Norm Matthews

We had grilled chicken wings for dinner today.

I wanted some salmon for dinner but I knew Charlie would not be excited about it so I made a side of Chili Rellenos which is a favorite for him. They were a side for me, the whole meal for Charlie. They were the only thing he ate.. along with some tortillas and salasa.

I made a pork loin Banh Mi sandwich for our dinner. I thought I took a picture of it earlier but it did not show up on the computer or my phone. This picture is what is left when we were done.

It's kind of a faster, easier cassoulet.

I made a recipe for Italian sausage and beans stewed with tomatoes from a cook book my son gave me a while back and a salad with celery root.

I used a Japanese recipe for fried chicken but left it in the oil a little too long so I shortened the time in the recipe for what I think will work better next time. We also had zucchini and spinach.

Both of the last two meals were done on the grill. On Father's Day, I took some Mango tomatillo salsa to my sister's cookout and had some left over. I put it on some grilled salmon. The salad was store bought. They said it was a Cobb Salad. I am glad they labeled it. I would not have known otherwise. I took the toppings off of the soggy iceberg and put them on some fresh cut romaine. The other grilled meal was a steak with twice baked potatoes.

I tried a recipe for slow cooker Mongolian Beef. It was OK.

I found a Food Saver in the freezer marked Korean Pork. It was a batch I mixed up last year and froze some of it. I didn't remember if it was cooked or not so I put the thawed package in water with the Anova for about an hour then finished it in a skillet. We had it with kimchi, rice and laver.

We had chicken leg quarters marinated and basted with some Asian flavorings then baked until the skin was crisp . The recipe wanted the meat deboned but I thought it would be easier to remove the bones after it was baked. It would be even easier for me if I let whoever ate it take their own bones out.

I actually miss the German Weiners available where I used to live. I like them better than "plain pork" hot dogs. Not only would it be nice if they sold them one at a time, it would be nice, since hot dogs come in an 8 pack if they sold 8 buns instead of 10 at a time.

In remembrance of Anthony Bourdain, we had fried hot dogs for a late lunch. I don't know if the kind he had were done differently. I just deep fried some to see what they would be like. Despite Frank Fritz of American Pickers assessment of people who have chili on their hot dogs are people who don't like hot dogs, I had chili on one with cheese and onions and only hot dog relish on the other. Charlie had one extra from the microwave and assured me that fried hot dogs do taste better BTW.

It's rare when Charlie makes a request for dinner but he did today. He asked for steak and bok choy. I also made corn on the cob and twice baked potatoes. This is his plate. He didn't want the croissant roll but I had one.

@rotuts @Toliver is correct. If you click the link at the bottom of my post, either here or at the meatloaf post, it will take you to the recipe. I don't think I can post it here because it is from the NYTimes.

I tried a different recipe for meatloaf that came in my email today. It was tricky to keep from falling apart because I had to pick it up, put it in a skillet to brown on one side, turn over, brown on the other side, take out and deglaze the skillet with wine, then put it back in and bake. Charlie said it was a keeper and not to top it with bacon like I usually do. It is very different from the old recipe I have used in the past.

My favorite diet soft drinks are Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Squirt, Diet Canada Dry Ginger ale, Coke zero and Cherry Coke Zero.

Thanks for the link. I had no idea that moss was a food. I had known about lacto-fermentation for a while, I just didn't know what it was called until I tried to look up fermanlactol tablets. I have made some of those Chinese fermentation jars on the potters wheel. They have that reservoir at the top for water so the bowl used as a lid can allow gasses to escape while keeping air out. I have also made some Japanese and Chinese pickles in the past but I have not had much success at making kimchi.

