Chicken With Pistachio Herb Sauce

I had another meal planned and I discovered I didn’t have all of the ingredients, but I did have everything needed to make a dish that had just shown up on my blog reading list.  The recipe for Chicken With Sicilian Inspired Pistachio Herb Sauce came from Karen’s “Backroad Journal” blog and it looked very interesting plus I had a bag of pistachios in the shell.

Since I had already thawed three chicken breasts, I increased the sauce ingredients by 50% to get the recipe below.  Karen’s recipe used naked chicken breasts but those in her pics looked breaded so I decided to omit the olive oil coating and lightly dust mine with flour.  For the original recipe and shots of Karen’s dish, please click on the above link.

Tapoco For Lunch And A Couple Of Breakfast Meals

Our RV travel club didn’t hold a rally in June but a small group of us decided we would drive up US-129 (the Tail Of The Dragon) and have lunch at the Tapoco Lodge Tavern on June 15.  The 318 curves of The Dragon is 11 miles of hell for us old normal drivers and an absolute mecca for motorcyclists and sports car enthusiast.  This is a shot from the web of the back of the Tapoco Lodge showing the Tavern (umbrellas) and the Cheoah River .

Crab Cakes and Low Country Boil For Four

Last summer we went to an outdoor concert at some people’s home and ran into a guy that I had worked with at Alcoa but had not seen in 20 years and I promised I would get us together in 2022 after hip surgery recovery and this was finally the day.  I wanted to have a seafood medley in the air-conditioned house but “the boss” wanted to have low country boil on the dock and she balked when I suggested we could make it in the air-conditioned kitchen – “it has to be done outside on the dock.”

Unfortunately, I got so busy visiting and cooking that I took only a couple of pics.

It’s A Bologna (aka Baloney) Kind Of Day

For some reason, we have gotten into fried bologna sandwiches lately and with fresh homemade bread from the previous day and sliced bologna in the fridge, this was the perfect day for them, so they became the supper meal.  A couple of years ago we visited Historic Rugby, TN and one of the trip highlights was my best ever bologna sandwich from R.M. Brooks and what really stuck in my mind was the thickness of their meat. 

Pasta Bolognese

Bev has been on a pasta kick lately, which is fine with me, and had stated that she wants Bolognese for the next time, which was also fine with me.  I’ve been trying to make Sunday our pasta day and I just happened to have saved Tricia’s recipe for “Rigatoni Bolognese” from her “Saving Room For Dessert” blog.  It had to be tried when she described it as “An Italian classic sauce that's rich, thick with a complex flavor you won't soon forget. While it takes a little time to make it right, the directions are simple and easy to follow.”  This is a shot of Tricia’s.

Our First Charcuterie Board and Honey Taste Test

While we have made up several antipastos over the years, we have never done a charcuterie until now.  We bought a nice looking 15"x22” walnut board from a vendor at the Lenoir City Crafts Fair for $85, which seemed like a good price. 

Deconstructed Cabbage Rolls

In a recent post, I wrote about our side dishes that needed more pizzazz, one of which was fried cabbage, and Bev did a magnificent job of fixing it.  I’ve often said that I am a recipe follower but she is the real cook in the family.  My plan was to just reheat the cabbage as a leftover but her plan was to turn it into something very different.

Meat Salads, Breakfast, and Pressure Washer

Beverly came up with a great idea for our Friday get-together on a summer day – meat salads on a bed of lettuce. So, she bought some Food City chicken salad with grapes and made ham salad and tuna salad – she never uses a recipe but just adds some onion and celery then other ingredients to taste.  To make mine look a little fancier, I molded the salads in a small bowl then flipped onto my plate.

Pan Seared Rockfish With Lemon Caper Sauce And Two Side Dishes

Cindy has a friend who regularly goes fishing in Alaska and catches more than he can eat so he often gives her a plastic grocery bag full and this time it contained Halibut and Pacific Rockfish.  As it turns out, I had recently saved a recipe for “Pan Seared Rockfish With Lemon Caper Sauce” from his “Ask Chef Dennis” blog and since it contains a different recipe for one of our favorites for fish – lemon caper sauce – I suggested Cindy might want to make it and we can compare his sauce to our usual.  I just love it when a plan comes together.  Since she had more fish than the recipe called for, I increased the sauce ingredients - click on the link above for the original recipe.

Dock Opening 2022

While we managed to get in a closing party in Oct 2021, I can’t recall when we last had an opening party – I went back thru 2016 and found no blog posts.  We would normally have it earlier in the year, but I needed to do hip replacement recovery until later so we opted for May 29 so as not to interfere with others Memorial Day plans – remember, we’re retired and every day can be a holiday and pets are always welcome.

Braised Pork Shank Slices

A pork shank is basically the front leg of the hog and when I saw a dish on TV using the whole shank and I wanted to replicate it but the only shank I could find had already been sliced into soup bones, as they called them.