Over the years, I’ve gone on several campaigns to clean out our longer term freezer but I’ve never been as successful as this time and it’s partly due to a new philosophy for freezer use. This is about as empty as it will get as all of the old items are now out and I was amazed at the stuff that I discovered over the last few months - it’s organized by shelf such as pork and chicken on a shelf or beef and precooked items on a shelf.
These next two pics are from the web but they look just like Teddy Bear & Bodie's normal look.
On Friday Morning we again ate breakfast in the main dining room as our final meal at the Greenbrier and again we ordered from the menu (link above). This is a shot about 2/3 of the room, the drapes and a chandelier.
Since we are now harvesting plenty of cherry tomatoes, I’m on the lookout for ways to use them and this recipe for Marinated Tomatoes from the Two Peas And Their Pod blog seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Since Cindy just got home from her knee replacement surgery, I thought I would treat her to salmon as she is a fish lover and I served the marinated tomatoes as bruschetta.
On Thursday, my back was hurting me bad (from the bed I think) so I skipped breakfast, the croquet game, and exterior history tour done by the others. Here are some pics from Bev and Steve.
We began the next day with breakfast in the Greenbrier's very elegant main dining room which had a buffet.
Since my buddy Dave has announced that he is giving up most of his blogging, it got me to thinking about mine. I believe my blog is as they were meant to be - my journal - where I can go back and find recipes, pics, our travels and so on, thus I have no intention of quitting right now or I would miss all of that documentation, plus it gives me something to do. I have recently been posting every three days but I don’t have many folks stopping by to read quite a few of them and so I had an epiphany. I can keep writing up my blogs to get the documentation I need but I don’t have to publish all of them but rather just the ones that I think you will find interesting and hopefully about more than just food.
Greenbrier Hotel pic from the web.
It’s been seven years since we visited my hometown of Fairmont, WV so we used the 80th Birthday Party of my cousin’s wife (Ruth) as a good reason to go. It’s a 450 mile and 7½ hour (plus stops) trip on interstate (I-40, I-81, I-77, I-79) and divided highway (US-19) for the entire trip so pretty easy driving. This is our trip plan:
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2025 WV Trip |
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day |
Leave |
Arrive |
Lodging |
Activities |
Food |
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1 |
Greenback, TN |
Morgantown, WV |
Hotel Morgan |
Drive to WV |
Colasessano's |
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2 |
Morgantown, WV |
Fairmont, WV |
Hotel Morgan |
Ruth BD party |
Bourbon Prime-breakfast |
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3 |
Morgantown, WV |
Fairmont, WV |
Hotel Morgan |
Tour WVU, visit Dick & Ruth |
|
|
4 |
Morgantown, WV |
Fairmont, WV |
Hotel Morgan |
Tour Fairmont, Dick & Ruth |
|
|
5 |
Morgantown, WV |
White Sulfur Springs, WV |
Greenbrier Resort |
Drive to Greenbrier |
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|
6 |
White Sulfur Springs, WV |
Greenbrier Resort |
Bunker tour |
Sam Sneads |
|
|
7 |
White Sulfur Springs, WV |
Greenbrier Resort |
Croquet, Lewisburg shopping |
The Forum |
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8 |
White Sulfur Springs, WV |
Greenback, TN |
Drive home |
Bev saw this Italian Beef Eye Of Round Roast the other day at Food City and she decided we should give it a try.
I can’t remember where I got this recipe (Perhaps from Facebook) but I wanted to try it as a way to use our Royal Red Shrimp and easily serve our Friday card group. I followed the ingredients list but I changed the cooking method quite a bit to keep the steak from over cooking. The original called for cutting it into bite sized pieces prior to browning it but I browned it first and kept it very rare.
I’ve posted about this before, but I’m doing it again to document my process for future use. I bought a CAB tri tip from Food City and as usual it had a big fat cap hidden on the bottom side – I know better than to buy roasts from them.
Easy Fish Piccata
I had some Pacific Cod filets in the freezer and decided to
turn them into a Piccata dish using the recipe for
It’s been a while since we’ve had spaghetti and meatballs and when Eliza brought her family down it seemed like a good opportunity. We had some homemade meatballs in the freezer but no Italian sausage so I used TPO (tomato, pepper, onion) from the Wurst Kitchen. The menu included bread with EVOO & balsamic vinegar, then panzanella, then pasta and finally dessert.
