Our Trip to Tennessee ....Um, Boonville Missouri I Mean

Sigh...


Blogger meet up at Larry's Little Bit of Heaven (South) will not include Dave and Jackie.


But the good news, it happened only 100 miles from home, the car got a little better over night and we limped home...


New car shopping planned!


To my friends in Tenn -  Have fun, sorry about the Pina Coladas (What I was planning to share with the group), they will not go to waste.

There's a Tear in my Eye - An Announcement

First the recipe for the photo above before we get to my announcement...


4 Talapia Filets
1 Vadallia Onion, sliced thick and cut into quarter size pieces
6 Sweet Peppers, seeded and sliced thin
1 Tomato
Seasonings


Sweat the onions and peppers over medium heat.  Once there is a puddle of liquid formed under the veggies, poach the fish (just lay them right on top of the onions and peppers).  Cover and continue to cook for @5 minutes.  The fish I was cooking was thin Talapia, and was fork tender done in just that 5 minutes.


The Tomatoes are fresh, raw and just a little of my "Sodom and Gomorrah" Low salt substitute (Salt, Garlic Flakes and Black & White Sesame Seeds).  Fish was seasoned with salt and pepper and some smoked paprika mostly for color.


Easy Peasy, and a tasty low calorie healthy weeknight quickie...


But, hey, as good as that sounds (and tasted), it would not bring a tear to my eye...


This will...


I am a dot-com guy!  


I am a working man!  


My long delayed "project" has finally come to be!!!


I could ramble philosophically about someone my age (older than dirt) or someone returning to the workforce after several years (almost 10) of comfortable retirement.


Instead I will share what actually does bring a tear to me eye... Food blogging has changed my life.  When I started, I was barely able to even boil water.  Cooking was an obligation to "do the least I could do" for my wife (with her inconvenient day job).  I started blogging in the "Julie & Julia" era of growth in the hobby.  What was a diversion became a hobby and now an obsession.  


Personally, I can now run the category whenever food topics come up on Jeopardy.  I fear no recipe, no technique nor ingredient.  I've come a long way from adding a little honey to butter to make honey butter (my first post).


But more than a sense of individual accomplishment, I have come to embrace the community of food bloggers.  All of us blog for a variety of reasons.  But just the idea of boldly hanging it out there is something we can and should be proud of.  There are a million cookbooks.  There are dozens of professional websites with trained chef created recipes.  Yet we think we have something to contribute...


We do.


Daily, we accept the challenge of cooking within a budget...  Cooking a variety of meals so our food is not repetitive nor boring.  We challenge ourselves with new ingredients, new techniques.  We dress our presentations to be as attractive as possible for our limited audience of tasters, and to stand out to our readers  But we also share and contribute to a community.


And it is for that community that I am introducing ...

eRecipeCards.com

(before you go there, please read the limitation note at the bottom of this post)

On the surface, it resembles the "food Porn" sites that encourage magazine quality photos.  In fact, eRecipeCards.com is designed to be inclusive.  While top quality photos are a goal for us all, more important is the recipe.  The site is moderated, with each post being looked at and approved.  But about the only way your post will be rejected is if the recipe is not original (or credited to the original inspiration (go ahead and show off those Food Network recipes, especially if you add/alter something to make it your own).


But, of equal importance is a quick way to look over the contributions of the food blogging community.  Take a quick look at their work (photo, title and brief description).  If you want to see more, there is an easy way to see the complete original blog post (photos and title have links to the original blog).  And best of all, if it is something you will want to see again (is there a bigger honor than to have another blogger recreate your recipe), you can create an eRecipeBox to hold the eRecipeCards you like best.


OK, I am sure I will be talking about this over the next few months, but here it is, ready for my friends to BETA test the site...


Please, take a few minutes, visit the site, punch a few buttons and see how it works.


Create an account and submit a blog post.  In fact, submit several (at a minimum, what you might think of as your top ten list maybe).  Plan to make eRecipeCards.com a daily stop to see what the blogger world is up to, but also to let that world know what you are up to.


