Seafood For The Roden’s

In addition to the fried potatoes, the Roden’s also requested seafood while they were here – their dad is a meat and taters Texan who doesn’t eat anything that swims so they don’t do much seafood at home.  For this meal, I decided to kill two birds with one stone by allowing budding griller, Lauren, to expand her repertoire beyond beef and help me cook the seafood.

The menu was to be shrimp, king crab legs, and scallops all cooked on the grill, plus another batch of the fried potatoes.  We decided to make this an event meal over a period of time and began it with some lobster bisque that we had bought at the Palm Beach Gardens, FL Green Market back in January and frozen - it was still very good.

We followed this with king crab legs heated on the grill and then Lauren and cousin, Riley, cooked the scallops and shrimp.  I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the things I’ve learned about grilling seafood is that butter is a key ingredient and in this case, garlic butter – made with garlic powder.  Riley started the scallops and got a hug from Aunt Kathy.

After the scallops were flipped, Lauren started the shrimp and learned how to get the char-grilled flavor from the basting butter flame-ups.

The final products, along with the potatoes, were delicious - they did very well for their first try.

We had ten diners and there was not a single leftover.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

8/3/14 meal date

A Day At The Lake With The Roden’s

As I’ve posted previously our daughter, Kathy, and her three girls were here for their annual visit from the San Antonio, TX area.  The typical visit includes playing at the lake, a trip to Pigeon Forge for a fun day (Wonderworks this time), and a picnic in Cades Cove.  After discussing it with her kids, Kathy realized that what they really wanted from the picnic was a hamburger cookout with the special potatoes fried in a big cast iron pot so we decided it would be a lot easier to do this at the lake than haul everything up to the mountains.

Kathy invited some local friends (used to be our neighbors) who have a pontoon boat and two teenage boys (their son and nephew) for the day and they used both the pontoon and our jet ski to pull the seven kids on tubes. This is Kathy’s group coming into the dock for gas.

The pontoon is actually a tri-toon with a 250hp motor and it will perform almost like a regular boat when it comes to pulling tubes, skiers, etc. so they were able to give the kids some pretty good thrill rides and here are some shots of them.

And the shots of the day were from a video as the tube went across the wake from a big cruiser - teenage boys live for this.

This is the pontoon group coming in for supper.

Needless to say, the kids were pretty tired and plenty hungry - this is the potatoes cooking (they get crispier) and the kids eating the burgers, dogs, and melon we had with the potatoes. 

Besides the potatoes, the other special request was for real lemonade and I used the recipe for The Best Lemonade Ever from Allrecipes.

Ingredients:

1¾ cups white sugar

8 cups water

1½ cups lemon juice

Directions:

1. In a small saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled.

2. Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice and remaining 7 cups water.

Notes: 

1. I made double this recipe and made it a little stronger by only adding enough water to fill a one gallon jug.   

2. I added 1-2 lemons worth of slices to it.

Riley, who had requested it said it was indeed the best lemonade ever.  It was a fun day on the lake at Almost Heaven South.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

8/2/14 meal date

Grandpop Gets A Grilling Lesson From Lauren

Daughter, Kathy, and her three girls were here for their annual visit from the San Antonio, TX area and they usually come with a list of things they want to eat while here.  During one of the food conversations, Kathy mentioned that her 11 year old, Lauren, was quite the steak cooker and perhaps she could show me a thing or two.  And since I’m always eager to learn, I headed for the freezer to see what we had on hand and found six nice rib eyes from our last whole loin purchase.

I was thinking of just using our normal Montreal Steak Seasoning, but Bev convinced me to use the Best Steak Marinade in Existence so I whipped up a double batch and the steaks got a six hour soak.

INGREDIENTS:(I made twice as much as below)

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup olive oil

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons garlic powder

3 tablespoons dried basil

1 1/2 tablespoons dried parsley flakes

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place the soy sauce, olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, basil, parsley, and pepper in a blender. Add hot pepper sauce and garlic, if desired. Blend on high speed for 30 seconds until thoroughly mixed.

2. Pour marinade over desired type of meat. Cover, and refrigerate for up to 8 hours. Cook meat as desired.

As can be seen, I didn’t cover or refrigerate them (they were still a little frozen going into the marinade), and I flipped them about four times (the 6^thone was on a plate).

Kathy advised that Lauren was not used to cooking thick steaks and I might have to help some with cooking time and we used the gasser as that was her normal grill to use.  This was a good learning experience for her as I had the grill screaming hot and with the marinade dripping into the fire, she had some serious flare-ups to deal with.

She was used to cooking a certain thickness of meat on a particular grill setting for a specific time but this threw her a curve which she handled well and then grilled some oiled romaine while the steaks rested.  Her learning was how to handle flare-ups and cook the meat to temperature rather than time and mine was how to enjoy a granddaughter cooking for me.

Add some mashed potatoes and it was a fine meal.  Hopefully she will want to help me with seafood night.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

7/31/14 meal date

Madison Attends The Prom

Most of my regular readers likely know that our 16 year old granddaughter has lived with us now for 20 months and you may also recall that she has a boyfriend (Anthony) in the Los Angeles area who she met online.  He and his dad made a trip here last fall and she went out there for this past Christmas.

While here in the fall, Anthony asked if Madison could come to his prom this year and, after spending several days with him and his dad, we agreed it would be okay.  While we were RVing in South Carolina and she was staying with her parents, they bought her a dress then when we returned, Madison and Bev went shopping for the rest of the ensemble.

The six days between our return from SC and her flight to LA were a whirlwind of activity including hair color, pedicure, spray tan, etc. to get her as ready as she could be when she left.  And this is the result.

I have to believe Anthony was very happy to have this beauty on his arm at his prom.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

5/31/14 event date