It’s so easy to be cheesy – Redneck Cooking
Happy Halloween everyone. I hope you all are having a good Halloween. I thought about writing a piece about some cool spooky Halloween kind of dish. I came up with the idea of making a meatloaf into the shape of a hand or a foot or something. Then I came across the Not Martha website. This is a cool looking meatloaf and my wife and I thought it would be fun to make one of these the next time we get the whole family together so I am now on the hunt for a hand shaped mold. So now that the meatloaf body part has already been perfected by someone else I decided to go with my original idea and give you my lasagna recipe instead.
Adventures in our CSA – the e-scape from boring garlic
If I had to choose one thing it is actually possible for my dad to love more than my mother or us kids, it would be garlic.
My father adores garlic. He cherishes it. He has garlic magnets, garlic t-shirts, garlic cookbooks, and garlic chewing gum. He has attended garlic festivals (and yes, I have been dragged along). There is no way that we are in any way related to any vampires, because if we were, they would be dead from the fumes that radiate from our house in a half-mile radius come dinner time. When my twin brother and I were born, my dad, the son of a photographer and a photo hobbyist himself, posed our unresisting, swaddled infant bodies for portraits to send to the eagerly expectant crowd of family and friends who had been watching my poor, tiny mother swell to roughly double her size. And to break up the soft, off-white background (and to differentiate us, I’m guessing, because newborns all look kind of the same) he curled some pink ribbon and some blue ribbon and placed it next to us where a normal parent would perhaps place a stuffed animal. Only since my dad is not a normal parent, guess what he tied it to?
That’s right. A bunch of garlic.
Not every garlic was created equal
I wouldn’t say my love of garlic is as passionate as Kona’s, but I do like the stuff. I use it fairly often in my recipes. I ran out about a week ago and I was missing it, so when I was at the grocery store yesterday I made sure to look for some. My only choice was purple garlic — a package of five, no less. I didn’t see any reason not to buy it, so I did.
That night I decided to make some sauteed broccoli, scarily similar to the recipe Bob posted recently. It has to be my favorite way to cook (and eat!) broccoli. Yet, the first bite I took, I realized there was something was … not quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I just was not enjoying my food. Read the rest of this entry »
Spice up your broccoli
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I’m sure: I love broccoli. I really think I could eat it every night of my life and I’d be okay with it. I love it that much. Sometimes, though, I do like to do something different with it. As much as I like it simply steamed, pan sauteed, or roasted, there are still times when a little something more to spice it up is a welcome change. The other night was exactly one of those times.
Redneck salad? – Redneck Cooking
I got home from work early Friday and it was a nice day out. The sun was shining, the temperature was perfect. It was too nice to be in the house. I mowed the lawn and just enjoyed the afternoon out in the yard with Bo. We played and had a very relaxing afternoon. About 5:00 Bo asked me in his nicest bark when we were having dinner. I realized I was hungry too, so in the house we went.
Bo ran to the Fridge to see what succulent morsel of meat I would pull out of for dinner. I had not taken the juice pack of Elk steak out of the freezer. There was no thawed meat in the fridge. In fact there was very little in the fridge. There was the last piece of chocolate peach upside down cake, a half a loaf of bread and half a head of iceberg lettuce. Grilled cheese sandwiches sounded good, so I checked the cheese box in the door. No cheese.
Bo ran to the pantry and scratched at the door. No meat in the fridge means a can of chili or soup. I did not feel like chili or soup, but I did have a can of the Italian tomatoes I used in my Redneck Rice recipe, some green beans that I canned last fall from my garden, a jar of dill pickles from my garden, and a jar of dill pickles and onions from my garden. “Salad sounds good,” I announced. Bo curled his lip, growled, and started looking at my leg like a starving man looking at a chicken leg. Bo does not like salad. I have tried to teach him to be more open to trying new things but he is just a dog. If my cat Junior will still alive he would have been very happy. He liked picking the tomatoes out of the salad and eating them.
Asparagus, fingerling potato, and goat cheese pizza – Pizza Clack
Man, I wish I could be more like Debbie. She makes her own spelt pizza dough; I buy the pre-made Harris Teeter-brand dealie. She cooks exciting things that she just has laying around the house; I have to go on a grocery excursion. She’s finding inventive ways to cut carbs from her diet; I decide that throwing potatoes on a pizza would be a totally rad idea.
The thing is, it really is a rad idea. Sure, potatoes on a pizza may not exactly up the health quotient, but damn, does it make a good dinner. I’ve been completely obsessed with asparagus lately, so I searched around for new asparagus dishes and found this asparagus, fingerling potato and goat cheese pizza.
Redneck Rice: a canned feast – Redneck Cooking
I love spring for the most part, but when it comes to eating it sucks. The freezer is just about empty of good meat. All the vegetables at the store are hot house grown and nearly tasteless. It is still too early for good fishing and the Morels have not come out yet here in Idaho.
I asked Bo what he thought would be good for dinner; he said bacon. Well, at least I think that was what he said when he barked and drooled. Bo likes bacon even more than I do. Bacon sounded good so I checked the fridge. No bacon there. I did find a can of Spam with bacon. That is a good start to my masterpiece.
Most Commented (Past Week)