My Daily Plate

     Supper was a lot of fun tonight as we had "top your own pizza" night. I made whole wheat pizza dough in the trusty bread machine, divided it between everybody, and let them each build the pizza their own way. The result was a pepperoni pizza with stuffed crust; a half-pepperoni half-cheese pizza with stuffed crust; a mammoth deep dish pepperoni pizza so loaded with sauce it had to be eaten with a fork -- with stuffed crust; a barbecue chicken pizza for the wife; and my pizza was spinach and Alfredo sauce with mushrooms, chives, basil, red onion, jalapeno, lowfat turkey pepperoni, fresh cherry tomatoes and kalamata olives.   Barbecue Chicken Pizza   Half pepperoni Half cheese   Monster Everything Pizza Spinach Alfredo Pizza      There are only four pictures, because one son was mostly done eating his pizza before I thought to break out the camera. In keeping with my attempts to improve my overall diet, my pizza was covered in vegetables with only a few slices of tur

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

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

Thanks goes out today to the Father-in-law for buying some jalapeno salmon burgers from the local H.E.B. grocery store. Then he got sick (not from the salmon) and passed them on to me. So, tonight I had a grilled jalapeno burger with horseradish dijon mayonnaise, garden salad and cumin seasoned brown rice. Jalapeno Salmon Burgers The salmon burger was quite tasty, though I'd much rather just have fresh salmon smoked on the grill. I brushed a little olive oil on each side of the burgers to keep them from sticking to the grates. It worked quite well and left nice grill marks on the burger. I'll share an Irish proverb: "A trout in the pot is better than a salmon in the sea." Gotta love those Irish. Then again, a salmon burger on my grill beats your trout in a pot any day!