March 2018,... What's for dinner ???

One of my boys loved stew out of a can, they both loved spaghettios, I still like bean with bacon soup out of a can occasionally.  Hubby loved Lipton Chicken noodle in the dry pack, but he added a couple of wieners to it.  That was always too salty for me.

Dane had late golf this afternoon so I took advantage of the quiet house to finally prep everything to do our Income Taxes......all I had to do was print off a 1099 from a site and then I would have everything put together. But the printer needed cartridges. So, off to Sam's Club I went to get the cartridges ~ HP564xl cartridges......to the tune of $150.

I put the new cartridges in the printer and pushed the button to make a copy to test....like I always do, and ~ darn it all, it won't print. It goes through the process, makes all the right noises but no ink on the paper. I went through all the testing steps and I think the print driver for the large black ink cartridge bit the dust.

So I was in no mood to cook supper when he got home at 5:00. I said, "let's go out and then stop at Best Buy and get a new printer."

So that's what we did. Outback for steaks & fish and then to Best Buy.

Geeze, Louise! A new printer/copier/scanner for $89. And it comes with cartridges. Geesh!

But it'll wait until tomorrow for me to unhook the old one and hook up the new one.

Heck, I have until April 15th before I REALLY need it! LOL

Yesterdays stew




Tonights steak .... sirloin tough.
$6.00 worth of these two babies.

Out for lunch with my son today, I had a crab "burger" on a pretzel bun and a great salad.  And a wine spritzer. YUMM!  Fisherman son occasionally calls about a lunch out.  One day he said that I'm sometimes more fun to go out with than his wife, because I'll go to any restaurant he likes, and I'm willing to try anything.  He's very adventuresome, Lisa is not.  Burger was great, big, salad came home for supper.

Tonight was the leftover corned beef and vegetables.....It was the LAST day for serving before I planned to toss it after 7 days. There wasn't anything wrong with it but I just won't reheat if it's been in the refrigerator for a week. And it was well wrapped and fairly air tight.....but in case this is my last post ever, well.....you'll know 6 days was too long.

LOL

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Lore, sounds like the lunch company was as good as the lunch! It's amazing how much fun it is to just sit and talk with our children on a 'one-on-one'......it feels good to know we did something right to raise such wonderful adults. Glad you had a great time!

Burgers for us tonight. I had planned some turkey Reubens but couldn't get the rye bread I wanted. I don't like Oroweat, it is too dry. The grocery store's own brand is half the price and much better. So i have postponed the sandwiches to another night.
Last night I made peanut brittle for the first time. It turned out ok but it just isn't as good as See's Candies. Prolly will toss it. Maybe I had the wrong recipe. It had water, sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, butter, baking soda and peanuts. Is there something missing?
I pulled out this monster turkey for easter. 19.5 lbs. I hope it defrosts in time. It was one of those 49cent specials.

We had steak and oven fries tonight.

Looks like that potato was on steroids. It is huge!

I had spinach tortellini soup for the past couple nights.. really easy to make--so good.

I found the original recipe, but thought it was too bland. It was just not hearty enough; so, I tweaked it. I added some onion powder, simmered it longer than required to soften the diced tomatoes, adding also adding some tomato paste to make it heartier..

Came out really good. Fresh spinach and basil were added with the tortellini, at the end of cooking.

Norm, your steak & oven fries look really tasty....looks like my favorite, a rib eye! Dane prefers a NY strip, but for my money (and now days it's usually a lot of $$), a rib eye has the most flavor and is SO tender. YUM!

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Jimmy, your shells & beans always reminds me of when we were first married and Dane was in Viet Nam. I didn't do a whole lot of cooking for myself but one of my 'go-to' meals (especially when $ was tight before pay day) I would make elbow macaroni cooked in tomato juice. Two ingredient meal~and the tomato juice was usually some that I had canned from Mom & Dad's garden every August. So the only thing I had to buy was a box of elbow macaroni.....probably 25 cents way back in 1970!

