So...whats for dinner?

Oh Hauntie, that recipe sounds so delicious when i go shopping saturday im going to buy the stuff to make it, will make it sunday and will let you know how it turned out, this is the kind of stuff my DH and i love, I know it will be good, thank you for sharing your familys recipe.

Seaside- It does make you smile when you say pickity place huh, LOL!  too cute.

Laurie- Did i miss anything on your anniversary, where you went? hope you had a great time.

Shelly- LOL my favorite store bought cookie is oreos with milk yum,!

Chicken stir fry for dinner- easy and made it healthy too,

Debbie - Since you had the healthy stir fry tonight, you can go all out on the braciole and gravy on Sunday. If you really want a spectacular feast, I'll give you my recipe for homemade manicotti. If there's extra, the gravy and meat freeze really well. I'm glad you asked for the recipe. Now I have an old family recipe written down for the next generation. If you make the braciole on Saturday, I'll be around if you have any questions. Just PM me. I'll be a Pickety Place on Sunday with some of the other BCO gals.

I am happy to say that Chemo #1 is history for me and so far, the side effects have been minimal.

Good news on the dinner front, too. After the treatment, we went to the little cafe where DH picked up lunch for some gelato. About halfway through, the very nice young man behind the counter asked if we would taste a new entree he was trying out. We said 'Sure' and about 10 minutes later we were enjoying Chicken Artichoke Fettucini - enough to make a meal and quite tasty, albeit a bit early.That was really a sweet way to top off the experience!

Sue,



So glad that chemo 1 is in the past!!! Chicken Artichoke Fettuchini sounds really great! Especially if followed by Gelato...lol.....

Hauntie- I will be making it sunday, the directions look so easy but if i have any problems i will pm you, and you are right the juices from the meat is like gold, never throw them out LOL! My mouth is watering just thinking about it now. Seaside is so right, its important to have all those recipes written down so they dont get lost or forgotton. My mom wrote a lot down but there are some i wish i could just call her and ask how she made a certain dish, that makes me sad, so i made a cookbook just for my daughter so she would have those should somthing happen.

Sue-Glad you are doing well and enjoying your great sounding dish, i know for me i felt good for a few days after chemo then by the 3rd or 4th day i started feeling kind of crappy, so i always tried to get things done in the first few days of chemo. Hope you have minimal SE

Zumbagirl.- I make a pasta salad siminlar to yours but add pepporini slices artichokes and parmesan cheese to it, i get asked for the recipe all the time when i bring it to potlucks. Also add peppadews, got to have my peppadews haha!

Debbie - What's are peppadews? I had an aunt who's family owned an Italian bakery. She was very secretive about her recipes. She made the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, but even with her recipe, no one can duplicate hers. Her grand daughter inherited all her cookbooks and some hand written recipes, but she does not have the recipe for her all time favorite cookie that her Nana used to make. I don't understand why people are so secretive about recipes. Unless you're marketing the product, it's not like someone is going to cut into your profits.

In our family, it's not that the recipes are secret. It's that there are no written recipes. If you asked my mother how much of something to put in she would tell you, "until it tastes right" or "until it looks right". One of my aunts used to say "until it's nice." What the heck does that mean? When you hang around the kitchen long enough - watching, tasting, and helping you learn exactly what those expressions mean.  It's really hard to translate into cups and teaspoons and tablespoons, but it's worth the effort in order to preserve those old family recipes.

My Mother (and those of many of my friends) neglected to pass the recipes to their sons.  After Mom died Brother started asking "How did Mom make _______?"  I've written down or copied most of them for him but there are two that I have never been able to get on paper with accurate enough measurements to duplicate them without hands on instruction like she gave me.  One is  special potato bread based roll and the other is a modernization of an old Norwegian potato dumpling made with raw potatoes.  The measurements in both are so dependent on variables like the amount of water in the potatoes, the humidity, etc. that you need to know and feel how the dough looks and feels, even how it smells, to get it right.  Since he moved a thousand miles away shortly after she died we have never had the time when we to get together to spend the needed hours working on those two things.  At least he did find someone who could teach him how to make lefsa---and she wasn't even Norwegian.

This is a great conversation about family recipes that go to the grave with the creator.  I found an old church cookbook that had a couple recipes that my paternal grandmother had contributed, which was such a neat find!  I remember asking my mother for the family recipe for gorton and she told me cinnamon the size of a lima bean and cloves the size of a pea.  Well, that's imaginable, but for how much meat?  When my daughter was in college, she spent Thanksgiving at a friend's house and she wanted to make a tortiere, so she needed the recipe for gorton.  She asked me for a "repeatable" recipe and that's when I decided to write it down in proportions for 5 pounds of meat.  So now we have recorded our family recipe!

