Mashed Potato Pancakes
After our baked steak and gravy meal, we had four cups of mashed potatoes and I decided to turn them into one of my favorite things – mashed potato pancakes. I looked around the web and found several similar recipes which I combined into the one below. Since Cindy wanted to cook she took over and followed the recipe.
As in the past, when our neighbors had their beef processed, I ended up with tail pieces (ox tails) and bones which I like to use to make broth and this was the day. I had 7½ lbs. of bones and I began by roasting them at 400F for an hour.
Then I added them to my 16 qt. pot and added water to about ¾ full.
I cooked them on very low for 21 hours to get this very rich broth. I had planned to add onion, carrot, and celery to the pot but forgot until too late.
Then I removed the bones and meat (separated it for the dogs) and let it set until the fat hardened on top and removed it.
Finally, it was strained and water added to get enough for 8 quart plastic
bags. But as we bagged it, two of the
bags had a pin hole leak we could see and a third one leaked out in the sheet
pan that I was about to freeze them on.
I don’t need this frustration so I’ll be buying beef broth from now
on. Since we cook chicken regularly for
the dogs, I may still bag up and freeze these small batches of chicken broth.
Gourmet Scrambled Eggs
Recently, we had Creamy Lemon Garlic Salmon & Shrimp
And Creamed Asparagus and we had both of the creamed sauces leftover which I
used to top scrambled eggs for a delicious breakfast on two separate mornings.
Cuban Sandwiches
Remember our recent Mojo Pork meal, well we had plenty of
leftover pork and opted to invite our neighbors down for Cuban Sandwiches. I made the sandwiches as I had done previously using my yet-to-be-patented panni press.
Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.
Have a
great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.
Larry
4/25-5/2/25
event dates
We had some sauce and several meatballs left from our recent meal and in thinking about something other than the same meal, I decided to make a casserole dish by cooking additional spaghetti.
When Pam posted the recipe for Tuscan Gigante Beans on her “For The Love Of Cooking” blog I new I wanted to make it, but I also know that Bev doesn’t like lima beans in any form – it’s the texture and also applies to chickpeas. However, she does like white beans so I decided to just make the dish with Great Northern Beans. Since I was sure we would like the beans, I made a double recipe as shown below. Click on the link above to check out Pam's site for the original recipe and some great pics.
During a recent market trip, Bev picked up two packages of corned beef and I froze the smaller one and cooked the larger one. I decided it was large enough to eat some for supper with still plenty left over for corned beef hash. The size of the ingredients is a matter of personal preference but after eating some Neuske’s Corned Beef Hash, I think I like the smaller pieces better even though they take more time to prepare.
Cindy had a birthday while Bev was in Florida so we finally were able to take her out to lunch this day and as a seafood lover, we took her to Chesapeake’s Seafood House in West Knoxville. They are one of the Copper Cellar Family of Restaurants, which is a local chain that, in addition to Chesapeake’s, includes Calhoun’s, Copper Cellar, Cappuccino’s, Cherokee Grill, Corner 16, and Smoky Mountain Brewery with locations around the Knoxville area and in Gatlinburg.
Since most of the trees around here are oak, hickory, and poplar, we don't get much bright color but our burning bushes and providing us with some late fall beauty.
When I was growing up, my mom would get at least three meals from a Sunday pot roast and I’m having some similar results with my brisket. You’ve seen my first two brisket meals (brisket and burnt ends), then my neighbors and Eliza’s dad each got a meals worth of it and then I got a couple more final meals. Following the burnt ends and burnt ends hash, we had brisket sandwiches where the sliced brisket was reheated in the broth then I had mine open faced on a burger bun with each half topped with broth, then a slice of smoked gouda, the brisket, more broth, and pickled red onions - it was delicious.
My desire to cook seems to be waning and both of us have long since pasted the desire to clean up the kitchen so we have decided to eat more meals out and we started with a Sunday visit to the Dockside Grill at Tellico Marina which is less than a 10 minute drive from home. After a 10am BLT for breakfast, we made it to the restaurant a little before 3pm to find just a small crowd, which was perfect. This is the view of the main dining area and the harbor from our table with lots of boats going in and out to just look around.
