Photography



















Popular posts from this blog

Fourth of July Faux Pas

Image
The Austin brother-in-law was all set to bring Rudy's barbecue for our Fourth of July family celebration. The economic outlook being what it is, I suggested that I should smoke a brisket on my gas grill to save a boatload of cash while feeding the dozen folks expected for our celebration. Now, I have smoked brisket on my grill precisely one other time, with lessons learned. Still, the family was amenable and so at 6 a.m. sharp, I put a dry rub seasoned brisket on the grill to smoke using mesquite wood chips.     Mesquite chips smoking In my research and limited experience, six hours ought to be long enough to smoke a brisket. The last time I tried it, six hours was not enough, so I decided this time to turn up the burner a bit. Cooking brisket on a gas grill requires the "indirect" method of cooking. One of the four grill burners was turned on. The remaining three were off. The brisket cooks over the off burners by indirect heat. The wood chips are placed over the on...
Read more

Sausage and Pasta Bake

Image
Today's Daily Plate is a combination of several comfort foods. It pairs jalapeno pork sausage (what can be more comforting than that?) with whole wheat pasta and adds three different types of cheese in a homemade cheese sauce. Just talking about it makes me comfortable all over again! Oh, and don't forget homemade whole wheat bread on the side. The pasta was made up of odds and ends of packages and boxes I had on the shelf. Mostly it is penne and shells, but there are also some bow ties. The sausage was a local store brand of link sausages filled with jalapeno and a bit spicy.  To this I added onions, bell peppers and a couple of fresh jalapeno peppers and sauteed the lot up in a skillet. Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta until al dente, and combined the two in a large casserole dish. Then, I made a roux of equal parts flour and butter (I was making an extra large batch, so I used 6 tablespoons of each which made 4 1/2 cups of final sauce and would have been better with five cup...
Read more

Chicken Breasts with Cherry/Currant Chipotle Sauce

Image
Today's Daily Plate is a feast for the heat lover. It features grilled organic chicken breasts with a cherry/currant chipotle sauce. For side dishes there were Jalapeno Cheesy Brown Rice and Bush's maple beans.   We buy organic chicken breasts because they are completely trimmed and cleaned, free of any hormones or other unnatural chemicals and more tender than average chicken breasts (which I'm convinced die of natural causes). Of course, organic chicken breasts cost as much as sirloin steak, but are worth it! For today's plate, I sprinkled the chicken with a Montreal steak seasoning and grilled it on the gas grill. The cherry/currant chipotle sauce was a reduction using Knudson's black cherry juice and black currant juice, garlic, onions, chipotle pepper powder and other spices. It was marvelous! The cheesy jalapeno brown rice included sauteed jalapenos and celery mixed in with brown rice and a can of Rotel original. Then I chopped up a few ounces of moz...
Read more