Sue - so glad you are past that first chemo!  I love gelato - when we lived in Missouri, my doctors and hospital were all on the Kansas side of the state line, and there was a gelato shop a few minutes away from the medical center.  We always stopped for a treat after an appointment or procedure.  I think we stopped after my first lumpectomy!!!  And to get that bonus meal was just the icing on the cake!  Now don't forget to keep drinking, drinking, drinking.  The more you drink, the sooner the nasty chemo taste passes you by.  Wishing you minimal SEs this weekend!  I just finished so PM me if you have any questions or concerns.

I have to say, I LOVE this thread and everyone in it.  We are such a congenial group of women who encourage each other, share our personal experiences along with our recipes and meal ideas.  And I don't recall, ever, one misunderstanding or heated discussion, or moment of rancor that we see in some of the other discussions.  Nothing but positive vibes and real, honest, support of one another.  What a gift!  So Laurie, you started this and I thank you!

Michelle

i think i'll make polenta, ham, cheese and spinach casserole today.  It is deliciously chilly.

i layer spinach cooked with mushrooms and soup (or something like mushroom soup) with cheese, polenta and cubed ham.. it's very filling, not too spicey.  everyone loves it.  the recipe I have is very complicated.. but it's really quite easy..

 if one sautees the mushrooms, adds the frozen or fresh spinach, the cubed ham and velveeta, sauce or soup to make it saucy.. i cook my polenta in the microwave just stirring occasionally.  I layer these with cheese.

hauntie  that braciole sounds terrific...gonna give it a try.  My Dh will eat anything, and I mean anything, that is cooked or covered in sauce...and no he is not italian, or even close.

Am I the only one here who came from a family of terrible cooks? Have no recall of grandmas making anything special and my mom was just very basic, never used any spices or tried different ways to do things.  i guess if I had to choose one thing that was special, it would have been our birthday cake, she made great boiled frosting on top of angle food cake. to this day if my mom is having us over for a meal, we know what to expect, so i usually bring something to round out the meal. God bless her, she raised 5 kids on a very tight budget, so we got the basics...ha ha the good things is, I was very skinny back then.

Last night made chicken french, mashed potatos and fresh green beans. tonight going to a friends for a birthday celebration, going to make homemade guacamole for an app.

Are you Irish Carrie?  My mother used to say she knew the food was cooked when the smoke detector went off.  Everything was well done in our house.  My mother did make spaghetti gravy from an Italian friend's recipe, which I make now.  She used to use box cake mixes for our birthday cakes, but she made the frosting herself.  We used to get to lick the pot she made it in.  I think it was just powdered sugar, butter and vanilla.  She also made butter cookies at Christmas, but they are too hard and time consuming.  I've made them a few Christmases, but mostly just make the toll house cookies.  My sister makes them though, so we always have a few at Christmas.

LOL, you never know, husbands are sneaky that way.

I guess since I'm Irish, I can say this.  I think the Irish are known not to be good cooks.  When I think of good food, I think of Italian food, French food.  I don't even know of anything really known to be Irish.  Maybe ham and cabbage.  We went to Ireland on our honey moon.  Other than breakfast, the food was mostly bad except an Italian restaurant we ate at in Killarney.  It was owned by an Italian immigrant.  I hope I didn't offend you.  I am sure there are plenty of Irish men and women who are great cooks.  Not in my family though.

Definition for peppadews:

are designer vegetables developed and patented in South Africa. A cross between a sweet pepper and a chilli, they are slightly spicy, fruity and piquant, and are usually found pickled. Although they are patented, they are a hybrid and are not genetically modified

Tonight we had Tuna steaks with red wine and shallots. This is super easy to make and for those who don't like fish, not at all fishy.

Take tunq steaks and salt and pepper each side. Heat 1-2 tbs. butter in a saute pan till really hot. Add tuna and cook till desired wellness, somewhere around 3-4 minutes per side  depending on thickness. Remove from pan and cover to keep warm. Add 2-3 thinly sliced shallots to pan and saute for a few minutes till soft. Add any where from 1/2 to 1 cup of red wine to pan and simmer till reduced a bit( the amount of wine depends on how much sauce you want and how many steaks you are making) . Add some chopped fresh tarragon( I guess you could use dried but I  haven't) and swirl in 1-2 tbs butter to smooth sauce. Plate tuna and cover with shallot sauce. I promise you a winner. I generally like to serve it with either mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower and maybe some green beans. Enjoy!!

Michelle- Before i forget i wanted to comment on what you said about this thread being friendly, i was just thinking that a few weeks ago how great it is to come here and everyone gets along, with no qurarrels,  i feel safe here, i do check in with the "Newbies" now and again but this thread is my home, I care about you all.

Have fun on your night out! It is our night out too, i love fridays and margarittas..

Docbabs- I love tuna steaks, we get them fresh here on the west coast and they melt in your mouth i will try your recipe next time i make them.