2015 Blogger Party and Breakfast From Leftovers

Greetings fellow bloggers – We are happy to announce that the 6th rendition of our annual blogger party will be held at Almost Heaven South during Memorial Day Weekend.  Chris (Nibble Me This) and I still have the final details to work out but wanted to tell you the possible dates (most likely May 24) in hopes you would pencil it in on your calendar.  We would appreciate if you would mention it on your blogs as well so more people will be aware of the event. 

Date: Memorial Day Weekend (popular recommendation from last year’s attendees)

Time: TBD

Place: Almost Heaven South in Greenback, TN

Theme: Tapas Party (another popular recommendation from last years attendees)

Many of you have expressed a desire to come in the past so why not make this your year – before I get too old to host them.

More details will follow in March.


Another Dippy Egg Meal From Leftovers 

Referring back to my previous post on how I cook dippy eggs, I mentioned they could be used in other ways and my favorite is with potatoes and onions.  I kicked this one up a little by adding some other ingredients and using the leftovers from the previous night’s meal. 

I started the breakfast meal buy slicing some onions, julienning a green bell pepper, chopping a seeded jalapeno and cooking them in olive oil (drat I realized as I was typing this that I forgot the garlic).  After they had been tossed a few times, I added the cubed leftover potatoes - I love that I took the time to learn to toss a skillet full of ingredients. 

After the potatoes had cooked to nearly ready, I added the diced the pork chop and a couple pieces of diced breakfast sausage (cooked previously) and cooked until they were warmed through.

In the meantime I cooked the eggs as I did in the previous post and topped the potato mixture with them.

Where you go from here is a personal choice, but this is what I do.

This meal was totally delicious and I liked the way all of the flavors worked together, including the BBQ sauce on the pork chop.  It was a great way to begin the day and I ate it using the same goal as with dippy eggs - minimize the yolk that gets left on the plate for Coco.  You've likely figured out that the runny yolk is my favorite part of an egg.  In case you were wondering about bread, there was no way I was going to use up valuable stomach space when I needed it for the potatoes and eggs.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

2/9/15 event date

2015 Florida Trip – Day 23 – Salmon Cakes

We brought some frozen King Salmon tail pieces from home that we had purchased in Wheeling WV at $7/lb. and there was a unanimous decision to turn it into salmon cakes (salmon patties in my family) using the recipe from our previous batch.  Wow, how time flies as it had been July, 2011 when last we made them and I had saved the same Ina Garten recipe twice from fellow bloggers who had made them since then.

After weighing the salmon and discovering we had two pounds, we decided to cook it all, eat half and use the other half for the cakes in a day or two.  Since we had some blackening seasoning with us, we used it for the first meal along with some salad - note the watermelon radish.

Bear in mind that we all grew up eating salmon cakes made from the canned fish and usually topped with ketchup and this may have been Pat’s first ever from fresh salmon.  Rather than repeat Ina’s recipe, I’ll just provide the link from our last time which includes the original recipe and how we made a larger amount - I used a pound of salmon for this run so I'd have left overs.

Just as last time, they were very good and since we didn’t have sauce ingredients, we ate them unadorned .

And for breakfast the next day, it was a toasted English muffin, the cakes reheated in the micro wave topped with baby Swiss cheese, and poached eggs.

These were fantastic and almost inspired me to whip up some Hollandaise for the next morning.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

1/18 & 1/19/15 meal dates

2015 Florida Trip – Day 9 – Moving South

After seven nice days at Cedar Key RV Resort, we headed on down south to our next destination at Riverside RV Park just north of Port Charlotte (on Florida's west coast) and along the Peace River.  It was just 220 miles so we didn’t have to be in a rush to leave and we still got in mid-afternoon.  This is the entrance sign and the office/store and large pavilion - check out Sweetie in the mirror.

This is our first visit to this huge campground with 500 sites resulting from several expansions of what used to be a Yogi Bear Park.  We're at the top of the largest lake in this Google Earth shot.

At 6 mph, it takes several minutes to drive from our site to the entrance.  Our site, #398, is on one of several lakes with this view our first foggy morning and then evening and the next morning.

We were advised by several folks to watch the dogs as some of the lakes contain gators.

This is our site with a large amount of room on each side.

With all of the space around us and the lake view, it would be perfect except that the operating side of the coach faces south.  When I reserved this spot, I didn’t notice that their on-line map was rotated 90 degrees and I thought we were getting afternoon shade.  Here are some shots of sites around us, mostly occupied by people who have been occupying them for several years.  You can make improvements to a site but ownership remains with the campground so some folks have concreted their drives and many have landscaped their sites.  When they are not here, they just have to hope that other visitors to the site take care of what they have done.

This is the backside of the pavilion with shuffleboard courts and the pool to the right - pickleball courts nearby.

This is the fishing pier and boat launch on the Peace River.

Like many of these small town sized campgrounds catering to Snowbirds, there are a lot of planned activities with something for almost everyone.

When Bev got up the next morning, she whipped up a breakfast of re-heated scalloped potatoes and ham topped with a couple of sunny side up eggs.

Barely edible J

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

1/5/15 event date

Chicken & Peppers for Supper and Breakfast

Due to our travel plans, we didn't really have a garden this year but we did plant a few tomatoes and peppers to eat on.  As usual, we have a large fall pepper crop and while we’ll freeze a few, we are planning dishes around eating them fresh - like in the old days when folks ate whatever was ready in the garden.  For this meal, we decided on a recipe from Allrecipes for Chicken and Peppers with Balsamic Vinegar.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil, divided

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into strips

Salt and pepper to taste

1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 orange bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

4 large cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon dried basil (we used fresh)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, divided

Directions:

1. Heat two tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Place the chicken in the skillet, season with salt and pepper, and brown on both sides. Remove from heat, and set aside.