I wasn’t trying to keep making Italian but just thought this dish looked delicious and would be perfect for our Friday get together. The recipe for Easy Chicken Milanese alla Florentine came from the “Ask Chef Dennis” blog and I made several changes to it but the original can be found by clicking on the above link. Chef Dennis Littley’s comment on the dish – “Chicken MIlanese alla Florentine is a delicious restaurant style dish that is made with a crispy chicken cutlet topped with steamed spinach and sauteed mushrooms, topped with Swiss cheese and served with a creamy white sauce. It's easy to make and oh so delicious.”
I had some halibut in the freezer that I wanted to use and after searching my blog, I found a recipe that we had made previously but I didn’t have the sauce ingredients so I adapted my normal lemon, butter sauce for this dish.
Since returning from Italy, we have been having Bruschetta regularly for happy hour and during a recent trip to the Mennonite Market, I bought a bag of Roma tomatoes to use for the tomato mixture so it wouldn’t be as watery – I removed the seeds from the Roma's. I had six Roma's left and was thinking about another use for them when Bev reminded me of the pasta with fresh tomatoes we had made in the past. So I did a blog search and found the recipe for Pasta al Pomodoro Crudo and recalled that I had a half box of small shells pasta in the pantry so a meal was born. I’m posting this dish again to document the recipe using the Roma tomatoes.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA
Bev wanted fried pork chops like we both grew up eating and I wanted to cook them on the grill griddle so a plan was born using the following recipe. For sides, Bev wanted cucumber salad using the recipe below and well done broccoli then tossed in butter like she got at the cafeteria she used to lunch at.
I try to make cooking for Friday cards pretty simple so one-pot meals and casseroles are usually high on my list. I saw this recipe for Crack Chicken Casserole on the “Ask Chef Dennis” blog and it seemed to fit the bill. Dennis says that “Crack Chicken Casserole is creamy, cheesy, and packed with crispy bacon, ranch flavor, and pasta. Pure comfort food baked to perfection.” I followed the recipe as written.
Crack Chicken Casserole
Ingredients:
2 cups rotisserie chicken - shredded
8 oz cream cheese - softened
1 packet ranch dressing mix
10.5 oz cream of chicken soup condensed
1 cup sour cream - full fat
1 cup half and half or whole milk
1½ cups sharp cheddar cheese - shredded
6 slices bacon cooked and crumbled
8 ounces shell pasta - cooked aldente
2 cups crushed Ritz Townhouse crackers
4 ounces unsalted butter - melted (1 stick)
½ cup green onions - sliced for garnish
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Cook the shells per the instructions on the
package for aldente.
Butter a 9×13-inch baking dish. Set aside until
needed.
Add the softened cream cheese, ranch seasoning
mix, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, and half and half to a medium bowl.
Whisk until smooth and creamy.
Both of our flights were good and on time with the only bad part being the long layover in Chicago – by flying on a first class international flight, we had access to the Polaris Club where they was food, drinks, and comfortable chairs all complimentary. This made the seven-hour layover much more bearable.
I grew up eating and loving my mom’s potato salad, Bev learned how to make it, and I still prefer it over all others. It is simple with potatoes, hard boiled eggs, onion, celery, mayo, mustard, and celery seed (definitely no pickles) and eaten at room temperature after sitting for several hours for the flavors to marry. However, when I saw the recipe for Dill Pickle Potato Salad on the “Flavor Of The Moment” blog and knew I liked all of the ingredients, I decided to give it a try. With the dill, I thought it was somewhat Mediterranean to go with the Greek shrimp for supper. The trick to enjoying it was to not compare it to mom’s but think of it as an entirely different dish. Bev made it for us and doubled the recipe as shown below.
Bev and I were due to stay in Sorrento for another day but Wende had to leave on May 9 so rather than find transportation for her to the Rome airport and since we had nothing planned for another day, we just all left on Friday although our flight home wasn’t until Sunday.
