French Dip Crescent Ring

Cindy said she had been wanting to make this for a while and finally had time to do it this week.  She used a recipe from Delish and followed it as written below.  This is a shot of theirs.

Chicken, Bacon, and Spinach Pasta

When I saw the recipe for Chicken, Bacon, Spinach Pasta on Claudia’s What’s Cooking Italian blog, I knew it had to be tried and since we had some spinach and grape tomatoes that needed to be used, this was the night.  I revised the recipe for the way we made it but you can click on the link above for the original, cooking tips, and more pics like this one.

The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak, 2021 Travels, and Stuff

 First will be the stuff.  I don’t know what happened in my childhood to affect this but I have usually always been in the corner of the underdog so you can imagine my pleasure at watching the big win by Tampa in the super bowl.

After zero traveling in 2020, we are planning trips to upper East Tennessee, Nashville, Georgia, the Florida peninsula, and a 60-day western trip and we are sure looking forward to getting out – now, we just need our vaccines.

A little while back, we made Chicken Fried Pork Loin (schnitzel) and now Bev has requested Chicken Fried Steak and even though we’ve made it with several recipes that we always enjoyed, I went in search of yet another one.  The recipe I chose was called The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak and it comes from Trish on her Mom On Timeout blog.

It’s hard to pass on a recipe that has this description “The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak is fried to golden perfection and topped with the creamiest gravy you can imagine, sure to quickly become a family favorite.”  I’ve shown the recipe below as written with a couple of minor changes in the directions.  I cooked the first two steak pieces in a skillet to generate some fond for the gravy then I deep fried the others – I couldn’t see much difference in the looks of the two of them.  You can click on the link above to go to Trish’s site for the recipe and more pics like this one.

Rachael Ray’s Tuna Casserole

I had four (3 pounds) tuna filets in the freezer that needed to be used and since only Cindy and I like the medium rare version, I decided to use them to make tuna casserole - a first for us using fresh tuna.

I looked around online and settled on a recipe fromRacheal Ray that sounded good but was more complicated than some others. 

The recipe uses one pound of tuna for four servings but since I had three pounds and wanted to make two or more casseroles, I tripled Rachel’s recipe to get the one below and made it into casseroles which changed the directions a bit.  You can click on the link above for her original recipe which looks like this.

French Onion Pork Chops

I had been looking for different ways to fix pork loin chops and this recipe for French Onion Pork Chops caught my eye.  The recipe comes from Wendie on her Butter Your Biscuit blog and since we really like French Onion Soup, I knew it had to be tried.  Here is a shot of the dish from her blog.

Sicilian-Style Swordfish

We have developed a liking for swordfish but it is not readily available around these parts so I bought some from Joe Patti’s Seafood (wholesale to the general public) in Pensacola, FL.  While it cost a lot to get it here, the price from them is not much more than buying seafood locally.

We had made Swordfish Puttanesca about 15 months ago but for todays dish we went back to a 2014 recipe to re-try Sicilian Swordfish, which is similar but different.  The main reason for the redo is to get the cooking times recorded.

Using Up The Beef Bones - Great Burritos

My last post was about the beef shanks we had gotten from our neighbors and I also mentioned that we got several packages of neck bones.  Not to let them go to waste, we cooked the neck bones in water overnight to get as much flavor from them as possible for broth and we got four very rich quarts - likely eight quarts of the store bought stuff.  As it turned out, we also got a couple cups of very tender meat from the bones and decided to make something for ourselves rather than give it to the dogs.