I would bring the tomato juice to a boil and add some macaroni and stir it until it was done. My favorite bite was that 'test' to see if the macaroni was soft. I loved the not-quite-done macaroni and would often stop it at that point. Then I'd take the pan off the stove and carry it into the living room to watch the nightly news, eating my supper out of the pan.

Thanks Beth. It is a ribeye and that's my favorite steak too.

bethk wrote:This brisket sounds really good.  I wish I liked leftovers over and over again because that's what I'd end up with.  That, plus it's no longer a cheap eats type of meal.  Just like chicken wings, when people found out how good it could be they made the price out of bounds for every day eats.

Boy, isn't that the truth!  But just like chicken wings, when I see a sale on brisket, I try to pick one up as they're just too good.  Last time I was in the grocery about 3 weeks ago, I guess, they had beautiful whole briskets but they were $6.99 a pound. I just laughed and shook my head. And if I wanted one terribly and decided to pay an outrageous price for one, I know what would happens, as it ALWAYS happens when I do something dumb like that, the following week the grocery we use has the darn thing on sale for like $2.79 a pound and I end up kicking myself.

bethk wrote:One thing that I do when I make something like this that I need to cover with foil.....IF it has tomato product in the sauce, cover it first with a layer of parchment paper and THEN the foil.  The acid in the tomato reacts negatively with the foil sometimes.

Never had that happen, Beth, but you did cause me to wrack my brain over it for a while. I don't think I usually let the foil touch the item I'm baking. When making brisket, I have two of those huge black oval porcelain bakers with the little white dots on them, and I usually use one of those just so I can cover and uncover easily. (How the heck I ended up with two I'm not sure; probably my mom gave me hers after my dad passed away and she lived alone.) They're good 'cause they're really deep and they have really deep covers as well, and a whole brisket fits in there easily.  It's funny, as I use those pans so seldom that I dread getting them out of my lower corner cabinet stuffed to the gills with baking and oven "stuff" -- I usually am digging around in there until I'm out of breath, as the damn cabinet is huge, too.

I have found that Costco has whole briskets for a lot less than grocery stores. You have to get a whole one but you can always cut it up and freeze part of it.

Last of the leftovers tonight......gonna reheat the leftover stir fry. Got to make room for stuff with Andrea & Tori coming later this week for a couple days, although we probably won't do much cooking with just a 2 day visit.....

Here is the last brisket I got from Costco. It is prime.  One about the same size from a meat market was choice quality and cost around $100.

bethk wrote:I'm a PEA PICKER.......I pick peas every day!

It's amazing how many pea pods you can grow in a couple patio pots.......I had a stuffed quart zip bag full so I had to come up with a meal plan to use some of them, at the least.  I have gotten 'smart' and I 'clean' them.....string them and remove stems and blossom ends.....BEFORE I stash them in the refrigerator bag.  That way, they just need to be cooked and I don't have to mess around with them when I'm ready to cook.

So, tonight ended up as a beef stir fry with pea pods.....and a few other vegetables, but mainly pea pods.

This looks really good, Beth. I adore pea pods. They never seem to last long when I buy them at the store and I always seem to forget about them, which ticks me off no end as they're not cheap. I may try growing some in a couple of pots -- I always thought I wouldn't have enough to do much unless I grew lots of them. Now I know better so thanks!

Yes, Michelle....Dane picks them (or I pick them) every other day. Right now I've got a stuffed quart bag in the vegetable drawer ~ if we cook a meal here when Andrea and Tori are here they will get blanched and made into a pea pod / orange salad. That's all I can think of to do to get a bunch used at one time.

I think I mentioned I clean them, string them, before I put them in the refrigerator so they're ready to go when I decide to use them.

And since they were so fresh when I used them in the stir fry they reheated very nicely and didn't taste 'left-over' as I was afraid. We actually enjoyed leftovers for a change!

Beth wrote:I just hope when (and IF) Robin and Ben EVER move out of the house they take all THEIR STUFF with them and don't leave it for us to deal with.

You ought to mention it to Robin NOW, Beth, not to leave anything in the house when she moves out. That way she won't plead "but I have too much to do already" to you when the time comes. And don't forget to remind her how you and Dane didn't do that to she and her sister when you moved.