And as welcome Beta testers, I am going to ask a favor...


Suggestions... Now is the time.  If there is a feature you would like to see added, please let me know.  In fact, here's an email I guarantee will be the first email I read of each day... 

Dave@eRecipeCards.com

Drop me a note and tell me what can be improved.


Something not working right... Let me know that ASAP.  I did a run through, and it appears to be functioning.  But, as Regis says, "I am only one man".  Please help me make it perfect (and that includes spelling and grammar errors).  No issue is too small.  Same email address please.


And finally, my single known limitation...


The photo editor is being worked on, and will function MUCH better in just a couple of days.  Right now, the only photos that can be accepted are square, already sized 250X250 pixels.  If you submit something larger, you can move a box around to accept only a portion of the photo.  Please take the extra step to resize your photos square and to the 250 pixel format so your posts will look right from the start.  Like I said, it is just a matter of days before an improved version of the photo editor is added (just a couple of days).

OK... Come visit...

http://erecipecards.com/


And then drop me a note about what you think!


Dave (a working man)




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Firecracker Cole Slaw - More Wedding Side Dishes

Ah... Another day, another side dish I made for the rehearsal dinner to the wedding of the century (in our family anyway)...


And this one has a special place in my heart these days as I stole the recipe from a good blogger buddy I have never met...  BUT, come Sunday, I will no longer be able to say that.  This recipe comes from Sam's blog, MY CAROLINA KITCHEN.  Sam and a few more bloggers are going to meet up at Larry's "Almost Heaven South".  Could not be more thrilled to finally touch base with Sam, Larry, and the rest.


Great folks all, but also I have been stealing these recipes for a couple of year's now.  I just love getting my recipes from bloggers.  Always more details than just from a book.


But I digress...

Not only did we serve this as a side dish, but we topped the pre-made sandwiches with this cole slaw.


Not only is it very tasty, border line diet food, but colorful enough to add to the presentation.  Speaking of color, the RED peppers, the WHITE cabbage, combined with the purple (almost BLUE) cabbage would make a "firecracker" 4th of July slaw (That Sam, clever Gal!)




A very colorful, flavorful Cole Slaw.  I first saw this recipe on Sam's blog, MY CAROLINA KITCHEN.  Sam did a pre-4th of July post of a red, white and blue FIRECRACKER COLESLAW.  But with the light dijon mustard vinaigrette replacing the heavier mayonnaise base in many slaws makes this a recipe deserving of year round serving.  Their is plenty of "weight" to the next two side dishes that will make you feel full and a little bloated (totally worth it).  But this... Dare I say diet food?, this light vegetable (yes, cabbage is a veggie) dish is a great complement to the heavier aspects of this meal.  Or, as I like to do, use this slaw as a topping for the sandwich...


Firecracker Coleslaw
Adapted from Simply Shellfish by Leslie Grover PendletonAs seen on  MY CAROLINA KITCHEN

½ cup natural rice vinegar (unseasoned)
½ cup canola oil
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons sugar
4 cups finely shredded red cabbage
4 cups finely shredded white cabbage
2 red bell peppers, cut into thin slivers
½ cup toasted sliced almonds

In a large bowl, whisk the vinegar together with the oil, mustard and sugar. Just before serving, add the two cabbages, bell pepper and almonds and toss well. Season with fleur de sel and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Serves six to eight. Easily tripled.




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Killer,,, Absolutely Killer Smoked Beans

Few things in my life I am more proud of than my beans.  I was thrilled to be able to add these to the menu for the wedding of the century.  I needed to triple this recipe in order to feed everyone.  Those baseball boys went wild for these...

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Alright, sit back, maybe grab that third cup of coffee, 'cause this is going to be a long portion of the post.  

I know a lot of smokers (not the Marlboro men, the indirect grilling, long and slow cooks, with a hint of Wood smoke in their food).  EVERY SINGLE SMOKER IN THE WORLD THINKS THEY HAVE THE BEST BEAN RECIPE.  Want to start a fight, tell one of these smokers that your beans are better than theirs.

