London Broil Meal

London Broil

Rub steak with juice from crushed garlic clove and liberally season both sides of your London broil with salt and pepper. Let it sit at room temperature on a rack set inside a rimmed baking tray for at least one hour. The salt will dissolve and will be absorbed into the meat. Prepare a grill for medium-high heat (or heat a grill pan over medium-high). Grill the first side for four minutes, then rotate 45° from its original spot on the grill (but don’t turn it over) in order to get the crosshatch grill marks. Continue to grill for another three to four minutes, then flip and repeat the process, until it’s charred and medium-rare. An instant-read thermometer should register 125°F when it’s ready—about 10 to 12 minutes total. Let it rest about 10 minutes before cutting, and serve it with a pat of butter.

Simple Green Salad

Iceburg lettuce, chopped

Tomato, diced

Carrot, Sliced

Celery, Sliced

Cucumber, Sliced

Toss and serve with dressing.

 

 

Homemade Bread

3/4 c. Milk

1/2 c. shortening

1/2 c. Sugar

1 t. Salt

2 pkg. (or 4 1/2 t.) Yeast

1/2 c. lukewarm water (110 Deg.)

4 1/2 – 3/4 c. Sifted Flour

2 eggs, room temp.

 

Scald milk; add shortening, sugar & salt, mix well.  Cool to lukewarm.

Sprinkle yeast on water & stir to dissolve. Beat 1 1/2 c. flour into milk mixture (at least 1 minute). Beat in eggs and yeast mix. Gradually add in enough flour (1/4-1/2 cup at a time) to make a soft dough that leaves the sides of the bowl. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth, satiny & no longer sticky, 5-8 minutes.

Place in lightly greased (Buttered) bowl, turn dough to lightly cover with grease. Cover & let rise to double, 1-1/2 hours.

High Altitude – Second Rise – Punch down, turn in bowl to grease top again and let rise to double.

Punch down & turn onto surface, divide in half. Shape as desired.

Brush top with melted butter & let rise to double, 30-45 minutes.

Bake @ 375 degrees 12-15 minutes for rolls, 15-25  minutes for loaf.

This recipe will also make cinnamon rolls.

Pork Loin Meal

Ingredients:

6 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh chives

salt and pepper to taste
(Opt. Chunked Celery, Chunked Carrots)

1 (4 pound) boneless pork loin roast

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder

salt and pepper to taste

 

Directions
Prep 20 m

Cook 1 h 50 m

Ready In 2 h 25 m

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a pot with enough water to cover, boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes. Drain, cool, and place in a bowl. Toss with olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon thyme, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, chives, salt, and pepper.
Rub the pork loin roast with 1 teaspoon thyme, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, and onion powder. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Place the roast on a rack in a shallow roasting pan, and cook 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Arrange the potatoes around the roast, and continue cooking 50 minutes, to an internal temperature of 145 degrees F (63 degrees C). Remove from heat, cover with foil, and let sit 15 minutes before slicing.

Footnotes: 

Tip

Aluminum foil can be used to keep food moist, cook it evenly, and make clean-up easier.
www.allrecipes.com/recipe/70562/herb-roasted-pork-loin-and-potatoes/

Serve with: Cucumber/Onion Vinegar Water, Vegie Sticks, Canned peaches, Depression Era Sugarless Cake or Tillamook Ice Cream.

 

Porcupine Meatball Meal

One of my 52 Weeks meals. This recipe came from a cookbook I got to help teach my daughter how to meal plan and cook. The cookbook it came from disappeared in one of my moves.

3 courses

The menu is really simple. Just the Porcupine Meatballs, No Yolks Dumpling Noodles, and homemade green salad.

