Easy Fish Piccata And Bruschetta, Chicken Parmesan With Italian Corn

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 Easy Fish Piccata from “The Mediterranean Dish” as we love lemon, caper sauce.

Hoppin’ John’s And Spinach Artichoke Dip For New Year’s Day

Tradition has it here in the South that black-eyed peas should be eaten on New Year’s Day for good luck in the coming year.  It’s hard to know if it really helps but we eat them and seem to enjoy good luck and no since tempting fate so we had them again this year.  It’s been 13 years since we used this recipe so I decided a redo was in order but I made several changes to the recipe as shown with the strike thru's.  Also, I tried to add as little heat as possible for Bev and Cindy although the Kielbasa had some.

Deep Fried Asparagus & A Restaurant Style Omelet

You may know this, but the tops of the asparagus spears are the lateral branches and ferns before they have opened up.

As they grow taller, the distance between the laterals increases, then they become branches and produce the ferns on the ends.

Chinese Meal Ala Ashley, Charcuterie Board, Spam Hash, Our RV

Bev wanted to make pasta with Ashley, one of our surprise Christmas day guests, and Ashley wanted to incorporate it into a Chinese dish to cook for us.  She roasted some of the pasta and boiled some then served the combo under a delicious stir fry of chicken, beef, broccoli, and typical items for these dishes.

I’d shown Kathy’s charcuterie board previously but for New Year’s Eve, Wende had to use the counter top for hers.

We had some cooked potatoes left from two previous meals and a can of Spam that had been sitting in the pantry for a while so we decided to turn them into hash for breakfast.  I just diced everything, medium, and fried in oil to crisp up, then plated and topped with a couple of sunny side-up eggs for a delicious breakfast.

I would normally have added some peppers and onions to the hash but I wanted to judge the taste with just potatoes and meat.  This was my first ever spam hash but I will make it again.  I had originally bought the Spam (Hormel) to recapture some of my childhood where canned meat sandwiches were often on the lunch menu, except Mom always bought Treet (Armor) which I assume was cheaper. Now, I have Spam on the grocery list to use with our next batch of homemade bread for a fried Spam, cheese, and mayo sandwich, circa 1950’s.

Finally, when our motorhome stranded us along the roadside back in October, Bev said she would not give it another change to strand us and wanted to sell it.  After engine repairs and a full chassis servicing, it has been sitting peacefully in the driveway awaiting it’s fate. 

With the time to begin making reservations at hand, a decision was required and Bev has agreed to give the ole girl one more change since we spent so much on her, so I’ll soon have some trips to report on and hopefully with good outcomes.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

12/27/22 – 01/06/23 meal dates

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.

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. 

Cheese And Chocolate Fondue For Valentines Day

When I asked Bev what she wanted to eat on Valentine’s Day, I was expecting to hear some sort of grilled meat and most likely beef tenderloin.  But after s few days of thinking about it, she decided she would like fondues.  For dessert, she decided to just melt some Ghiradelli Chocolate Flavored Melting Wafers and for the cheese, we opted to use a copycat recipe from the Melting Pot Restaurant that I found at CopyKat Recipes  I substituted white wine for beer and changed the instructions as we don’t have a fondue pot.

Dock Closing Party 2021

We hadn’t done this in a while and since we had a nice day on Oct 31, we decided we would have a dock closing party, which we haven’t done in a few years – it’s really just an excuse to get together.  We had ten neighbors join us for a fall menu of grilled hot dogs, chili, mac and cheese and and several desserts.  We had the mac and cheese because I had recently seen an appealing recipe for chili mac and since we had the chili, I decided to make the mac and cheese and combine them in my bowl.

Fortunately, we were able to pick a sunny, 62F beautiful fall day for the event and we ate at five to be done eating and visiting before it turned too cool.  This shot is from our parking area while I was using the burners to clean the grill.

Individual Tomato Pies

I don’t know why, but we haven’t made these in years and they are outrageously good.  The recipe comes from the Roseville B&B in Marshall, TX but I don’t have a link for it.

Fish Sticks and Fried Green Tomatoes

While at the store last week, the seafood case had some nice looking fresh cod fillets and I bought a couple just to have in the freezer.  Later it dawned on me that I would like to turn them into fish sticks and I selected a recipe from Crunchy Creamy Sweet. 

Christmas Dinner With Our Friends – Appetizers And Drinks

My previous post covered the salad and the lasagna main course for our Christmas meal and today I’ll show our appetizers.

I'll begin with two kinds of hummas using a recipe from Gimme Some Oven for the first one. You can visit Ali’s site by clicking on the link for the original recipe, a how to video, and more shots like this one.

Dave and Laurie Visit - Galette

Our friends Dave and Laurie came over for an afternoon visit and since I’d seen, Pam’s blog post for a tomato galette, we decided to serve it as a little snack but then Bev, the non-recipe follower, engaged her memory to say “remember those individual tomato pies we made several years ago?  I think the stuffing for them was great so we should use it in this recipe.”  I looked it up and since we raved about the pies, I decided she was right.  So we opted to make one by her inspiration and one from Pam’s recipe and have a taste test.  This is our version of her recipe.