My beans are better than theirs (sorry Chris).  There are lots of little details in the beans that add up to ... better.  I will pretend to be humble about my beans, and not use the word best.  But I have eaten a hundred smoker's beans... so far, mine are better.

Really....

And here's the difference...  First, like every great bean recipe, this is sweetened with not only a little brown sugar, but also molasses AND sorghum!  The M & S adds deep color, as well as extra layers of texture (makes it thick) and taste.

But the key is the spices.  With the exception of some dry mustard powder, I do not add any new spices to my beans.  Instead I add 1/2 pound of spiced meat scraps.  Either some pork tenderloin or brisket frozen from a previous cook session or I fire up the grill or smoker a few hours early and cook a few scraps before putting the beans on.  Remember what your mom served you... Pork and Beans.  Well, these are pork and beans with a bite.

For my latest session, I had smoked some pork tenderloin, stuffed with sausage..  I had already reached temperature on the pork, and was going to wrap them in foil.  I knew I was going to use this to flavor my beans.  So, I cut off an end piece (end pieces have extra spice rub on them).  I diced it up and used it in the beans.  Believe me, plenty of seasonings.

One word of caution... This technique for spicing your beans works best when you add the meat as it cooks, not at the end of the cook session.  Think making a stew or a soup.  You do not add the onion in at the end of the session, but at the beginning, when the flavor of the onion will flavor the entire pot.  Same theory with adding spice rubbed meat scraps.  It does take planning ahead, but so does any successful BBQ...

And my final secret...

Look close at the photo on the left...

I smoke my beans below the pulled pork.  Beans take about 3-4 hours to smoke.  during the last couple of hours of the cooking of the pork shoulder, I drizzle some honey on the shoulder and put the beans below the pork.  The drippings from the pork (there aren't many, it is at the end of the session remember) drop into the beans and add yet another layer of flavor and heat from the mop and dry rub that the drippings drip through.

Layers of flavors, built around different layers of flavors.  This is the menu item that people come back for seconds.

It's just pork and beans (wink nod).

OK, here's the recipe for the beans...

Ingredient list...

1/2 pound of cooked smoked meat scraps, well spiced already with spicy rub, save the end pieces from a previous cook session.
1 large white onion, finely chopped
1 medium size red onion, small diced (about 1/4 inch square) ... save these to add just prior to serving
6 ounces tomato paste
1/3 cup Brown sugar
1/3 cup Brown Sugar ... save to add just prior to serving
1/3 cup Molasses
1/3 cup Sorghum Syrup
1 TB Dry Mustard
1/4 cup White Vinegar
1-27 ounce can BUSH'S brand Country Style BBQ Beans
1-16 ounce can BUSH'S brand Pinto Beans
1-16 ounce can BUSH'S brand Great Northern Beans
1/2 bottle of Killians Irish red (or your favorite) Beer

Place all the ingredients in a heavy baking pan, stir well to blend ingredients. Add a full bottle of Killians if using an offset smoker, or just 1/2 bottle if using an oven. Place in cooker and allow to cook along with the meat for 2 hours, leave them in the smoker as long as the residual heat is at least 200, after you remove the meat and foil the meat (foiling the meat allows the juices to be absorbed into the meat, making it more moist and tender... but I digress).  The moisture in the bean pot will help to keep moisture circulating in your cooker.

Garnish with the red onions and a bit of brown sugar.
And fellow smokers or grillers... These are worth leaving your bean recipe behind for a try.

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Cheddar Cheese Potato Salad - Recipe to serve 70

Well, not really 70, but this is the recipe I made for the rehearsal dinner served at the wedding of the century. The recipe I use calls for 5 pounds of potatoes.  Tripling everything gave me a delicious 15 pounds of potatoes... Plenty to serve to our crowd of 70 people.