PORCUPINE MEATBALLS

1 Egg, beaten

1 10.75 ounce can Tomato Soup, split

1/4 cup instant rice

1 tsp. Parsley

1 tsp. Dried Onion

1/4 tsp. Each salt and pepper

1 pound burger

1/2 cup Water

1 tsp. Worchestershire Sauce

Mix 1/4 c soup, egg, rice, and dry spices together. Break burger into the soup mix. Mix well using hand if necessary. Shape into 20 balls. Heat skillet to medium. Gently place balls in skillet and brown.

Mix remaining soup, water, and Worchestershire sauce. Pour over balls. Bring to boil, then reduce heat to slow simmer. Cook 40 minutes, stirring gently occasionally.

Noodles: bring water to a boil, add 1 handful noodles per person and cook until done.

GREEN SALAD

Iceberg lettuce, torn

Romane lettuce, torn

Cucumber, sliced or chunked

Radishes, sliced

Red cabbage, shredded

Grape or Cherry Tomatoes

Mix ingredients. Serve with choice of dressing.

52 Weeks of Seafood

2021/04/24

Well, dealing with this 🙄 pandemic has been a challenge. Trying not to have to deal with the imposed hysteria that made it difficult to get decent food (amongotherthings). And being in a small town without access to the ingredients I have become accustomed to means learning how to cook all over.

Today’s dinner is baked cod filets, maple syrup & ginger poured over sweet potatoes and baked in the same oven with the cod, grape tomatoes, and pickled beets that I put up last fall.

Pretty good meal

Last fall we found out that my man needed to begin a more healthy diet. Blood pressure, allergies, asthma, and the like had me looking for an eating plan that was doable for both of us and not something we had to “subscribe” to. I found the DASH diet. It is pretty much the same stuff we are used to having, just prepared in healthier ways

And we can still have the sweets and saltys just not as much as we used to have.

Cabbage Rolls for Dinner

One of my husband’s favorite comfort foods is stuffed cabbage. Since it is a rather easy meal to make we generally have it a few times a year. And since this recipe makes 8 rolls I split it between 2 pans lining one with foil so I can freeze it.

Easy cabbage rolls

They don’t look the greatest but they taste good.

Along with this meal we had whole kernel corn

Just open the can. I’m lazy.

My raised rolls are made with my bread recipe I posted earlier.

Still learning how the convection oven works.

For dessert I made Banana Bread without the nuts (until the man gets finished with the dentist).

Banana bread recipe.

I always make half of this recipe as mini loaves so we can take them when we go up in the mountains.

Left over baked chicken?

When I bake or rotisserie a chicken (or a turkey) for my husband and myself there is usually at least 2 more meals. This time we got 3.

The first meal is, of course, baked chicken (3 daysago). Next I made chicken noodle soup (the man had a tooth pulled and couldn’t chew), but before I added in the noodles I took out, and canned half of the soup.

Started with baked chicken but didn’t stuff it. (Meal #1.)

My Chicken Soup recipe is another KISS recipe. I keep it in my head, although I have it written in my “grandkids use this one” cookbook.

Part 1

Part 2

So, this time I made too much Chicken noodle soup and only got 3 quarts to can. This is my preferred method of storing extra because I lived so long without a freezer. We did, finally, get a good freezer.

It took 6 months for the Covid panic to settle down enough that the stores could actually get some freezers back in stock. But I still think a freezer is a luxury and a pantry is a necessity. Anywho, I canned the leftover chicken soup to be used this winter for Chicken and dumplings or more Chicken noodle soup.

Only got 3 quarts this time.

Every time I bake a chicken or a turkey I make sure to can up some basic soup with the leftovers. A full pantry keeps food fear at bay.

Keeping Busy

For the last few weeks, since Covid-19 and lockdown, I have been making some PDFs of my decades worth of small cookbooks. Some of the recipes in these books are pretty good, some are just so-so, and some are awful! But I will leave it to you to decide what you think.

This is the Swans Down Cake Flour cookbook from 1947. As you can see I have used it well. In fact I used it so well that I ended up taping it back together quite often. I have since thrown this one away because it was falling apart. Thank heavens for a printer that will make PDFs for me.

