Recipe: Stuffed jalapeños

These are cute as the dickens! Since I am not keen on hot peppers (except true Hungarian peppers) Mr. Big Food adapted the recipe and used fresh sweet marconi and immature pablanos I'd picked earlier in the day. They reheat nicely in a skillet. 

Photo here. Recipe below.

Flower Power

Zinnia

Okra

Banana squash (male)

It's rather warm this morning.

I'm about to lapse into a food coma

Photos with no captions

In the late summer of 2001, Shandra Levy (sp?) went missing, and sharks off the Florida Coast were attacking people in the water. That was the news.

Just sharin'

the sentiment of a fellow Mississippian,

Marshall Ramsey.

Marshall's sentiment at the link.

Recipe: Deviled Round Steak and Variation

Mr. Big Food made the variation for me. I do not care for peas all that much.

This was last night's supper. After the steak is browned in the iron skillet, and the remaining ingredients added, it bakes for two hours, affording Mr. Big Food and I the opportunity to fix ourselves an adult beverage, move the little speakers to the patio, plug in the mp3 player, listen to some of The Redneck Collection, and chat about America & how glad we are we made the move to rural Mississippi & how funny the dogs are & this week's menu which begins tonight with an assortment of appetizers for supper.

BIG LIFE!

Recipe below.

Iron skillet

Yes. Yes. I'll clean the stove tomorrow.

And then you wait around for two hours while it bakes in a low temperature oven.

I didn't build that.

Someone else did that. Thank you, Someone Else!
~~
As long time readers know, Friday is 'Venture off The Farm, Go to Starkvegas Day.' And although it didn't work out quite as I had planned-- I was running behind and didn't get a single shot of Dunn (Main) Street-- I did manage to snap a photo or two of folks I want to thank for building my little corner of America.

Long layers, $9

All of the photos below were taken while I was driving. There is no Law against photographing and driving.

Stewart's Body Shop

We get the oil in the truck changed here. Clay is a good guy. When we got the new truck, and needed  a new hitch thingy, Clay turned us on to the 3-way hitch.

"The store" with a restaurant. I do not want to see the nutritional labeling on the menu.

Turner Fence

White's Welding. It gets hot in there in the summer what with all that welding.

Mary & Jesse White made the grills that began this blog.

Nu-Way Hardware is overpriced, but convenient. The folks are super helpful. One taught me how to snake a toilet.

Jim's Auto Parts is priced right. The folks at Jim's can convert British (English?) to metric.

Southern Belle is a T-Shirt company specializing in T-Shirts which appeal to Southern Belles.

I haven't even made it to the highway yet. ...

Recipe: Creative Cooking Chicken Salad with Bacon

Dang good food

for a Friday night supper.

I'm not kidding. This has got to be one of the best chicken salads I've ever had.

We substituted New Zealand Spinach-- which I picked after we got home from Starkvagas-- for iceberg lettuce, and used the California Red French Dressing Mr. Big Food had made a few days ago for the oil/vinegar the recipe called for. It was a meal.

A hearty, make-ahead dish, Chicken Salad with Bacon combines the meal’s salad, vegetable and meat courses in one bowl—so convenient for picnic or a quick luncheon dish.”—The Creative Cooking Course (1982)

And of course, cucumber and green pepper picked this morning.

Recipe below.

Recipe: Dilled Pot Roast

Last night's supper-- so I may update with a photo of leftover dilled pot roast.

This is a slow cooker meal, served over noodles. It cooks for 11 hours. At about hour #2 you can begin to enjoy what you'll be really enjoying later. 

Recipe below.

Recipe: Baked Lasagne Supreme

Sorry no photo.

This is one of the best lasagnes ever. Mr. Big Food substituted homemade Italian sausage for ground beef, and of course he used homemade stewed tomatoes rather that canned, and all fresh seasonings. If we were to have a lasagne contest, this would be my #1.

Recipe below.

Recipe: Zucchini Nut Bread

Zucchini nut bread-- without nuts-- slathered with cream cheese

This is one delicious zucchini bread! Quite different than the others we've baked in that it's lighter, both in color and texture. Perfect for a snack with a cup of iced coffee, as the recipe begins:

“Serve this marvelous bread in many different ways: hot with coffee for breakfast or a brunch, cold with cheese as a snack, at mealtime to children as a vegetable.”—Winifred Green Cheney, The Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976)

Recipe below.

Lima beans

Last evening as we were preparing a truly delicious-- and simple-- meal, I looked in the pantry and asked Mr. Big Food, "Do you know we still have dried lima beans from last year's garden?"

Mr Big Food responded, "Yes. Good thing, too."

~~

Via Instapundit:

CHANGE: Corn and soybeans hit record highs, stir food crisis fear. “Corn prices crossed into uncharted territory above $8 per bushel — about three-and-a-half times the average price 10 years ago of $2.28. Soybeans punched past $17 for the first time — also three-and-a-half times the 2002 average. Analysts said that while forecasts for continued dry weather are expected to sustain the rally, corn prices could be vulnerable to any move by the government to lower the amount of corn-based ethanol blenders are required to mix with gasoline. Even as chatter about a possible revision of the ethanol mandate has escalated, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the former governor of top farm state Iowa, has ruled out such a move.”

