So...whats for dinner?

We have been eating and have also had a couple of days of winter-like weather. This past Saturday it was muggy with high temp. of 80 degrees. Then on Sunday the temperature plunged to 40's. Monday (yesterday) was cold and this morning is cold but now we're in a warming trend and Christmas day is supposed to be sunny with low 70's.

DH has been in a cooking mood. On Sunday he cooked a beef pot roast with veggies. We finished it for dinner last night. We have also been working on a pot of navy bean soup seasoned with ham bits and smoked ham hocks. He cooked that, too. Yesterday I thinned it and added shell pasta. To be honest, I didn't like it quite as much as when I cook it. He had too much tomato.

No cookie baking here. I plan to make some box brownies for Christmas day. DH has not mentioned baking his oatmeal cookies this year and I haven't mentioned it either. I really don't like having sweets in the house except for some dark chocolate kisses and ice cream in the freezer. Sugar is addictive and I am borderline diabetic and more than borderline overweight.

Not sure what dinner will be tonight.

I am trying to prepare myself for my mother being absent from my life. She has been staying in bed more lately. She has a deficient heart valve and her blood pressure has been low. She turns 94 on Dec. 27th. I'll visit her this afternoon. Hoping she will feel up for playing bingo.

Now off to the gym.

Told hubby that dinner tonight is omelette so and toast. He was fine with that

thank you Nance, I think the Waldorf salad is where I am headed. Also saw a fresh fruit salad with a lemon yogurt dressing that sounded good and got good reviews on all recipes.

Ok Special that curry salad sounds good too, want to post the recipe? I used to do a scalloped corn casserole, but have burned out on it.

Burgers and tator tots, yup you read that right, I had a craving for the little tators!

carberry - here is the curried fruit recipe - this is an old standby from military wife days.

Curried Fruit - 1 lg. can peach halves, 1 lg. can pineapple slices, 1 lg. can pear halves, 1 lg. can apricot halves, maraschino cherries, 1/2 c. brown sugar, 3 t. cornstarch, 1/2 c. butter or margarine, 1/4 t. ground cloves and cinnamon, 1 t. curry powder. Drain fruit and reserve juice. Arrange fruit in a large baking dish. Garnish with cherries. Cook butter, brown sugar, drained fruit juices, cornstarch and spices until thickened. Drizzle over fruit and bake at 350 F. for 20-30 mins - serve hot.

Baked tonight with an old friend (military wife - she probably made the curried fruit too, lol!) and we made fudge, peanut brittle, wedding cookies, peanut butter reindeer cookies, molasses cookies, shortbread, truffles, dipped oreos, rolo butter snaps, Hershey hugs pretzels - fun, but I'm tired!

Tonight is the rest of the chicken from the other night

Just gained a lb. from reading about all those cookies you folks are baking!

Last night's dinner was a big flop. I had asked dh to take a chicken out of the freezer and submerge in water to thaw. He complied but the chicken did not cooperate and was still quite frozen at 5 pm when I arrived. I held it under running water and managed to extract the innards. Put it in the oven at 350 degrees in a clay cooker. We ate some of it (drumsticks were done and outer breast) with some homefries made with leftover baked potatoes. Today I need to finish cooking the leftover carcass for chicken salad or whatever. A rotisserie chicken from Sam's Club would have been WAY better. I have not had a lot of success with cooking whole baked chicken, which I really like when done well.

At least last night's rye old-fashioneds were very good. I'm thinking my drinking days may be numbered. I have an appointment with a phrenologist (sp?) on the 27th to discuss my declining kidney function. From my research into kidney disease, I'm gleaning that drinking alcohol is not recommended.

Hope tonight's home-made pizza is appetizing. The blob of frozen crust dough is thawing along with a small container of pizza sauce and another small container of roasted grape tomatoes.

