Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

We'we', whatever.  We' are not French, but we like to eat! 

New rule, when all else fails, make casserole.  Ok, not a rule, but a good idea.  This dish was the....can I say "bomb diggity"?

We have missed cooking for a few weeks due to various things.  Last Saturday we got in late from a wonderful week in Florida visiting Nicole, Corey and my son-in-law, Mike.  It was an awesome time with them.  We are some pretty proud parents and grandparents.  Thank you Father for our kids!  Corey is beautiful, by the way!

We missed cooking though and missed keeping all our followers up to date on our blog.  All two of you, Ryan and Sara.  And Ryan only because Sara makes him! Haha!

Anyhow, our choice to cook this casserole came from Pinterest.  Kathy and I ran to McKays and picked up some broccoli and odds and ends.  Earlier, Kathy had already picked up.....you guessed it!  Coleslaw!  Come on, you know why too!  Because we like it!!

Refer to the recipe, but we did some tweaking.  We took Chicken breasts and boiled them with Worcestershire sauce and 1/2 tsp of garlic powder.  Then we steamed 2 bunches of fresh broccoli and cut them into small spears.  We then pan fried ham steak and ground it up.  Next, with some wrist action we mixed 1/2 cup of sour cream, a can of cream of chicken soup and a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.  Lastly, prepare six ounces of Pepperidge Farms seasoned cubed stuffing moistened with 8 ounces of chicken stock.  Now, say that 5 times real fast!

Placing the broccoli in the casserole dish with care but not to be left alone, we put in the chicken and ground up ham.  Oh boy, then we smothered it in the sauce mixture, added slices of Swiss cheese and finished it by topping it all with the stuffing.  Cook on 350 for 35 minutes!  Yeah!

Food scale score: 4.5...yeah, you want some don't you??

To all our blog followers (Ryan and Sara), please offer some of your recipes.



Leg of Lamb



This was a long week of work.  With our daughter-in-law, Jacy, off on maternity leave from being our company's (Berith Builders) administrator, I've been frazzled with too much work load.  We forgive her though!  She just gave us our newest granddaughter, Naomi Grace!

So, with a lot going on, we picked up something a little easier on me and prepared for a crock pot meal.  We decided on boneless leg of lamb.

Kathy picked up a pre-seasoned lamb from McKay's and popped it in the crock pot.  We wanted cheddar cheese risotto to go along with it.  Kathy had made it a few times before but this time she coached me through it.  (See recipe pic)  We also made some homemade gravy.  Why?  Because we like it!

With green beans seasoned with Mrs. Dash, a tsp of ham stock and a tsp of butter, this green side dish was a winner!

We had the pleasure of our son, Tony, for our dinner guest tonight.  He helped us rate our food scale.  We rated it a 4.0.  I must say, lately our cooking has been pretty stellar!

Kathy has been searching out a lot of cool recipes on Pinterest.  Stay tuned for a lot of awesome dishes coming our way!!

Hey, by the way, you should all be proud of us!  It's the first Saturday without eating coleslaw!  We are learning self control! :)

 

To Crown a Rockfish!

Tonight, Kathy and I decided to cook a rockfish.  It alone, if cooked right, can make your tongue slap your brains out.  So how can we take it over the top?  Crown it with Crab Imperial!

We enjoyed our day together doing errands and running to Waldorf for some extra print cartridges.  After picking them up, we stopped at one of our favorite stores, Nicks of Clinton.  It was there that we picked up some nice rockfish fillets, 1 lb. of jumbo lump crab meat, oh, and filet mignon for a later date.  Why?  Because we like it!

We dropped by Woods Produce in Mechanicsville for a lemon plus a quick stop to Copsey's Seafood for something else that we seem to have every Saturday...Coleslaw!  Copsey's has the best! (If you want to get on Kathy's and my good side, just give us coleslaw!)

When we got home, we prepared the Crab Imperial.  Kathy very carefully sorted through the lump crab meat thoroughly for shells.  We then mixed up the ingredients....1/3 cup of Panko bread crumbs, 1/2 cup of Hellman's Mayo, 1 tsp of Old Bay, 1 tsp sugar, 1 egg,  and 1/4 tsp of dry mustard. All of these got mixed together with the crab meat.  Awesome!


We then stuffed the 2 rockfish fillets with the crab imperial, lay them on a coated baking pan and topped the imperial with buttered bread crumbs.  The oven was set to 350 for a cooking time of 15 mins covered in foil and an additional 15 mins without for browning.  Nice! 

