Summer Tomato Meals

It’s summer time and for us that means loading up on foods that we rarely eat in the off season.  While we eat some grape or cherry tomatoes, we rarely buy tasteless slicing tomatoes, we generally only eat the Malibu Pole Green Beans that come from the Mennonite market although we might cook a mess or two of something else, and we keep a bag of frozen corn in the freezer for use in soups and such but eat none fresh.  While off-season okra tastes the same, it’s just always been a summer dish for us.

So here are some tomato meals that we have eaten recently in addition to the usual tomato sandwiches, tomato and cottage cheese, etc.  First up is Roz’s Italian Cheesy Tomato Pie with Buttermilk Biscuit Crust which Cindy made for the first time and it was delicious.

Summer Meal And Best Corn On The Cob Cooking Method Then Another Summer Meal

Bev had made a trip to the Mennonite farm market and we decided to have a summer time meal for supper.  So, the meal was Malibu Green Beans cooked with Benton’s country ham, cucumber salad, and boiled corn (sort of). I had recently read an article on Serious Eats about the best ways to cook corn on the cob.  I think it’s a must read if you like this dish and I opted to give the cold start method a try.  The article also discusses using salted water but I decided to wait until next time to try it.

Hot Dogs And Slaw For Memorial Day

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.   

My First Smoked Beef Tenderloin For Christmas Dinner

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and we had a nice, albeit warm, one that required opening up the house to avoid using the AC.

I love, and have made, smoked prime rib for Christmas dinner several times but Bev does not like all of the fat in the ribeye so an idea hit me.  Her favorite beef cut is tenderloin so I decided to try smoking a whole tenderloin roast for this year’s Christmas meal.

More Delicious Fish For Cindy and Me - Halibut In Prosciutto Herb Cream Sauce And Cioppino For Thanksgiving

I HOPE YOU HAD A WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

As I continue to work through our supply of frozen fish while Bev is gone, we had two remaining pieces of Halibut and we opted to cook them using the recipe for Halibut In Prosciutto Herb Cream Sauce from the “La Bella Vita” blog.  The two pieces of fish were very different which is one of the reasons I cancelled my subscription from Wild Alaska Seafood Co. as I believed I was just getting the leftovers for a very high price. 

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.

Eliza Christmas, Neighborhood Ham And Bean Soup

Eliza and family didn’t make it down until Saturday for us to celebrate Christmas with her and for a meal on a rainy day we opted for a soup to use more of the leftover ham from Christmas dinner.  After looking around the web, I settled on the recipe for Neighborhood Ham And Bean Soup from Food.com.  But before we get to the meal lets have a look at Eliza having her second Christmas with Bev’s help.  As a seven year old, she walked in the door, gave me a hug, said Merry Christmas then asked "do you have presents for me." 😊

Christmas Dinner – 2024

Christmas Dinner attendees for this year were the four of us (Bev, Pat W, Cindy, and me), our neighbors Pat L and Steve and special guest granddaughter Madison (also her birthday) and the one thing I wanted to do for sure was smoke a ham half and a turkey breast on my yet-to-be-used pellet smoker.  As Bev and I discussed menu items many things popped up and the two things we knew we wanted for sure was gravy for the turkey and homemade bread.  Then we considered many side dishes such as dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, etc. until Pat L pointed out it could be simpler and healthier to just make green beans rather than the casserole.  Then Bev and I realized we had plenty to eat without the dressing and our favorite way to cook sweet potatoes was to simply bake them and so a menu was born that was way easier and much healthier - smoked turkey breast and smoked ham, gravy, green beans, baked sweet and Irish potatoes, salad, and homemade bread.

The table is all set.

Delicious Then Awesome, Unique Tomato Sandwiches

I really like eating fresh, local, summer garden vegetables and we plan many meals around them.  Bev, the pups, and I made a trip to Maryville (about 18 miles) for stops at the Coning Farm Market and another market in town to get a loaf of Tellico Grains Bakery Olive Bread.  As a result, my supper plan for the day changed to boiled corn and a unique tomato sandwich.

