Sorta Chicken Cordon Bleu On The Grill Then Chicken Cordon Bleu Soup

We still had ham left from Christmas and some chicken breasts in the fridge that I decided to marry and Chicken Cordon Bleu came to mind but I didn’t want to make the traditional rolled and breaded version.  I wanted to grill the chicken and not roll it up and Bev is not a fan of Swiss cheese so my dish became something very different but still using Chicken Cordon Bleu as the inspiration.  I looked around the web for recipes and settled on the recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu from Nagi on her “Recipe Tin Eats” blog to use as a guide.  I used her recipe for the sauce but my own technique for the chicken.

Beer Can Chicken

I’d been wanting to cook beer-can chicken for a while and we wanted Eliza to bring her family down so we married the two desires.  I like the idea of adding butter and seasoning under the chicken skin so I looked around the web at several recipes and selected the herb butter recipe from food.com and tripled it to get the recipe below.  This was my first time making compound butter.

Chicken and Pineapple Kebabs

We had some pineapple spears in the fridge along with some chicken breasts and bell pepper and Bev suggested kebabs for supper which sounded great to me.  I went on line in search of a recipe and settled on the recipe for Chicken and Pineapple Kabobs from “The Whole Cook” blog.  I chose it because of the short list of ingredients, all of which I had on hand.  I followed the recipe but added the extra step of reducing the leftover marinade in a pan and spooning it over the plated kebabs.

Cedar Plank Salmon With Maple Ginger Glaze & Smoker Repaired

Not sure how I got there but I ended up looking online at some cedar planks for grilling and since I had plenty of Sockeye Salmon in the freezer, I ordered a 12 pack of planks – probably from Amazon.  As best I can tell, I’ve only made this dish once since I began blogging and since we thought it was just okay, I went in search of a new recipe.  The recipe I selected for Cedar Plank Salmon With Maple Ginger Glaze  came from Lisa on her “Downshiftology” blog.

Souvlaki And Greek Salad

When I saw Jenn’s recipe for Souvlaki on her “Once Upon A Chef” blog, I knew I wanted to give it a try.  I thought it would be an easy company meal so I invited Eliza and her family down for Sunday supper.  Since the recipe is for 4-6 servings, I increased it by 50% to get the recipe below.

Pollo Asado, Mexican Grilled Chicken Ala Chef Lea Ann

Chef Lea Ann recently posted her recipe for Easy Pollo Asado (Mexican Grilled Chicken) on her “Cooking On The Ranch” blog, and since she is a go-to source for southwestern recipes, I knew it had to be tried.  She describes it as “Citrus juice and Mexican spices join forces to create bright and complex flavors for this easy Pollo Asado recipe. A juicy grilled chicken dinner with sheer pizzaz.”

Since I had 4½ lbs. if thighs, I upped the marinade ingredient amounts as shown below and I subbed green pepper for jalapenos.  While we have a Mexican store about 25 miles away, I just ordered the Naranja Agria and the Achiote paste from Amazon.  Be sure to check out Lea Ann's site, ( link above) for the original recipe and her good pics.

Mother’s Day At Almost Heaven South

 Happy Belated Mother’s Day To All Of You Moms

Bev decided she wanted a steak for her Mother’s Day supper and for her that means a filet.  We also invited our friends Pat and Kathy (and their fellows) to join us as their kids live out of town.  For our steaks we had two rib eyes provided by our neighbors for themselves, four filets, and half of a prime strip steak for me.

Raspberry, Bourbon Glazed Pork Chops

Beverly came home the other day with a six pack of “gottch-ya” pork chops that she had bought on sale.  You know the ones where they put a couple of nice looking sirloin chops that are covering several ““gottch-ya” chops that you would not otherwise buy.

Transylvanian Goulash Inspired Dish And Thanksgiving At Wende’s

When I saw this recipe for Transylvanian Goulash from Debbie on her “A Feast For The Eyes” blog and with my girls, who would be lukewarm on trying it, off in Florida, I was inspired to make a similar dish for myself, especially since I had some pork chops in the freezer and a jar of kraut in the fridge. 

Since I was making it for just me, I halved the ingredient amounts and changed the cooking method so as not to overcook the chops as I prefer them slightly pink.  I debated whether to leave the chops whole or cut them up and I opted for the former.  You can click on the above link for Debbie's original recipe and how-to pics.

Pinto Beans, Hoe Cakes, and Birthday Meals

This post is primarily to get our pinto bean recipe documented on my blog. For our pinto beans, we’ve always just added stuff to taste so they rarely taste the same and some are better than others so this time, I tried to make a good batch and document the recipe.  I looked around the web to see what ingredients were used by others and came up with the following recipe.

