Delicious Green Beans and Grilled PorkTenderloin

The spectrum of green beans runs from haricots to pole beans or from slim green pods with tiny beans to pole beans with large pods and large beans and everywhere in between.  When Kathy was here this summer, she said she liked the smaller beans sauteed in a little olive oil and I thought yuck – more raw veggies like the restaurants serve as steamed vegetables – my mom cooked veggies done and I still prefer them that way.

If Kathy's version is the only way you will eat green beans you might want to quit reading here.

Poblanos Stuffed With Cheddar Cheese And Chicken

I had been wanting to cook something southwestern that was not overly fattening so when Debbie published the recipe for Stuffed Poblanos with Cheddar &Chicken on her A Feast For The Eyes blog, it quickly got my attention as we had some poblanos ready to pick.  I saved the link but when I returned to her post, it wouldn’t bring up the recipe card so I went to the Fine Cooking recipe as it was Debbie’s starting point.  Check out Debbie's blog for some great how to shots.

The Dragon, Tapoco, & Fontana

I had posted about our lunch trip to Tapoco Lodge last month during our Tennessee Travelers rally and last week we were discussing it with our friend, Joe.  After he went home, Bev and I decided we should invite him and wife, Carol, to make a trip up to the lodge for lunch as they had not been there.  As it turned out, Carol had never been up that way at all so she had not seen the Alcoa lakes and dams or ridden on the famous “Dragon” and neither of them had seen Fontana Dam - shot from web while spilling water.

Some Recent Meals At The Ranch

Following our kids leaving and an Independence Day party, we had enough leftovers to eat for a week, so no much cooking happened and following that we made no meals worthy of a standalone blog post.  We have had a few that made for some good eats though, such as a favorite summer meal of fried okra, fried corn, cottage cheese and our home grown tomatoes – the corn and okra came from a local vegetable farmer.

It was very good, as always.

Annual Visit From Kids and Grands

Happy Birthday America

Kathy, plus daughters Lauren and Jennafer and boy friend, Evan, came in from San Antonio for their annual summer visit from 6/24-7/1 then Eric, Ann, Matthew, and Sophia joined us from Napierville, IL 6/27-30, and Wende, Ralph, and Eliza came down from Oak Ridge, TN for the day on 6/29 so all of my kids were here for at least one day.  Kathy always comes prepared with her list of special supper meals (*) to eat while here and we filled in the blanks for the following:

Mon: Million Dollar Spaghetti Pie