We wanted a sauce to pour on our finished stuffed rockfish, just because we can.  What we came up with was a large tbs of butter, tbs of flour cooking on low for 5 mins.  Then we added a cup of chicken broth, a 1/2 cup of heavy cream, juice of 1/2 lemon, a tablespoon of prepared horseradish and a pinch of black pepper.  Stir until it boils and thickens.

We plated it with seasoned green beans and a baked potato. It pairs nicely.

At first bite, we both agreed.   It is the best dish to date, but are a little apprehensive in giving any dish a rating of 5 because you can't do better!  This dish was really close, but after much deliberation, we settled on a score of 4.5. 

What a wonderful meal!

We Crocked Our Goose!

I think we might now be past the stomach bug.  We missed last week's meal because of it.  This time it was Kathy who had it!

This morning around 7:00, I quietly got the crockpot out and pulled 6 neatly packaged goose breasts out to cook.  JT Tayman had provided them fresh from his eastern shore goose hunt two weeks ago.  

I threw a nice helping of quartered onions into the bottom of the crockpot, gently layed the goose breasts over top, and then drowned them in a can of tomato sauce.  I turned the crockpot to high and they were ready for a day of deep slow cooking.  Yeah!

Later in the day, around 2:00 pm, Kathy and I strained the juices from the pot to expose the goose, which was very tender.  As prescribed on the recipe, we pulled the goose into shreds and smothered them in with BBQ sauce, "Sweet Baby Rays".  We then set the crockpot to warm and let it sit until dinner.

Kathy was awesome to pick us up some coleslaw.  What is it with coleslaw??  I think we have had it with almost every food blog dinner we've done.  Anyhow, we added corn to our menu and fully enjoyed our meal!  And yes, you guessed it, Mom Wolfe was our guest. 

Are you ready for this?? The food scale score for the BBQ Goose was.......a 4!

Thanks JT for the goose and the recipe!  You da man!  Oh and hey JT, we added onions to your recipe!  Why?  Because we like it!



Into the Wild

I'm thinking that Kathy and I are cooking on the wild side this past couple of weeks.....a wild game kick that is.  Last week, you know we cooked gator and next week we already planned to "cook our goose".  Tonight, we cooked and ate venison, which is just a sneaky way of saying, "deer meat". 

I shopped like a bog boy and picked up a green pepper and some sliced mushrooms.  We already had one box of mushrooms but I got another one.  Why?  Because we like it!

We marinated the venison with meat tenderizer, Worchestershire sauce, and steak seasoning, and let it sit fuming in its juices.  Oh, by the way, my son, Jason, gave us the deer meat which he had processed by Joe Wood.  Hey Joe!  Beautiful job on the cut!  And Jason, thanks for hooking Mom and Dad up!

Kathy browned the venison while I diced up the veggies.  The grand dish that we were preparing was Venison Stir Fry.  It consisted of the following (Get this because there will be a quiz later!): green pepper, red pepper, onion, mushrooms, lots of mushrooms, tomatoes with green chilis, and unmeasured dashes of A-1, Heinz 57, Worchestershire, Crystal's Louisiana sauce, garlic salt and season salt.  (If you want to thicken the sauce, use a heaping table spoon of corn starch dissolved in a little water.)  After adding all of our ingredients with the meat and veggies, we let it simmer for about 20 minutes.  Total prep time was around 40 minutes.  Worth it!!!

The side dished were: green peas, apple sauce, jasmine rice, and cole slaw.  We like to eat! 

Mom was our sweet guest and we all enjoyed this meal entirely.

Food taste score: 3.5

Thanks for coming in and peeking over at our table.  You are always welcome!

Eat Them Before They Eat You

Tonight, our theme for cooking was, "Eat them before they eat you!"  We decided to cook Gator Bites...that's right, alligator in bite-sized chunks.  Where did the idea of gator to eat come from?  It's mainly from our scampers to St. Pete Beach, Florida where we eat at a place called Silas' Steakhouse.  In fact, we're planning to head back down very soon to see our granddaughter, Corey May.  And we'll also be headed back down to St. Pete BEACH!  Why?  Because we like it!

Kathy and I picked up the gator meat from Nick's of Clinton last week thinking we would be cooking them last Saturday, but a stomach bug said otherwise! Ugh!  So, tonight was the night for it instead.

We ran by McKay's for buttermilk to soak the gator meat, and picked up some jalapeno and red pepper that will be diced and added to fried potatoes.  (It's fried potatoes with a kick in the pants!)  We also settled for some coleslaw from Mckay's.  We usually get it from Copsey's Seafood in Mechanicsville.  (Holler out to Marie for her killer coleslaw!)  Then we were on our way home...

