As always I go from the heated cabin to my heated car and then to the heated (or so they say) building. I'm out in the cold for a total of probably no more than 10 minutes. The wind was blowing pretty hard this morning but the building kind of blocked it for me.
Tuesday I was out of the office so I didn't get to update the blog. Wednesday I was busy trying to get caught up from being out Tuesday so again, no update. Here we are today and finally I have a few minutes to spend with you....
I don't remember what night it was, possibly Monday, when I came up with a new recipe. Well, it's new to me. There are probably lots of people who have made some version of it and there are probably many recipes out there on the internet for it too. However, in my mind, it's my recipe because I didn't refer to any website or cookbooks when I put it together - lol!
It's one of those really easy ones too... all you need is a bag of frozen cauliflower, a bag of frozen Sugar Snap Peas and a ham steak. For the sauce you need a couple tablespoons of butter, a couple TBSPs of flour and a handful of cheese - whatever kind you like, shredded or not, either way. For the topping - the fried onions like you use at Thanksgiving for your green bean casserole.
Cook the cauliflower and peas according to the package directions. It was my experience that they could be cooked together since both bags said "cook for 5 minutes." Cut up the ham steak and brown it in a skillet with just a little water (as the water goes away, the ham will brown). Technically you could leave out this step since ham steaks are pre-cooked but if you want the brown on the pieces, you'll need to leave this step in the process.
While the veggies and ham cook, melt the butter in a sauce pan and then sprinkle in the flour. Stir until the flour is smooth. Drain the veggies and ham (if any water is left but there shouldn't be much...) and stir everything together in a casserole dish. Remember, if you have animals, they would really enjoy drinking the veggie and ham juice over their boring old dog food... If you like your casseroles to be more creamy, kindly double the sauce recipe. You can either stir in the cheese with everything else (which is how we like it) or put it on the top of everything. Crumble the fried onions, sprinkle them on top and bake in the oven (at 350) for about 20 minutes. mmmmmm mmmmmmmm goooooooood! I wish I was there to make it for you.
I thought about adding sweet peas to the recipe but I tend to burn Wally out on peas so I left them out but they would be good to try :) Besides, sugar snap peas are technially peas... just still in the pod. What do you think? Do you think you'll try it? Well, if you do, let me know if you like it. The cauliflower will get mushy if you cook it too long so watch that. Do you have your own version of this recipe that you would care to share with me? If so, send it to dh4184@att.com and I'll give it a try :)
Now that I think about it, it had to be Monday when I came up with that recipe. Tuesday we stopped at Snappy's Pizza and had a late lunch/early dinner there. We haven't been in a long time but the waitress remembered us and she remembered what we liked to order. That was so cool. She even changed the channel on the tv to something we like to watch - don't remember what it was now - but doing so got her a pretty darn good tip! The pizza was consistenly good - lots of meat, cooked until the tips of the meat were browned, thin crust, cooked enough to be just a little bit crunchy...just the way we like it. This is a fairly huge compliment coming from me because I'm no fan of the pizza industry...Snappy's takes the cake :) LOL
I had put down Connie's Mom's cookbook for a time (too busy to read what with holidays and family and such) and recently picked it back up again. I got to page 726 (of 824) when I came to this paragraph. Just so you know, at this point in the book, I'm in a section that directs the housewife on how to set her guests at ease when the dining table shows the remains of the meal...Here's how it went:
"With regard to having no maid service and your guests leaving the dining table and moving to the living room…the hostess enters with the coffee while the host attends to placing the screen (to hide the dining area until it can be cleared). By the time all have lighted a fresh cigarette, the coffee is being poured and the dining table has been forgotten."
Now, is that out of date or what? LOL I got the biggest kick out of it... First of all, the part about having no maid service made me laugh...did it make you laugh? Then they place a screen up to hide the dining area? Hello? Get your butt in here and help clean up you lazy guests!! LOL! Then you want to go light up? In the house? Oh, I think not... I guess it just goes to show how much things have changed since way back when. I got a kick out of it and thought maybe you would too...
We're gearing up for Super Bowl Sunday - how 'bout you? Steelers or Packers? I know Lizzard has made it clear who she wants to see win (starts with an S) but what about the rest of you? Could it be I have so few readers who even care about football? I know Kris doesn't - she's getting ready for racing instead.
Kick-off is 5:30 (I believe that's CST but don't quote me) and I'll be lucky if I make it to half time...LOL We're planning to watch it at home of course...on the menu???? Chili-cheese dip with "Scoops" for dipping :) Hot wings in our own homemade version of wing sauce :) and a sugar-free cake for dessert :) That's it. Pretty simple huh? What are you planning to have?