Royal Red Shrimp & Wine

Friends Laurie and Dave (Big Daddy Dave) joined Cindy, Bev and I for a little dinner get-together the other night and as I was writing the blog I realized I had too much to say for one post so I broke it into two beginning with the appetizer and wine.  But first, here is a shot of Teddy & Romeo watching our recent snow.

Fried Green Tomatoes Ala Roz

I’ve always loved fried green tomatoes and when I was growing up, my family often had them in simple fashion – sliced about ¼“, S&P, dusted with flour, fried in Crisco, eaten as an open faced sandwich on a slice of white bread.  They’ve come a long way since then and are now featured on many restaurant menus as appetizers, side dishes, and sandwiches usually with much more sophisticated coatings than mom’s simple flour.

I’ve tried many versions in restaurants and enjoyed most of them but have never been able to create a satisfactory coating at home so I decided to give Roz’s “The Best Fried Green Tomatoes With Garlic, Bacon, And Buttermilk Sauce” a try from her La Bella Vita blog.

I won’t reprint the recipe here but encourage you to stop by her blog for the details and some great photos – you really need to see her shots – then you’ll likely be heading to the store to pick up some green tomatoes.  I borrowed one of her pics to whet your appetite. 

The only change I made to her recipe was in cutting the tomatoes about 1/3.”

Her blog also includes a dipping sauce recipe and a photo of tomatoes stacked with pimento cheese.  Since we had some smoked gouda pimento cheese on hand, I opted to try them both ways.

The tomatoes were delicious without any toppings so I have found my coating recipe and will make this the go-to version.  I deep fried them at 350 degrees but after reading this in Wikipedia – “Shallow frying is preferred, as the tomatoes do not float in the oil, which allows the weight of the tomato to press the cornmeal to the underside of the tomato.  This negates the need for a wash” – I’ll still use Roz’s wash but I’ll try pan frying next time to see which I prefer.

I followed the sauce recipe as written and next time would make two changes – First, I thought the bacon was a little overwhelming so next time I will use half as much and second, the sauce was overly salty, which may have come from the bacon so next time I will mix and let it set a while then salt to taste.  While I enjoyed the pimento cheese stack, I preferred the dipping sauce.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

7/09/17 Meal Date

Wine Club BBQ

Over the past year or so, our wine club seems to have morphed into a supper club with wine playing a very diminished role and the entrée, provided by the hosts, becoming the star of the evening.  Since I haven’t cooked BBQ in a while, we decided it would make a good entrée and theme, but it is beyond hard to come up with your wine pairing for the BBQ.

We provided ABT’s (stuffed jalapenos) as an appetizer, slaw as a side, and pulled pork, ribs, and brisket as the entrée.

Beef Tenderloin Oscar

Spring flowers from our yard are earlier than usual so Bev made a bouquet.

Italian Night At Almost Heaven South

Bev and our neighbor Pat had seen a recipe for spaghetti and meatballs on the Today Show that they thought sounded very good so Bev decided to make it and invited her and Steve down to share it with us.

But before the pasta, we had an appetizer of fried green tomatoes, Italian style. using the recipe from Roz over at La Bella Vita Cucina – check out her site for the recipe. 

Oysters Rockefeller Topping As Leftovers

We had had some friends over for grilled oysters Rockefeller recently and I made too much of the spinach topping even for the five dozen oysters we scarfed down.  We used our normal recipe for the topping and with spinach, bacon, garlic and parmesan, it has to be good for other things – but first I mixed in a good bit more crumbled bacon.

We had recently bought a whole pork loin so I carved off five one inch thick chops, cut a deep pocket in them and stuffed lightly with the oyster topping – it had lots of flavor so I didn’t want it too thick.  I seasoned the outside with Lawrey’s as I thought I’d would go with the spinach flavors then grilled them to 140F on each side.

These shots are when they first went on the grill and after flipping.  

Tuna Salad & Stuffed Mushrooms

It had been a lazy rainy day, we had the kitchen all cleaned up, and I was thinking nuked leftover grilled chicken for supper with maybe a Knorr’s Pasta side for a one pot and one plate meal.  Bev, however, had other plans – sometimes she can’t help herself when the food prep gene takes over.

First she decided she wanted a repeat of the stuffed mushrooms we’d had a few days ago (you may remember the leftovers went into the recent breakfast scramble) and I readily agreed with this choice.  This is the recipe and a couple of shots that turned out this time – the liquid in the pan is because we forgot that the shrooms were supposed to be cooked some prior to stuffing, step 3.

2014 Florida Trip – The Super Bowl at Waters Edge

Since our musician was leaving on Sunday morning, Gabe, and his wife Tammy singing harmony, entertained us one last time around the pool the evening before the big game.