Although to be honest, it was a bit scary to watch the bridal party go through the line.  you see, Bryce (the groom) is a baseball boy.  Grew up playing ball and earned a scholarship for his entire run of college.  Most of his groomsmen and assorted friends at the dinner were baseball boys.


My, can they pack it away... This is a photo of this guys "seconds".  You should have seen his first plate.

Here's the bride and groom on their first run through.  After learning to cook for mostly middle aged people who wander into my back yard (funny words, middle aged... That's assuming I live to be 105, but let's say middle aged... And I digress).


After learning to cook for folks my age, it was a bit scary to watch the first 20 kids take a big chunk of the food meant to feed 70.


But, the old folks came through for me and they obligingly took half what the baseball boys took.


We had plenty...


So, what did I learn with my first important catering job...


Cook what you know will be winners...


Like this potato salad recipe...

I have a couple of secrets in my potato salad that makes this special.  Neither are so over powering that you immediately know what they are.  But, the little subtle aftertaste of both make this recipe my very favorite in the whole world (and I learned to eat in church basements, I have seen my fair share of potluck dinners).


My two secrets, Cheese and a tsp of Raspberry Chipotle BBQ paste!


5 Pounds Red Skinned Potatoes, 3/4" diced, unpeeled (healthier, adds texture and appearance)
8 ounces Cheddar Cheese (buy the brick, not the pre-grated)
4 hard cooked Eggs, chopped
1 medium size finely chopped Vidallia Sweet Onion
4 TB fresh Chives, minced, divided half in the taters, half as garnish
2 TB Salad Sprinkle, McCormick brand, divided half in the taters, half as garnish
1 TB fresh ground Black Pepper
0 TB Ground sea salt (yes, ZERO salt, there is plenty in the Salad Sprinkle)
3 TB Pourable Yellow Mustard
2 cups Mayonaise
1 tsp Raspberry Chipotle BBQ paste.  The paste is a concentrate.  1 tsp is plenty to season 5 pounds of potatoes.  But, a tsp of a spicy BBQ sauce could be substituted

Cook the potatoes til just done, cool immediately. Combine all the other ingredients into your kitchenaid mixer and mix on low for about three minutes. Once the potatoes are completely cooled, mix in about 1/4 of the potatoes and 1/4 of the goo in a serving bowl. Then add about 1/2 the remaining potatoes and goo, mix that layer, then the final layer. Cool in the refrigerator for at least three hours prior to serving, preferably over night.

And when cooking for baseball boys and their buddies, just make three batches!

The weather for the wedding was perfect!  Highs in the 70's, no humidity, beautiful blue sky...


And yes, that is a team of fine Missouri Mules that took the bride and groom from the church.

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Grilled Pork Chops... It's What's for Dinner

It was a very long weekend... The wedding of the century!

Love was in the air...

And food was on the table for the rehearsal dinner...


Smoked Pulled Pork (3 Boston Butts)
Smoked Turkey (3 Turkey Breasts)
My KILLER Smoked Beans (3 BIG pots)
Cheddar Cheese Potato Salad (15 pounds)
Firecracker Potato Salad (Don't know how much, but A LOT)
Heavenly Hash Chocolate Cake (Just two of those)
9 (yes, NINE) Loafs of Eng Bread
And 3 home made BBQ sauces


@70 people left full and happy!


This week, I'll post all that.  Today is Sunday night's dinner after driving home...


Quick stop at the store found the first FRESH corn of the season.


Fire up the grill, season the pork chops with a little of my "Big Easy in a Jar" Cajun spices


Carefully keep track of the internal temperature (pork is now safe and even more moist and delicious at only 145 degrees instead of 160 plus).


At the same time, just a little butter on the corn and heat them up on the grill as well...

And fall asleep about 7:30 PM


Weddings and catering is a game for the young!


All went perfect though!


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My Life... An Update

Good morning... And an apology.