2. Heat remaining oil in the skillet over medium heat, and stir in the red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, orange bell pepper, and onion. Cook about five minutes, until tender. Mix in the garlic, and cook and stir about one minute. Mix in the basil and two tablespoons balsamic vinegar.

3. Return the chicken to the skillet. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 20 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear. Stir in remaining balsamic vinegar just before serving.

While I really liked the concept of this dish and it made for a colorful presentation, the basil and balsamic were not my favorite so I would use something different next time.  The green and orange peppers are Cubanelles at different degrees of ripeness (nice to get green, orange, and red from the same plant) and the yellow one is a bell.

The following morning, Bev turned an okay supper into a delicious breakfast by chopping the chicken and peppers, warming them in the microwave, and using them to stuff an omelet along with some hot pepper cheese.  After folding the omelet, she topped with more cheese and a little salsa.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

10/21- 10/22/14 meal dates

Leftovers Breakfast - Garage - A Senior Moment

BREAKFAST
Perhaps the best part of our Wine Club party food was a bunch of the practice biscuits still in the freezer and gravy left over from the party to which we added a couple of scrambled eggs, and picked-that-morning tomatoes with cottage cheese.  I'm pretty sure tomato and cottage cheese did not originate locally, but it still seemed like a delicious southern breakfast to me.

GARAGE
I've been on somewhat of a mission to clean up this dump and get rid of stuff we don't need.  Usually that means starting in the most downstream location and working backwards so I began in the upstairs garage.  I'm not sure if I'll get the house done in my lifetime, but for the first time in a few years, both cars are in the garage.  The garage is still a work in progress.

SENIOR MOMENT
I hate to tell this on myself but it was just too funny to pass up.  I got up at my normal time and busied myself doing the normal morning activities eventually in anticipation of the noon broadcast of the UT-Florida football game.  Finally the appointed time rolled around, I went over to the SEC Network and found a show about coaches wives to be on, so I assumed the guide/programming was not updating as Bev had mentioned the other day or the game was on the alternate channel.  

When it wasn't either place or any of the local channels, I decided an urgent call to Direct TV was in order.  After a few minute wait, I explained my problem to the nice young lady who answered and she said the game was supposed to be on the regular SEC Network channel but the guide was showing a different show - to which I said "that is the problem I'm having."  After a little more conversation, she said she would put me on hold and see what she could find out.  She came back shortly to assure me the game would be on the normal SEC channel on Saturday to which I replied err, ugh, I thought it was Saturday.

In spite of driving Madison to school just 4 hours earlier and watching the normal weekday shows on TV, at some point during the morning my brain decided it was Saturday.  After my profuse apologies for wasting her time she said not to worry as she thought it was Thursday.  I guess it could have been worse, at least I knew it was October.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

9/30/14 meal date

Chicken Marsala for Pat’s Birthday

We managed to let Pat’s (SIL) birthday slip by us and to make up for it, we offered to cook her a meal of her choosing and she selected chicken Marsala and invited four of her friends for the event.  

We had made this dish back in Sep. 2011 and again in Feb. 2012 using pork loin but we liked them so well, I thought it was worth a re-post.  Our recipe is a slight adaptation of a Carrabba’s Restaurant copycat recipe we found on Food.com.

The recipe can be found at the Sep. link and several shots of the cooking process are at the Feb. link so I won’t repeat them here.  Because of the size of the meal, I ended up using two 12” skillets and made one recipe in each pan, using one stainless and one cast iron so I would be sure to get a little fond in the pans – they tasted the same to me.  It’s times like this that I know why we have a six burner cook top as I used two for the meat, Bev used two for the veggies and we didn't have to reach over each other.

We served the chicken with some hand mashed potatoes using our favorite recipe from The Pioneer Woman, steamed (til done of course) broccoli with butter and cheese, and homemade rolls, which I missed getting in my plate shot.

We topped it off with some homemade pineapple/coconut ice cream.

The food was a big hit with the diners and Pat seemed well pleased with the event.

And what about leftover mashed potatoes and gravy you asked - breakfast may have been better than the supper meal.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

9/7/14 event date

Breakfast From Leftovers

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while but this one was too good to pass up.  Our friends, Dave and Laurie, brought us part of a box of portabella mushrooms and we had some cremini’s in the fridge so mushroom dishes were in order.

The first was a sausage mushroom quiche for breakfast using a recipe from Allrecipes and the second was stuffed mushrooms for supper using another recipe from Allrecipes.  I failed to get a shot of the quiche and the stuffed mushroom ones weren’t good enough to post, but both dishes were very good and I would make either of them again.

As it turned out, all of the egg mixture would not fit into the crust for the quiche and we didn’t have enough portabellas to use all of the stuffing mixture so a breakfast meal was born.  Bev added a couple more beaten eggs and combined the two leftover mixtures for a scramble.

While the photo may not show it, the scramble was delicious – how could it not be with mushrooms, spinach, pepperoni, sausage, and cheese.  While we are unlikely to have this very same mixture available again, we know they go together very well.  Next time we may make an omelet using the quiche ingredients for the egg part and the mushroom stuffing as such.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

7/12/14 event date