You will probably be able to tell which recipes I have used over and over.

Finally warm!

We actually had great weather this weekend. So, of course we grilled a steak, baked a spud, and whipped up a fruit salad.

Fruit Salad

This fruit salad is really simple because summer is the time of KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Simply make whipped cream (or get Cool Whip), chunk up pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, etc. Fold it all together. You can also add walnuts, pecans, coconut, whatever.

Smoked Pork Loin Roast

Smoked Pork Loin Roast

When you have a husband who owns a smoker you get to try lots of different tastes.
We had smoked pork loin with steamed carrots (sorry, no picture) and green salad.
The man wanted peach cobbler for desert and I wanted vanilla ice cream.

I won’t be able to give you the recipe for the pork rub because, “it’s my own concoction”, according to the outdoor cook. So you will have to take my word that it was great. And since there is only the two of us I have enough for two more meals in the freezer. As long as they are vacuum sealed and dated to be used within six weeks they should be all right

Peach Cobbler

I am not including the recipe for this peach cobbler because we really didn’t like it all that much. I will continue to try recipes until I find one I like. I won’t experiment on peach cobbler because the man wants one that tastes as good as his mom’s. Since she was an AWESOME cook I can agree and will keep looking for the one she used.

Finally moved!

Sorry it has been a few months since I have been able to post here. We have been remodeling two homes (one to sell) and slowly getting settled in Montana. The house in Nevada has been sold so that headache is gone.

Now we have to deal with this Corona virus & the pandemonium that is happening.

Anyway, I have done a crochet project since many of my dish rags have disappeared and I need to replace them.

So simple.

This dish rag is so easy.

It’s made with Sugar & Cream cotton (that has been in my stash for a couple of years) and an F/5 – 3.75 mm hook.

All you do is chain 27 stitches. Turn, half-double crochet in second chain from the hook, and continue to half-double crochet for 24 stitches, 25 total stitches including turn. Chain 2, turn half-double crochet 24 stitches. Twenty rows is fine for my use, any bigger and it gets really heavy for washing. The double-crochet stitch is good for scrubbing pots and pans if necessary.

52 Weeks of Tatting

 

This picture is my current project, a rather quick bookmark and fairly easy one, as well.

 

These two pictures are the pattern.

 

This project is from the book/magazine “Learn to Tat” by Janette Baker, which I got at Hobby Lobby in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  It has pictures of how to do the stitches for the patterns in the book. It also comes with a DVD. It contains directions and patterns for doilies, edgings, and other small projects. I will post the projects as I complete them.

 

 

The Equalizer 100 Books to Read

 

   

 

I Started looking for the list of 100 books to read before you die that were mentioned in “The Equalizer” movie but all I could find were lists and the guesses of and by someone else.

In “The Equalizer 2” I finally got to see Robert McCall’s bookshelves.  The books that I could actually identify are as follows:

1. Between the World & Me, Ta-Nahisi Coats
2. In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
3. Siddhartha, Hermann Hess
4. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
5. Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
6. Black Power, Stokely Carmichael
7. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
8. Native Son, Richard Wright
9. The Double Helix, James D. Watson
10. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (mentioned in 1st movie)
11. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes (Mentioned in 1st movie)

One thing some of these books have in common is that they were written and focus on black urban males. I am not saying that they should not be on anyone else’s list, but as a 65 year old white rural female I don’t really identify with them.  I am still going to read them (after all, I have read the King James Bible, The Quran, The Book of Mormon, etc. though I am not any of these religions) because a different point of view is always helpful in personal growth.

Actually, everyone should have a list of books that they believe they should read before they die.  I have even started my own list.  Care to see it?  Ok, here goes, in no particular order are my first 37:

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7.  
8. 
9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 
13.    
14.  
15. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
24. 
25. 
26. 
27. 
28. 
29. 
30. 
31. 
32. 
33. 
34. 
35. 
36. 
37.   

 

These are the ones I have read and hope to read soon