Entree – Rosemary and the Goat

Mazetti AKA Johnny Marzetti

This recipe bring back memories of my adventure into cooking.

One of the first things I was looking for in our new home, (fast forward to 2024) was a special place to put all my cookbooks. The day I wanted to make some choux puffs (cream puff shells) to use for a tea sandwich I knew where to look; not on the internet but the same book I have gone back to for almost 55 years for making cream puffs or a savory shell to use for a tea party and that was my Good Housekeeping cookbook.

Now, the book. Upon opening it, I thought I would start sneezing, and I did. Not only had it been in storage for 4 years, it has been around my house for 55 so it has a really musty smell. There are so many recipes I want to revisit and try to update from this book and the Mazetti (aka Marietta) recipe is one of them. The GH version calls for canned tomato soup and that is something I never liked anyway so this version is a little old and a little new and perfect for a weekend dinner for the family.

December 21, 2024 By Sherry

Entree/ Pork

Smoked Ham with Spiced Apricot Glaze

So delicious you will not want to wait until Easter to make it.

I have to give all the credit of this recipe to my husband, (Papa G, GA, or papagsmokinroundtop (instagram). He has honed his bar-b-quing skills since he was a teenager and he watched my dad bbq. Along the way of our 55 years of marriage he has picked up many skills in the culinary world.

Growing up, and that has taken a very long time, we always had ham for Easter dinner (or lunch). The ham was always baked the same way. My mother would cut criss crosses in the fat of ham and insert whole cloves and then toothpick pineapple slices all over the ham. The glaze was pineapple juice mixed with brown sugar and some mustard. Always delicious not matter who made it for Easter. And, of course we had to have deviled eggs and usually potato salad and I knew just about anything my mother made would be delicious.

October 19, 2024 By Sherry

Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Chili Crisp Shrimp Scampi

Another pasta dish for the cooler months to come.

Nothing says you can’t eat pasta in hot weather but this was such a homey dish that I started thinking of the cooler days to come. I think this dish would also be great served cold or even room temperature. It would be great to have it made and in the refrigerator and just pull it out a couple of hours before you are ready for dinner.

So one morning when I’m sitting at my computer planning some upcoming menus which I have done for the last 55 years of married life and I received the link to this recipe from our son Scott (Chicago) and after reading through the recipe I had everything need to make it for dinner that night. I was at the bottom of my chili crisp jar but had just enough to make this dish.

October 4, 2024 By Sherry

Entree/ Pasta/ Uncategorized

Lemon Ricotta Pasta & Spinach

Easy peazy meatless meal!

We love our meats. Whether it’s chicken, pork, beef, fish or or even game like quail, rabbit or venison we want it grilled, bbqd, or roasted as part of any delicious recipe we might find surfing online or something GA might find on YouTube. He watches a lot of grilling and bbqing shows so he is always coming up with something with a little different twist from the norm.

We do occasionally eat a meatless meal; sometimes it is all vegetables and sometimes it is a good pasta dish. Since I have pantry full of different shapes of pasta that I can’t seem to stop myself from buying, I always have the urge to look up a new pasta recipe. That’s when I came across this recipe from theclevermeal.com website and I just knew we would love it. This dish could always be served with some grilled or roasted meat but it’s great on its own and it is so quick and easy to make.

August 30, 2024 By Sherry

Pork/ Sauces

Tonkatsu Pork with Sauce

This recipe has been around awhile!

Back in our early married life (55 years ago now) I use to make a few Japanese dishes and not sure why I stopped but I did. I’m going to revisit some of those recipes soon and give them another chance.

I happened upon this recipe (and online they all seem to have the same ingredients) in my latest Cooks Illustrated magazine and then googled some online recipes, tried and really liked it. The CI version used flour to dredge the pork but several online used cornstarch, which I used and Cooks Illustrated did not include a sauce recipe with their recipe and that was one of the best parts of the dish.

August 28, 2024 By Sherry

Pasta/ Poultry

Chicken Fettuccini with Mushrooms and Asparagus

I love the creaminess of fettuccini!

Lately I’ve been focusing more on afternoon tea parties than the “what’s for dinner” question I get late every afternoon. I love making tea foods and planning the party and it is a lot more work than throwing something together for dinner. But while looking for some ingredients for making a new scone I realized the pantry needed a little TLC.

Seems like I reorganize my pantry every week. Before we moved into our new house and renting a little 850 square foot house, my pantry was a broom closet that my husband converted into a pantry. You wouldn’t believe what I could get into this tiny pantry. Now I have this huge pantry that holds not only food that would last me a year (not really) but every pan and gadget I own and believe me I have a pan for every need. You name it – madeline, donut, barquette molds, flower molds, cannoli forms, Charlotte pan; if you can think of it I probably have it and I have used probably 99% of them at one time. If you ever need a special pan and live close by, you can borrow one of mine.

August 21, 2024 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Chicken with Pesto and Bowtie Pasta

Easy to make with a rotisserie chicken!

Recently I bought this beautiful bow tie pasta made by Good Hair Day. Don’t ask me why any food product would have “hair” in the description of any product but the packaging was pretty cool. Beautiful girl with long hair and the clear opening of part of the package where her hair is has the pasta shape showing through. This pasta retained its beautiful color after cooking and there’s nothing more I like than color.

