So Industrious

Sue gets things done. A lot of mornings when I leave early she has plans to can some things before time for her to go in to work if it's garden season and I'm told most of this is this years and last years with a little left from the year before. The boxes all have this years in them and it's mostly green beans and maters. She gets mad if I forget and grab a store bought can of something instead of hers. Also the freezers have a lot of corn okra in them as well.

Thanksgiving Stuffed Onions

These are really good and you won't even realize your eating your leftovers. Not at all hard to do except using the melon baller to hollow out the onions. The recipe only calls for the onion but I wanted to try one or two with the onion inside a bell pepper and those were good too. Not having any mashed potatoes we decided to use rice and although it was just as good it did take away from the visual effect since you could not shape it or brown it like you can potatoes. Click Here for the recipe.

Thanksgiving Cooking

I really like cutting up the turkey to cook it. Just never liked carving at the table with 40 or 50 mouths to feed and this way you can carve ahead of time and cook the white and dark meat both to their proper doneness without a problem. No more shaking hands with Mr Turkey, unless you just want to. A big bonus with doing it this way is being able to take the bone out of the thigh meat and with some string tie it up to cook - beautiful slices and cooked evenly. This bird got a 3 to 4 hour brine after I got it cut up in a couple of 2 gal zip lock bags with some of Jose's Apple Sqeezens,lemon,and herbs - it then air dried overnight in the fridge. Bringing the bird to room temp before cooking is important to me and then just before going in the smoker I gave it a handful of herb butter under the skin of the breast. The double smoked ham came out better than usual just because the glaze was a last minute on the fly concoction that I made up and it turned out as good as any I've ever had on a ham. I had planned to make the coffee infused glaze that comes with the famous Dr Chicken's Double Smoked Ham recipe but forgot a few ingredients and didn't think about making it till it was too late so I had to come up with something quick. It was a simple mixture of No Sugar Raspberry Jam, Fresh Lemon Juice, Maple Syrup, Honey, and Cider Vinegar. Nice thing about this glaze is, if I add some crushed red pepper and a little more vinegar it might just make some really good bbq sauce. Maybe something in here will make you want to try something new for Thanksgiving next year.

Two Soups In One

Well this is about the dangedest thing I ever done. I made pork Posole the other day out of some left over spare rib trimmings and seriously miss judged the broth vs how much meat I had and we wound up with a big pot of nice chili broth which consisted of about 5 bucks worth of dried guajillos and no meat. We saved the broth not knowing what we were saving it for and next day the thought came to mind that all I had to do was add more meat. Since we just needed enough for one meal I headed to the nearest meat counter that I could just buy one or two chicken breast, took them home trimmed all the fat and added to the pot along with another can of hominy and a few minutes later we had Chicken Posole. I cut the chicken into large pieces so you could have a Chicken Taco with your Posole.

Top Sirloin On The Cheap

I've always had good luck with this inexpensive cut of meat and it was on sale for 2.99 and that means I got plenty for 2 for less than 5 bucks. I used the 30 min marinade you see here and boy is this a good product.

Philly Cheese Steak Omelette

Grilled Sirloin Tip Roast sliced thin and chopped for Philly Cheese Steaks last night turned into one big ole Omelette for two this morning. You can bet the bank there ain't no place in town that can beat it.

French Dip Sandwich

Knorr French Onion Soup and a nice roast beef sandwich makes me smile. No dipping here either, submerged the whole sandwich in the soup and served. And you don't really have to have enough sandwiches to soak up all your soup, just have a bowl with the sandwich.

Birthday Surf n Turf

Mom kinda likes steak and shrimp and these NY Strips were real good and all turned out great. She did kinda over do it a bit on the shrimp consummin though - guess it had been a while since she had grilled shrimp. Just turned 79 years young so guess she was entitled to ever how many shrimps she wanted.