you about our Hummers – I believe Bev has four feeders for them and one is on the bedroom deck and visible from the living room.  This is the window we look through with the feeder on the left side of the middle window and it’s fun to watch them fly right up to the window if they arrive in spring to no feeder or if it runs out of food, as it did last week.

A Little Time With Roz – Italian Cheesy Tomato Pie with Buttermilk Biscuit Crust

As soon as I saw Roz’s post on this with the yummy photo and advising that she had won a competition in Charleston, SC with it, I knew it had to be tried – especially since we love tomato pie – please pop over to La Belle Vita Cucina for the recipe and nice how-to photos.  We made it per her recipe, except we used a 12” dish to cook it in and since it was larger and my tomatoes were perhaps a little thicker, it took longer to get everything bubbly.

This is it hot out of the oven and resting.

Our First Stromboli

When we made the Pizza Margherita yesterday, we had an extra ball of pizza dough that needed using and decided to make our first ever Stromboli.  Even though this is “Time With Roz”, I couldn’t find a Stromboli recipe on her site but the dough needed to be used.  At least it's Italian and includes tomatoes in the sauce.

I looked around the net and opted for an Emeril Lagasse recipe then adapted it for our dough amount and some things we had on hand to add to it – his recipe is for two Stromboli while the one below is for one that is a little larger than his.

A Little Time With Roz – Pizza Margherita

As I’ve said before, I don’t read recipe books and use very few (although Bev will on occasion), as I prefer to let you who love them do the reading, make the meal, and post the recipe on your blog along with your comments and improvements.

We like both tomatoes and Italian food and this summer, Roz from La Bella VitaCucina has been posting some dishes we wanted to try, so I decided to just devote a week or so to them - first up is Pizza Margherita.

We made the recipe as she posted it, with a few deviations, and rather than recopy it here, you can click on the link above for the recipe and some hunger inducing photos.  This was a joint effort between Bev and I, where she handled the crust and I did the topping.

Fish On The Grill Ala George

I follow several RV blogs, mostly full timers, and one I read daily is Our Awesome Travels which follows the journeys of George and Suzie, a full time Canadian couple who split their time between Canada and the USA.  George writes about their travels and his daily dinner creation (he was a restaurateur), which is nearly always cooked on a Weber Q – I once commented that he could be the poster boy for this grill.

He frequently cooks fish using an easy method for the grill by making a foil pan, seasoning the fish, topping with lemon slices and cooking with the lid closed (I assume) - I don’t know if he cooks over direct or indirect heat.

I wasn’t sure how it would work with this method but it’s a mild white fish and we were having a southern meal, so I used catfish – hey this is the South you know and I’m making a major departure by not frying it.

I decided to do a little taste test while I was at it and cooked four different filets – two spread with soft butter and two without and one of each with a different spice – toothpicks and whole or halved lemon slices tell me which is which.  Ready for the grill.

Seafood For The Roden’s

In addition to the fried potatoes, the Roden’s also requested seafood while they were here – their dad is a meat and taters Texan who doesn’t eat anything that swims so they don’t do much seafood at home.  For this meal, I decided to kill two birds with one stone by allowing budding griller, Lauren, to expand her repertoire beyond beef and help me cook the seafood.

The menu was to be shrimp, king crab legs, and scallops all cooked on the grill, plus another batch of the fried potatoes.  We decided to make this an event meal over a period of time and began it with some lobster bisque that we had bought at the Palm Beach Gardens, FL Green Market back in January and frozen - it was still very good.

We followed this with king crab legs heated on the grill and then Lauren and cousin, Riley, cooked the scallops and shrimp.  I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the things I’ve learned about grilling seafood is that butter is a key ingredient and in this case, garlic butter – made with garlic powder.  Riley started the scallops and got a hug from Aunt Kathy.

A Day At The Lake With The Roden’s

As I’ve posted previously our daughter, Kathy, and her three girls were here for their annual visit from the San Antonio, TX area.  The typical visit includes playing at the lake, a trip to Pigeon Forge for a fun day (Wonderworks this time), and a picnic in Cades Cove.  After discussing it with her kids, Kathy realized that what they really wanted from the picnic was a hamburger cookout with the special potatoes fried in a big cast iron pot so we decided it would be a lot easier to do this at the lake than haul everything up to the mountains.

Kathy invited some local friends (used to be our neighbors) who have a pontoon boat and two teenage boys (their son and nephew) for the day and they used both the pontoon and our jet ski to pull the seven kids on tubes. This is Kathy’s group coming into the dock for gas.

Grandpop Gets A Grilling Lesson From Lauren

Daughter, Kathy, and her three girls were here for their annual visit from the San Antonio, TX area and they usually come with a list of things they want to eat while here.  During one of the food conversations, Kathy mentioned that her 11 year old, Lauren, was quite the steak cooker and perhaps she could show me a thing or two.  And since I’m always eager to learn, I headed for the freezer to see what we had on hand and found six nice rib eyes from our last whole loin purchase.

I was thinking of just using our normal Montreal Steak Seasoning, but Bev convinced me to use the Best Steak Marinade in Existence so I whipped up a double batch and the steaks got a six hour soak.