St. Patrick's Day: A Vintage Postcard and a Recipe

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Today everyone is Irish!

Above is a vintage postcard that I recently purchased

and I would like to share it with you to

save and use as you wish.

I think its a really pretty one.

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Years ago (I won't say how many!) when I was growing up my mom would make Corned Beef and Cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, even though we are not Irish. Kind of the way she always made fish on Friday even though we were not Catholic. Who can figure?

I never liked Corned Beef and could barely stomach eating it, but unlike most of the kids today, we were required to eat what was put on the table whether we liked it or not. (The only exception was liver, which my brother and I hated, and I still do.) No creating of special dishes for the picky in my mom's household! She would always say "You will acquire a taste for it if you eat it enough", and it seemed to work, because I grew up from a picky eater who lived on milk until I was in second grade and forced to eat school lunches into a foodie who can eat almost anything (except liver of course). Mom also said "If you like to eat, you'll like to cook", and a lover of cooking I am. Thanks Mom! Do you ever wonder why I don't always create too much art?

In any case, I never liked boiled food and to this day I think that it is boring and tasteless. So, in my determination to find a Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe that wasn't boring, I tried several different recipes over the years, and a few years ago I found this one. It is now the only one I make, requiring a little more work, but loaded with flavor. So if you would like to try it, here is the recipe for you to save and print as you wish. All credits are on the page, but also my few notes. A little freshly chopped parsley added to the platter when served is also a fine thing!  Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I am not a beer drinker, but a bottle of the Guinness was good along with the meal, and the rest I will use this weekend in a stew recipe, which I will share later. (My husband does not drink at all.)

Though the recipe may not look too clear here,

I did print this out as a test and it printed

quite well...

I hope you enjoy it if you try it.

Let me know if you do, and how it turns out.

Corned beef will probably even be on sale this coming week!

Have a "lucky" day today

and a great weekend!

Sausage and Sweet Potato Frittata

Good morning friends! Do you like to sometimes make breakfast food not for breakfast, but for lunch or dinner? I actually do, so here is a recipe that I tried Friday night for a light supper.

I purchased this magazine a week or so ago,

and I think that it is still in the stores. 

I got mine in Walmart...

And this is the recipe...

Believe it or not, I cut the recipe in half, and hubby and I had leftovers for lunch the next day. I didn't even use a cast iron pan, but rather just a Caphalon one. And since dill is no longer growing in my herb garden, I just used a little bit of the dried type. I used Jimmy Dean sage pork sausage, and there was something very delicious about the mix of the sausage and the sweet potatoes. I served it with a little kale salad on the side, which bulked it up a little.

Let me know if you try it and what you think!

Roast Pork and The First Snow

Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a great one.

Though I have lived in The South for more than half of my life, I can't quite get accustomed to eating black-eyed peas to celebrate the New Year. I would much prefer to follow the traditions of my German family and eat pork and sauerkraut, which either my grandmother or mom usually made in the beginning of January. Eating sauerkraut is said to bring blessings and wealth and is eaten along with pork, the pig being said to be a symbol of good luck and well-being. Though I imagine that doctors might argue these fine points, my dad is alive and well at almost 93, so I will maintain this hearty, if not healthy, tradition!

After years of eating lean and healthy pork tenderloin, I yearned for my grandma's slow-roasted pork that was loaded with flavor, melted in your mouth and had that delicious crust on it. I remember her starting it early in the morning in the oven that she had in the basement so that it wouldn't heat up the whole house. There it sat slow roasting until we arrived on the scene mid-afternoon.

Though tenderloin is a lot healthier, I feel that it lacks the flavor that we experienced in the old days. And since this is a meal that I usually only make once each year, a little splurging can't hurt! The recipe that I use is from the the "Make-Ahead Recipes 2010" issue of Cooks Illustrated, which is my favorite cooking magazine.

On New Year's Eve we went to a party given by our neighbors who live across the street, and on Sunday we had the two of them over for a roast pork and sauerkraut dinner. Though the recipe is intended to be a make-ahead version, I can't bear to wait to eat it, so I make it as a roast to be eaten when ready.

