Steve Irby

I usually start the day with a smoothie but decided to give the blender a day off. I had a few odds and ends in the refrigerator that became a tortilla de patatas-ish breakfast. The filling was leftover potato pave, red onion and yellow pepper sauteed in butter and tomato infused olive oil. I topped the two egg dish with labneh and semi-dried tomatoes.

Ajax (my dog) and I really enjoyed an extra fatty pork steak for lunch today. I bought four at BJ's a few days ago and grilled them today. The trim, or lack thereof , was just like the good old days! Served with potato pave and avocado drizzled with picual olive oil.

Last nights dinner and todays lunch. Okra based gumbo with smoked turkey, Conecuh sausage, shrimp and blue crabs.

The last of the home corned brisket served as corned beef hash.

A neighbor that cooks? Most certainly!

I started dessert prep earlier in the week with the intention of making a raspberry tart. However the week got away from me and the raspberries were getting soft. The raspberries are now in the freezer destined for smoothies and have been replaced by strawberries and blackberries. Here's a few desserts that will be given to the neighbors. The fruits are glazed with homemade pear preserve syrup. I ate one blackberry tart for QA/QC purposes and it was delicious.

The cod and clam tasted fine in the sauce but the off flavors were evident in the jonah crab, scallops and shrimp. They had that kind of "gray" flavor from being stored improperly.

I'm sorry to have to call this dish "not ready for primetime cioppino". The sauce was great but the shrimp, crab and scallops had an off flavor and the clams were kind of anorexic. It turned out to be a pretty expensive photo op☹️

I split a couple of dozen raw ersters (9th Ward phonetic spelling) with Charlie "Boudreaux" Irby. Actually I ran him off after three since they were running a little small and I was pretty hungry.

Lunch was meat and three as it is often referred to by us southerners. The meat was pineapple and brown sugar seasoned venison sausage from a deer that my nephew shot. It was processed by a small seasonal butcher in Causeyville MS. The string beans and creamed corn came from the freezer from produce that I put up this summer. The au gratin potatoes were prepared from trim that I had leftover from preparing T Keller's potato pave. I'm going to start my nap after one more bite of the corn!

I picked up a couple celeriac roots off the quick sale table and decided to make ravioli. I had enough puree for about six dozen so we had a nice serving for dinner and the rest were frozen. The ravioli were served with brown butter, sage, prosciutto and parmesan cheese. My camera was a little wonky and gave a yellow cast to the food with the sage leaves appearing burnt although they were lightly browned! @Smithy I've also been enjoying tomato pies this summer. I usually make two quiche and one tomato pie per session using prepared pie shells. I place the seasoned tomato slices on a wire rack and cook at 220F for a couple of hours to get the moisture content down. I also enjoy the pan juices😋 We've had a few meals this week from a piece of smoked brisket that was hiding in the freezer. This is the last portion of the really fatty well marbled point.

Bruschetta using Craft Bakeries red sea sour bread with two toppings. The tomato topping is slow roasted tomatoes over Shahia Brand labneh balls with oil cured olives. The mushroom topping is black pearl and Italian oyster mushrooms sautéed in butter.

It's a good thing I'm bald because there was a lot of mopping action on my head with this dish. I picked up a tray of smallish green peppers off the quick sale table and roasted them a few days ago. I sampled a liitle bite from one of the peppers and it seemed pretty mild so I chopped them up and added to some smoked turkey leg quarters that I was clearing out of the freezer. I had a small can of chopped jalapenos on standby in case the stew was too mild. They definitely weren't needed. I ended up with a very h🥵tly spiced turkey and green chili stew. I added a couple of cans of white beans to tame the heat a little but you still felt the heat as soon as you stopped eating. The roasted pepper on top is a mild gypsy green pepper that was added as camouflage.

Yesterday was my birthday (#71) and we had reservations for dinner at a nice restaurant. As the day progressed, and the energy levels dropped, we decided to hang at the house and have a light supper. I ended up preparing a simple salad with hoikkado scallops piccata. Dessert was a flourless chocolate tart from Publix that was very good. We also had a scoop (or two) of B&J Pistachio Pistachio ice cream since we were celebrating.

I was gifted a couple of different types of Hungarian paprika so I decided to make Chicken Paprikash. I served it with spätzle and steamed cabbage. One of the recipes that I was looking at had an affiliates link to the Kull spätzle maker. The price on Amazon was $199.00! I guess it's time for me to move mine to the safety deposit box.