February 2018; Whats for Dinner??

Fresh or Frozen, Lore......Lake Erie Perch is the finest in the land! ((Green with envy......sigh.....))

But I know you will all enjoy your fish fry ~ have two or six for me!

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Rainy day here. I didn't know what to make. But when I looked in the freezer I spied a package of Knockwurst and decided to have hot dogs with chili sauce. I picked up a small (4 oz.) microwave-able package of Nathan's Chili Sauce at the grocery store to give it a try. It was just enough for the two of us (with a bit to toss) since I only eat one.

I picked up a fresh bag of chips ~ been ages since I've had any in the house. And they were so, SO good! But, one meal and that's it. Well, maybe a couple snacks before they get stale and I toss 'em.

Neighbors Joann and Tommy got a bunch of 'fresh' farm eggs from someplace and brought over a couple dozen ~ which got put in the refrigerator with the other two dozen eggs I already had. Oh, dear, what to do????

I decided to make Grandma's Lemon Sunshine Cake ~ a very subtle lemon scented chiffon cake, which is different from an angel food cake in that you use the entire egg instead of just the egg whites. It's always been my all time favorite cake to bake.

Grandma always served it with a Lemon Custard that she made with instant lemon pudding mix and Dream Whip ~ but I'm just passing it out plain. I figure whom ever gets some can spoon some fruit over and have a treat. Me? I just ate my piece plain.....love that it holds together. The crumb came out really nice and fine, a tried and true recipe to be sure! The only long, thin knife I have since we moved is a serrated bread knife ~ and it makes a mess of the sides of the cake when I try to loosen it from the angel food cake pan. But it wasn't too bad this time so, hey, it might not be beautiful but it sure does taste good!

I am not a fan of watching sports, but I understand that the betting was on the Patriots????? Guess it really ain't over 'till the fat lady sings.  My 'merican DIL is happy!

Perch was delicious, I went home early (before all the game hoopla started) and watched some of the original Star Trek on Netflix.  I loved it when it first came out, still love it now............. But, the sets are sooooo cheesy!

I am an old Star Trek fan. I own all of the series. I didn't like the new version.

Joe and I went down to Fallbrook, Oceanside, Temecula this weekend to check them out. We really didn't get much of a good look at anything. Fallbrook is a firetrap and the small downtown looks like a dump. The whole city is rural and they have many nice homes but I couldn't be happy there.
Temecula has a charming Old Town. It is has wineries and nice new homes and the things I want like Target, Walmart, Nordstrom Rack and See's candies. Homes are reasonable. We could actually get a nice home for about $550,000 but what we liked cost upwards of $750,000. Didn't get to really see Oceanside. There are gangs which is typical of SoCal but a gang map can keep you looking in the right areas. We are fortunate because we have no gangs here in Lake Forest. The big dilemma is if we move out of OC we can never move back. Just too expensive. I keep trying to figure out how to live in our house without going crazy. The obvious solution would be to have Katie leave but I can't do that to her. Neither Katie nor Joe want to leave here. Maybe I am being too selfish but I can't help it. I want some space to call my own. Too bad Fallbrook didn't work out. The house we looked at had a two bedroom guest suite with a kitchenette. Perfect for Katie.
When we were in Temecula we stopped at some burger joint and Joe got this HUGE burger. It was like something that you would see on Food Paradise. It was a huge patty with a ton of pastrami and cheese along with lettuce, tomato pickles sauce and fries. What a mess it was to eat but it was really good.
Last night I made salmon with an herb butter sauce and rice pilaf. Tonight maybe my gourmet dogs: a dog split down the middle, filled with gruyere, wrapped in bacon with a Dijon, horseradish mayo, shallot chive sauce.

I picked up a package of bone-in, skin on chicken breasts (on sale) at the grocery store yesterday and wrapped 3 of the 4 for the freezer. The 4th one got de-boned, sliced into piards (sp???) and lightly pounded to thin them out. Seasoned with s&p & then a light flour (I used a little tea strainer to sprinkle a light coating of flour instead of messing with a bowl and a lot of wasted flour) ~ into a hot pan w/oil and browned lightly. Then removed & cooked some sliced baby bella mushrooms, removed them to wait with the chicken. Finally, softened a chopped onion and added a bit of flour to thicken the sauce......about 1/2 c. of Dry Marsala Wine and some chicken stock. Chicken & mushrooms added back in and simmered for a few minutes.

