What's cookin'

We hope to make today, a day in the yard. It's beautiful but chilly out and we have a lot to do., so I'm going to braise a pork loin and throw it in the oven to later be joined by some sauerkraut. Ric

Shake & Bake huge chicken legs & thighs baking in the oven with baked corn pudding, butter biscuits and stovetop stuffing. We like simple fare. Easy to make & Bake. Will take pix & post here after it is done, before we chow down.

Love corn pudding!!!

Schlachfest at the German American club...YUMMY!!!! bratwurst, knockwurst, pork loin, sauerkraut, mashed taters, homemade apple sauce and freshly made donuts.

The pork loin came out so tender you could stick it & twist a forkful,. The sauerkraut seasoned with Penzey's caraway seed and cracked pepper was fabulous. Ric

Caraway has been used for it's digestive properties for years, hence it's association with hard to digest foods, such as sauerkraut.

Ric--
I would NOT dream of ever cooking/baking any kind of pork or Sauerkraut without Caraway seed...
It is one of the musts to rub on a fresh pork roast before it hits the oven.
The others are--S&P, Onion Powder, a bit of garlic Powder, Some Allspice into poked holes, and Bay leaf.

YUMMM....Yours sounds great! Braising is something I have just leaned to do in the last few years.
Thanks to DG.

I worked today from 9-7:30. So--No dinner....Gita

Oh Man, supper was so late, I forgot to take pictures & we devoured it! Arrgh

I am SO drooling for pork and sauerkraut now LOL LOL Poor piggies---but they taste so goooooood Geez when it comes out tender like that I can seriously stuff myself........

Mmmm... everything sounds so good from above! I am hungry tonight!

I need ideas for the fool-proof-melt-in-your-mouth-never-ever-be-dry turkey ideas for T-giving! Tell me yours!

Speaking of poor piggies...............I just got a catalog featuring some real special piggies from Spain. The price was over $1000.00 on sale for a ten to twelve pound ham plus shipping. Guess what? Someone received real bad information on what I might buy. I think I have a pretty good idea why the catalog firm was based in Northern Virginia.

Had BBQ ribs, mashed sweet potatoes, and Birds Eye super sweet corn last night. I also made a banana creme pie, which I love, but to which Holly is indifferent. I called Jamie to stop after work today to pick up 5/8s of the pie. He railed that last time I gave him a whole pie and I reminded him I had made 2. LOL Today was chili dogs and chili dogs. I think I'm chili dogged out. Tomorrow, Holly and friends have been planning on dinner out. I called a friend and his son, and we're going to Applebee's, for the free veterans dinner. I may also stop by Chili's for lunch. Now , if I could find a Ruby's for breakfast... Ric

Not as involved as most of what's been mentioned here, but I did concoct a great sandwich at lunch today... turkey, cheddar cheese, a smear of mayo, and so far you're thinking *yawn*... now top it with some thin slices of crisp apple. !!

I was out of lettuce and wanted crunch. This turned out to be really tasty!

I've enjoyed reading all your posts. There are as many good and creative cooks here as gardeners. The two seem to go hand-in-hand. We got our last delivery of the season from our CSA membership today. It was absolute perfection. A beautiful cauliflower, an almost-blue green brocolli, a creamy green cabbage, a fennel bulb, superb kale, without a single pin hole or nibbled edge, some of the glossiest greens I've ever seen outside of Whole Foods. We actually oooh'ed and ahhh'ed taking each item from the bag. So which to have first? Of course I went for the greens because they're easy. I'll think about the rest tomorrow.

Making me hungry!!
Jill my DS will love the apple idea! So many restaurants are now adding fruits to salads with yummy results.
doc, wish you get ahold of that mailing list and sell those suckers some $1000 "spanish" holiday cacti LOL
Pam that sounds super. I stopped at my produce place the pther day but only had $3 on me. Apples.

Sally, I'm totally in love with the "strawberry pecan" salad option at Longhorn... nice mix of greens with not only strawberries and candied pecans but also red grapes, mandarin oranges, and feta cheese. Joyanna eats at least half the fruit and cheese from my salad, so it has become a "must order" when we go there. It would be easy to do at home, I suppose... we have a local popcorn place that does nice praline nuts (the praline pecans from Trader Joe's would work also), and that's the only "complicated" ingredient.

All you Salmon lovers a quick easy recipe'
1 can Salmon
1 large potato smashed
onion
shallots
celery
1 egg
mix all this well I take out bones and skin makes 4 decent patties as far as the onion, celery and shallots its up tp you how much you like sautee in frying pan till golden on both sides you can add your salt pepper to your tastes also :)

We're doing our turkey in the smoker for Thanksgiving...the best turkey I've EVER had.