I am alive, happy and well.  When last we blogged, I was ankle deep in the 17 day diet, and all went well.  Lost a whopping 22 pounds.  After being off it, I stabilized at 18 pounds down.  Enough to get into the jeans that make my butt look good, so I am happy.  I am back to my own lifestyle diet, more natural foods, nothing with ingredients I can't pronounce, little if any processed foods and real ingredients (butter and heavy cream). As diets go, I can not be happier with the 17 day diet.  All realistic goals were achieved.  As a lifestyle, nothing was really changed, and we will see where I am at in a year.


But that ended a couple weeks ago.  Since then, despite my absence from blogging, I have indeed been cooking up a storm.  Plenty of pizzas, veggies and ...


Even a few fun things...

Like these Frozen Bananas, dipped in chocolate and rolled in peanuts AND BACON (the ELVIS).


But that's a post for another day.


More cooking news from the Cul de Sac... If you read the posts on the diet, you remember I was dieting to attend "the wedding of the century" (to us anyway).  The wedding is this Saturday.  Well, it has become more than just a chance to enjoy family and friends.  I have been asked to help the father of the groom with the rehearsal dinner.  We settled on a menu, and it looks like all my favorites...


Pulled Pork with a Cajun spice rub and Raspberry Chipotle mop and finishing sauce


and... 
All my favorite side dishes...


Side Dishes for a Pulled Pork Meal - Killer Smoker Beans - Blue Cheese Potato Salad and Firecracker Cole Slaw







Cousin David (I'm Cousin Dave, he's Cousin David) is in charge of plenty of other items (Salmon, Turkey and more).  But, it was sure an honor to be asked to help out.  67 people are confirmed for the dinner, but I always make plenty... You're invited if you can find us!


And an update on Books...


My favorite Mystery Writer's site, The Mystery Lover's Kitchen, had a VERY big day yesterday...


3 of the author's that contribute to the site had books released yesterday.  Culinary adventures centered around ice cream, Victorian grand homes and BBQ in Memphis.  Sounds like my summer reading is set.  I got my care package from Amazon.com...

But before I move on to new reading, I need to follow-up on the last book I read from the 6 merry murderesses...


Avery Aamees "Lost and Fondue" came out last month.  Avery was nice enough to send me an advance look at one of the recipes in the book.  I already posted her ...


Garlic and Blue Cheese Fondue


And it was indeed fabulous!  Last "real" food I made before the diet, so the taste lingered for nearly 3 weeks.  Finished the book, and it was (as expected) terrific!  It is very accessable, even if you have not read over the first in the series, but it was fun to revisit old friends.  To live vicariously through the life of someone living their culinary dreams (author and cheese shop owner).  And not to give too much away, there was even a nasty ex-wife that I took particular delight in reading.


So, as always, I highly recommend not only the Mystery Lover's Kitchen site, but also the books they offer. It's called summer reading for a reason.  So plan your summer reading with something you find interesting with the culinary fun they offer.

Besides a fun read, the books also feature recipes.  The ladies from the site are happy to let me post a recipe from their books as a type of advertising.  I do not want to step on their graciousness (or copy right infringement) by posting more than one recipe from each book, but I do want to tell you about a second recipe from "Lost and Fondue"...

I made Avery's recipe for VIDALIA ONION and BACON QUICHE!  Not only was it fantastic, but there was even a surprise ingredient (to me).  there was a little pinch of a spice that really set this apart.  And made my kitchen smell amazing while I was cooking.


Not gonna give anymore away.  If you want to see the recipe... BUY THE BOOK.  Or, if you want to visit the MLK site, you can find the quiche recipe cooked there (full recipe and commentary can be found there).


Click HERE for that post.  I sprinkled my 1/2 tsp of secret ingredient on the top, which is why my quiche came out a bit darker (and more masculine butch looking) than Cleo's version (again, have to go see here take on the recipe).  But the eggy custard center was absolutely delicious.


OK, I promise... back to more regularly posting.


Riley, Julie and Wendy... Your reviews and recipes are coming.


And for fun, visit... here.  Progress is being made!




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