Chicken Marsala on Parsley Noodles with Mixed Vegetables:

More fish for me tonight.  Salmon done in the oven.  Three bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos, and some frozen green peas. I think it's been at least 10 years since I had plain, delicious green peas as a vegetable.  I bought a bag of them a while ago because I made a shepherd's pie.

I had to go to the store and found they had pork steak on sale, BOGO, so I picked up a couple packages. I pulled a pork chop out of the freezer because HE doesn't like pork steak (it has too much fat for him) and I made braised pork for our supper. He didn't complain about a serving of white potatoes (big surprise!) and I think it's because I also fixed his favorite.....lima beans.

I was wide awake and tossing/turning about 4: last night.......................... So, I got up and put a mushroom/chicken stew in my slow cooker.  It smells great in here.

Great minds think alike, Lore......when I got going this morning (much later than you, I might add) I put a chuck roast in my Crock Pot with the 3-packet seasoning. Italian Pot Roast tonight, with roasted-in-the-oven carrots and potatoes, I think.

I am not sure what we will have tonight. Maybe dogs.
I have spent half the day doing research on the value of some old watches with no luck. I would like to sell them but I can't until I find out what they are worth. The same thing with books. I have a couple hundred old first editions I want to get rid of but I have no idea of their worth except for a couple that have four edged paintings. I have been decluttering the house and filling in nail holes and painting. What fun.

As I mentioned, I put a beef chuck roast in the Crock Pot this morning with a topping of 3 dry mixes; Italian Dressing, Ranch Dressing & Brown Gravy Mix. It cooks all day, stinking up the house (LOL) until it's time for supper. It's Dane's favorite, I think.

What's interesting to me is that when Norm & I first started fixing this pot roast, the original 'recipe' came from a cooking.com forum member, Bev, who said it was the 'best' Crock Pot recipe she ever cooked......we explained to our new forum members about it and I have no idea if any tried it. But one member, I cannot remember for the life of me, who.....decided to NOT follow the directions and put her pot roast in the oven instead of the Crock Pot ~ and then proceeded to explain how awful it was. Well, guess what? If you don't follow the directions you're on your own....and you get what you deserve. The 'science' of this recipe is the condensation that falls from the Crock Pot lid and turns the combined dry mixes into a sort of 'crust', well, not exactly a crust because it isn't dry in the least.....but the condensation makes the pot roast taste as if you seared it ~ when you didn't!

It really irritates me when people don't follow a recipe and then come back and make negative comments about how awful it turned out for them. If they cannot read and follow directions the first time they try a recipe they don't need to become a critic, IMO.

OK, rant over.

Anyway, supper turned out great. I roasted my potatoes, onions & carrots, seasoned simply with evoo, s&p ~ in a 450° oven for about 35-40 minutes, or until they were tender and lightly browned.

I poured the 'juice' from the crock pot (I always use a Crock Pot liner whenever I use mine) into a fat separator container and offered a small dish at the table in case Dane wanted some 'gravy'. The leftover pot roast will get shredded by hand and the de-fatted juices poured over to make Italian Beef Sub Sandwiches or Italian Beef Sliders for a patio party.....which ever comes first.



Pics don't do justice to the flavor this meal has!

Tonight we had a spicy roast chicken with rice and a salad.

Mushroom/chicken stew is really good,  White and wild mushrooms, boneless skinless chicken thighs is really good.  My husband would not have liked it, he didn't like 'shrooms.  I love them.

It drives me crazy to read review after review of a recipe where the person has said "I added this and I added that and left out this." Hell, it isn't even the same recipe. What I want to know is how it is as originally written, then if it needed tweaking, then tell us what you did and why.

This was what someone said about a recipe (from Jaques Pepin) that I shared on another site years ago.