My youngest brother and his wife and daughter (in town for Christmas) are invited to dinner Friday night. I'm making giant meatballs and tomato sauce and spaghetti. I wanted to serve something I could make ahead of time. The side will be romaine salad dressed Caesar style and garlic bread made with bought French bread. I had thought of making jambalaya but it is less a fail-safe dish.

DH is off playing golf. I'd better get some things done.

Dinner tonight with two of my girlfriends---they wanted to go to TGIFridays.....we all three ordered the Ribeye's. they ordered there's medium rare, I ordered mine medium well. When they came out of the kitchen I got mine and one of the others was served. Then we waited and waited. Then the third one came out---it looked like we had three different cuts of meat, but they all were ribeye's.....I commented mine should have been the last to arrive. The service was not good.....When the waitress finally came to the table to check, my friend whose steak came out last showed the waitress how overdone her steak was.....about 25 minutes later, a guy shows up in a tie claiming he cooked the steak and had hurried it by putting it on the hottest part of the grill--so he wrote off her dinner. Definitely not someplace I would have chosen to eat....I do better in my kitchen ...

But, my friend Melodie has a wonderful hand with candy making---she brought me little plastic Sandwich boxes with Peanut Brittle, Fudge, Caramels, and Divinity......I have sampled one of each and they are divine........ How will I ever burn it off before my check on on Jan. 13th and Jan 19th.......

..

I just did a whole chicken in the oven that turned out well. They used to be kind of dry, but then I discovered brining.. I've tried several different brines and all have made a huge improvement. It takes an overnight sit in the brine, so it's not something that is spur of the moment.

Sharon and I used to go to 'Fridays, but quit going about 15 years ago when the prices jumped *way* up. The food was good, but....not worth the cost.

I guess I'm lucky Red as I'm good for the office scale for another year. I just did my medical physical. There was a NP in training in need of clinical hours there and I was asked if I'd consider volunteering. I did....and everythingwas done twice...The only surprise was my severely low Vitamin D levels.

Carole. I'm sorry that you, too, are going through "this" with your mom. I wish there was something magic that I could say or do to fix things.

Special, I remember my mom cooking with other military wives. Nearly all of the time it was for block parties and other celebrations. and I was welcome to watch. The other times....I was absolutely banished from the kitchen.

doorbell.....delivery....

My Vit D was just under 8 (whatever the units might be), with the same 30-100 as the normal range. She prescribed me 50,000IU tables, one per week, for 14 weeks with a recheck then.

Oh...on cooking news....I bought what I think might be my first "store bought new" piece of cast iron. I bought a Lodge Mini-cake pan. I'm hoping it will do a nice job on the sourdough biscuits. I imagine it will take a couple of tries to get it right, but I'm OK with that! :-) The sourdough starter is being made ready for a command performance.

It's a cloudy, windy, rainy day and DD just brought me a cup of coffee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Life is good....

The instant read thermometer is a wonderful thing. I forget the brand name of it, but I like that it has a very small active area at the end. I can use it even on small pieces of meat. The older ones have such a large sensing area that they aren't accurate on the smaller pieces of meat.

I still use the old standby thermometer for the larger pieces of meat that spend a long time in the oven. The old Taylor one (that still has a 180F marking for "fowl") can be read through the glass front of the oven door, so I don't have to keep opening the oven up.

Thanks for the new cooking temperature guidelines. I knew about the change for pork, but did not know that they had lowered chicken/turkey temperature from 175F degrees. I will need to remember that.

Last night was a WF roast chicken, mashed yams and roasted Brussels sprouts from the WF hot bar. That way Gordy can eat decently for the next couple of days. (He'll go to our friends' for Christmas dinner--their son & his fiancee are visiting her folks, so they'd have been alone, since we're in NY). Dropped off the rest of the truffle (which won't keep till New Year's Eve) at B'way Cellars (no parking, so I had to hit the flashers & hurry in & out) for Tom the chef/owner to take home. Chuck, his bartender/sous-chef, is his tenant, so I imagine they'll divide it between them. The guests eating at the bar were going nuts over the scent--but the restaurant doesn't have a truffle slicer. My car smelled like a French restaurant for an hour!