I have a dilema - remember the coat dilema? Well, this is about as important as that one... my sunglasses, that I have had forever, decided to give up on me the other day. I was distraught. They were given to me by my good friend and Orlando co-worker, Daiana Gutierrez and they have served me well for many years. I told her today that I definitely got HER monies worth out of them. The dilema? You guessed it... I have to go shopping :( :( :( ugh!
Well, while I was in O'Reilly's Auto Parts store I checked out their selection. They may as well not have even had a selection for what it was worth. I'm not even that picky about sunglasses but theirs were a waste of time. They had little bitty lenses and the only tint they had on the lenses was gray. C'mon people...whatever happened to brown or black? Does anyone really wear gray tinted lenses? Is it just me who is anti-gray? So here I am without sunglasses and surely not wanting to stop and shop for any. Daiana said she would see if her husband had anymore laying around that didn't fit his style and if so, she said she would send them my way...lol! yeah, it's that bad... thank goodness it's overcast today hahahahahahaha
I do have to stop at Publix so I'll give their selection a look-see but I'm not expecting any miracles. They will have buttermilk, however, and I do need that in order to try out a recipe for some whole wheat banana bread...that sounds pretty good, huh? I'll keep you posted.
It's also the weekend of the rabbit stew!! woo hoo!! Yes, I'm going to pick up the ingredients this afternoon and with any luck, we'll be dining on the wittle wascaly wabbit come Saturday :) LOL! I'll keep you posted on that one as well. With this weather, any kind of stew sounds good to me :) Sorry 'bout that Kat and Kris...just the way things are.
The puppies are growing like weeds!!! Oh my goodness are they ever getting big. I have to pop them on their cute little noses and tell them "down!" They jump up on me and they're so heavy that they knock me sideways...little monsters! lol I'm clumsy enough without their help...especially in the snow :) Of course they listen much better to Wally, indeed they sit their little butts right down and wouldn't even think of jumping on him... he's the one who most often feeds them so they know to sit for him. I'm always at work when the feeding frenzy begins so I don't get to participate except on weekends. They don't have that good of an attention span to remember from one weekend to the next. But they do know that they don't much like getting popped on the nose...lol my only saving grace for now.
Suffice it to say the roosters spend most of their time on either the hitching post or under the truck or in some way avoiding those puppies if at all possible. We still have 5 of them so I'm really hoping it wasn't the puppies who did in that last one. They are still roosting in the tree right outside the back door too. I don't know what the appeal is but now there are three of them in that tree and the other two are in a tree off in the woods. Crazy things. They scared the crap out of me the other morning. Everything was quiet and I was just walking out the door for work when they decided to start crowing...COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOOOOO! It was so loud and so close I'm pretty sure I jumped a little...lol! yeah, go ahead and laugh. Your turn will come... :) :)
Here it is Friday eve and once again I'm wishing it was already the weekend. Darryl's birthday is Friday but he doesn't know that we all know it. We're all supposed to meet over at Pee Wee's Place around 6pm so we can surprise him with a pizza and a cake and hang out for a while. I'm making the cake - pineapple upside down cake. It's supposed to rain Friday during the day and then that is supposed to turn to snow Friday afternoon...from there who knows? I imagine it will be some sort of combination of the two. If that tells you nothing at all, it should at least tell you that we won't be there long... I'm not trying to drive in a mess like that. LOL Saturday morning - off to the meat-gettin place for meat, of course, and bones for the dogs :)
Darryl does so much for so many people that we couldn't let his day go by without recognizing him. He brings me vegetables all summer long, he keeps us in fresh eggs as long as the hens are laying, he gets the grocery store in Centerville to carry the chicken feet for my broth and he supplied us with the pig back in August. He knows everyone's phone number and pretty much where they live. He knows who is good at welding, fencing, logging, etc and is generally a handy sort of guy to be friends with. We'll make sure he has a good birthday rest assured. :)
So happy superbowl to you and yours - hope your team wins especially if your team is the Packers! LOL! Enjoy your weekend - let me know if you cook up something you think I should try. I'm always looking for new ways to cook things. I'll be busy feeding animals, cleaning puppy poo off my shoes, and of course, doing some cooking. We hope to see you soon :) Got old cookbooks laying around taking up space and collecting dust? Send me an email - I'd love to have them shipped to me and I don't mind paying the shipping.
"Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat." ~Author Unknown
No comments:
Post a Comment