All Posts By:

Sherry

Entree/ Pork/ Poultry

Egg Roll in a Bowl

A lot less work than making egg rolls.

Still watching those hurricane (Harvey) rains come in and it’s still hot here in Texas, of course, and not that I look for easier things to make, but this is a super quick dish to throw together once you get everything chopped and if you have a mandolin it will save you so much time.

My twin sister and I have been making egg rolls for years. We make bunches of them and freeze so when we are ready to make some good Asian food, the egg rolls are awaiting in the freezer.

I saw a recipe on Pinterest for Crack Slaw or Egg roll in a Bowl and decided to make my own version similar to how we make our Best Egg Rolls. I can’t believe how much easier this is than the hours I have spent making egg rolls. Of course, there is nothing to put in the freezer after this meal; maybe just enough for leftovers the next day.

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Beef/Veal/ Entree

Portobello Stuffed Mushrooms

Healthy ingredients stuffed into mushroom.

Recently we went to Chicago to visit our son and his family. Two birthday cakes and lots of good food later I still lost three pounds after returning from being gone for nine days.

One night we went to a great restaurant called E + O Food and Drink (Earth and Ocean) and my husband had this great pork pata (shank) recipe that had a pate sauce. I may be trying that sometime this fall or winter when the weather fits the dish here in Texas.

We had very nice cool days while there and even slept with the windows one night, which we never do here in Texas. When we stepped off the plane back here in Texas and the heat hit us in the face we knew we were home.

I have a friend on the Fast Metabolism Diet so I decided to try this healthy recipe for her which is a stuffed portobello mushroom. I found some ground turkey and ground beef in my freezer and had lots of extras to add in. I’m serving mine over some spinach, either raw or cooked; either way it will be a healthy burger for any meal. You could add a bunch of vegetables on the side to complete your meal.

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Beverages/ Cocktails/ Drinks

Blueberry Mojito

Blueberry Mojito to go with my Blueberry Ice Cream.

So I had these blueberries left over from making my Blueberry Lavender Ice Cream and what’s a person to do with them other than eat them by the handful — make a Mojito of course.

Nothing taste better on sweltering hot days here in Texas than to have a cocktail in your hand, floating in the pool watching the clouds float by. My husband has even made a little boat to hold his drinks but I don’t really trust my drink in his vessel.

I’ve only posted two other drinks on this blog, one Aviation Cocktail (my favorite) and my daughter-in-law, Brooke, posted a Kentucky Derby Cocktail when son Paul did a post on “Born in Kentucky” back in 2009 so I thought it was time for another one.

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Appetizers/ ColdApp

Honey & Pistachio Goat Cheese Appetizer

Move over Rosemary and The Goat appetizer!

This blog is eight years old going into it’s ninth year. (Happy Birthday to RATG.) If you didn’t know it, I named the blog after an appetizer that a friend of mine (Peggy) made years ago and I’ve been making it ever since — rosemary, goat cheese and some olive oil.

Don’t you just love appetizer recipes that are easy to make at the spur of the moment? And, if they have some kind of jellies, preserves, honey or flavored oils poured over them, that makes them even easier. Smear some on your favorite cracker or some crispy bread and you will be dying for just one more bite.

I picked up some local honey at the farmers market the weekend I made this appetizer. Sure I could have bought honey at the store for about $4-5 cheaper but this was locally produced and I really liked the light color of this honey. I had left over fig preserves from some other yummy, savory appetizer I made several months ago.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Vegetable Noodles with Cedar Plank Salmon

Do you want something cool for dinner on a hot summer night?

I cook all the time it seems like whether it is summer, fall, winter or spring. Soups are not as appealing in the summer months as the other three seasons and I don’t like eating a lot of cold foods in the cooler months when all you want is some good comfort food. But, when it is 100° outside with the “feels like” temperature even higher than that I do occasionally go for something easier and cold for dinner.

The day I bought this salmon, it wasn’t even on my grocery list. But, when I happened by the seafood section and saw this beautifully arranged salmon fillets, I had to buy some. We are lucky here in our part of Texas to have a great assortment of seafood year round. This salmon was a beautiful orange and was a wild caught fish which makes it even better.

The recipe I came across for the marinade for this dish used soba noodles. I decided to make it “pasta” free and make my noodles from zucchini, cucumber, carrot and onion. Remember, I don’t want to call this zucchini pasta because it isn’t fooling anyone saying that. I wouldn’t want my tastebuds set for some good pasta and get a mouth full of vegetables but, if you know in advance that this is a very healthy dish, you will not mind at all that it’s carb free.

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Appetizers/ ColdApp

Beefy Roasted Red Pepper Spread

Reincarnated recipe from the past.

Back in May I was at my sister’s house in Missouri and one night she made a cheese ball. Ohhh, cheese balls, I use to love them. A couple of months ago I bought a ready made one at the grocery and thought it was awful and maybe that’s why I quit making them.

But the cheese ball my sister made was so tasty, creamy and one of those food things you can’t just take one bite. Even my grandson, Thomas, ate it and wanted more. This cheese ball (spread) is a recipe I’m sure we all made back in the 70’s maybe even before than that with the dried beef that comes in the little jar and the ACCENT that we were all told was not good for us. I’ve read that there is no proof not that MSG does any harm to humans. Read this article for more information on MSG. I don’t think this cheese spread would taste nearly as good without the Accent and it’s not like you are going to use the whole container anyway.

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Dessert/ Ice Cream

Blueberry Lavender Ice Cream

Gotta try at least one new ice cream recipe this summer.

