Looky, Looky

We are finally getting rain! I saw these clouds roll in and got so excited I had to take a picture (finally got some batteries). It started to sprinkle while I was outside.

Hubby and Little Man were out and about early this morning. When they came in Hubby said it was pouring in Tulsa. They made a stop in Bixby and he said it was raining hard there. So far here in beautiful downtown Glenpool it is raining steadily.

An update on the lemon pie...we had some last night after supper. I was uncertain about the texture - it wasn't what I had expected after being refrigerated for 24 hours - SO I covered the thing up and put it in the freezer. What a difference that made! It didn't exactly taste like sherbet or ice cream...it was creamy and cold and good! I will make it again, but I think a dark chocolate wafer crust will give it a little oomph.

(Looks like I forgot how to use my camera) This is the frozen pie I had for breakfast this morning...along with a leftover stuffed green pepper. Not very good breakfast food, but I got up at 5 a.m. so it was really lunch time for me.

I'm going to go outside and get rained on!

I stuffed...

green peppers last night.

Cut the top and core out of the peppers. You can use a spoon to get the pithy part out, rinse well to get all the seeds out.

Brown the ground beef...you don't have to cook it to death. I added the chopped onions and cooked til they were translucent.

Put your peppers in boiling water or use a steamer. Cook just until they get a little tender, about 10 minutes. Remove and drain. Place in a baking dish.

I seasoned the ground beef with a little Worcestershire sauce, pepper and garlic, then added about a cup of my salsa.

Put the seasoned ground beef mixture in each pepper, gently packing down as you go. NOW...this is where Hubby and I don't see eye to eye. I think ketchup should be one of the seven basic food groups. He, on the other hand, does not share my fondness. I would have put ketchup or a ketchup mixture on top of this like you would on a meatloaf. But in the interest of not seeing him curl his upper lip at the sight of baked on ketchup on the peppers, I left them plain. You can use your favorite barbecue sauce if you like.

I added a little water to the baking dish and cut up some new potatoes and laid around the peppers, baked them at 350 degrees until the potatoes were done.

When the peppers and potatoes were done I sprinkled them with american and white american cheese and returned to the oven just until the cheese was melted. They don't take very long to cook since everything is already cooked before assembly.

Some people like rice in them, some like them with Italian seasonings, some people like a little tomato sauce or drained canned tomatoes in the meat mixture. These would have been good with Spanish rice as a side but I just didn't have it in me. Fresh tomatoes were pretty good with them.

It's supposed to be dangerously hot today...guess I'll stay in and pout.

Oh yeah...

cooked cabbage last night to go with baked pork chops and sliced tomatoes (natch). It is so easy and inexpensive and good.

Choose a medium to large firm head of cabbage...it should be heavy for its size. Remove the first few outer leaves and rinse off. You can core it if you want, but I leave mine in tact because the remainder of othe head will stay fresher in the fridge. That will be cole slaw some night soon.

This is about half a head, cut in large chunks.

Place in a large sauce pan and season with about 2 spoons of sugar, crushed red pepper, a little bacon grease and enough water to come up about a fourth of the way from the bottom. This is one of those "as you like" dishes...we like enough sugar to smell sweet and enough crushed pepper to make you sniffle. The bacon grease I keep in the freezer and just chunk off about a teaspoon to give the cabbage a little bacon flavor.

Cover the pan and cook over medium heat until it's done, again as you like it. I cook mine until it's just tender and still has a little green color. You can cook it to crisp tender or gray...what it's called when it is nearly translucent and almost mushy. Grayed cabbage is good with hot cornbread...pour the cabbage and some of the liquid over the bread.

This is when ours was done. As you can see, it loses a good bit of volume so you need to fill your pan full. If you over fill the pan, just sit the lid on top and as it cooks the lid will shut. It only takes about 20 minutes or so, depending on how done you want it to be.

This was about $.75 worth of cabbage, the pork chops were less than $4.00, and we have leftovers for lunch.

Pastrami Mama part 1

I told you my daughter brought me two corned beef briskets. I have a "thang" for pastrami and I guess she got tired of hearing me talk about one of these days I'm gonna make one. After a thorough search on "how to make a pastrami, and after reading about a thousand recipes, I decided to take the plunge and attempt the process. It is not a quick process, but everybody promises the results are worth the time.

Babybacks...

were what we had for dinner last night. They were a little high at nearly $8 for the slab, but that's what Hubby wanted for Father's Day dinner...so babybacks it was. He found three green peppers in the garden, so I used one of them in the potato package we cooked on the grill with the ribs.