What A Difference A Day Makes - It's Snow Time In Tennessee

We had a little snow Friday night, but by Sunday, it was pretty well all gone and looked like this.  Note the gnarly white branches on the sycamore tree.  Click on the shots to enlarge.

Then Monday morning after snowing most of the night, it looked like this. The table is mesh, so most of the snow went on through it.

This is the grill - a little over 6" and still snowing lightly.

Some shots off our decks.

This is the front of the house and it was snowing again.

I got the 4WD Explorer teed up just in case I had to get out.

I don’t have the camera to get good shots across the driveway, but it was pandemonium at the bird feeders - they didn't seem to care that I was out there taking photos.

It was a beautiful snow and deep enough to cover everything. Fortunately, it was cold and we got a pretty dry snow, so we didn’t loose power from falling trees, my BBQ canopy didn’t collapse - although, after I noticed the poles are bent when I looked at the shot, I headed out to knock the snow off,

and the boat dock didn’t sink, as the header shot shows.

It’s been many years since we’ve had snow this deep – so long that I had trouble finding my snow boots to go out in it.  It's been a long time since I had both of these items in use - Bev wanted a path across the patio into the yard for the dogs to use to go potty.  In my youth in northern WV, I became very accomplished at using one of these machines, and it's like riding a bike - notice how the 17 year old shovel looks brand new?

We ended up with nearly 7" of snow.  Have a great day and thanks for stopping by on a beautiful day at Almost Heaven South.

Larry

Ham & Eggs – Basic Food

One can’t have a big fancy breakfast every day and sometimes just has to settle for a simple breakfast meal of ham and eggs. When you buy a whole de-boned Benton's country ham, you get a lot of the nice big center slices like you see in restaurants, but you also get several part pieces – taste is the same. So for this meal, it was a couple of those pieces of ham, two over-easy eggs, and toasted marble rye. Basic but acceptable :-).

It was diet-like food the rest of the day and I didn't eat the fat on the ham.

Don't know about you all, but I spent the cold, snowy weekend piled up in the downstairs den with a roaring fire and a glass of wine, watching sports and getting things in order to work on my taxes.  We awoke this morning to 5" of new snow and it's still falling lightly at 6:15am.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Ham Reuben Sandwich

Rawtalent posted a super good-looking ham Reuben the other day over at Rawtalent’s Club Eclectia and since I had all of the ingredients and had been thinking along the same lines, I had to have one. I still had some marble rye bread, kraut, & pully ham from New Years Day, homemade 1000 Island dressing, and the Swiss cheese was gone, but I had gruyere.

I don’t know about you, but the engineer in me wants everything to be neat and organized – including my food. For example, I hate it when the ingredients fall off my sandwich or even more when it falls apart. I wanted a warm sandwich and had only ham pieces that had been pulled off, so I decided to build the sandwich by arranging the ham to fit the bread, topping with the cheese and nuking until it melted. I let the cheese cool a little to reset while I heated the kraut and gave the bread and dressing a 15 second nuke – just to take off the chill.

Then, I just assembled and enjoyed.

It was every bit as good as his looked and a great use of the unique flavor of the pulley-ham. Normally, I would have scarfed down the entire sandwich, but today I could only eat half. When I went for a physical back before Thanksgiving, the doctor prescribed phentermine (the safe half of Phen-Fen) to help me lose some weight and I’ve lost 12 pounds and I broke even thru the holidays.  In addition to increased energy, it makes me very full sooner than normal, so I eat alot less.  Coupled with some participation in Bev's diet, I'm hopeful.

 I ate this lunch on BBQ day and it turned out to be a cold rainy & snowy day.  But, later in the day, the snow became the big, soft, half dollar sized flakes - I love it when it does that and I learned that if I used the sports setting on the camera, I could get a shot of it.

We just had enough to cover the grass, but Knoxville got over an inch and it was so pretty, someone made a video which was shown on The Weather Channel the next morning.

