Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Cindy had bought a loaf of jalapeno cheddar bread at the Greenback Farmers Market this week and Bev decided she wanted to use it for grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the homemade tomato soup she wanted to make.  I’d tried a couple of soup recipes from the web and they all contained significant chicken broth which left the soup tasting like tomato flavored chicken broth to me – no offense intended for those of you who make it this way. 

So I went in search of a recipe without the broth and found one from The Pioneer Woman that looked like what I was looking for.  Her recipe uses both tomatoes and juice and makes a big batch so I scaled it back for the 28 oz can of tomatoes we wanted to use to get the one below – click on the link to check out her site for the original recipe and a video.

Fish Ala Cindy

One of Cindy’s clients regularly goes fishing in Alaska and often gives her some fish from his freezer – usually halibut but also some other white fish and salmon.  She likes to take her turn at cooking here at home and for this meal it was to be “fish her way.”

We stayed out of the kitchen while she prepared the fish and her sides of cous-cous and spinach with pearl onions.  "Her way" for the fish was to cut the halibut fillets into bite sized pieces, dredge them in Zatarains Fish Fry, and cook them in a skillet with an inch of oil.

She had also picked up some stuffed mushrooms at the market for an appetizer and everything was delicious – this is my plate which included some homemade remouladesauce.

Pintos and Johnny Cakes

Bev made a big pot of pinto beans mostly for converting into re-fried beans to freeze but we needed to eat some for supper – just because they were there.  The beans were made using our normal method of cooking a country ham bone for several hours then using the broth for the beans.

But the main part of this post is about the cornbread with we usually make as cone pone in a cast iron skillet but we opted for something different this time.  I’ve been wanting to make Johnny Cakes, Hoe Cakes, cornmeal pancakes for a long time so this was the night.  After looking up several recipes, they were all basically just Bev’s cornbread with sugar added, which didn’t appeal to me. 

So we just used her cornbread recipe, without the sugar, and cooked them as small pancakes - about 3" diameter.

Sloppy Joe’s For Family Promise

I’ve mentioned this before but every so often we make meals for Family Promise which is a mission by several local churches to house, feed, and train homeless families.  The last time we did it, we made sloppy joe’s using Manwich and they were a big hit so we opted to make them again but homemade this time.  We chose the recipe below from The Chunky Chef  and both the recipe and some good shot’s like the one below can be found by clicking on the link. 

Marinated & Grilled Pork Tenderloin, Bye-Bye Cane

Bev had picked up a package of pork tenderloins and wanted them grilled so I looked back thru my blog for any that we had really liked and found one from 2012 that we had good comments about and we decided to give it another try (updated a little) along with the same slaw side dish.

Apple Bacon Coleslaw

Ingredients:

1 pound head of cabbage, or a 1 pound bag of purchased, pre-shredded  cabbage

1/2 of a sweet onion, diced-I used a Vidalia onion

2 apples, unpeeled, diced- I used Gala

about 2 tablespoons fresh chives, snipped

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon sugar

juice of 1 lemon

1-2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon salt

4-6 slices of bacon, cooked, drained and crumbled

Instructions:

In a large bowl, mix together the mayo, mustard, sugar, lemon, 1 tablespoon cider vinegar and salt together. Taste, and if the dressing needs more tang, add the other tablespoon of vinegar. Add the shredded cabbage, apples, onion, and the chives and toss well with the dressing. Top with the crumbled bacon before serving. This slaw can be served immediately, or covered and chilled until ready to serve.

Healthy Breakfast And Other Stuff

After my surgery, the doctor advised that I should not be dieting while healing but now that it’s a month post-surgery and the start of a new month, it seems like a good time to get back to eating less.  But since I’ve mentioned surgery, here is an update.

Hip Update - Yesterday (three weeks and 5 days post-surgery and 10 therapy sessions), I was finally able to walk 100 yards or so without my cane and with just a slight limp – so good progress continues and the internal healing should be fully complete in two more weeks.

Pork Ribs Cooked In an Oven- My First Ever

As a long time BBQer, I’ve never cooked pork ribs anywhere but in a smoker but since I don’t have a functioning smoker and using the grill, which has a smoke box, in too cumbersome while walking with a cane, the oven was the only choice.  I also didn’t have any rib rub so I made up a batch of Mike Mills Magic Dust using half of this recipe  and using smoked paprika to replace the smoke from the cooker.

Magic Dust

Ingredients:

½ cup paprika (Larry used smoked paprika)

¼ cup kosher salt

¼ cup sugar

2 Tbsps. mustard powder

¼ cup chili powder

¼ cup ground cumin

2 Tbsps. ground black pepper

¼ cup granulated garlic

2 Tbsps. Cayenne (Larry omitted)

Directions:

Mix all ingredients and store in tightly covered container. To make it hotter, increase mustard powder and black pepper to ½ cup each.

To prep the ribs, I just removed the membrane from the back and gave them a generous coating of Magic Dust.

I set the oven on full convection at a temperature of 235F and cooked them uncovered for three hours then covered with foil for 2 hours and finally cranked up the temp for the last ½ hour to get them done.  I gave the tops a coat on Sweet Baby Rays BBQ Sauce and served them sided with slaw and doctored pork and beans.

I thought the flavor was good but the convection oven dried out the tops a little, but they were not bad for a first try.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

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

Larry

2/23/20 event date