Related: World Braced for New Food Crisis.

The drought in the US, which supplies nearly half the world’s exports of corn and much of its soyabeans and wheat, will reverberate well beyond its borders, affecting consumers from Egypt to China.

“I’ve been in the business more than 30 years and this is by far and away the most serious weather issue and supply and demand problem that I have seen by a mile,” said a senior executive at a trading house. “It’s not even comparable to 2007-08.”

David Nelson, global strategist at Rabobank, added: “Today the [US crop] disaster is real, whereas to some degree the big run-up in prices in 2008 was speculatively driven.”

Oh, goody.

 It's not too late to think about putting in a fall garden. More here, and here.

~~

HOLY COW! IT'S RAINING!

File this under "Is There Anything 'Normal' about Missisippi weather'?"

For the third night in a row-- in JULY in MISSISSIPPI-- I've opened one of the Den windows.

And it rained!

Important Stuff

Rocky

Missy

And now... doggy nap time.

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi...

Poor quality photo. Sorry. She won't sit still in front of the camera and I have a hard time changing the settings in the dark.

Who here remembers the seat of your pants light speed to sound speed to distance conversion factor, with respect to lightening & thunder and miles?

See a flash. Start counting, "One Mississippi, two Mississippi... " Hear the thunder. The number of Mississippis you've counted to between the flash and the thunder = the number of miles away from the lightening strikes you are.

It's good enough for government work.

A nice storm rolled through here this evening. I had opened a window. We could see it coming.

One Missis...

BOOM.

Big Life. 

A Force of Character

While on a break from garden work, I came across this:

One of the many great things about Paul Johnson’s magisterial A History of the American People is that he begins that history in the Sixteenth Century. There was an identifiable, culturally distinguishable American People long before there was a Revolutionary War, a Constitution, or a central government. The American People, by their industry and ingenuity, didn’t just build successful businesses… they built the most successful nation in history — and all, somehow, without HUD, Fannie, Freddie, the EPA, OSHA…

[my emphasis]

From Andrew McCarthy's article up at PJMedia today. I don't know the book to which he refers (which was copyright 1985) but that second sentence reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from The Beards' Basic History of the United States (1944):

Years marked by wars, religious controversies and persecutions, political disputes, and royal despotism lay behind the decision to leave Europe and migrate to the English colonies. But there was something in the spirit of those who made the break-- a force of character not simply determined by economic, political, or religious conditions-- that made them different from their neighbors who remained in the turmoil and poverty of the Old World.

[my emphasis]

If I recall my basic population genetics correctly, we'd call this a 'founder effect.' Those with a force of character put an ocean between themselves and their weaker neighbors.

~~

By the way, you can purchase a used copy of The Beards' book for one red cent at Amazon. But don't get the one their son edited that came out in 1960 unless you want to see how easy it is to re-write history.

The sky is blue

and it was over 80 degrees-- in the shade-- before 8:30. We have yard/garden work to do.

We'll be taking a lot of breaks!

I FOUND IT!

Over a month ago, I realized I didn't know where my Little Orange Book was. I looked, I asked, and yes, I accused. Who would have stolen my Little Orange Book from me?

Today, I am pleased to report that my Little Orange Book has been found and retrieved from behind the bookshelf thanks to  

• large barbeque tongs (not pictured; didn't work), 
• a dry-wall square (not pictured; used to push it to the other side of the bookshelf where the gap is larger), 
• carpenters' square (lever to raise it to where the gap is large enough for my hand), 
• flashlight (obvious), and 
• if I do say so myself, 

some good old fashioned America ingenuity.

It's much oranger than it appears. (Photo taken with the camera I hate.)

Cooler Corn & Cardboard Cookin' / Let's Play Redneck

Two great ideas for when the lights go out, or when you just want to play like a Redneck. 

The first, Cooler Corn, comes via an email from Mr. Big Food's Dad who I think gets more emails each day than Mr. Big Food (who gets a lot). The second, Cardboard Box Solar Oven, comes from Anita Evangelista's Backwoods Home Magazine article, "How do you live without electricity?" (issue 73: Jan/Feb 2002).

Just add boiling water!

Call Me Pavlov

There are times I need them to calm down but don't want to restrain/restrict their movements too much. It's their attitude, not their behavior, I want to affect. And I want them to learn.

Toward this end, we've tried a number of behavior modifications treats things over these last few months. The one that works the best, and is currently in favor, is Chewies. Chewies are semi-squares/rectangles of rawhide, "processed in the USA or Mexico."

For BIG dogs

It's taken a couple of weeks, but when I now say, "Chewie!" they behave appropriately. Missy jumps up on the couch-- this is all taking place in the Den and it really messes them up when I give them a chewie in the living room-- and Rocky assumes the seated alertly position on the floor beside her. He's protecting her in a certain male-y sort of way.

Yes. That is a small bag of some Dollar General mid-priced puppy food. (It's funny to think them as puppies. But they still are.) That's not what they eat on a regular basis.

suek-- this is for you!