Note: I use what we call a fresh (not smoked) pork picnic,

WITH the bone,

rather than a boneless Boston Butt, 

which I have tried but didn't like as well.

I don't bother to tie the meat.

After trimming most of the fat

(the rest is cooked out during the slow-roasting,

and makes wonderful drippings for gravy),

fresh rosemary (still growing in my herb garden),

freshly cracked black pepper, table salt,

fresh sage leaves (NOT still growing in my herb garden!),

 fennel seeds, and garlic,

are mixed together...

...and then rubbed all over the meat,

which is then put in the oven for three hours

at 300 degrees.

During this time you do nothing

except inhale the wonderful aroma

of it cooking,

and quite literally,

this starts in less than 15 minutes!...

After the three hours,

you take out the meat,

add the wedged-up red onions

to the drippings that have already accumulated...

...and roast for another 3 to 3-1/2 hours,

during which time I keep an eye on it and add

a cup or so of water

(or white wine!)

and then it will look like this...

At this point I don't follow the recipe any further.

I make my own gravy (not the apple cider and

apple jelly version).

I also don't set any meat aside for Cubans.

Here is the recipe, which I hope you can enlarge

and print...

If you wish to make the roast and Cubans as specified,

here is the rest of the recipe...

And here is the recipe that I use when I make

most of my gravies.

I could never remember the formula of butter

and flour to drippings,

and this seems to work for me.

From Pinterest, where else!

I do use just a little less flour than specified.

For the pork I use chicken stock or broth,

but this also works well for beef recipes

using beef stock or broth.

Ignore my chicken scratch on the bottom!

By the way, for side dishes I made

a Martha Stewart recipe that I have been

using for years with saurkraut,

white cabbage, and browned mushrooms

in it,

along with mashed potatoes 

and a spinach salad with pears and

Gorgonzola cheese.

Oh, and NY Cheesecake,

another standby from the same issue of

Cooks Illustrated as the pork.

If you're going to cook,

you might as well cook!!

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And a day after eating this nice winter meal,

low and behold,

we got snow! 

It didn't stick, though!

Have you cooked anything delicious lately?

Have a great evening!

A recipe to share: Dark Chocolate Ganache Cheesecake

Good morning! 

A couple of weeks ago my neighbors had a cook-out, and we all brought a dish to share. I must tell you that my heart is actually in cooking rather than baking. Well, it's not so much that I don't like to bake, but I love to cook actual meals, and by the time I'm done with them I have neither the energy nor the time to bake something besides. Who needs the sugar anyway? Especially since Mr. Perch can't eat sweets (diabetic), so who gets stuck eating the entire cake but moi!

In any case, I decided that I would attempt to hone some of my baking skills and try this recipe for Dark Chocolate Ganache Cheesecake, then bring it to the party. Wow! If you think that it looks complicated, bear in mind that it was I who made it, so dive right in. It was not only simple to make, but delicious, and practically the whole thing was eaten. Philly Cream Cheese, thank you for your help!!

Here is the recipe,

which you will need to enlarge

to read.

Save and print!...

And my very own attempt, 

served on a pedestal cake plate...

Who says you can't be fancy at

a cook-out!?...

Have you tried any great recipes lately?

Christmas Chores, Cooking a Pot Roast, and the Story of a Wooden Spoon

Good morning friends. I hope that you're having a great week! There simply doesn't seem to be enough time to get everything done that needs to be done.

In between...

...trimming the tree...

...decorating the house...

...and wrapping the gifts...

...I actually cooked a pot roast using my go-to simple

recipe from Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman).

Thanks, Ree!

Pardon my little notes.

I do not like watery sauces,

so I thickened this by adding a mixture of

equal parts of cornstarch and beef broth,

with a few drops of Gravy Master, 

shaken together and poured gradually

into the sauce until it thickened

into a nice gravy.

I have many recipes for Pot Roast, most more complicated than this one, but this is the one I use when I don't have a lot of prep time. It's great in cool weather, fills your house with a wonderful aroma, and it sure beats the stuff that you make with canned cream of mushroom soup, which I never use in ANYTHING!! (Sorry, just my opinion.)

