Vegetable Soup For A Dreary Day

Every now and then, Bev needs a vegetable soup fix and with the many cool, rainy days we’ve been having, she decided the day had arrived.  We had a full compliment of veggies on hand plus several packages of various beef cuts that needed to be used from the freezer.

She pressure cooked the meat to get it tender enough to remove from the bones then shredded and diced it for the soup.  Along with the meat, broth, and veggies, our basic recipe includes canned tomatoes, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and S&P.

Reuben Casserole

A cloudy day, but spring still brought us a new set of pretty views as the apple tree was blooming and the cherry trees popped out in one day.

After one meal of breakfast hash and one Reuben sandwich from our St. Patrick's Day corned beef, I had not yet had my fill of corned beef so when Mary recently posted the recipe forBaked Reuben Casserole on her Deep South Dish blog, we made a trip to the store that day for deli corned beef and Swiss cheese.  Since I wanted a larger casserole, I increased everything by 50% as shown below and used the remoulade sauce we had on hand rather than making 1000 Island dressing.  Click on the link to go to Mary’s site for the original recipe and many how-to photos.

We Are Now Hunkered Down

A little sunrise out of Cindy's BR window - pretty nice view to awake to.

Up to now, we have been going about life as almost normal but being very careful about where we went, keeping social distance, and keeping our hands sanitized, but now that we have confirmed cases of Covid-19 in our immediate area, we have gone into full hibernation here at Almost Heaven South as of Mar 24 with no more non-emergency trips out of here.

Corned Beef For St. Patrick’s Day

While I have not had my ancestry checked, my understanding of it is that I have enough Irish blood to legitimately celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but like many Americans, I would celebrate it anyway.

Interestingly, many of the traditions we celebrate with are not really from Ireland at all, such as eating corned beef and cabbage or drinking green beer which were both started in America.  Like Cinco De Mayo in Mexico, St. Patrick’s Day was a minor holiday until the Americans got a hold of it – a good reason to throw a party seems to be behind both celebrations in the USA.

Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Cindy had bought a loaf of jalapeno cheddar bread at the Greenback Farmers Market this week and Bev decided she wanted to use it for grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the homemade tomato soup she wanted to make.  I’d tried a couple of soup recipes from the web and they all contained significant chicken broth which left the soup tasting like tomato flavored chicken broth to me – no offense intended for those of you who make it this way. 

So I went in search of a recipe without the broth and found one from The Pioneer Woman that looked like what I was looking for.  Her recipe uses both tomatoes and juice and makes a big batch so I scaled it back for the 28 oz can of tomatoes we wanted to use to get the one below – click on the link to check out her site for the original recipe and a video.

Fish Ala Cindy

One of Cindy’s clients regularly goes fishing in Alaska and often gives her some fish from his freezer – usually halibut but also some other white fish and salmon.  She likes to take her turn at cooking here at home and for this meal it was to be “fish her way.”

We stayed out of the kitchen while she prepared the fish and her sides of cous-cous and spinach with pearl onions.  "Her way" for the fish was to cut the halibut fillets into bite sized pieces, dredge them in Zatarains Fish Fry, and cook them in a skillet with an inch of oil.

She had also picked up some stuffed mushrooms at the market for an appetizer and everything was delicious – this is my plate which included some homemade remouladesauce.

Pintos and Johnny Cakes

Bev made a big pot of pinto beans mostly for converting into re-fried beans to freeze but we needed to eat some for supper – just because they were there.  The beans were made using our normal method of cooking a country ham bone for several hours then using the broth for the beans.

But the main part of this post is about the cornbread with we usually make as cone pone in a cast iron skillet but we opted for something different this time.  I’ve been wanting to make Johnny Cakes, Hoe Cakes, cornmeal pancakes for a long time so this was the night.  After looking up several recipes, they were all basically just Bev’s cornbread with sugar added, which didn’t appeal to me. 

So we just used her cornbread recipe, without the sugar, and cooked them as small pancakes - about 3" diameter.

Sloppy Joe’s For Family Promise

I’ve mentioned this before but every so often we make meals for Family Promise which is a mission by several local churches to house, feed, and train homeless families.  The last time we did it, we made sloppy joe’s using Manwich and they were a big hit so we opted to make them again but homemade this time.  We chose the recipe below from The Chunky Chef  and both the recipe and some good shot’s like the one below can be found by clicking on the link. 

Marinated & Grilled Pork Tenderloin, Bye-Bye Cane

Bev had picked up a package of pork tenderloins and wanted them grilled so I looked back thru my blog for any that we had really liked and found one from 2012 that we had good comments about and we decided to give it another try (updated a little) along with the same slaw side dish.

Apple Bacon Coleslaw

Ingredients:

1 pound head of cabbage, or a 1 pound bag of purchased, pre-shredded  cabbage

1/2 of a sweet onion, diced-I used a Vidalia onion

2 apples, unpeeled, diced- I used Gala

about 2 tablespoons fresh chives, snipped

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon sugar

juice of 1 lemon

1-2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon salt

4-6 slices of bacon, cooked, drained and crumbled

Instructions:

In a large bowl, mix together the mayo, mustard, sugar, lemon, 1 tablespoon cider vinegar and salt together. Taste, and if the dressing needs more tang, add the other tablespoon of vinegar. Add the shredded cabbage, apples, onion, and the chives and toss well with the dressing. Top with the crumbled bacon before serving. This slaw can be served immediately, or covered and chilled until ready to serve.

Healthy Breakfast And Other Stuff

After my surgery, the doctor advised that I should not be dieting while healing but now that it’s a month post-surgery and the start of a new month, it seems like a good time to get back to eating less.  But since I’ve mentioned surgery, here is an update.

Hip Update - Yesterday (three weeks and 5 days post-surgery and 10 therapy sessions), I was finally able to walk 100 yards or so without my cane and with just a slight limp – so good progress continues and the internal healing should be fully complete in two more weeks.