Have a good one.

Larry

My World Has Just Changed – Diet Food

Bev’s sister, Pat, has enrolled in a diet plan and Bev decided to do it with her – and when she’s on a diet, I’m on a diet whether I want to be or not. Actually, I’m the one of three of us who probably needs it the most. Unlike many plans that provide the food, this one provides guidelines for you to cook and eat by, so our choices are to make two dishes for every meal or for me to climb on the diet train, sorta.

My plan, for our main meal at least, is to eat the same basic thing Bev eats, but not be as restrictive with it. The difficult part is to eat many of the same foods and have them still be different and tasty - fortunately I visit several blogs that provide many healthy dishes. Joanne, over at Eats Well With Others recently posted a list of bloggers who are on a healthy eating plan, so I’ll be visiting all of them.

The day the new eating plan was to begin, Jenn over at Jenn’s Food Journey provided a recipe for Baked Fish With Rosemary Aioli, and it sounded like a great meal to begin with. Check her site for the recipe.  I cooked mine per the recipe (got my fish a little too done) and made my first ever aioli.  I sided it with salad with our homemade 1000 Island dressing - remember I said sorta above.

Bev couldn't have the aioli so she put hers in a ramakin, topped it with Rotel, and baked.  She had a salad with a no fat dressing.  I really enjoyed mine and remember, I said sorta for me.  I will make some changes to my dinner meal and lunches, but breakfasts will likely continue to be the same.

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

Larry

Just Another Pastrami Sandwich And A Christmas Gift

Before the sandwich, I wanted to provide some info on the beef rib I've been posting about.  The roast in the header shot and the steak from yesterdays post came from two different whole rib roasts (5 total) that I bought on sale from Krogers at $6.99/lb before Thanksgiving and $5.99/lb before Christmas.  They were all choice grade from Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) and were the best I've ever cooked and maybe ever eaten.  Their meat also gets bragged about on the BBQ forums and I will definitely seek it out from now on - almost makes me want to live in Iowa.

Now for the sandwich.  I had just a few slices of homemade pastrami in the fridge along with some of the good marble rye, Swiss cheese, and homemade mustard from New Years day. So says I, what can I turn these into? Back in our skiing days, Bev, decided to try a grilled pastrami sandwich for breakfast and it quickly became the go to meal prior to a fun day on the slopes.

It’s just bread-cheese-meat-cheese-mustard-bread, bread buttered and grilled in a skillet with a lid, to help melt the cheese.

It was quick, easy, and delicious - a great lunch after a light breakfast. 

We only exchange Christmas gifts with a couple of folks and this year recieved the perfect gift for us. We seem to always need multiple warming devices, especially for lake parties and our friends Kathy and Ashley solved our problem with this gift. It's a Bella Cucina Triple Slow Cooker, with three 2 1/2 quart cookers. We had two of the three in service for our New Years party.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Now That’s A Steak & Our Christmas Gift

Remember a while back I was prepping the Christmas rib roast and I cut some thick steaks, we cooked one and froze the others.

Here it is after Bev seasoned it with S&P, Tiger Seasoning and Montreal Steak Seasoning – 1 ¾ inch thick.

I seared it on the gas grill for a few minutes per side then popped it into a 300* oven to an internal temp of 122*. Here it is just before slicing.

We had eaten some potato skins an hour or so before the steak, so we weren’t super hungry and didn’t eat the entire steak, so we cut off the amount we wanted – here it is after removing Bev’s piece.

Note it has more well done around the outside than did the Christmas rib roast (header photo), but not as much as if it had been cooked over direct heat the entire time.  The best part - it was delicious.

Bev and I have long since stopped giving each other Christmas gifts, preferring instead to take each other on a vacation or something like that - when you're old and retired, you pretty well have all the stuff you need. As I've posted several times, we buy meat in bulk, when it's on sale, cut it the way we want it, and store in the freezer - to accomplish this, we've been using a vacuum sealer for years. We wore out a Foodsaver, bought a new one a year or so ago and it's already not doing a good job, so we bought ourselves a new one for Christmas.