We diced up onions and tossed them in with the jalapeno and red pepper as Kathy fried the potatoes.  (Take a peek at the pic...What a beautiful mix of colors and taste!) 

Flour, of coarse, is what we used for frying the gator, but not without some doctoring.  Salt, pepper and garlic powder joined the flour and waited to gently coat the gator.  Next came dipping the gator in the flour mixture, while handling the gator chunks with the hands of a mother: gentle but firm.  Then we plopped them into the deep fryer.

Earlier today, we made a remoulade sauce that contained creole mustard, ketchup, horseradish, mayonnaise, tobasco, and a dash of white vinegar.  You have to have dippin' sauce!  Come on somebody!

After prep and 35 minutes of cooking, we sat down to eat our experimental plate.  Overall opinion: Not Bad.  It tastes like chicken!  No, just kidding.  It doesn't at all.  It's not gamey, but something like calamari.  You have to try it!

Food Scale Score: 3.0

We will do it again....but maybe with a different sauce?!

Gator Bite Recipe:

Veal Piccata with Herbed Parmesan Capellini

Tonight took a different path, all in the fact that we had been picking up our ingredients on Fridays, but this time we found ourselves looking for a recipe and ingredients on Saturday. 

Life's twists and turns had us looking at a busy Saturday wondering what to cook and where to find time to do it.  Such is life!  While at Target picking up a couple of things, we killed two birds with one stone and sneaked back to the book section, perused some recipe books and Pow! There is was: Veal Piccata with Herb Cappellini.  After a quick pic on the Smart Phone, we went to Safeway, picked up our herbs and veal, and away we went.

Again, I was learning new things.  Kathy taught me how to mince garlic, and chop parsley and basil.  I was tasting them along the way and putting it all into my Taste Computer (my brain) so I would know how to make some future concoction of our own.  Like Parsley with, uh, Peanut Butter? Nah!  Maybe not!  

Kathy was trying new things tonight too.  She had never had veal before so she was going to learn something during tonight's eating time.  

Prep time took us about 25 mins.  I floured the veal and cooked it 2 minutes per side while Kathy worked on the pasta side of things.  I was checking out what she was doing and sometimes checking her out. ;)  Why?  Because we like it!

All this to say that the meal took about an hour overall to prepare and cook, but only 10 minutes to eat it.  Isn't it funny all the time we take preparing for a few minutes of inhaling food?!

On our food scale, we collectively gave it a 3.

Plus, I learned a Life Lesson: Capers are cool! 

Oh, by the way, Mom Wolfe got to experience our delicacy too!

See you next week!

Veal and Pasta Recipe:



Easy Ham Hash

Kathy and I chose to start our adventure in food and fun and food this week.

And yes, I said food twice.  Why?  Because we like it!

We chose out of a recipe book that we had purchased on a night out together a week or two ago when we thought of doing this food blog fun connection thing.  The recipe book is called "Taste of Home."  It's seems to be full of casserole type dishes.  Who doesn't like casserole?  Well, I guess some don't and some kind of casseroles we don't.

So here goes our adventure!  The only thing to lose is time in front of the TV!  That's a winner already!  It's time together doing something we both enjoy: Cooking and Eating!  We will try all kinds of recipes; classic, ethnic, comfort foods, exotic, wild game, you name it! 

The first recipe we tried was Easy Ham Hash.  Huh?!  Not the most savory name, I know.

Preparation took a half hour but for me it was time spent learning some basics.  Kathy taught me how to peel and shred potatoes, peel and dice onions.  She wanted a little more horseradish cream than was called for.  Why?  Because we like it!  The casserole took 35 to 40 minutes to cook.  It smelled pretty good.

We paired all of this "country sounding" hash casserole with peas, applesauce (a special concoction that we'll disclose later) and Lela's pickled beets.  Thanks Lela!

Mom Wolfe was our guinea pig tonight.  She liked it!

The scale we'll use will be 0 to 5, with 0 being horrible, like, "I want to find the person who came up with this recipe and......." And 5 meaning it will be on Heaven's Menu.  I'm almost sure of it.

So tonight's recipe......rap quickly on a nearby table for a drum roll effect.....is a 2.5!  Easy Ham Hash.  The name fits the dish.  Anything smothered in cheese can't be lower than a 2.5!

By the way, Kathy and I had a blast!

See you next week!

Recipe for Easy Ham Hash: