Let’s talk about the computer first which is an HP Laptop. Some of you have commented that my blog posts used to auto fill some info for you and it also auto filled your info when I commented on your posts or when I did banking – it would show my log-in ID. Obviously I have hit a wrong button at some point so if you have any suggestions for a fix, I’d love to hear them.
Our kids, Rhett and Beth, gave us some special Iberico Pork from Spain’s Campo Grande for last years Christmas and we are just eating the first of it. From the web: “Known as the "Wagyu of pork," Ibérico pork is a premium meat from black Iberian pigs native to the Iberian Peninsula." Renowned for its rich marbling, buttery texture, and nutty flavor, it is sourced from humanely raised animals with a traditional diet of grass and acorns.” For this meal, I selected a four-bone rack of pork chops which I cut into individual chops. I looked around and found several recipes but smothered meat and pork is always a favorite of ours so I used the recipe for Smothered Mediterranean Pork Chops from the “A Labour Of Life” blog.
The Memorial Day food question for us usually boils down to “will it be hamburgers or hot dogs for the meal and since we recently had burgers, we opted to go with the dawgs this time. I’ve mentioned several times that I grew up in an area of West Virginia where hot dogs were topped only sauce (chili), mustard, and onion and slaw was not even an offered option (it is in most places now like the rest of the state). But not being from that area, Bev and Pat like slaw dogs so the simple menu for just us was hot dogs and slaw. While I never put slaw on my dawgs, I do like it as a side dish. The key to a good hot dog is the sauce and we have played with many recipes over the years to have now settled on My Dad’s West Virginia Hot Dog Sauce which came from the “Tried And True” blog. Bev omitted the beef broth and changed the cooking method a lot to get the recipe below. The original recipe and pics can be found by clicking on the above link.
I made a double recipe of this dish six years ago for a dock party and it was a major hit with our guests – some called it the best ever, so I decided it was time for a rerun but just a single recipe this time as shown below. When I was at the Food City deli ordering the meat and cheese the way I did, the clerk guessed that I was making pasta salad.
So, it’s that time again when Bev and Pat head off to Sint Maarten ( Caribbean Island) for a couple of weeks at Pat's timeshare and Cindy and I are dog sitting and eating fish and first up was Greek Salmon using our go-to recipe. And while thinking about what to have with it, the same day up pops the recipe for Best Italian Salad Recipe (Restaurant-Style) from the “Ask Chef Dennis” blog. I did the salmon and Cindy made the salad and followed the recipe as written but used Great Northern Beans and omitted the pepperoncini.
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.
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.
As I’ve posted many times, we buy our eggs from a local couple so we can get the best ones possible. Their chickens were on strike most of the winter forcing us to buy from the store but they have now began laying with a vengeance and we’re being offered 10 dozen pretty regularly. So, this time, I found homes for several dozen and decided to turn one doz. into egg salad. We have used several recipes for egg salad over the years including a couple of Masters Tournament clones (I’d think there could only be one), your recipes, and our normal where Bev just makes it to taste.
Bev makes lots of cucumber salad over the summer and she uses both a vinaigrette and a creamy dressing, making both to taste. Tonight she chose to go with a recipe for Balsamic Cucumber Salad that she found on "Taste Of Home." We sided it with a marinated sirloin steak from Food City that we will buy again. The salad called for a balsamic vinaigrette but it didn’t provide a recipe so I used the one for Balsamic Honey Vinaigrette, also, from "Taste Of Home."
Balsamic Cucumber Salad
Ingredients:
1 large English cucumber, halved and sliced (we
used cukes from our garden)
2 cups grape tomatoes, halved (we used grape
tomatoes from our garden)
1 medium red onion, halved and thinly sliced (we
used a Vidalia onion)
1/2 cup balsamic vinaigrette (recipe below)
3/4 cup crumbled reduced-fat feta cheese
Directions:
In a large bowl, combine cucumber, tomatoes and
onion. Add vinaigrette; toss to coat. Refrigerate, covered, until serving. Just
before serving, stir in cheese.
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.
Thanks to our gardener neighbor and a visit to the Mennonite market, we had lots of leaf and bib lettuce and Bev wanted to turn them into a salad and Nicoise popped into my mind – it’s been years since we made one. So, I went on the web in search of recipes and ideas and came up with the ingredients I wanted to use plus a dressing recipe from “The Modern Proper” blog. Nicoise means "In the style of Nice" - a French city - and I even looked up how to pronounce it (nee·swaaz).
Bev and I made a trip down to the Englewood Mennonite Market this week and picked up several goodies and decided to turn some of them into a nice summer meal for our Friday group. Nearly the entire meal came from the market and it consisted of:
Malibu stringless pole beans cooked our normal way
We were preparing for our first RV trip since last October and I always like to have something made up for a quick bite such as pimento cheese, or in this case turkey salad. I use turkey breast because its so easy to just roast the breast, remove it from the bones and chop it up. While bigger cubes of meat make for a nicer pic, I prefer mine smaller so I used the food processor for my chopping of the turkey and the celery. The recipe for Turkey Salad with DriedCranberries, Pecans, and Grapes came from “Add A Pinch” and it called for four cups of chicken but, by weight, I had twice as much so I doubled everything to get the recipe below.
Before I get to the food, I was surprised while watching a nature show when the host said “this bird can see in color.” It never occurred to me that all animals didn’t see in color so I did a search on dogs and was surprised to find that they basically see just blue and yellow and this is what we see vs. them.
The rest of you dog lovers likely already knew this but I was glad to learn it. My buddy Joe is color blind and this may be what he sees or something similar.
Sandwiched between a Thursday of 72F and a predicted Saturday of sunny and mid-50’s was a Friday of rain and 42F which seemed perfect for a fire and soup. Plus, Bev and Pat would be coming home at an unknown time from a few days in Gatlinburg making eat-anytime-soup the ideal meal.
I’m working on reducing our frozen food inventory (again) and when I saw this recipe for Steak and Pepper Stir Fry, I knew it would get some freezer burned beef out of the freezer and prevent some of our recently picked peppers from going in. A one pan stir-fry meal works well for our Friday group and Mary’s recipe from her “Vegetable Recipes” blog fit the bill. I used beef tenderloin which I grilled over high heat for a couple of minutes to add another layer of flavor. The original recipe with great pics like the one below can be found by clicking on the above link.
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.
REMEMBERING OUR FALLEN HEROS
I recently had the urge for a muffuletta sandwich which is not an easy desire to fill here in our area due to the ingredients as it is an Italian sandwich and there are no Italian markets around these parts. The muffuletta was created in 1906 at the Central Grocery in New Orleans by Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Lupo and we ate one of theirs during a trip to NOLA in 2010 – actually we just ate half of one.
I wanted to have something different with our ChileColorado and searched the web for a Mexican salad that sounded good and came upon an interesting looking recipe on The Café Sucre Farine blog. It had lots of ingredients and I didn’t followed the recipe exactly so I noted my changes.
I like pork chops and I like peppercorn sauce so when I saw this recipe from Pam on her For The Love Of Cooking blog, I knew it had to be made. I considered grilling the chops but then Bev said her favorite chops have always been “like Mama made” – floured and pan fried - so I stuck with Pam’s version. Her recipe is for two chops but I had ten, so I amended the amounts to get the ingredients below plus I didn’t use the oven to cook them. You can click on the above link for the original recipe and Pam’s great presentation pics.