 

Fortunately, in this area, rosemary and thyme

 grow all winter in my garden.

Here's what it looked like going into the oven...

...and then into our tummies!...

Oh, and if you're wondering about the tape on the wooden spoon, here's the story.

That was my mom's wooden spoon. I think that it's about 60 years old.

I don't remember my mom ever actually spanking either my brother or I.

But, she was a yeller. And a threatener.

"If you don't behave, I will come after you with my wooden spoon!"

And come after my brother she once did.

And missed.

She hit the wall.

And broke the spoon.

And taped it back together.

The original tape still holds.

They just don't make tape like that any more.

And they certainly don't make spoons like that any more.

I now have a collection of my own wooden spoons.

But this one is my favorite.

There is not a time that I use it where I don't think about my mom coming after my brother with that spoon.

Mom passed away in 2009, but I know that she is still wondering when she will get that spoon back.

Happy decorating!

And happy eating!

 

Food for thought: Perfect Flat Iron Steak...

Good morning!

Before we left home to come up here to Birdsong, I was looking through my freezer for something that I could  make that would be quick. I came across a flat iron steak, and did a Google search for recipes, as I had never made one of these before.

I came across the following recipe, tried it, and we liked it very much. This particular cut of meat came out really tender after marinating. I am not a fan of the London Broil cut of meat, and whenever I make London Broil, I use flank steak, which to me is a lot more tender. This flat iron was actually even better than flank steak.

Here is the recipe if you would like to try it...

Have a great day!

Food for thought: A great recipe for Lasagna...

Hi there!

Awhile ago there was a great magazine called "Cottage Living". It was a sister publication of Better Homes and Gardens, and eventually it ceased publication. Why, I don't know, because I thought it was pretty good. Over the years, I had clipped some recipes from it, and one of them was "Judy's Lasagna". I had been making my own recipe for years, but decided to try this one just last year, and ended up liking it better than my own. It was from the September, 2007 issue. You can see that I sometimes hang onto recipes for awhile before I actually get around to trying them! Ha!

The sauce is great and requires little cooking time. As a matter of fact, next time I make it I will double the recipe for the sauce portion and keep half of it to use as meat sauce. Instead of that portion baking in the lasagna, I will cook it a little extra, adding browned Italian sausages to it, and serve it over Rotini. Also, you can used dried herbs if you don't have fresh ones. Just remember to halve the amount when using dried basil. Dried oregano can be used at the full amount.

I like this recipe because the sauce is thick enough to where if it thins a little when layered with the wet lasagna noodles, it's still pretty thick. Some recipes require you to dry the noodles after boiling them, which this one doesn't. And the layering part is simple, and comes out tasting just as good.

Here you go...

We served it to our friend and his gal Saturday night when he came over to fix our computer issues, and they loved it (enough to take some home...the best form of flattery!).

Enjoy.

I hope your day tastes good!

Slow Cooker Beef Stew: A Recipe Tried and True!

Greeting from Miss Phoebe's kitchen!

As you know, I am always on the hunt for good recipes! The following recipe for Beef Stew with Mushrooms, Rosemary and Tomatoes is one of my favorite slow cooker recipes. It is actually more like a Beef Burgunday than a basic beef stew. Thanks, Family Circle!! I made it on Saturday, doing only until step 4 (mushrooms). Then on Sunday, right before our company arrived, I re-heated the stew on the stove and did the mushroom part. Nice!!

I usually reserve making soups and stews for the colder weather, but it was supposed to rain on Sunday. Beef chuck roast was on sale this weekend, so here we are! By the way, it never did rain, so we enjoyed it out on the back deck. Some noodles on the side, red wine, a Caesar Salad, and there you have it! Not to mention the fresh Rosemary (which grows all year round here) from the herb garden.

Give it a try. I think you'll like it!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, and some good recipes...

