Norm Matthews

Looks like shrimp is a recurring theme on this page. I made a Rick Bayless recipe called Mexico City Shrimp with Chipotle Mojo. We had it with a Mexican style rice, Street Corn Pudding, and store bought cold crab salad

I sure am early enough for it but I live in Kansas. I was planning to try some different ways to cook turkey but the first one turned out so well that I am going with that one.

This is about half of the turkey. The rest is shredded and bagged for other meals

We have tasted this one and it is a keeper. Everything was properly cooked and nothing was dried out. I suspect that most people who don't like turkey have never tasted one that is properly cooked. Turkey is a large mass with different parts needing different temperatures to be at their best. The pop-up timers that most people rely on are very accurate but they are set too hot and the turkey producers don't put them in with any attention toward where they put them. It should go dead center of the mass of the white meat. You have to check with a second probe when it starts closing in on the target temperature to make sure it is in the coolest part of the breast.

This is my year to host the family Thanksgiving dinner so I thought I'd practice ways to cook it before November. This is a twist on a ThermoWorks recipe posted last year. I tried it last year and the white meat was juicy and the dark meat was well cooked. The twist from the original recipe is that I tried it in the smoker this time. When I only cook turkey once a year, by the time it comes around a year later, I have forgotten what I did to make it special... Come to think of it there hasn't been a really special turkey ever. Once quite a while ago someone brought a smoked turkey to a potluck and I didn't like it. Now after a few years of doing my own smoking, I think I probably didn't like it because the person didn't know how to smoke properly. If he was like me, when I first started, he thought any smoke is good smoke and the more the better. If that is what happened, that is why it did not taste good to me. So this year I'll practice a few times to see what turns out well. This one was was spatchcocked so it would cook faster and hopefully without any undercooked parts. I took it out of the smoker at 157 º at the breast and let is coast up to 160º out of the smoker. The dark meat was mostly 185 to 190 which is what dark turkey meat should be. Usually when it comes out whenever the pop-up timer signals, it usually means the white meat is dry and the dark meat is under cooked. I mean its safely cooked but kind of icky. This way the dark meat surrounds the white meat and cooked properly by the time the white meat in the middle was done and still juicy and the skin is crispy. So the look, feel and temperatures tell me that this one is going to be good. When it cools down, I'll cut it up and we will have it for dinner.

Charlie liked the chicken shawarma so much from a few days ago that he asked for it again.

We had Chicken Shawarma grilled on skewers over charcoal. We had it with rice and a sauce made with Greek yogurt, mayonnaise, lemon juice and garlic.

We had loin back ribs from the smoker. Charlie said i should try my sauce with some liquid smoke in it. Instead I put some sauce in the smoker with the beans for a couple of hours for the smoke taste. I think it tastes better than liquid smoke. I also added a little smoked paprika.

I am not a big fan of deep fried shrimp but several months ago I impulse bought a bag of Zatarain's shrimp fry and I had a package of shrimp in the freezer and decided to use them both now. My moms family live in the Ozarks and I have been to a lot of fish fries with catfish and hush puppies but I had never heard of fried shrimp until I was teaching in another town. Arthur Treacher's opened a fish and chips store across the street and they had them. My first thought was well yeah why not. After I tasted them I just thought: Why? When I was young, we had only a New Orleans style boiled shrimp in a neighborhood tavern. They had them on Fridays. Charlie asked what I was going to make to with them and I said I hadn't decided yet so he looked in the pantry and came up with corn and macaroni.

We had Swedish meatballs for dinner last night along with asparagus. Charlie said the asparagus tasted a lot better than usual. I told him that I added some oyster sauce to the usual melted butter ( 4 tsp. butter & 3 tsp. sauce)

Yes it does. I was not sad to hear that news.

This recipe caught my eye as being a step up from the Martini Chicken I have been making for, maybe, 15 years. It has the Parm cheese in the breading like the other one does but also uses lemon zest and juice in the egg dip part of the breading and lemon zest in the bread crumbs. There is a lemon and oil sauce tor topping. When Charlie said it was good, I said I was thinking about replacing the old recipe for this one, he said to keep the old one in the recipe book, he likes it better. That suits me, I guess. This one took a lot more time. I made an Alfredo sauce for the pasta.

i guess we all have biases about certain foods, especially if it is our home food. I have ordered Kansas City Bar Be Cue in places nowhere near KC and get meat that has not been grilled or smoked, just pan fried and completely hidden under a ton of sauce. I once ordered Korean pork at a chain restaurant and it came with brown sugar and pineapple in it.

Charlie and I were talking about what to call these since they aren't Philly but they are cheese, peppers, & beef. I think from what I have seen in stores, a steak can be any cut of meat or fish that is meant to be an individual serving while a roast can sometimes be the same meat but cut but to serve more than one. So I think it's still OK to call it a cheese steak but not a Philly. Texans have a different idea of chili than what I make but it's still chili, I just don't call it Texas chili. How about I call it a KCBBQ cheese steak? We have often made these sandwiches with Steak-Ums before. We both think think thin sliced smoked brisket is a step up. We also like to add jalapeño.

I used about half the left-over smoked brisket from Sunday's BBQ, to make Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches. Charlie likes provolone and I like Cheese Whiz so I put in provolone in all of it, pushed some of it aside and added Cheese Whiz to my side and more provolone to his side. I'll make sure not to use a stainless steel skillet the next time I cook something with cheese in it. Clean-up was a chore.