If you have been reading this blog much at all, you know that we are not “Spring Chickens” here in this family so I’ll let you do the ciphering for yourself and not disclose any numbers but SIL, Pat W, just had a very major milestone birthday (which I’ll hopefully be here to have next year). Since we didn’t want to go out for lunch on the crowded Labor Day (her actual birthday), we waited until this day to go to her requested restaurant for lunch – Tapoco Lodge. Since I posted about the lodge a few years ago , I won’t do that again and will confine this post to this visit. Our neighbors Pat L and Steve joined Pat W, Bev, and I for the always adventurous drive up the 11 miles and 318 curves of The Dragon (US-129).
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 mentioned earlier that Bev and Pat are in St. Marten and oddly most of the pics she sends me look like these.
During a recent freezer dive, I discovered a pkg of oxtails in gravy and decided it would be perfect comfort food for a cold Friday get-together meal. I nuked the meat and gravy then served it over mashed potatoes and sided with green beans.
Cindy Salmon
Cindy made a very good Salmon dish recently and I didn’t do a post about it as it required typing in the entire recipe. The recipe for Salmon With Creamed Spinach & Parmesan Sauce came from Tieghan Gerard in an unknown magazine and it was very good.
We’ve had a box of jumbo pasta shells for I don’t know how long and I’ve looked at many recipes to use them. Then along came the recipe for Easy Lemon Ricotta Stuffed Shells With Marinara Sauce from Velva on her “Evening With A Sandwich” blog and I decided it would be perfect for Friday now that buddy Joe has found he can eat gluten. I followed her recipe except for the hot honey and I made a couple of minor changes.
I posted about this dish four years ago and had it not been for a different cooking method, I wouldn’t have posted this time. We remodeled our kitchen close to 20 years ago and we put in a new technology microwave called a GE Monogram with Advantium Technology and I’ve always liked it even though we didn’t maximize it’s potential. So, when it came time for a new one, we again went with the GE Monogram except now it’s called a 5 in 1 oven and our goal is to make more use of the oven and not use it only as a microwave.
Cindy brought me the leftovers from her New Years Day breakfast trip to First Watch so I could add an egg to them. The restaurant meal was an Italian Hash Brown Skillet and it looked tasty.
Now that we have made it thru the Christmas meal, we have plenty of leftovers to use up up as you will see on my next couple of posts.
Since I didn’t get to eat as much gravy on Christmas Day as I would have liked, the next evening I made an open-faced hot turkey sandwich. I added some gravy and sliced turkey to a bowl and nuked it then built the sandwich as follows: slice of homemade bread, turkey, gravy, and chopped bacon. It was delicious.
Our Christmas menu included gravy for the turkey and I like to make it ahead of time - made it on 12/23. My original plan was to roast turkey wings then I realized I had a chicken carcass from Cindy’s roasted chicken meal so I baked it at 350F for about 45 minutes then added it to a pot with an onion, a couple of carrots, celery ribs and garlic cloves covered it with water and simmered a few of hours. I used the recipe from Simply Recipes as a guide.
We interrupt our trip to the Midwest for some other stuff.
We made some old-fashioned salmon cakes recently for supper
using canned salmon and we had a leftover that I turned into a breakfast
omelet. I chopped it up and reheated it
in butter and when it was hot, I moved it to one side of the pan and poured two
beaten eggs over it and the rest of the pan.
I added shredded cheddar to the non-salmon side of the pan, covered, and
cooked until the eggs were set. I slid
it out of the pan folding it into omelet shape as I did and topped with a
dollop of dill aioli to get this delicious breakfast.
One of Bev’s favorite lunches is refried beans which she makes and freezes when we cook a big batch of pintos – they are not really refried but are mashed and doctored with several items. After bragging about the white beans served to me at Angie’s Kitchen a couple of times, Bev suggested we make some white beans so she can see how they work for her refried beans. Rather than going to the store, we used a pound each of navy bean and great northern beans that we had on hand and I started with our pinto bean recipe and adjusted it to get the one below.
