Category Archives: Recipes
Sous Vide Pork Chops
The recipe said that this would work out if the chop was cooked at 130° for really pink, and 1-4 hours would do – I set the temp at 135° and left it in all day. It was going to be lunch but we got to messing about outside and had leftovers instead.
We gave the chops a quick sear in a hot skillet to brown them. It’s a great way to get juicy chops. It gave me an excuse to male mac ‘n cheese, so bonus!
Penne Bolognese
I’ve never made this before so I gave it a shot. I used the Epicurious recipe with modifications – bacon, plus Italian sausage with hamburger instead of ground pork and veal. I was curious about the milk and how it would cook down. I think the bacon is a nice touch.
We give it two thumbs up.
Tidbits
We put the finishing touches to the blueberry garden – drilled the ties with an auger bit and pinned them in place with rebar driven through the holes and into the ground.
Roasting poblanos on the burner is not as elegant as a purpose built pepper roaster but it works well enough. I used these in a batch of baked beans:
Along with the roasted peppers there are several sweet onions. I always start with Bush’s Original Recipe and add additional types, pintos and black beans in this one.
They are a perfect side to go with nearly anything. No two batches are ever identical but they all are so similar the differences are trivial.
I wish I had run across some poblano seedlings but I won’t be short of garden peppers. These are “Gypsy” peppers.
They seem to be much like the familiar banana peppers. They may be a banana X bell pepper cross.
These are Anheims, they will turn red as they ripen but are most often used when still green. I have a few bell peppers coming on, and the usual complement of hot peppers.
Loaded chili dogs! These have chopped onion and fresh jalapenos, and pickled jalapeno slices.
Tidbits
This ended up being better than expected. It’s a basic tomato and cucumber salad with a dill vinaigrette made with seasoned rice vinegar. Mrs J snagged a bag of sweet Vidalia onions so I included those into the mix. My handheld mandoline made short work of that English cuke.
This hosta is pretty. I took several garden shots per a request over at Balloon Juice in the Sunday morning garden chat.
This is looking up at the patio herb and pepper garden. The bare looking tree/shrub thing is a vitex that has to be severely pruned every year lest it take over. It always was a late starter but I think it may dead. I won’t miss it too much although the hummers and the bees sure liked it.
Mrs J prefers garden kittehs to gnomes. 
The feeling isn’t necessarily shared throughout the household.
Post needs more sammich! This is the last of a brisket I smoked earlier this year. I reheated the slices in BBQ sauce.
Another garden kitteh. Mrs J is fond of those coconut fiber containers, saying she has good luck with them.
I love to thin slice the mini peppers to brighten up a slaw. We will make several in a row with the vinegar dressing, then shift to creamy for a couple of batches.
Hot Dog Triple Delight
Left to right: Dog with traditional garnish of pickle relish, chopped onions, and mustard; slaw dog with Jamaican scotch bonnet pepper sauce; a dog with hot Chicago style giardiniera.
Pork Chop and Fries
It’s been a long time since we made twice-fried potatoes. Dusted off the French fry cutter and ran a couple of Idahos through it. Soaked them in ice water, dried them on a towel, and fried them at 320-ish for a few minutes. Drained those and popped them into the freezer on a tray till we were ready for dinner, then fried them again at 350-or so till they took a proper color.
Tidbits
I caught Ollie posing with Garden Cat, seems he was jealous of Ginger Boy getting all the pretty kitty accolades.
I’m sure he was also interested in the occasional hummer. Things are slow on the humminbird front. I fear that the numbers may be down again this year. They always enter a lull in feeder activity at this time, anyway.
The first pepper! Yay! Lots of blossoms and little pepper nubs on the other plants, too. This one is an Anaheim.
We finally spotted a bird with a peanut. Because of the way the camera is programmed we rarely see such. The peanuts just disappear from one picture to the next, as if by magic.
I took a notion to bread and fry boneless, skinless, chicken thighs. Soak them in buttermilk, dredge in flour, and then rest them until the flour has soaked up all the buttermilk. It didn’t take long to fry them in 350° canola oil. The red potatoes were boiled with the skins on, and then mashed with sour cream and butter. The tomatoes are in a vinaigrette with crumbled feta.
Post needz moar Homer kitteh! Also moar Gabe! Homer likes dogs and disdains other cats. The other cats in the household return the same.
We have a lot of canned tomato soup from last year. Fortunate, because we love tomato soup. Especially with grilled cheese. This year we have a few tomato plants out back, mostly for BLT sammiches but there may be enough to can some.
I set up the grill for the holiday, just hamburgers today. We needed some buns so I baked a few.
I’ve been putting together some odds and ends of the green striped china. The round plates are “new old stock”, as are those cute little bowls. I have some more stuff ordered from an Etsy shop, and Ebay has provided a lot of it. They’re vintage pieces made for the classic diners and restaurants from the ’50s. The green stripes are a pattern known as “Niagara” 
We grilled some sweet corn, I dusted these buttered ears with grated Parmesan, the kind that sells in the plastic shaker canisters. It is a nod to the classic Mexican elote. It was pretty good but nothing like the real thing.
Sunday Dinner – Chicken ‘n Dumplings
We were watching Diners and Dives on the Food channel while we finished off some leftovers for supper and saw a chef make a big pot of these. I managed to re-created the recipe fairly well, I think.
I noticed that the dumplings were different – she dumped a bunch of eggs and a good amount of melted butter into a bowl of flour and stirred it into a dough ball. The dough was yellow with all of the eggs. She then rolled the dough out and cut it into squares. I didn’t see her add salt or baking powder, I added some to mine. I think I used about 3 cups of flour, 6 eggs, and a stick of butter, melted, 1 tsp salt and 2 tsp of baking powder.
The chicken was roasted, the meat pulled off, and stock made of the carcass. I boiled mine with carrots, celery, onions, fresh herbs from the patio garden (Yay!), garlic, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt, and plenty of ground black pepper.
Strain the broth and add back the chicken, bring it to a simmer. Add the dough squares, dropping them one at a time to keep them separate. She added a beurre manié (flour and butter, like a roux but uncooked) to her pot, so I did too. I wasn’t sure if it was needed but it worked out great. I worried that the dumplings would disintegrate but they held together well, so well that the extra thickening was welcome.
The episode was from season eight and was titled “Comfort Food Classics”. The YT video looks like is was taken off a TV screen and is running at about 4x speed for some reason. Set playback to full screen, click the gear icon and set it to .5 speed, dumplings start at about 4:40.
Pizza Night
These are built on naan loaves and they make very nice impromptu pizzas, Toppings include banana pepper rings, pickled jalapenos slices, smoked pork, salami, onions, fresh jalapenos, sliced onion, Awesome sauce, grated Parm, mozzarella, asiago, and provolone cheeses, olives and maybe something else, not sure.
Fried Rice
Fried rice is one of the easiest things, but be sure to use older rice that has dried out some. This lunch was the happy result of finding a baggie of rice in the back of freezer beyond during an exploration this morning. I also used up a single link of garlic pepper sausage left over from a breakfast a few days past. Saute the sausage or ham or whatever in sesame oil, add the peas and carrots and chopped green onions and sweat those for a few minutes, add the rice and warm that up. Lastly stir in some oyster sauce and a little soy sauce. I usually add in some scrambled egg but this time I didn’t.
The chicken was dredged in flour, fried, and set aside. It has a sauce of honey, garlic, ginger, chili paste, and soy sauce that was simmered to warm and reduce. Add the chicken to it and toss to coat. The green beans were steamed and chilled, then re-warmed in a pan with garlic and sesame oil.
