Norm Matthews

Charlie asked me to make a recipe I hadn't made in a long time and in looking for it, I found one that looked a lot better. It is for Pepperoni pizza rolls. I made it and he loved it but I forgot to add Italian seasoning and garlic powder. He loved it so I made it again with the ingredients I forgot to add a few days ago. He and a guest who had the other ones both agreed it was better this way. I also saw a pasta recipe in todays news paper that looked good and made it too. We will have the rest of the pizza rolls as snacks for the next few days. The recipes for the pizza rolls and Bucatini all'Amatriciana are at my blog listed at the bottom of the page

By reading this, I am just now finding out that you can use any oil in an air fryer. I got mine when Bed Bath & etc announced they were closing their brick and mortar stores and everything was on sale. I have not used it much but I haven't used it with any oil at all. I don't recall the instruction book mentioning using oil either. I am glad to find out that you can because it sounds liked the food will cook a lot better that way.

I learned about them and made some in the early 1970s. I later learned that a Mexican-American restaurant owner in Texas created chips he called fritos and it inspired the Frito company to produce them commercially starting in the 1930's. The earliest ones and also the ones I made today were with an egg, salt, a cup of water and enough Masa to make a soft dough. I put it in a pastry bag with a ribbon tip and pipe it into hot oil. If I ever decide to try it again, I think I'll add some seasoning like taco seasoning or chili pepper. It is a lot easier to just tear open a bag and start munching.😋

I found out that my son likes pan fried okra a lot more than I thought. So before it goes out of season and the farmers markets close, I thought I'd make it one more time. I saw a Country Style Ribs that looked better that usual. It was one big thick slab of meat with bones. Charlie has been doing some remodeling,,, mostly in the basement where I have a pottery studio. He built some shelves which are lighted. He also added some lighting under the cabinets so the kitchen counters are lit. While I was looking through an old cookbook that I kept before I had a computer, I came across home made corn chips and thought I'd try them again and see how the would compare to todays store bought ones. They are OK but the taste is not as developed as they have become after all those years. Finally Povitica bread is BOGO this time of the year and we had some of that too.

I cooked some okra and green beans from the farmers market and used left over chili with some added corn and taco seasoning in a corn bread topped casserole. I added some cheese to the corn bread.

I made chili tonight.

I felt like doing something Autumnal as long as pumpkin spice wasn't involved. I did a pork tenderloin roast with apples, shallots and spinach, and Dutch Apple Dumplings with brown sugar butter sauce and melted ice cream poured over.

The pinto bean cakes recipe with the avocado salsa are on my food blog listed below. They are mashed pinto beans mixed with corn meal, red onion, salt, pepper, onion powder and smoked paprika. They are formed into cakes and sauteed in oil until crispy on the outside.

I caught a cold Charlie just got over. I didn't feel like doing anything yesterday but I had all the stuff to make these Fajitas and some bean cakes with salsa. IMHO it wasn't worth the effort. I may go to bed early. Charlie cleaned up the kitchen.

I smoked two slabs of spare ribs yesterday. This is part of one of them.

True. Some juicers will exert enough pressure to extract bitterness from the pith as well as the juice. Most if not all of commercially made orange juice is like that. Fortunately the Sunkist juicer extracts more juice by using a reamer instead of pressure and does not have that issue.

@JoNorvelleWalker just alerted me to this topic after I posted one about orange juice in the breakfast topic. It may have been as long as 14 years ago that a popular coffee shop lost its lease. They were selling stuff and I asked if they'd sell the juicer. They did, obviously. A few years later I found the Sunkist electric juicer in an antique store. I don't know for sure if it is a commercial one but it is sturdy and I imagine someone would have to really like juice to have one in a home. The stainless one has been sitting in the basement for ten or more years. Last week Charlie reorganized the basement and brought it up and said it looks too cool to leave in the basement. I found some Valencia oranges today and made some juice with them. I used the stainless one for the first four and the catcher under the press was filled 3/4 full. The next 4 in the Sunkist filled it up to the brim. The porcelain reamer gets out much more juice than the manual one.

The first 4 oranges I squeezed with that one and it filled the catcher 3/4 full. The second 4 from the Sunkist filled it completely. I remember when I was a teen I stopped at a drug store soda fountain for breakfast at the Country Club Plaza in KCMo. and they had one too. It was the first time I ever had fresh squeezed juice and still remember it now 60 years later.

i didn't know until just now that there even was such a topic. Thanks.

I didn't know where to post this. Beverages does not have a section for orange juice and it didn't fit anywhere else, so I chose cooking- breakfast. I guess it doesn't take much to make me happy and today I am happy. I love love Valencia orange juice. I used to make it several times in season but for the last six or so years they have been crazy expensive. Today at the Hen House (local grocery chain that has been around since the 1940's) had a bag of 9 for a little over $5.00. Nothing tastes as good or makes as much juice as they do, IMHO. Last week Charlie cleaned up the basement and brought up a juicer that I got when a local coffee shop that lost it's lease and was selling everything. He said it looked too cool to keep setting down there. It doesn't work as well as the antique electric Sunkist one though. The carafe is a quart size and was filled up with less that two bags of oranges.

Thank you. I hope you like it. Everyone here who has tried it says it's good. The other side dish was from a package mix for mashed potatoes with cheese and garlic. Neither of us liked it.

Sounds really good. Love the ceramic plate.

I was going to make this dinner yesterday (Tuesday) On Monday, I asked Charlie if he would like to go out for lunch on Tuesday. He said he didn't think he'd be able to do it so I forgot about it and started doing dinner later on. Right after I put the Mac and Cheese in the oven around 4:30 he came in and said he could go to dinner with me in about 45 minutes. The mac n cheese went in the fridge and the rest got finished today. The mac&cheese is an Ina Garten recipe. I didn't think much of the way it tasted before it went in the oven but we both loved it when it came out. Charlie said I could skip the tomatoes next time though.

I am going to try this soon. Looks fabulous.

It was 101 degrees outside today. it was a little hotter standing next to the grill. We had chicken (thighs) bulgogi along with rice and three kinds of kimchi. Charlie asked for and got a salad to go with it.

The toppings are Crema, Tajín, and Queso fresco.

Quick & easy tenderloin on the grill, corn pudding and peaches from the farm stand.

We had tacos

Charlie had his birthday party today. I was cooking all week. We had ribs, brisket, beef bulgogi, fruit salad, potato salad, coleslaw, shrimp mold dip, BBQ beans, deviled eggs and Tonto de Verano punch and a lemon pudding cake