I read lots of BBQ forums and interact with folks who are in the meat business and the overwhelming choice seems to be a Cabela's Commercial Grade Vaccuum Sealer, which is what we bought. We used it for the first time today, and while I can't yet speak about it's reliability, it is a serious vaccuum sealing machine - more powerful, sturdier, wider bags, better sealing system. Here's a shot of the old one, the new one, and the two of them.

This is one toy that definitely saves us money and should pay for itself - this is a couple of pork loins, bought on sale for $1.98/lb and cut into roasts for us and our BBQ customers.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Hoppin John’s

This is the final dish we served on New Years Day and the one of which I’m most pleased as I made it by adapting several recipes and it was delicious – my Mississippi friends thought so and even my Chicago transplant friends, who’d never eaten black eyed peas, enjoyed it. Most recipes I've seen for this meal have the greens served on the side with the rice either cooked in or topped with the peas, but I wanted a one pot meal that required very little attention during our little party.

Hoppin’ John’s
Adapted form several recipes but primarily Mary’s Black Eyed Peas at Deep Dish South

¼ cup olive oil
1 country ham hock
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup medium green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound Kielbasa smoked sausage, halved lengthwise then cut crosswise into 3/8" slices
About 1½ quarts chicken broth, divided
1 pound dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and picked through
1 can Rotel
1 to 2 jalapenos, ribs and seeds removed and chopped small, or to taste
Couple pinches of salt, or to taste
15 turns of the pepper grinder, or to taste
½ tsp Zaterain’s Creole Seasoning, or your favorite (more or less to taste)
½ tsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
2 bay leaves
Additional water or chicken stock, if needed
1 cup rice of choice (more or less as desired - we used the whole grain we had on hand)
1 bunch of your favorite greens (about a pound), tough stems removed, washed, and shredded (we used kale).

Put oil in a large pot, add onion, celery, bell pepper and sauté until softened. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, then add Kielbasa and lightly brown. Then slowly add one quart of stock, stirring to deglaze the pot as you do, and bring it up to a full boil. Add the ham hock, reduce heat and simmer for an hour (I did this several hours ahead).

Once this cooks, add the dried peas (or pre-soaked if you like), Rotel, jalapeno, salt, pepper, Cajun/Creole seasoning, cayenne, and bay leaves and bring it all to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and partially cover, cooking for about 1½ - 2 hours, or until peas are tender and creamy. Remove bay leaves and ham hock – remove meat from hock, chop, and add back to peas.

Meanwhile in another pot, cook the rice in chicken stock.  It could have been cooked with the peas, but this gave me better contol of the liquid amount.

Meanwhile (again), add a little olive oil to a large sauté pan over medium, heat and add as many greens as the pan will hold. As they wilt, turn them and add more until all have been wilted.

About 30 minutes prior to serving, stir greens and rice into the peas and again adjust liquid if needed and seasonings. I cooked the rice and greens several hours ahead of time.

When done cooking, I poured the finished dish into a slow cooker on warm and it required no more attention from me. I’m sure it could have been cooked entirely in the slow cooker, but since I didn’t know how long it would require and I wanted to serve them at a specific time, I used a pot on the cook top method. Serve them up with some hot cornbread and your luck is set for the year – I ate two helpings and another for breakfast the next day just to be sure.

With so many flavors, I believe this dish might even appeal to those who aren't big fans of  field peas and I don’t plan to wait a year to make it again.  The next time, I'll try collards and use more of them - since it was all mixed, I didn't want to have so many for the non-greens eaters.  Also, the rice fans would likely want lots more than I used.

Have a great day and now it’s another week of leftovers, but I don’t think I’ll be able to turn clam chowder or Hoppin Johns in to much else.

Larry