Have you ever seen fields of lavender? When we were in France several years ago I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see fields of purple; but we were there too early in the year. I have seen fields of lavender in Texas at Becker Vineyards and also at Matanza Creek in Santa Rosa, California which were both breathtaking. Since purple is one of my favorite colors I wanted to try some using some culinary lavender I had bought in Austin awhile back.

I was taught years ago in school that you don’t use artificial coloring in food (I think the exception has to be decorated cookies and cakes). Green should never be used in Key Lime Pie. You know that PURPLE is my favorite color (have I said this before???). So how am I making my purple ice cream then if I can’t use that little bottle of purple food coloring I have that I use for cookie frosting — blueberries, of course.

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Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Entree

Tuna Tartare Nachos

Delicious, down to the last bite!

On our way to our grand-nephews wedding in Alabama back in June we decided to break up the almost 800 mile drive by spending the night in Meridian, Mississippi. As usually, I’m online searching for a restaurant that we want to try and this little gem of a restaurant caught my attention — Harvest Grill. It has a relaxed, casual feel and an inventive menu, just our type of place.

The restaurant was having some sort of brew event on the patio when we got there but we decided to get out of the heat and sit inside. We sometimes like to order from the appetizer menu so we can try several things and save room for dessert; which we did this night and tried their creole bread pudding with caramel and white chocolate shavings with scoops of ice cream between the four small squares of bread pudding — fantastic.

Now back to some of their appetizers. My husband ordered oysters on the half shell then another order of Black and Blue Oysters (steak and blue cheese). I knew when we were still 100 miles away I would be trying their Tartare Nachos — Ahi tuna over Asian slaw with avocado edamame and a habanero peach glaze and wasabi aioli; I loved the crunch of the wonton crisp, the heat from the wasabi and the peach glaze and the sesame flavor of the slaw. All my favorite ingredients and now I was going to have to come up with a recipe to make this exciting, tasteful dish.

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Appetizers/ Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Crab Cakes with Red Pepper Yogurt Sauce

Great use of leftover crab meat.

My son and his family were here recently and he made a wonderful Grilled Redfish on Half shell with Crab Macque Choux (corn) and a Carrot Habanero Burre Blanc Sauce. It was delicious and even though I could not begin to top his dish (see below) I did have 1/2 pound of crabmeat leftover from his Macque Choux .

So, one night we had some friends over and I decided to make a tuna tartare appetizer (recipe coming soon) we had tried at the Harvest Grill in Meridian, Mississippi when on our way to a family wedding in Alabama. And I wanted to come up with a crab dish to use that left over crab. I debated over either a crab spread (hot or cold) or crab salad but when I found this crab cake recipe I decided to try it because it used some avocado on the plate as a resting place for the crab cake and a red pepper sauce smeared on the plate. Visually, it just jumped off the page and I think I actually had all the ingredients to make it.

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Entree/ Salads

Shrimp and Avocado Salad

Love at first site!

My sister, her daughter-in-law, her 2 grandsons and son and two of our grandsons from Austin came to visit and even though I’ve had a couple of months to plan my menus I get down to the wire on what I want to have for the week — burgers (✓), BBQ (✓), teppanyaki steak on my new grill top bought for outdoor kitchen (✓), homemade pizza on our Kamoto Jo smoker (✓), and maybe some mussels for lunch one day (✓ didn’t get around to) and cook those in a new contraption we have for the grill (a basket you can either fry in, steam in or boil in and it will be perfect for mussels. (Will do the mussels another time this summer.)

I needed just one more dinner and when I was browsing Pinch of Yum’s blog this shrimp avocado bowl just jumped off the computer and I immediately knew what I was going to add to the mix — some oranges, some roasted walnuts, toasted sesame seeds and some cilantro and green onions for garnish. The miso dressing was so good on this salad.

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Entree/ Poultry

Sichuan Red Chili Chicken

Some like it HOT!

Back in May we were in Austin to babysit the new grandson, Frankie and his brother, Thomas, while his parents went to a Derby party one night and a wedding the next night. It easy taking care of a two month old because he couldn’t crawl and get into stuff or get up and run all over the house with Gran tailing him to make sure he didn’t get hurt. All Frankie did was lay there and look cute while his big brother did all the other stuff.

One night we ordered Chinese and our SIL told us about one of his favorites from this restaurant which was fried chicken (a lot smaller than I made mine), breaded, fried and then covered with these fried hot pepper pieces. He warned us that it was almost 50/50 ratio of chicken vs hot peppers. The pepper wasn’t crushed red pepper but the whole dried peppers you buy in the produce section and then broken up into small chunks. At first we thought we were just eating chicken skin because the pieces were so tiny but soon realized that it was indeed chicken pieces with skin cut into tiny pieces maybe 1/2″ thin pieces and fried until crisp and then heaped high with hot peppers.

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Beef/Veal/ Entree

Beef Tenderloin Steaks with French Onion Sauce

Not the prettiest picture but oh, so good!

If you’re thinking of cooking steaks any time soon and want something just a little different, try my beef tenderloin steaks with French Onion Sauce. The sauce smells like French onion soup while it’s cook. Top a toasted piece of French bread with your cooked steak and the sauce and you will be delighted with the surprise.

I did these steaks recently when friends came over. My steaks were on the small size (6 oz.) but by the time we added it to the bread and sauce it was almost more than we could finish. If you aren’t a big meat eater, try 4 oz. steaks for the ladies and maybe 6 oz. for the guys.

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