Long day today, after late night charging devices & packing yesterday. Didn't help matters that I tore the house apart looking for my MacBookAir (travel 'puter) and it turned out to have been in the zip-off computer compartment of my travel guitar case. So I have to get something else for Christmas (we were gonna hit the Apple Store on W. 57 tomorrow). Our flight was at noon, and I got a wheelchair bec. the Rollator would've been too unwieldy (and my back is much better). I am TSA Pre, but the wheelchair attendant at MDW said that even using the wheelchair lane, I could skip the shoes/liquids/remove-the-computer b.s. WRONG. They put a newbie TSA ID checker at the wheelchair lane, and when I got to the rotary scanner they said to take off my shoes (lace-up, of course) because I'm under 75. When I showed my boarding pass, they got snotty and said TSA Pre works only in the TSA Pre lane, and I could have gone through it in the wheelchair. GRRR. They picked apart my carry-on, made me boot all my electronics, measured all the fluids in my quart baggie. At least now I know what to do the rest of the trip (Sun. flying LGA-MDW-DCA).

The hotel (W. 57 by Hilton) is posh. But no microwave (there is a regular mini-fridge and Keurig besides a minibar). The upset presentation is tomorrow at 9 am (ugh). We probably won't bite, as the property taxes and therefore the maintenance will be much higher in NYC than it is in Vegas where we currently own an HGV timeshare. But they will give us restaurant & theater vouchers. Meanwhile, we're meeting Bob's BFF from high school (our best man 45+ yrs ago) at the hotel and will walk the 1/2 mi. to Ruth's Chris for dinner. He is not an adventurous eater, to put it mildly--wherever we go he ends up ordering a steak or a burger. Dunno where we'll eat tom'w night. Christmas Eve is at Butter, Christmas brunch at Tavern on the Green, and dinner at Fogo de Chao (Bob's fave). In return I get to pick all the other meals, as weird as I want them. Just nothing with a strict dress code--I brought only pants, and he just a jacket & tie, no suits. Tonight we're business casual. (As is our friend). Dinner is obviously gonna be steak (duh) with ll the trimmings. (All I had today was an airport croissant, cappuccino, seltzer, and a packet each of Southwest peanuts & pretzels).

So, we had chili from the freezer for supper as I spent most of the day making tomato jam for a friend to use as "stocking stuffers" for their grown children/families. Used flash frozen heirloom tomatoes from a local farm.  Good stuff but definitely a labor of love.  Canned it as well.  Will do this in the fall next year.  It really IS good stuff!

That looks good. Is it made like the jams using the more traditional fruits?

I hate flying--precisely because of the security stuff. Flying in uniform, on government orders, with a government purchased ticket, holding government ID and being in pre-check, doesn't seem to exempt me from much of the security stuff. It's even worse when 10-15 of us show up at the same time....borrowing from Alice's Restaurant...they must think it's some sort of movement.

This was my first knowledge of tomato jam. The two words don't go together! Tomato. Jam.

I have to FINALLY get around to doing some house cleaning today. Then company for dinner tonight. And a Christmas drop-in-between-12-and-5pm at a former neighbor's house. Tomorrow will be a cooking day. Sunday morning more cooking.

My oldest brother cannot attend the family Christmas this year. His wife is bed bound after a fall.

The whole roasted chickens always look so pretty and mouth-watering on cooking shows. Eric, do you stuff the cavity? I put raw onion and sage and thyme from the patio herb garden in my recent disaster chicken. Like Nance, I like to split the chicken open (butterfly, spatchcock) when it is thawed. I would have needed a hefty hatchet on the frozen bird!

The sun has peeked out and it's looking like a pretty day.

Happy Friday to all.

So Happy, how do you eat it? On biscuits? not on toast at breakfast, right?