For our last Sorrento meal, we opted to just go up the street a short way for our second visit to La Lanterna and we all wanted pizza. We began with our usual of sparkling water and a bottle of good prosecco which made for a pretty busy table.
We’ve had a Puttanesca Sauce several times on fish and chicken but never on pasta until our final tasting in Sorrento and we loved it so I just had to try making it. For the fish version, I had adapted recipes from two fellow bloggers and for the pasta version, I adapted that version plus one from “Simply Recipes” to get the one below. The major difference is that the pasta version has more tomatoes that are cooked down into a marinara-like sauce.
We have done a variety of tastings from being at the winemakers dining room table to a large winery but this was our first large group experience where we were bused from Sorrento to the farm – about 25 minutes all uphill, narrow and curvy.
When we arrived at the farm, we were greeted by the dad and two brothers who now run the business.
Why Connatserville you ask. We live in a place that was once all owned by the Connatser family and they, as our neighbors, still own the vast majority of the land, so Connatserville.
For many years, I’ve wanted to give Waygu beef a try but rather than just try it, you know, I just had to do a taste test.
After our stop in Cetara, we headed back west and stopped in the town of Minori for lunch at the Ristorante Giardiniello which was recommended by the tour company owner, Roberto and it has been in business since 1955. It was very pleasant sitting under the pergola.
Well, the big day has finally arrived – the major reason for coming to this area is to see the Amalfi Coast and we hired a private tour to do it so we could leave the driving to them and be able to take in the sites. Our driver, Fabio, picked us up in Sorrento at 8:30am and the journey east began.
During our Italian trip, we began most restaurant meals with Prosecco and decided we really liked it so now that we are home, we decided a taste test was in order.
Spumante is an Italian word meaning "sparkling" or "foaming," referring to sparkling wines and while in Italy we drank some very good Prosecco and decided it would be our go-to sparkling wine for the future. The primary white sparkling wines in Italy are Asti Spumante, Prosecco, and Franciacorta.
We had no planned event for today except taking in the main Sorrento area which for the girls meant doing a little shopping and for me it meant people watching and having a cold one at the restaurant that had just changed hands and names the previous day. It was Bar 22 Pizzeria when we ate there Sunday night and now it is Monnalisa Ristorante.
Eliza and crew came down on Sunday to drop off the items Wende brought home from Italy for us and I opted to make yet another Mediterranean meal. While I don’t usually think of salmon as a Mediterranean dish, it was on several Italian restaurant menus and I wanted a dish that goes with the Panzanella (tomato and bread salad) that I wanted to serve. Even though we’ve made several Mediterranean Salmon dishes in the past, I did a little web search and found this recipe for Mediterranean Salmon on the “Cuisine With Me” blog and I liked it as I had the ingredients on hand.
Just as with the other kids visits, I arranged for a cooking class, at least one wine tasting, and a town visit or in this case, a town stay. And for our first full day I was up at six am and ready to start my day. Bev got up a couple of times and went back to bed and finally got up to stay along with Wende at 10:30 am. About 11:30, Bev was ready to go get a little food so we went down to the Piazza Tasso (the main square) and ate at the Bar Ercolano. One of her trip desires was to stay in town and walk down the street to eat at a cafe.
When getting into Sorrento (pop. 15000), we were told by the apartment hostess to come to the main square (Piazzo Tasso) and let Valeria know we were there, which we did. Per our request, she had arranged for someone to help with the luggage and valet parking for the car and it all went well. I took these shots of the busy square while awaiting pickup.
We interrupt our Italy trip at the three fourths point (with Sorrento to come) to say that we got home on May 11, after a 24 hour day, so I’ll be interspersing the trip with normal posts beginning with this one – can you believe it’s pasta – to use some of our asparagus. The recipe for One Pot Spring Pasta Primavera is courtesy of the “Flavor Of The Moment” blog and I doubled it (as shown below) to use the full pound of pasta and asparagus and to have leftovers.
After a good nights sleep, on Saturday, mid-morning, our very nice hostess, and owner, Sabrina retrieved our car from the parking garage, helped us load up and sent us on our way. This is a shot of the owner, Sabrina, on the right and her right hand girl, Rita.