Our Super Good Bangers and Mash For St. Patrick's Day

While I grew up believing the name Doolittle was English, my kids turned up a family crest suggesting it was Irish so I like to take no chances on St. Patrick’s Day and celebrate just in case I’m part Irish.  I know for sure I have a fair amount of Dutch and native American blood but who knows what else.  Maybe I should do one of the ancestry tests but for some reason I’m protective of my DNA – I promise that I have nothing sinister to hide 😊.

We invited Eliza to bring her family down for supper and considered the many options for the meal – Irish stew, corned beef, Shepherds pie, fish pie, bangers, etc.  After remembering the supply of great sausages I had in the freezer from The Wurst Kitchen, I settled on the following menu.

Before dinner drink – Pickle Back (not an Irish drink but it uses Jamison Irish Whiskey).  You shoot the whiskey then chaser with pickle juice - surprisingly not bad but it won't become my favorite - I'm not a whiskey guy.

A Few Random Meals Around The Holidays

Happy New Year and thanks for stopping by my blog this past year.

Here are some meals we’ve made recently but I didn’t want to do an entire post on.  The first one is breakfast hash that was inspired by Pam’s post for Skillet Potato Hash WithMushrooms and Bacon on her "For The Love Of Cooking" blog.  I made it to use some mushrooms we had in the fridge and some leftover boiled potatoes.  I generally followed Pam’s recipe except I just used bacon grease rather than cooking bacon and I started with cooked potatoes.  I topped the hash with three small eggs for a delicious breakfast.

Christmas 2023 At Almost Heaven South

Just as last year, Kathy and Keith, came from Nebraska to Tennessee for a couple of weeks and spent the first part of the visit with Wende and the second part with us.  After they did Christmas morning with Eliza at Wende’s, they all came down to our place for more Eliza present opening and Christmas dinner.

With the addition of friend Kathy, her daughter Ashley, and our neighbors, Pat & Steve, we had 14 for dinner - Pat, Steve, Ashley, Kathy, Wende, Ralph, Beanie, Eliza, Kathy, Keith, Larry, Beverly, Pat, Cindy.

Creamed Cauliflower (aka Creamy Garlic Parmesan Cauliflower with Bacon) & Thanksgiving Dinner

When daughter Wende invited me over for what is becoming her traditional Thanksgiving supper of Cornish hens cooked over an open fire, I volunteered to bring a side dish.  My original choice was Brussels sprouts & sweet potato hash but when I saw Kevin’s recipe for Creamed Cauliflower, I changed my mind.

On his “Closet Cooking” blog, Kevin describes the dish as “A quick and easy stove-top creamed cauliflower with butter, garlic, parmesan, and bacon!”  I made it by his recipe below but since I made it ahead of time, I transferred to a dish for reheating at Wende’s and I used one of his options to add shredded cheese to the top.  For the complete list of options and his good how-to pics, just click on the above link.

But before I get the cauliflower, this is the main event being cooked over the open fire - potatoes and onions in the foil.

Classic Hoppin Johns

During a recent visit to the Mennonite Farm Market, Bev picked up some purple-hulled field peas (similar to black-eyed peas) and after shelling she had four cups.  I went in search of recipes that would be different than just cooking them like dried beans and what I found was the recipe for Classic Hoppin John’s on the Southern Living site.  Since we like to have the peas on New Years Day for good luck, we decided to make the hoppin john’s now for supper and freeze the leftovers to eat on Jan. 1 for good luck.

Delicious Tomato Basil Pasta

We only had a few grape tomatoes but we had a bunch of small tomatoes from our garden and decided they should work in this recipe and we had a giant plant of fresh basil to use so we opted to make Chef Dennis’ Tomato Basil Pasta from his “Ask Chef Dennis” blog.  Since I prefer shaped pasta with chunky sauces, I used the box of penne we had on hand.

Random Summertime Meals And Tomato Soup

A classic summertime meal.

Your Basic, Delicious Summertime Meal For Card Night

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 

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.

Christmas At Our House 2022 – Very Eventful

For our Christmas meal this year we invited daughter, Wende, and family, our friends Kathy and Pat, which along with Cindy, Pat, Bev, and me, gave us 10 diners which fit our number of chairs.

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.