For Magazine Monday - Crockpot BBQ Ribs for an Easy Memorial Day Dinner

Before I get to my Magazine Monday submission, I want to say thank you to Rosabela at Cooking with Rosie for following my blog!


Grilling and Memorial Day seem to go together...as do BBQ ribs. But today I am posting a crock pot recipe for ribs. The torrential downpours and high winds we've been getting don't bode well for those us without a sheltered area to stand and grill.

As a matter of fact, last night Doug had hamburger patties all ready to grill but it was so nasty outside from the afternoon storm (we had hail) and the skies were still dark, thunder rumbling...it just got too late to start the charcoal. We'll be having those cheeseburgers for lunch today...before the next round of storms hit us.

In the meantime, if you want ribs and the weather isn't cooperating, try this crock pot version. It's good.



Ingredients you'll need..........

1 cup ketchup
3 tablespoons molasses
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco )
4 pounds country-style pork ribs

In small bowl, stir together ketchup, molasses, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, mustard and hot sauce.


Place pork ribs in slow cooker and pour 1 cup sauce over top, reserving the rest for later. Cover and cook on HIGH for 6 hours or on LOW for 9 hours until very tender.



Remove ribs from slow cooker and brush with reserved sauce. Simple. As crock meals should be.

Served with homemade cole slaw, buttermilk mashed potatoes and biscuits...



From Family Circle Magazine, June 2009 issue.

I am submitting this to Creampuffs in Venice who hosts Magazine Mondays and to Dining with Deb for her Crock Pot Wednesdays.

If you make this one let me know how you like it. We loved this recipe. A keeper.

Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial day - be careful out there on the roads and waterways :-) And please remember why we're off, to remember our servicemen and women, tip a glass to them on their day.

Mark Bittman and I Heart Cooking Club features Garlic

What is the theme this week? Garlic. I love garlic. It's one of my favorite little items to dice, mince and roast...it adds such a good flavor to food. I'd suck as a vampire since I couldn't eat garlic...

When I was reading the Sookie Stackhouse series I remembered Sookie gave up eating garlic because of Bill. That is true love. Fortunately my man isn't long in the tooth and enjoys allium sativum as much as I do.

First up is Bittman's version of roasted chicken with a glaze of orange juice, crushed garlic, honey and cumin.

Drip the honeyed-garlicy glaze over the roasting hen about halfway through the cooking time. The skin is crispy and flavorful.



Juicy chicken, the garlic wasn't overpowering........





Served with a Belgian Farrmhouse ale - Saison Dupont - freshly made French bread and garlic butter........ (more on the butter later)



From Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (god that sounds pompous) page 645

Garlic Butter - place a half stick of butter or margarine in a mini food processor. Add two slender pieces of roughly chopped garlic. Here is where I screwed up - I decided you can't have too much garlic, right? Wrong. I doubled the garlic and wow! Overpowering.

I could have stopped a train with my breath after all that garlic butter. I put it on my bread. I put it on the green beans. Whew.

Click on over to IHCC and see what other garlic creations everyone else submitted.

Cheers!

Quitman Georgia - Where it's chilly in May

So...in evaluating what I want to do with my blog I'm definitely posting less frequently. The consequence of that is less traffic to be sure...I have even lost two followers (yikes). Oh well...can't please everybody....

Anyway....I had these photos of a nice bike ride to Quitman Georgia and wanted to post them so our cousins can see what we've been up to. If you ride in on a Sunday, don't expect a warm welcome.



Seems like I own a gazillion blue shirts...can't believe I have a photo in a another color!



I love this photo..it looks so retro....



Tristan and Doug..........



We managed to get three cups of coffee....and they were free. Know why? They wanted us to leave. I asked for coffee and dessert...and I had to track a waitress down to ask. She brought us three cups and never came near us again.

The family sitting nearest us stared some, then paid and left. I could tell dessert was not in our future, nor was a refill (fine, it saved us money and waistline issues) so I got up and asked how to pay.

"Just go. It's just three cups so you can leave, no problem."

It was the rushed offer to shoo us out that made me realize they wanted us to go...it wasn't a friendly "oh-shucks-you-visitors-must-experience-our-hospitality"



So we left.



And that is all to report from the headquarters of Squirrel Head Manor. Just back from a trip to Ocala.