Pasta Primavera Salad Ala Larry

Eliza brought her parents down on Sunday to play in the lake as the season winds down and we invited them to stay for hot dogs.  For a side dish, I remembered that I had been wanting some pasta salad and after some looking, I found the recipe for one that I had made it the past, really liked, and was somewhat healthy.  I made it the day before so the flavors could marry well.

Grilled Pork Tenderloin

We made a similar dish about 10 years ago and after discovering a couple of pork tenderloins in the freezer, I decided it was time for a redo.  I’m often dumbfounded by how long it’s been since we’ve made some dishes.  I reduced the leftover marinade to make a sauce for the pork and Bev made some apple coleslaw using the recipe below.

Steak & Chicken Fajita Marinades

Our beef raising neighbor, Pat, called to advise she had some flank steak and wondered what to use it for and ask if I wanted to cook it.  Since it weighed only 1½ pounds, I suggested fajitas as it would feed our crowd that way (all of my girls are back home now).  To help it be really tender, I found a marinade recipe from Little Spice Jar that was labeled as “The absolute BEST Steak Fajitas you've ever had! This is my take on the tex-mex steak fajitas. Marinated for hours in lime juice, garlic, and cumin -- so good you'll never use another recipe again!”  For more pics like this one click on the above link to visit Marzia's blog.

Greek Souvlaki On A Pretty Day

It’s hard to believe how fast January went by and how much the temps dropped between December and January.  I enjoyed having fires in the fireplace and used my full rick of wood.  But on this 60 degree first day of Feb, it was time to fire up the grill.

Grilled Pork Steak

Bev came home from the store recently with three pork steaks and wanted them grilled with BBQ sauce.  I had never heard of a pork steak until our midwestern friends Laurie and David (Big Daddy Dave) served them to us. In reality, they are sliced pork shoulder or Boston butt.  I decided to brine them first and found a recipe on Best Recipe Box and decided to use it but not their grilling instructions so they are mine.  

Oysters, Wings, And Jerk Chicken

As you may recall, during our RV trip in April to Pensacola, we made a couple of stops at Joe Patti’s Seafood and one of the things we bought was shucked oysters, which I froze.

I had been advised that the frozen ones were not that good when eaten raw but just as good as fresh when cooked so we deep fried them.  I thawed and drained the 24 oz container which contained 20 select oysters that looked fresh shucked.

Homemade Pizza On The Grill & Strawberry Shortcake

After thinking about it for several hours, Bev decided we should do something fun for supper while Joe was here and she opted for make-your-own pizzas using stuff we had on hand.  She found a dough recipe at A Couple Cooks and made a double batch (one would have been plenty for four individual pizzas).  Rather repeat the recipe here, it can be found by clicking on the link.

Bev made six dough balls and after an hour of proofing, she made a station for each of us to make ours – she did hers by hand and I used a rolling pin for mine.  

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

Maiden Voyage For New Grill

Bev had bought an eye of round roast and we decided to cook it on the rotisserie for our first cook on the new grill.  She bought it at our local Vonore store which has a real butcher shop and the roast was well trimmed but unfortunately, their beef is all select.  To help with this less tender beef grade, I ran the Jaccard over the entire thing to cut some of the muscle fibers and provide an inlet for the marinade – a couple of shots from the web and a tool every kitchen should have – IMHO.

Finally, A New Grill

Many years ago, we bought the Home Depot version of a Ducane grill, which at the time had a reputation for making pretty high end grills.  Of course some corners were cut on the Home Depot version, which was less than half the cost of the normal Ducane.  We used it for at least 10 years and put new burners in it twice, but it now won’t stay lit and I’m not working on it anymore.

Bev’s view on grills is buy a cheaper one, toss it when it quits working and rusts out, then buy a new one, which is what we have been doing up until now.  But this time, I decided to spend some of the kids inheritance and I got a Weber Summit which is not a real high-end grill but well above our normal.  With the 10 year warranty on most parts, it will hopefully be the last grill we have to buy.

Since I could not find this model at one of our big box stores, I bought it from Amazon for less than the list price and with no shipping cost – I’m one of those online shoppers whose behavior is unfortunately resulting is the closure of many brick and mortar stores.  I had to spend about an hour installing the side shelves and a few more parts to end up with this, including many of my fingerprints.

It has some bells and whistles, such as lighted burner control knobs and a lid-handle mounted light, that I don’t really need but I like that there is a place to store the rotisserie items and the motor is always installed on a flip up mount.  It also has a searing area and a smoker box which will allow some bbqing without using my big smoker.

I have fired it up using a normal propane bottle and now I just need to put it in place on the patio, hook it to our home’s propane system, and commence to cooking.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

6/7/17 Event Date