Tonight I made a stew/soup/chili....I'm calling it "stouch". chunky beef round pieces with cannellini beans, celery, tomatoes, tom sauce and chili spices

I still have an extra turkey in the freezer and I'm thinking about us guys frying it while Holly roast hers in the kitchen. We inject them before hand with a mixture of butter, garlic, pepper, an a little worchester sauce. We end up with a crunchy butter ball. Jen, I agree, smoked turkey is awesome.
Ric

One big pot of bean soup with smoked pork seasoning and a pinch of this and that. This is for when we get tired of turkey.

We will have a huge turkey intending the left overs to make frozen dinners up for our two local families. Wrestling season is upon us. We need to stock up on radar dinners on the run.

Chili here too! The usual Hanover is the basic recipe, tweaked some, plus barley and butternut squash.

Started to cook and freeze for Thanksgiving. I'm getting too slow to do everything the day before. So far I have the lasagna, candied yams, roasted butternut squash soup, garlic bread and cute little corn breads (from cast iron corn cob molds) done. The day before I'll take care of the appetizers, stuffed artichokes and get the tables set. That will just leave the mashed potatoes, veggies, turkey and ham for Thanksgiving morning. I'm getting some good ideas here for the breakfasts, lunches and dinners which I'll be needing for my weekend stay-over guests (my leftovers will run out after a day or two).

Just wanted to post my prized plant (never had one before) which was given to me at the spring swap by Docgipe. Thank you Doc. It's so beautiful!!!

Roses says "just leave the mashed potatoes, veggies, turkey and ham for Thanksgiving morning. " Just! That all sounds delicious and I'd say that's plenty to do that day besides.
A checkout clerk once told me they sell a ton of frozen pzzas the day after TG.

That is beautfiul! And looks very healthy. I saw peach ones last year but didn't buy. My red one is just barely budding.

Wow, look at you go Teri!!! Do you have to defrost the yams before or just put them in the oven again?

Yes, they are beautiful, Sally and I couldn't have asked for a better gift from Doc.

Jen, I defrost everything before I put it in the oven so that it warms up evenly without partially overcooking.

Well now...........it is nice to know my Christmas Cactus is doing well in good hands. It looks actually better than one catalog offering I just recieved pricing a similar size $69.00 and a bunch of shipping cost. I have seven a little larger and maybe half a dozen smaller all beginning to flower or budding up to bloom.

I have been giving the rooted cuttings catalogs the evil eye. I certainly enjoy these that will bloom from now clear up to almost Easter some years. They make lovely inexpensive gifts.

Once in a while--as I peruse the racks the X-Mas cactus are on at my HD--I find a broken off
piece and take it home to root. People are so careless moving the pots around....

I have a pile of little sections (from my own) rooting...My older ones are really lanky and droopy....
maybe I just don't water them enough....Don't like them much any more....But--they do bloom--so-so.

OOOPS! I think I just digressed! Sorry!

Going to my HD in about an hour for our annual Thanksgiving dinner there....
I dropped my dishes (Sausage stuffing and Macaroni and ham and cheese casserole)
off around 9AM---and came back home....

Now--i am just waiting to get hungry enough to go eat.....and doing some laundry.

Gita

Made corn bread the other night, figured Jim wouldn't eat it since he's always told me he doesn't care for corn bread, but he had a nibble and told me it was good. Go figure. So I'll be making it again! I pretty much followed directions on the corn meal bag but cut the recipe in half.

Preheat oven to 425'F

Combine dry ingredients:
1/2 cup stone ground yellow corn meal
1/2 cup white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder

Beat 1 egg in a bowl, and add
1/3 cup milk

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients. If you have it, mince a red bell pepper and fold about 1/2 cup into the batter. This is pretty thick, but if it looks dry or sandy, add a splash more milk.

The recipe also said to cut in 2 tablespoons of butter or shortening. Instead, I melted a generous tablespoon in the bottom of a loaf pan and poured in the batter. I spread another tablespoon of butter on the top to melt when I pulled it from the oven.

Bake in a greased loaf pan 20-25 minutes. Corn bread "loaf" will only be about half the height of the pan.

Jill, my corn bread recipe has some sugar in it, we like it on the sweet side. I have to make it when I make my Cowboy beans and rice. I picked up a nice size bag of cornmeal when we went to Amish country, the little town of Baltic has it own mill, They have a working mill stone in the basement and a bulk food store upstairs. I think their cornmeal is the best.

I refused to pay $2.19 for a loaf of stuffing bread ! What are they thinking? I looked up my ABM recipe to make my own stuffing bread. ( I'll post it in the ABM forum) If you want something different for your left over turkey sandwishes try this. I'm going to make my stuffing with it.