Cheers..........

Magazine Monday: Focaccia and Smoked Salmon and the movie "Men Who Stare At Goats"

Thank you Deb from Kahakai Kitchen for following my blog!

I can only take credit for the appetizer part of this meal. My generous son brought home a huge piece of smoked salmon with apricot glaze for dinner. How cool is that? Good stuff and easy for me cause...I only fussed with the focaccia.

Behold the appetizer.........




How easy is this, you may ask? If you have homemade pizza dough on hand or if you have a husband who will use any old excuse to hop on his Road King to ride to Publix (or any grocery store) to grab pizza dough from the bakery section.....it's super easy.

Recipe and ingredients follow............




Roll out the pizza dough and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.......



Slice the cherry tomatoes, garlic and onions or shallots. Add 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, mix gently. Then spread onto a baking sheet and roast for about 20 minutes.




Shred fresh mozzarella cheese and place on the baked pizza dough. Top this with the cherry tomato mixture. Shred up some prosciutto and add to this.



It's now assembled and ready for a quick bake..
.....

Fresh and hot and gooey right outada oven.......




Now here is the beautiful smoked salmon with an apricot glaze.....


Wish I could take credit, cause it looks good and my goodness...it was delicious.

In my urgency to prepare a plate of toasted bagel, a slab of salmon, cream cheese and pizza/focaccia....I neglected to get a snap of the train wreck that was laden plate.

So..there it is. It was good. The movie we watched afterwards was not as good.

Men Who Stare at Goats. So. Weird. And I like some off the wall stuff like Coen Brothers movies and Harry Potter and Star Trek stuff.....but this. I can't even explain it. We weren't impressed.

Ok, here is your recipe - please do try it!

Cherry Tomato and Prosciutto Focaccia


Ingredients.......

16 ounces pizza dough
2 + tablespoons Parmesan Cheese
1 small carton cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large shallot or a medium onion, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
A sprinkle of pepper
8 ounces of mozzarella cheese, shredded
About 3 ounces of prosciutto, thinly sliced and torn in shreds
2 tablespoons fresh basil, sliced

OPTIONAL: 2 cups baby arugula

Heat oven to 425 F; Roll and stretch dough into a large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and bake at 425F for 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and set aside. REDUCE oven temperature to 325F.

While the pizza dough is baking, do THIS:

Slice up tomatoes and toss them in a bowl with shallots or onions, garlic, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Spread the tomato mixture on a baking sheet in an even layer and roast for 20 minutes.

OPTIONAL: When you remove the tomatoes from oven gently stir in 2 cups baby arugula.

Sprinkle a cup of the mozzarella over pizza crust. Top with tomato mixture and distribute prosciutto over the tomatoes. Top with the rest of the Mozzarella.

Bake at 325F for 15 minutes. Cool, sprinkle with basil…then cut and enjoy.

I sent this to CreamPuffs in Venice for her Magazine Monday series. Hop over and visit the Creampuff and see what other folks submitted.

Verdict.....This recipe is a keeper. It goes in the plastic sleeve and into the notebook. I recommend this recipe…great taste, easy to put together and makes a wonderful appetizer. Please let me know if you prepare it!

Cheers!

Potluck is the theme at I Heart Cooking Club

The theme is POTLUCK at I Heart Cooking Club this week.

Husband did this one, starting up the charcoal grill for a simple and charbroiled outta-this-world taste of grilled chops. Simple stuff.




Side of fresh salad with sun dried tomatoe dressing on the side and potato cakes. Can't get much simpler than that!


This one is from How To Cook Everything, page 747.

Surf over to IHCC and see what everyone else submitted for Potluck. Love Potluck.

Embrace Life video

My cousin Char sent this to me and I think it’s a very cool video, well done. A campaign designed to remind individuals of the importance of wearing their seat belts. Embrace Life has smashed through 1 million views on the YouTube and offers to broadcast it on TV stations around the world are flooding in.

Mini Baked Potatoes for Magazine Monday

It's been awhile since I've been online. I decidied I needed a break. I subscribe to so many blogs via Google Reader and while I usually read each one, I often can not comment. And I know it shouldn't make me feel bad, but it does.......

