Norm Matthews

We had our annual March corned beef dinner tonight. My corned beef takes two weeks to cure but I have done it in less time. We had soda bread with whiskey butter, cabbage with a balsamic reduction, carrots, rutabagas and corned beef. We also had smashed potatoes but they were still in the oven when I took these pictures.

Genco olive oil was the front company owned by Vito Corleone.

I recently got some olive oil from an Asian Market and later discovered that it was a blend. It was Genco brand. The same brand in the Godfather movie.

Kim Shook, I made the gravy with with bacon fat from bacon I used with the green beans and meat loaf, flour, salt, pepper, garlic and beef broth.

I made some tweaks to my regular meatloaf recipe. I also started eating it before I remembered to take a picture. We had green beans, roast potatoes and gravy.

Rotus, if you click on the link at the end of this post, it will take you to the notes I made while smoking the brisket.

I cut a large amount of the flat off the whole brisket and am curing it for corned beef to have on St. Patrick's Day. Temp at the end varied from place to place around the brisket but average was just under 180, but by now I can tell if it is done just by the feel of the thermometer when I stick it in.

Cassie has been telling me about Bechelmeyer Meats which has a very good reputation for meat and the Mexican food next door. I decided to go there on Wed. and get a brisket and use a lot of the flat for corned beef for dinner later in the month. Today I smoked the point and remainder of the flat. I smoked it for 8 hours and it looked like it could go two or three more hours but I ran out of patience and fuel so it is done and moist but not falling apart tender.

Quaker Oats (a cooked cereal) was the sponsor of Sgt. Preston at the time.

I remember that deed to land up North but I thought it was a square inch in the Yukon. In any case, they took it back some years later. PS I found this is from Wikipedia: It appeared in newspapers around the country. "Get a real deed to one square inch of land in the Yukon gold rush country" and, "You'll actually own one square inch of Yukon land".[1] The promotion was tied to the Sergeant Preston of the Yukon radio show which Quaker Oats was sponsoring at the time." and this: "Due to $37.20 in back taxes, the land was repossessed by the Canadian government in 1965, and the Great Klondike Big Inch Land Company dissolved in 1966. The land is now part of the Dawson City Golf Course. To this day, Yukon officials receive letters and phone calls about the deeds. The land office of the Yukon currently contains an 18-inch thick file folder of correspondence regarding the promotion."

Cornbread with sugar or brown sugar isn't sweet like cake. It is rather like French bread made with sugar instead of without. but Southwestern style cornbread is often made with cheddar and jalapenos and has it's fans.

Dinner tonight was skin- on chicken breasts, salad: spinach with dried sour cherries, apples and walnuts, and green beans with mushrooms, tomatoes and pieces of chicken tenders removed from the chicken breasts.

I was born in the mid 40's, and grew up in the 50's. I hated cereal. Mom made eggs and toast for my breakfast and either sausage or bacon. I would skip breakfast if she made something else. As an adult breakfast was a meal I usually skipped. Didn't much care for the whole idea of eating that early. I didn't drink milk either. It wasn't until I retired that I started eating breakfast again and it was usually an omelet and toast with coffee, some times some sausage but in the last year, I have started eating cereal and it's almost always either Honey Nut Cheerios or Oatmeal Crisp. I started doing it out of a sense of needing more fiber and dairy in my diet rather than liking it.

This thread had been dormant for 12 years but when I did a search to see if Carrabba's had been discussed anywhere before, this came up. My son, daughter-in-law and I went to the one here in Shawnee Mission last night. We all liked to a lot better than any other Italian restaurant we'd been to. Charlie had lobster ravioli and it was very good. Cassie had scallops and steak. The scallops were delicious but the steak was good but not really great. I had cioppino. Last time I had cioppino, it was at a restaurant at Pismo Beach in California in a booth with a huge window overlooking the ocean at sunset. I was with Joanie Sommers and while the stew was delicious, it was different from what I had last night. They were both good but different. I don't know if one or the other was really 'authentic'. I know it originated in San Francisco, but it'is considered Italian-American dish. The view for the former was certainly memorable.

I made Hungarian Goulash, fresh egg noodles and a salad. I either need to work on my noodle making technique or stop trying. Considering the time and mess, I think I'll stop trying.

Here is an update on what I did yesterday. You can see the two side clips and bottom clip added to increase stability and support. The basket on the counter is for potatoes and has had a canvas bag added. Everyone can please ignore the mess in the rest of the kitchen.

The weight it is supposed to be able to hold is 5 lbs. but yesterday I added one at the bottom and put two smaller ones on both sides.

I won't store the potatoes with the onions because when stored together, they release gasses that promote both of them to spoil faster. I generally don't buy either in large quantity. The only reason there are as many onions in that picture is because Cassie and I both got onions on the same day without the other knowing it. I usually only have enough of either that they will be used up within the week.

My son got tired of rummaging through the cabinets to find potatoes and onions among the rice and crackers so he put them in separate cloth bags and hung them up by some ornamentation at the kitchen door. It was practical but kind of ugly. Cassie said she thought some kind of baskets would be be better looking. Going on something I saw on the internet, went to Marshall's and looked around for something and settled on these. Then I went to a hardware store and got the hangers to hold them.

It was warm enough to grill outside and I was not motivated to be ambitious so I grilled (KC) strip steaks, baked some potatoes and made a salad.

Haha. Cassie said essentially the same thing about "too rich" not being a problem for her. It did seem less rich but it might have been because the torte had raspberry jam and the cake had whipped cream. Also I always made the torte with Dutch Cocoa and the cake was made with melted chocolate chips and that made it seem (to me anyway) less "chocolatey" if that is a word. I think next year I'll go back to the torte. "Rich" has its merits.

Everyone's sweets looks delicious. . For the past 5 or 6 years, around mid February, I have made a Chocolate Raspberry Torte (last years effort shown last picture) but it was really really rich so I thought I'd try this Chocolate Cloud Cake this year. Both are flourless cakes.

Not a great picture but it's chicken slow cooked in seasoned milk and a recipe called Potatoes Romanoff. We also had gravy made with mushrooms and the liquid from the chicken and a salad with dressing made with pineapple balsamic vinegar, tamarind glaze, homemade mustard, salt and olive oil.

Online a few months ago, I noticed a place called Krizman's on a Best of Kansas City list as a meat market that had the best sausages. I also noticed that it was just down the street from where I grew up on Strawberry Hill. They had great reviews, especially for their brats and Polish sausage. I went there today and got some Brats, kraut and Povitica bread. I asked what else was popular and the guy said that if I like to BBQ, they have BBQ rolls. Arthur Bryant's BBQ restaurants get theirs from them. I got some of that too. It was all very good indeed. The BBQ rolls were raw and needed smoking. The Brats were precooked and shriveled but plumped up when simmered with the kraut in a covered skillet. I also added onion, garlic, paprika and caraway seeds.

I have probably made more than a dozen loaves of sourdough French bread so far this winter and I noticed the last one is going slowly so after I saw liamsaunt and ElanaA's pizzas, I decided to make the next batch of sourdough with Focaiccia herbs and cheeses added. I divided it into two sections and baked one straight focaccia and then stretched the other one out on a pizza pan and topped it with pizza stuff.