More From Gatlinburg - Hot Sauce

As I posted yesterday, I just spent three days in the Gatlinburg area and while the power shoppers hit nearly every store they passed, I only went into a few.  One of my stops was the Pepper Palace, which my son had suggested I visit. I didn’t know what to expect, but this place was awesome, with lots of items (mostly hot sauces) from all over the country plus the ones they make themselves. As it turns out, the Pepper Palace is headquartered in Sevier County and makes a large variety of hot sauces, salsas, BBQ sauces, and spices. They have three other stores in tourist locations, but the store in Gatlinburg is the Mother-Ship.

I went in there mainly to see if they had Fire Ant Juice, which is a hot sauce that comes highly recommended by Chris Grove at Nibble Me This. Thanks to a sales lady, I found it and learned that if I bought 5 items, I’d get the 6th one free, so I commenced to tasting their company products. Beverly was doing the same and we quickly found 5 more items that we really liked, along with a new salt mill – not too bad, I got out for $75. This is part of one wall.

Pam, Chris, David - Get ready for a hot sauce tasting in the very near future.  This is the stuff I brought home.

I couldn’t end this post without showing a shot of how Bev took her clothes on the trip.

I had mine on hangers and in a plastic bag, but I only had a few things. See how empowering it can be when you reach a point in life when you don’t really care what other people think.

Now that I'm home and on my secure network, I feel comfortable entering passwords, so I had a lot of your blogs to get caught up on.

Have a great day and thanks for visiting.

Larry

Gatlinburg In The Winter

For 20+ years, we’ve owned a time share condo in Gatlinburg, Tn, and we’ve only stayed in it 3 times. It’s the 6th week of the year and this is not prime time to be wandering around Gatlinburg - we just bought it to trade for vacations in other places. Our problem lately is that we space-bank it to trade, then we don’t get around to using it, so we decided to stay there this year.

If you’ve never been to Gatlinburg, it’s a shoppers mecca along with the requisite motels, restaurants, and tourist attractions plus being surrounded by the Smoky Mountain National Park. When we go, I can only stand a few days of shopping, so we usually take a shopping friend or two with us so Bev doesn’t have to go it alone when I’ve had it. Not only am I done shopping after a few days, I’m ready to go home, so we put together a little plan that worked out very well. Our power-shopper friend Kathy went up with us and spent the weekend, then Bev and I spent Valentine’s day alone – more on tomorrows post. On Tuesday I came home while Bev’s sister, Pat, and another friend, Charlotte, were driving up for the rest of the week. Pat watched the dogs while I was gone and I watched them the rest of the week.

It was beautiful weather for this time of year as every day was sunny with temps going from the mid 40’s on Saturday to predictions of near 60 by weeks end. While the ladies shopped, I people-watched and I can see how the restaurants stay in business, as thin people over the age of 25 were an anomaly, but since hardly anyone was carrying a shopping bag, I couldn’t help but wonder how the stores make it.

One of the things I do like about Gatlinburg is that most, if not all, new construction is done with an architectural style that fits the area with lots of stone, logs, and other woods. This is the Calhoun’s, where we went to lunch for fried green tomatoes and the Cherokee Grill next door – along with my two lovely companions.

This is back into the area containing the Old Smoky Moonshine Distillery, which is also of the mountain motif. We had to try their free samples of twice distilled and six times distilled moonshine (White Lightnin). The White Lightnin was smooth and easily drinkable, but the other stuff was pretty rough.

There is a small ski resort there and it is serviced by an aerial tram from downtown.  Bev and I spent many happy hours on those slopes 30 years ago.

The town obviously provides a good living to some folks.

I’m not sure why so many people go to Gatlinburg as most seem to be just walking the streets or cruising the Parkway.

One of the best things I saw was the number of folks in my generation walking along holding hands.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Cosmopolitan

While I’ve been in many leadership situations throughout my work life, I’m a pretty good follower as well, so when a blogger buddy says this is too good to pass up, I try not to. Back in November, Pam, over At Sidewalk Shoes, posted her recipe for Cranberry Liqueur. Then in January, she posted a recipe for a Cosmopolitan and I decided to make a batch of the liqueur – actually 2 batches.

As I’ve said many times, Bev has been on, what amounts to, a low carb diet and she wanted me to make a batch of the liqueur using a sugar substitute – Truvia. They finished up this week and I made up one Cosmopolitan from each liqueur – they tasted pretty much the same except the sugar one was sweeter, and Bev actually preferred the other one. Here’s a shot of mine but for a really nice photo, go to Pam’s site or here.

I’m not a sweet drink kind of guy, but if I were, I’d love these and I think I'll try another one with more lime juice to see what I think. One caution – these things are like manhattans or martini’s and will quickly put you on your arse. I can see many of uses for the cranberry liqueur in sauces and baking, like the muffins Pam suggested.

Happy Valentine's Day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Fried Pasta - It's What's For Breakfast

Don’t ask me why, but for some reason I’ve been wanting to fry leftover pasta – I guess I’d seen it somewhere. Whatever the reason, we finally had some leftover spaghetti and I decided now was the time. As we usually do with leftover pasta, we mixed in some olive oil while it was still warm to reduce it’s sticking together.

For this dish, I mixed some pepper jack cheese into the pasta to help hold it together, then mashed it together as much as I could. I fried it in olive oil with a pat of butter, partially covered until turning. After adding the pasta to the pan, I realized it was more than I wanted, so I split it in half.