I made Norm's French onion soup last weekend for guests and it was delicous! I even broke down and bought a bottle of sherry. I was confused in the store wether to get the cream sherry or plain sherry so I went with the cream. I mean what can go wrong with anything that has cream in it's name? LOL I didn't have beef bones and 6 hours to make my own stock. I found beef stock at the grocery but it was $3.25 for what looked like less than a quart! No way am I going to pay that much for stock, plus I recalled I have a small jar of demi glace from France in my cupboard I had indulged in but never opened yet. So I used regular canned beef broth and demi glace to taste. The recipe says it takes about an hour to cook the onions. I think I had my temp too low because it took me closer to 2 hours and I had to turn up the heat toward the end to get the brown carmel color. No problem though... I had plenty of kitchen chores to do and just needed to stir the onions ever so often. I toasted rustic bread slices on one side, buttered and sprinkled granular garlic on the other side, then toasted that side. I floated those on top of the soup and grated over some Edam cheese. The market I had been shopping in had their guyere cheese over priced in my opinion (6oz for $7.65!!!) so I substituted Edam. I hate shopping a regular grocery when imported or gourmet ingredients are on my list!!! Sams club is great for reasonable imported cheeses but I didn't have time to run by there. Edam cheese is a great melting cheese so it turned out fine. The soup was a hit. My dinner menu was French onion soup, my open face gyro type sandwich, and hot blueberry cobbler for dessert. I swear I have bruises on my back from all the complements I got for that dinner. The rich soup was nicely balanced by the fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and garlicky yogurt of the gyro sandwich. And the sweet warm cobbler can't be beat on a winter night. Thanks again Norm for your delicous recipe and inspiration!

.......... I thought a nice red wine would taste great in the soup too. I almost added some but I do try to stick to the recipe if it's the first time I'm trying it. I also thought a touch of soy sauce would have expanded the flavor levels too. Next time I'll get a bit bolder and try some variations. The thing I most liked about the soup was it's layers of flavors. The broth is so exotic tasting I just loved it, and Sunday morning when I woke up all I could think about was the leftover soup in the fridge. Ate the rest for breakfast!!!

Your chicken looks good Norm.  Was it really 'spicy'?  I have so much difficulty finding anything like a Thai chili here....I usually just end up with a serrano.  I would think the coconut milk would really take the heat out of the chili.....just wondering.


Oh, wait....on re-examination I see it's just coconut oil, not coconut milk. OK, that might change things! Hahahahaha

(It drives me crazy when my eyes don't cooperate......)

My point exactly Norm. It wasn't even the same recipe. Edam? YUCK! Swiss would have been a better choice.
My sister can't cook worth a damn and its because she changes a recipe around before she has tried the original. I doubt she has ever followed a recipe as it was written. One time I went to her house for a spaghetti dinner. I took one bite and thought "What is this?". I asked my sister. It turns out she didn't have any tomato sauce so she cooked and ground up red bell peppers. I love red bell peppers - within reason. This was overpowering. This last Thanksgiving she boiled up some turkey necks and innards for turkey stock. She didn't brown any of the parts and didn't add any carrots, celery, onion, bouguet garni to the water. It tasted like sour mop. I tossed it and started over with a few cans of chicken broth, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, peppercorns, bay, parsley, thyme. After 30 minutes I had a good base to add the turkey drippings to. She also didn't have any pecans to add to the turkey stuffing so she threw in pine nuts. Not a good combo. It reminds me of one Thanksgiving where my mother was drunk and she added green bell peppers to the stuffing. We couldn't eat it.

Norm, that is the funniest review I have seen!!! OMGosh...

Why bother with a recipe, if you are not going to use it properly and substitute ingredients..

Some people are just so amazing/weird...

Thanks for sharing..

When I follow a recipe, I follow a recipe, taste as I go along. If, and I mean IF, it seems a bit dull or off--that is when I may change things around, but just a bit; after cooking, I will add notes to the recipes, as to suggestions. When I try it again, that is when I will add in my suggestions..

Kind of reminds me of my Aunt, years ago, when she was babysitting her grandchildren. They wanted pasta. She did not have any sauce, not a good cook, anyway.. She substituted Tomato Soup for sauce..
The 'girls' split the beans on her... so funny...

The funnier thing is; my aunt said it did not taste bad!!!

Buster, I have a friend who moved from the Boston Area to Temecula, many years ago. She loves it.. the life style, etc.. it looks beautiful in the pictures I have seen.

Beth, it was kind of spicy to my taste, but I am probably more tolerant to spicy food than some. What got me the most about the person who made onion soup was that she used cream sherry instead of dry sherry, and that she said she tries to stick to the original recipe on the first go around.

You are not supposed to use cream sherry for cooking. I believe that it is sweet.