Doc, tomarrow is bean soup, you made me hungry for it.

I worked a year and a half for Stroehmann Baking Co. On Stuffing Breads. 1. It takes two sets of knives and three movements over materials handling lines to make cubes. That equipment is used no where else in the producing plant. 2. For more than thiry years your baker has not been able to use stale bread to make Stuffing Cubes. Fresh has to be dehydrated (staled). 3. The extra handling from start to finish makes more crumb waste. 4. From the cubing to the bag fillers requires all different materials handling used no where else in the producing plant. What they were thinking was being thankfull to you for making your own. They do not have near the profit in a pound of cubes that they enjoy with any traditional loaf of bread the same weight.

Doc, This is not the cubes, it's the loaf. I don't use those hard cubes, just not my style.
The loaves are not as dry but drier that the slices of white sandwich bread.
Sorry I did not make myself clear in my post.

Ah, I knew I'd forgotten something! The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of sugar (in a half recipe)... I don't make sweet northern style cornbread, but I did add a scant teaspoon of sugar. :-)

Sam's had twin packs of stuffing cubes for about $4 the other day, but I thought I'd see if it went on a good sale this week at the local grocery.

Doc, I think they should feature that equipment on an episode of "how do they make that?" (program title is something like that, anyway LOL)

I'm not sure if it would be to exciting. In at least one plant I witnessed from the slicer to the filled and tied bag was all done with air handling equipment which also was rigged to dehydrate it to stale. The bags were filled by vollume to about a part of an ounce heavy. Every hundred bags in the movement one bag was manually pulled and weighed. The dehydrator was the key. Suck to much moisture out and lose money. Ha.

Since I made so much stuffing just a few days ago--for our HD dinner today--and also for next week's dinner---
I "amended" the bagged stuffing mix by buying a bag-full of day old rolls (50% off--I bought seriously good rolls--nothing cheap!) as well as a half-loaf of Jewish light rye bread (unseeded) at the $ store.

Then cubed it all myself and put it on a cookie sheet. Sprayed OO all over them and sprinkled with sage and thyme
and onion powder and put these in the oven until almost dry. Froze them and used them for the stuffing.
So--in total--I probably used up 4 bags of stuffing.....That is how much I made...

I dropped off my goodies at the HD this morning at 9AM. Came back home...
I went back around 1PM to eat--and my stuffing was just about gone.
Many people like sausage stuffing....just a great taste! Used up 2 whole Bob Evans sausage rolls. 1lb. each.
Lots of celery and onion and butter sauteing the veggies....also--sauteed all that sausage....
All the fat stayed right in there.....

Someone brought Broccoli-cheese and egg casserole.....OHHHHH MY!!! Need to ask her for the recipe!!!!
That was so delicious!

I am still stuffed! Gita

I like the 'sweeter' cornbread recipe option on the yellow bag- Indian Head? and it uses oil for the fat; very easy to mix, and moist.

I've had a broccoli casserole that uses velveeta and Ritz crackers. an artery clogger I suppose but sure tasty.

My opinion is that--once or twice a year, we can all survive the "artery clogging" of great food.
Fat IS where most of the flavor comes from.....

Sally--in your other post--you said that you have fat surfacing on top of your gravy.
It is from the drippings, I am sure,,,,the "good" stuff....

Isn't there a trick of putting lettuce leaves on top of soups to absorb the fat???
One of those "old" bits of advice.....
Same as egg shells to clarify a broth????

Not sure of either...G.

It's all in how you balance your diet.... too much fatty foods and not enough greens is bad for you just as too much greens and not enough protein is bad for you too.

re Removing some unwanted fat:

I really like using fat separating cups to pour out gravy. The spout is at the bottom, the fat floats to the top and doesn't get poured out. Or if you have time, freezing the gravy (or soups too) and then scraping the fat off the top, we find works well.

have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Using leaves to suck up fat works if the leaves come off your roll of paper towels.

doc--

Too funny!!!!!
I used paper towels to soak up the fat off of my Turkey Carcass Soup...Just floated them on top....
I think I used about 3 or 4.....then trashed them.

Happy Thanksgiving to you both--(all?)....

Gita

ROFL, Gita! I call my post-Thanksgiving soup by the same name, and it makes my mother wince. I think/hope that I have turkey stock in the freezer from a previous carcass, so we can have soup on Friday very easily... if so, will shove the carcass from this turkey into the freezer and make a double batch of stock after we roast the next one!

*snort* Doc... I have heard of using lettuce leaves for something, but not sure if it was blotting fat or absorbing excess salt. Paper towels work!