My mom's Watkins cookbook is too fragile to lend itself to browsing through it but I found that there are several copies available on eBay and I got one for $6.00. I was looking through it and started at the back and was reading some recipes with a mixture of fascination and revulsion until I got to the chapter heading for those pages. It was FOOD FOR INVALIDS. The first one that caught my attention was Irish Moss Jelly. I thought Irish Moss was a brand name but it is made with actual moss blended with water, milk and sweetened to taste. I discovered that it's a commercial product that can be purchased for eating or medicinal uses or planted and grown for ground cover. It is also known as Pearl Moss. Another recipe was for Fermanlactol Milk in which a crushed fermanlactol tablet was added to 12 hour old milk and allowed to stand in a warm place for 12 to 24 hours. I don't think the tablets are made anymore but that lead me to read up on lacto-fermentation which is a centuries old method of preserving fruit and vegetables. Kimchi and sauerkraut are (or are when homemade) made that way and whey can be used instead of salt for preserving fruit. The chapter had a recipe for making whey. There is a recipe for Sherry Eggnog Or Brandy Or Whiskey, for Gruel, Milk Lemonade, Beef Juice, Beef Tea and Albumen Water.

Yeah, I was thinking about either an outdoor pizza oven or flat grill. Maybe both.

Charlie asked me to get some brats while I was at the store. I got beer brats and then thought, if I cook these in the smoker, I should put something else in to take up the rest of the room, so I got a slab of baby back ribs. We had the ribs for dinner. The brats will become sandwiches sometime later in the week.

@Anna N You are surely a treasure to those who know you. Your post was so much fun to read. It got me to thinking about the few times I attended meetings for retired teacher union members and lunch was usually always served by school cafeteria staff or prepared in similar type kitchens. After hearing various comments about the food being good at them, I imagine most of those retirees, when they go to elder care places won't notice any differences in the food. They are apparently already used to it.

Well to bring the conversation down to more mundane food, we had chicken wings. The smoker did double duty, smoking them for half an hour with apple wood before moving them over to the hot side to crisp up. I used Zarda poultry rub and basted them with Zarda Apple Harvest BBQ sauce. Zarda's is a KC BBQ restaurant. A girl I went to high school with married one of the Zarda brothers. We had potato salad and coleslaw with them.

This is the oldest cookbook I have. It was my mom's. It is dated 1945, the year after I was born. I don't remember her ever having any other cookbook but I remember this one being about twice as thick as it is now because it was stuffed full of recipes that she had cut out of other publications or had written down. One of the handwritten recipes by her was one for Povitica bread. We lived in an apartment on Strawberry Hill in Kansas City. It was a Croatian neighborhood and Povitica bread was a holiday bread that everyone made. Mom asked the neighbor downstairs for the recipe and she said it was in her head and she was welcome to sit in her kitchen when she made it and write down how she made it. Wow the memories are flooding back. Watkins is still in business but back then they sold herbs and spices door-to-door. Mom always had a bottle of Watkins Vanilla Extract in the pantry.

I went to the store to get some ingredients for a recipe I wanted to try and to look for something for dinner. The recipe looked good but I make cake so seldom that I can't tell a good recipe from a gimmicky one apparently. The cake was Cherry Dr. Pepper Chocolate cake with icing made with butter and powdered sugar. I didn't care for it and neither did Charlie. But they had some meaty ham shanks and I cooked those with navy beans, carrots and baby bok choy. Charlie had thirds on that. I always forget to make corn bread with it.

Charlie and I went to Costco last week and because the weather had been so nice I got a brisket for the smoker and Charlie washed his car. It was cold and rainy for the next 5 days but today was perfect for running the smoker. I cut the point off the brisket and just smoked that part. The flat is in the freezer until another time. The brisket took 10 hours to reach 200 degrees, and came out wonderful. The only thing I am not completely happy with is I could not tell where the grain ran after it came out and I sliced it with the grain instead of against it. Except for the corn, all the other sides were store bought. The corn was cooked on the grill before being cut off the cob and reheated at serving time with salt, pepper, honey, butter and a little evaporated milk. The carrots were pickled with dill.