May, 2020 What's Cooking in the Kitchen?

Imelda, are those pineapple cookies or mexican wedding? They are so pretty. What is that dark mound in the center? How do you do the carvings on the sides? They look like a pro made them. Most of the time my cookies look like a hot mess.

I had a Mcdouble and small fries for breakfast. Tina went to W mart to get some supplies. On way back she picked it up for me.

supper will be tomato sauce with sausage and meatballs Tina made from scratch; meaning no jar sauce doctored up.....

You're a lucky man, Jimmy ~ enjoy your meal!

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I had a rather large piece of pork steak thawed this morning. I decided to cut it in half, pounded it a bit to make it 'appear' larger (sneaky, huh?) and then braised it. No one was the wiser........

Of course, I hedged my bets and made lima beans (his favorite) and steamed cabbage to go with.

We have some protesters in L.A. that have shut down some streets near city hall. It's all about the police brutallity in Minneapolis. Police now have shown up in riot gear. I hope things don't escalate into another riot. We'll see what happens when it gets dark.

I made fried chicken fingers and potato salad with corn on the cob yesterday. It is leftovers tonight. It was good because it was 93 today and it was a cool dinner. Joe and Katie had cold beers to wash it down. I like one or two sips of beer but nothing more. Beer is not something I can drink in quantity.

I picked up a whole chicken on sale today when I was out. I've got the thighs, legs & wings in a marinade DD#1 told me about ~ cider vinegar, oil, worchestershire sauce, a touch of honey & hot sauce. She said it was pretty tasty.

And 3 minutes ago it started to pour.......

and that's my life lately...........

LOL

With any luck it'll stop and we can start the gas grill later ~ I'm not taking the chance of trying to get a charcoal fire going and having it start raining again.

Of course, with my luck being bad I have to admit it's not as bad as Dane's luck ~ ~

He's out on the golf course right now!


(Hahahahahahaha.........I'm not laughing about him probably getting soaked.....I, uh, just thought of a funny joke....)

I have two Hoover Linx cordless vacuums. When they work, they do a good job. Mine have been sitting in a closet collecting dust since we moved in. They have lost their suction. I pulled them out today and started to work on them to see if they should be tossed. I took out the dust cups and there was plenty of suction at the motor so there must be a clog. I couldn't see or feel anything so i unscrewed the plate covering the roller. I discovered that the hole where the dirt gets sucked into was completely blocked with compacted pet hair. I started pulling out wads with my fingers and then got my hair catcher that I use on drains. Its' sides have these spikes that grab debris. I shoved it up both ends of the vacuum and pulled out more wads of fur. No wonder they didn't work. So now they are as good as new. I wonder how many women would do something like this? No one I know.

Tonight is club sandwiches. I have two nice avocados that need to be eaten. Lasst night I had acid stomach and went downstairs to get some ice cream to coat my gut. Joe got to it first. It was a whole pint. He tells me not to buy sweets because he wants to cut back on sugar but when i bring in something for myself, he eats it. Katie is the same way. I have to hide food from her or she will eat an entire bag of whatever it is.

wrap it in foil and mark it 'FISH'.....

Or put it in a vegetable wrapper and just leave it on the shelf.

You gotta be as clever as a Mom with 3 year olds in the house.......

The chicken was pretty tasty ~ not a strong marinade, but nice just the same. I made a packet potato with chopped onion & one of Dane's hot banana peppers ~ really mellowed out when cooked.



The chicken I bought had FIVE hearts in the cavity ~ so I put them on a skewer for HIM....just on my plate for the pic! LOL

It has been raining hard here all day. It stopped last hour. If is is raining in Florida, Kansas and California all at the same time, the whole country must be getting wet. My basement is wet around the edges anyway. It made me aware of a couple places that need to have the gutter looked at. Just before I checked in here, I copied a Jalapeno-lime chicken wings to consider grilling tomorrow. It's Mexican style.

Hey, Norm, if that chili-lime sounds good you might want to check out the chili lime fajita recipe Michelle posted ~ might give you a comparison to something that's been tried......

I wish Dane liked citrus on marinades.....but he's not a fan so I don't make it often.

I re read the recipe and am thinking about not doing it now. We had flash flooding here yesterday.

Did the water get to your house Norm?

I have a shop vac and got most of the water out of my basement in about 10 minutes and the tank was almost full, so there was a couple gallons that I dumped down the sump pump.

Crummy that it seeps in the basement, Norm. At least it wasn't a foot deep all over......

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On a lighter note:

Yesterday we had our first Swallowtail Butterfly hatch out of it's chrysalis.....



It's always fun to watch the process now that we know what's going on. It doesn't bother me that they eat my parsley down to sticks......

I have a long time internet friend that lives in Long Valley.

bethk wrote:Crummy that it seeps in the basement, Norm.  At least it wasn't a foot deep all over......

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On a lighter note:

Yesterday we had our first Swallowtail Butterfly hatch out of it's chrysalis.....



It's always fun to watch the process now that we know what's going on.  It doesn't bother me that they eat my parsley down to sticks......

My son found a Monarch crysallys in his garage last year and watched it come out.  Very cool!  My daughter had a whole bunch of caterpillars on her lemon espalier in California, they were eating all the leaves.  I suggested that she should take one to her favourite garden centre to find out what they were.  They told her they would become swallowtail butterflies eventually, and said that if she was ambitious, she could bring them to the garden centre, she put them on a lemon tree there, and their descendents may still be there! Roger's Garden Centre, near Huntington Beach.

P.S. forgot to mention dinner tonight. I made 4 Shepherds' pies. Well, technically not shepherds' because I used part beef and part venison that I happened to have and not lamb. Largest one for Son and DIL, next size for 87 year old Uncle Ernie, and two small ones for me. One for tonight, other one will go in the freezer. YUMM!

Tonight supper surprised me ~ I couldn't believe how hungry I was for the combination of dishes! I made a pork tenderloin and used an Asian glaze/BBQ I had in the refrigerator from some other time, I baked a small sweet potato to split, the Swiss chard greens (leaves) got treated as Southern greens and cooked down with some onion & a couple sliced hot banana peppers in some homemade ham stock.....and then I added Grandma's Summer Salad ~ not her garden grown leaf lettuce but some cold, crispy romaine lettuce and thin sliced sweet onion with a dressing of sour cream & cider vinegar syrup. It was something I didn't realize I was REALLY HUNGRY for! The tenderloin got sliced thin on a bias and the sauce spooned over.