To all my Irish friends, I hope that you're having a great St. Patrick's Day today. Though neither my husband nor I are Irish, I did make a great Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe yesterday, letting it cook while I put down some pinestraw in the garden. A couple of years ago I searched the internet for a good recipe that went above and beyond the "throw everything in the pot with the packet of spices that comes with the meat and boil the dickens out of it" venue, and tried the one below (scanned along with my little comments!). If you're like me and feel that "boiled equals tasteless", try this one. It is worth the extra work and I think that you'll like it! Click to enlarge and print out if you'd like.

It's no secret that I love to cook, so here is another recipe that I tried at the beginning of the week. The recipe is for Roasted Cauliflower Soup, from Miss Mustard Seed's blog, and you can find it here.  She offers some  lovely photos and step-by-step directions for making this. I think that you'll enjoy this one as well. My husband really loved it, too! And it is as good re-heated as it was the day I made it. By the way, I did roast the cauliflower, which would have even been good by itself as a side dish!

Eat well!

A southern snow and a warm recipe...

Friday night greetings from the Perch!

Well, it looks like we had our "blizzard" of the year...about one inch of snow that fell late last night, after having rained for almost the whole week. We don't get much snow in this area, usually about one or two inches each winter, but it pretty much sends people into a state of major preparedness, with schools either starting on a two hour delay, or not being opened at all. And that decision is made the night before the snow even starts to fall. I am told that this is because we live in a rural area, and they don't want to take unnecessary chances with the school buses. It sometimes seems funny to me, though, because even though my adult life was spend in the South (Florida for 28 years before NC), I did grow up in NY and can remember looking out the front door the evening of a blizzard just HOPING that school would be canceled the next day, and then having to listen to the radio the next morning for the final list of schools that would be closed (even after two feet of snow had just fallen!). But, I guess that its better to be safe than sorry in this area.

Here are a few pictures of the Homestead taken this morning (if I can get the dang things to download...still having fits with Blogger on this).

The garden shed...

The gazebo...

Some statuary...

The house...

And, here is a recipe for Shrimp and Corn Chowder that I tried the other night. This appeared in the February, 2013 issue of Family Circle. Once you get the dicing and shrimp-cleaning done, it is pretty easy to make. The changes that I made was to use only 1.5 tsp of Old Bay seasoning, as Mr. Perch and I do not like stuff too spicy, and to cut out the hot sauce and the lemon juice (which I do not like with anything that is cream-based). I imagine that you could also add a hunk of Cod, or even replace the shrimp with it altogether. We thought it was really good. (I hope you can read the scan of this recipe)

Stay warm and dry. Until next time!

One of my sweet Christmas gifts, and a recipe to share...

Good morning friends! I hope that you're getting ready for the big New Year's Eve festivities, whether they be quiet or noisy! We are having dinner over here with Bob's sister and brother-in-law, and my dad will cook Veal Marsala and pasta. No one makes Marsala as good as he does! Even if he is almost 90.

Here are a few things that I wanted to share with you. The first is a group of pictures of a Christmas gift that I received from my son and daughter-in-law, Chris and Kristin. They went to Chris' best friend's destination wedding in November, which was held on one of the islands off the coast of Georgia. While there, Kristin and her mom went shopping, and she bought this frame for me. Does she know of my love of peeling paint and architectural salvage, or what!? Of course, the baby in the frame is my sweet new grandson, Jason, dressed in the sailor suit that I brought to their baby shower last March. Have I mentioned that I have a "thing" for sailor suits. Both of my children have had to bear the burden of being dressed in one at least once in their little lives, and I am continuing the tradition with my grandchildren. Jason's room was done in a nautical theme, so it came together really nicely in the picture.

Doesn't this frame make you want to create some of your own?

And even if I had lived during Victorian times, my kids still would have been wearing sailor suits...

And, a recipe to share. My husband is a diabetic and cannot eat sugar (and I don't need it!), so a few years ago I found this recipe during a search of no-cook cranberry relish using little or no sugar. It is a very easy, and can be made in your food processor. The best part is that you can make it two days ahead and store it in your fridge. It is actually from the website: NoMoreCrohns.com, to whom I will give credit. Here is a scan of the recipe. I hope you can read it. It is the one on the left, Cranberry Apple Relish. I have not tried the other one. I also double the recipe, and make mine with pecans.

Well, have a great New Year's Eve!