It's nice to visit but between all the other things going on in life, work, etc....it just isn't always feasible to spend lots of time online.

I am trying out a new template (thank you to Janel for turning me on to a new idea)and will be focusing on other projects.

I the meantime, let me get in Magazine Monday and send this recipe over to Cream Puff's in Venice.

I made this last week...thought I'd posted it!

Maybe trying to slowly cook my way through Nigella Express has gotten me on this easy-to-toss-together kick. I am a fairly lazy person, if truth be told, but I do love puttering around in the kitchen. That being said…here is another easy side dish that could also fit the role of appetizer. Your choice…I made these as a side.



You’ll need some salt, new potatoes, a few slices of thick-cut bacon, about ½ cup of diced onion and cheese. Also parsley if you want to fancy it up. I did not use the parsley…still looks good though!



Simple ingredients, simple directions.

Step One - Heat your oven to 425 F (215 C ). You may either place a thin layer of salt on a baking tray OR scrub your potatoes and gently and salt them. I did the second thing. Cook them for 30 to 40 minutes.



Allow to cool a bit. I didn’t let them cool enough.... my fingers were burnt holding on to them for step two of the process. My digits are still red tipped and tender…

OK – Step Two. After the potatoes have cooled, slice off the tops and scoop out the middle with a melon baller. Do that instead of what I did which was cutting the potatoes in half. I then scooped out the potato flesh. It would have been so much better if I had not halved them, just sliced the top off. The reason – as I was scooping the potato out I would knick the skin and some ended up falling apart. Harder to stuff.

Set potato flesh aside.




Step Three – Dice the bacon and fry it up, then add diced onions. Toss in the potato pulp which you had set aside. Toss in about a ½ cup of cheese. You could use Brie. Cheddar. Swiss…whatever you fancy. I used Swiss and cheddar.



Step Four – Spoon this ooey gooey bacon-potato mix into the scooped-out potato shells. Bake for 2 or 3 minutes.

Here is what your stuffed mini taters will look like. Now put them in the oven. Simple.



Here is what they look like roughly 3 minutes later.... I'm sad the photo is blurry but you kinda get the idea....



Delicious! A version of these starchy bites are served at the Clarence Hotel in Dublin Ireland . (Owned by U2’s Bono and The Edge)



Served up with grilled chicken and leftover ribs. Coleslaw. Beer or iced tea.





I am sending this over to Cream Puffs in Venice for her Magazine Monday series

Then I’m off to watch a recorded episode of House.

Buitoni Riserva Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti and Foodbuzz Rocks!

Pasta – One of my favorites. In addition to the varieties of pastas available on the market shelves, there are different ways it’s processed which may enhance or compromise the taste. Let’s compare.



No, this isn’t a long assed story about the history of pasta…I received something very cool in the mail from Foodbuzz and you have to have the comparison story to…uh…compare.
And appreciate the flavorful gift they sent me :-)



There is boxed pasta that is…well, it’s ordinary and it’s inexpensive but….in the words of Jamie Oliver, “It is what is it.” You must follow this statement with a dismissive shrug aimed at said dried pasta.

Do yourself a favor and NEVER eat a serving of fresh pasta, then immediately follow it up with cooked box pasta.


Buitoni makes a variety of fresh pastas such as tortellini, linguine (my favorite), angel hair and fettuccine. They are available in the refrigerated section at your local market.

One evening, between the three of us, we ate all of the freshly cooked Buitoni linguine so I cooked a small portion of the boxed variety. Stab me through the heart……back-to-back comparison convinced me right there. Always use fresh pasta or…just have something else.

Thanks to Foodbuzz I was able to experience Buitoni’s rich cousin, the Riserva Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti. Sexy name for a pasta that you may find at your local grocery store. It conjures images of an Italian holiday where the food is perfection and wine flows like water. I digress…….



What is an adjective to convey bliss-upon-the tongue or delectable or luscious? Words will fail you with the first bite……as you savor the pocket of rich cheeses bursting onto your tongue, sliding across the taste buds, and filling you with contentment. The soft fresh pasta has a filling of creamy ricotta, Fontina and Parmesan cheeses and garlic. I couldn’t bring myself to cover it with a sauce.

I took a bit of olive oil, ribbon cut many slices of prosciutto and minced 5 large garlic cloves. Sautee…..spoon gently over the Riserva Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti.