After flipping, I added some grated parmesan, to the pasta and put the eggs on to cook. Here’s the plated dish (forgot the greenery again).

While I like hash browns a little better, it was tasty and the outside was similar to the crunch of crispy hash browns - I will do this again with some changes. First, I’ll decide in advance how much I plan to fry and while still a little warm, I’ll mix in some herbs and the cheese, but no oil (I want it to stick together). Then I’ll mash it tightly into the right sized container and store in the fridge. When ready to use, it should pop out as a near solid disk, ready to fry, which I’d do the same way. I might think of a sauce to use next time as well.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Chicken With Fennel And Olives Ala Marie

I like Mexican, I like German, I like Greek, I like just about all cuisines, but if I had to pick just one, it would be Italian. So a few weeks ago, when Marie, over at Proud Italian Cook posted this recipe, I knew I had to try it as soon as Bev was allowed to eat carbs on her diet. Marie served hers over creamy polenta (sounded great), which Bev can’t eat, nor can she eat normal pasta, but she had decided the Dreamfields version would be okay.

While it’s still made with durum wheat semolina, it’s processed in such a way as to allow your body to only absorb 5 grams of carbohydrates per serving. I decided to use ingredients we had on hand so the recipe became:

1 lb Dreamfields spaghetti (I wanted leftovers for another dish)
4 large split chicken breasts, bone removed but skin on (to help prevent drying out)
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 onion, sliced (I chopped due to a bad onion)
8 garlic cloves, pressed
14 oz diced tomatoes
1 cup stuffed green olives (1/2 cup of chopped would have been perfect for us)
1 1/2 tsp dried Italian spices
White wine

I followed Marie’s directions as written, except for the last sentence – check her site for excellent pictures.

In a large oven proof skillet brown up your chicken which has been seasoned with salt and pepper until it has a nice deep golden color, remove and drain the fat.

Drizzle in some olive oil and saute the garlic, onion and fennel and then deglaze with a healthy splash of white wine. Add in your herbs, salt and pepper, then place the chicken back in (tomatoes went in here also). Spread your olives all around then place the pan in a preheated 375F oven until a probe thermometer gives an internal breast temperature of 160* - they should go up to 165,* which is what I want.

And this is my plate after adding some grated parmesan and red pepper flakes.

I enjoyed the dish but would make several changes next time to the recipe I ended up using.  I would use 2 1/2 tsp of dried spices and sprinkle a little on the chicken.  I like olives and even though whole ones make a better picture, I'd quarter them in hopes of getting some in every bite.  I don't think a sauce this chunky worked well with the spaghetti - it's hard to get chunks when rolling it up, so I'd use a small shaped pasta next time, or more preferably the creamy polenta.  I couldn't tell any difference between Dreamfields and regular pasta in taste or texture.  All-in-all, it was a very enjoyable dinner and I ate leftovers for lunch and supper the next day.

Have a great day and thanks for visiting.

Larry

Turkey Salad

As you likely know, I’m a backyard BBQer and occasionally smoke a turkey as I did on my recent BBQ day. We ate most of what I kept as Turkey Paninis when my kids were here on Monday, and mostly what remained was smaller pieces. I’ve said this before, but my favorite use of turkey is as turkey salad and I especially like it from smoked bird.

Beverly usually makes it in the food processor and it ends up in small pieces, but this day, before heading off to town, she made it with diced ingredients. When lunch time rolled around, it had to be a turkey salad sandwich for me. I’ve shown recently how Bev goes the extra mile to make things better and I decided today I would move in that direction – my usual is cold turkey salad between two pieces of bread.

I added the turkey salad to the bread

Added a few slices of pickled jalapeno (I spotted them setting on the counter)

A little cheddar cheese and nuked for a minute to warm everything and melt the cheese some.

I added a little lettuce and enjoyed a pretty basic, but really tasty sandwich.

I believe I prefer the food processor version as the flavors are more evenly distributed and maybe a little more intense. I think this version would be good with some white grapes and nuts added to it.

TELL ME THIS WON'T HAPPEN TO US!!!

As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang.

Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him,“Herman, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on Interstate 77.

Please be careful!”

“Heck,” said Herman, “It's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!”

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Just A Couple More Breakfasts From Leftovers

With the daffodills coming up in the woods beside the house, I decided it was time to replace the snowy dock scene. Spring can't be too far away, but we had a little overnight bump in the road.

I was still working off the leftovers from Wende’s BD dinner and have already posted about the fish, but I also had 3 small hasselback taters left over as well. Bev fixed the first meal and she finished slicing thru the potatoes and fried them up with some onions and topped with shredded pepper jack cheese. Then she gave me half of them topped with a couple of fried eggs – one of them got broken.

It was delicious and I made the next meal using the other half of the potatoes and onions - another breakfast. I was still into tortillas as it was the only bread we had. So for this meal, I chopped up some brisket and tossed it in a pan with the other half of the potato mix and added several dashes of Chipotle Tabasco.  When they were warm, I added a couple of beaten eggs and scrambled everything, letting the brisket and spices in the potatoes provide the seasoning - except for the added Chipotle Tabasco. I added it to a warm tortilla, rolled it up, topped with some shredded cheddar, a few green onions, and jalapenos.

Still not as fancy as Bev’s burrito, but a dang good breakfast – I had lots of jobs to do that day.  That's it for the birthday dinner leftovers - aren't you glad?

Have a great day and thanks for visiting.

Larry