It's wonderful not have children, as one can be the a** giving advice to those WITH kids as if I'm an expert. It's a lot easier, as we all know, giving advice in situations you've never encountered. Forgive me if I sound like a royal pain in the a**, Beth. I mean no harm, of course. I just admire you and Dane for all you've done for Robin and delaying your own wants and needs to be kind and generous to her by postponing the sale of your house. I'm sure she wouldn't leave a bunch of stuff in there and expect you and Dane to waste time away from your home to deal with it. But a reminder ahead of time sure wouldn't hurt! I'm laughing, as there I go again...

OK, I need everyone to hold hands and say a prayer that the latest house Robin and Ben have an offer on is 'THE ONE' that works out for them. They've been through the mill trying to purchase a home that is 'their's'......IF this one goes through they should close around May 1st ~ they'll take some time to freshen it up with paint, etc. so Dane & I should be up in Ohio in June & July (thank heavens the snow should be over by then.....) to clean-up and do whatever repairs need to be done to get it on the market.

I sure hope Robin and Ben are planning to take the chickens with them when they move......LOL

Uncle Jimmy wrote:We got 8 inches of snow; so spring yard work isn't gonna happen. I say, put all our efforts into cooking.

We just had the loveliest weather we've had in a while last week -- it was cool and sometimes downright cold at night, in the 40s and a couple of times in the high 30s, and the days were all in the low 70s with very low humidity. It was really uplifting in the morning when I got up to go downstairs and schlep up coffee and pulled the drapes open in the bedroom -- the sun was shiny brightly and the sky was blue, blue, blue. Just gorgeous. Brian sat out on the balcony many a day watching the ships, paddles boats and tugs pass by. The river is really high this time of year and can cause problems for smaller vessels or the many, many barges being pushed by pushboats. Often there's a string of 6 to 8 barges tied together being pushed upriver, sometimes more. It takes a mighty skilled pushboat captain to maneuver those huge loads in this swiftly moving water.

I always end up mentioning to Brian how wonderful it would be if our weather was like that all year long. His response is always the same: "Well, I don't wish that on us or we'd be like freaking California and zillions of people would move here and ruin the place!" He loves it here but we're aware of how expensive it is to live in California -- not only the taxes but the price of homes, even middle class smallish homes (to us anyway), going for $500K to $600K! And when I watch those renovation shows on TV, he just shakes his head when someone mentions what a "reasonable price" those homes are.

It's still nice out but you can feel the humidity beginning to creep upwards. We've had the air conditioner on the last couple of nights as it was too warm (and stuffy) in here. I just can't sleep unless it's cool in the bedroom. Laughed, as I read recently where doctors say you should sleep in rooms that are 64 degrees. Man, that would cost us a fortune in electricity to make it that cold with our climate!

The Bonnet Carré Spillway was opened a couple of weeks ago to lessen the strain on the levee system down here due to so much snow and rain you guys are getting. The Corps of Engineers announced 3 days ago that they were beginning to close the Spillway but now, I guess due to the "Foureaster," they may have to open some of it up again. It is unprecedented that it be opened twice in one season in the history of the Spillway, which was built and ready for use in 1931. Heck, this year was only the 10th time it's been opened in all those years and now they're probably going to open it back up. I'm fascinated by the Mississippi River and how man learned to control it down here to avoid or lessen flooding coming down the pike from "the top" of our country!

Niagara Visitor wrote:One of my boys loved stew out of a can, they both loved spaghettios, I still like bean with bacon soup out of a can occasionally.  Hubby loved Lipton Chicken noodle in the dry pack, but he added a couple of wieners to it.  That was always too salty for me.

I really like the line of canned soups made by Progresso. I have my favorites but really haven't bought one that I found inferior. Brian likes that Lipton Chicken Noodle dry soup pack, too, Lore, though it's been years since I made him a cup. He sometimes wants it if he's not feeling well (not hungry) as he says it's easy to get down with not much of an appetite.