It’s been a while since I have posted a recipe. We are in our new house and after two weeks of unpacking we have about 95% of things put away. Organizing all that stuff will come later.

My daughter came to help one weekend and even though there were still a few boxes and pictures around that had not be put away or hung we cooked our first meal in our new kitchen. I have not read any of the manuals to my new equipment and I just guessed on some of the new features on the double ovens which are suppose to proof, air fry, dehydrate, convection and steam; I’ll read them on some rainy day.

March 18, 2024 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Grilled Spatchcocked Greek Chicken

Spatched what?

So what does spatchcocked mean? Well, it’s when the backbone of the chicken is removed and you flatten the chicken out. It looks pretty and also helps the chicken pieces all finish cooking at the same time on the grill.

Occasionally I will do a recipe exactly as it is written and then the next time I make it maybe tweak it with some extra ingredients. This night I told my husband (GA or Papa G as he’s know around the brewery) that I had a whole chicken we (he) could throw on the grill. He searched around the internet and came up with this recipe from Food Network. It was delicious and he went to the store to buy the extra ingredients that we didn’t have on hand. He did it all, spatchcocking the chicken, of course, making the marinade, cooking it, carving it, and when we were finished eating, he deboned the remaining chicken and put in the refrigerator. What a guy!

January 17, 2024 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Chicken In A Pot

Ooh la la! Chicken in a pot with a touch of Herbs de Provence.

Don’t you just love the hint of lavender in herbs de provence? I do and in this pretty easy recipe I’ll have you wanting to get out and buy the spice if you don’t already have it.

The recipe instructions for this dish are different than the pictures I took the night I made it because some things I should have done in a different order to get the results I wanted. End results of my dish just as delicious but I browned my chicken a little more with my torch. You don’t want to have to do that.

I love one pot dishes and especially this one because after getting it in the pot you pop it in the oven and just forget about it until ready to serve. Great dish to have around the holidays and any type of pasta will be delicious. Hopefully we will be in our new home early January and I will be cooking up more mouth-watering recipes since I will have a bigger kitchen; more space to spread out and also to have friends come over and cook.

December 16, 2023 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Food Stories/ Game/ HotApp/ Pork

Friday night fights!

Friday night fights!

(There isn’t a recipe today but just a little story about how we love frog legs and our fried fish and another look at a few of our family favorites.)

On any given Friday night when we were kids (my twin sister and brother) we would probably be in front of a black and white tv watching The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (Boxing). I guess that was my dad’s favorite sport to watch. (I learned a lot about Gillette razor blades every Friday night.) Many of those Friday nights would involve a fish fry with family friends or if my dad had gone frog gigging then he would have taken out his boat that he made to float ditches and gigged us some frogs. This boat was made from welding two car hoods together and was perfect for going down some of the bayous like Black Island or Wolf Island or any of the ditches full of rain water and overflowing with croaking bull frogs ready to give it up for a delicious dinner for our family.

Our dad could pretty much do anything. I’ve called him a Renaissance Man in one of my post about his hushpuppy recipe (which is the best hushpuppy you will ever put in your mouth.) Even though a lot of our meals were things like fried pork chops, fish, meatloaf, duck and other game, delicious stews and soups; just simple good food, there was a lot of love and care that went into preparing all those meals. Our mother was a stay-at-home mom and had lunch ready for my dad every day and then a nice meal ready every night about the time he came home.

October 22, 2023 By Sherry

Entree/ Pork

Baby Back Finger Chops

I want my baby back, baby back!

Remember that old jingle from chilis about their baby back ribs? I never had those and no way could they be as good as any bbq someone would/could smoke/grill at home.

These little loin back finger chops caught my eye one day at the grocery. I first thought they were un-frenched lamb chops but the closer I got to them I realized they were pork so I was interested enough I bought a package. They were somewhere over $5 a lb.. They were good the first time we grilled and we just used some Montreal Steak seasoning (one of my favorite seasoning). The second time I bought them I bought a package and also bought a rack of baby back ribs thinking I could cut them up and they would be half the price of the little loin baby back loin chopsl, after I got home with them and inspected before tossing in the freezer I did notice they they didn’t have the large chunk of meat on the end. So my theory didn’t hold up BUT the slab will live another day and show up on our grill one night.

August 7, 2023 By Sherry

Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Pasta

Shrimp and Bucatini Primavera

Not a shortage of veggies in this dish!

Love shrimp, love pasta? Love veggies? You’ll love this dish.

I’m trying to work my way through bags of pasta I bought over the last several months. When I get out of town to larger grocery stores and see so many beautiful pasta shapes, I can’t resist buying a bunch. Well I have enough to feed an army in my tiny pantry.

I can’t wait to have a whole pasta section in my new pantry. NEWS: Our slab is being poured this Thursday so once I see those walls go up, I’ll be measuring off my 10×7′ pantry to see what all I can get in there. Presently in our 800 sq. ft house we have been renting for almost three years I have what use to be a broom closet that GA did a great job making shelving in almost every square inch minus room for a broom. So to have a big pantry plus a butler’s pantry and wet bar with storage I will not know what to do with all that space. I will do my best to fill it all up.

May 16, 2023 By Sherry

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