Chili cups. Quick and easy main dish, hearty appetizers or Friday night staple. When Bytes and his brother were grade school sprouts, they got to picnic on a big green beach towel on the living room floor every Friday night and watch their favorite tv show. Forget Family Night. It was Exhausted Mommy and Daddy Night! They had an early bedtime the rest of the week and we were those mean parents that restricted tv watching. Watching that show meant they could keep up with their friends. Reliving and reenacting the show, through the “get into your pajamas and bed routine”, allowed the parents to interject some critical thinking into the process. “Do you think that was the best way to handle that?” kind of question. Well, maybe Mom, if she wasn’t busy corralling flying shoes ... [Read More]
Meat dishes
Beef Shish Kebabs
Dinner on a stick! Fun and colorful, shish kebabs make a nice change of pace for summertime grilling. They look and sound so glamorous for such a little bit of effort! Even the name is fun to say. Shish refers to the skewer and kebab means grilled meat in Turkish. The original Turkish recipes used lamb. With typical American adaptability, just about anything that will stay on a stick is "shished" and then "kebabed". It is best not to mix the kind of meat used on one skewer. Chicken or pork need to be cooked well, but beef can be grilled to your desired doneness. Cut the meat into one inch squares and marinate for several hours, overnight is best. Cut the vegetables you choose into pieces larger than the meat, about one and a half inch square. Pineapple is often added to a kebab because ... [Read More]
Pork roast, sweet potatoes and fried apples
Pork loin roast, fried apples and sweet potatoes – a classic dinner. It is very simple, calling for only basic cooking skills, but looks fantastic and like you spent hours in the kitchen. My kind of cooking! Start with a crockpot that has been sprayed well with cooking oil or lined with a cooking bag. I put about a half cup of hot water from the superhot tap into the bottom to provide moistness and help heat the crockpot quickly. You can brown the pork loin in a skillet to deepen the flavor, but I often do not take the time. There may be a bit of fat on the loin. Pork has a tendency to be dry so don’t give in to the temptation to trim it because it will add moistness to the meat. Mix together the brown sugar, salt, pepper, mustard with enough orange juice to make a thick paste. ... [Read More]