Since I’d unwittingly made a taste comparison between the boxed and fresh pasta awhile back, I did the same with Buitoni’s freshly packaged linguine with this Riserva. Obviously the Agnollti pasta won that taste test but the linguine was still top notch in my book.


If you want to treat yourself to a creamy flavorful pasta dish that can be on the table in under 6 minutes…..indulge yourself with a package or two of Buitoni Riserva. Thank you Foodbuzz and Buitoni – I’ll be your taste-testing guinea hen anytime. Call me…

Sausage and White Bean Soup - Stolen from Girlichef...shhhhh

Girlichef turned me on to this recipe and I am so glad I tried it.

Even though this is more appropriate for a winter meal…I have enjoyed it despite these warm Florida temperatures. We bring soup for lunch just about every day and what better way to fill up (AND have a change from my usual chicken and noodles soup) by having a hearty sausage and white bean based soup….rib-sticking stuff.

Girlichef’s recipe is HERE

I made some modifications and here are my results………….

I browned three fat links of fresh sausage (cut on the bias after being in the freezer for a couple hours. Makes the cutting easier) then tipped in some chopped red onion and 3 cloves of chopped garlic.



Pour in a can of Rotel tomatoes…I like the kind with lime. Let it simmer……the add cannellini beans juice and all. Toss in some rosemary and thyme.



I always keep homemade chicken broth in the freezer so…defrost a small tub of golden herbed broth. Using roughly a cup and half this simmered for a half hour on low heat.


Girlichef used pasta but I had some leftover baked potato from the mini baked potatoes I prepared earlier. Why waste? So into the soup they went.

Brilliantly...I forgot to take a snap of an actual bowl of the soup....so surf over to Girlichef's site to get a gander of the finished product. Looked just like hers...I promise.

Coffee Sirloin Roast...in the crock pot and Grilled Steak Sandwiches

For Magazine Monday I have a great coffee sirloin roast which provided us with three meals and I still have some beef left for soup!

This one is from Taste of Home, August 2009 issue, page 52

We like coffee and beef and mushrooms...so when I read about this recipe which combines all those good things, I had to try it. It didn't come out quite as rare as we like it...but it was fork tender.



I am more into the simple dinners these days. Here are basic ingredients.....







Recipe is as follows...please note I cut this recipe in half as there are usually only two of us...sometimes Tristan eats with us...sometimes....


Coffee-flavored beef roast
Prep: 35 minutes

Cook: 6 hours on Low

Ingredients

6 medium red potatoes, cut into wedges

6 medium carrots, cut into 1 inch lengths

2 beef sirloin tip roasts (2 to 3 lbs each)

1 tsp salt, divided

½ tsp pepper, divided

1 medium onion, halved and sliced

2 cups whole fresh mushrooms, quartered

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 ½ cups brewed coffee

1 tsp. chili powder

3 Tbsp. cornstarch

¼ cup cold water

Place potatoes and carrots in a large slow cooker. Sprinkle beef with half the salt and pepper. In large skillet, brown beef on all sides, transfer to slow cooker.



In same skillet sauté onion in drippings for 2 minutes. Add mushrooms and garlic; cook 2 minutes longer. Stir in coffee, chili powder and remaining salt and pepper. Pour over meat. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours or until meat is tender.



Remove meat and vegetables to serving platter; keep warm. Skim fat from cooking juices; transfer to small saucepan. Bring liquid to boil. Combine cornstarch and water until smooth. Gradually stir into pan. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened.



Serve with meat and vegetables.





Bonus lunch....
STEAK SANDWICHES!
We had this roast fro two nights and then froze the remainder. After thawing, we chopped the beef up in slivers, sauteed vidella onions and mushrooms, tossed in the beef slivers and made sandwiches. I crumbled Queso blanco into the beef mix after it was heated through. Thought about using cheddar but I'm glad I used this cheese. Quite creamy.



I use horseradish on mine.......



So...we had two huge meals and a great lunch and I still have a bit of beef left to make soup. Good deal....economically sound meal planning and last but not least...it all tasted good!

I am sending this over to Cream Puffs in Venice for her Magazine Monday series and to Deb for her Crockpot Wednesday series.

Cheers!