I've Got Fishing Fever

Well, I've got the fishing fever! The weather has been warm here for the most part, take away the 20 mph wind gusts and we'd have some perfect fishing weather! DJ and I have decided that we needed to start getting some of our fish filets out of the freezer so we can make room for more! My niece has been begging me to go out fishing and help her bring in the big one! We took her fishing the first time last summer and she out-fished us and reeled in 15+ tiny sun fish all day! Now she's ready for the bigger fish! We thawed out some large mouth bass, and got to work on our own fish fry! That is one way to my heart! Take me fishing, let's fry up our catch and enjoy the company and outdoors--PERFECT DAY! So I'm going to share a homemade dipping sauce I made to along with our bass (the breading we used was store bought, but I have a recipe if you just want to do it yourself! Here's a little song by one of my favorites, Taj Mahal, about the fishing blues! Let's get started!!

Ingredients for tangy dipping sauce
1/2 c mayo
1/2 c sour cream
1/4 c Franks Red Hot Sauce
2 TB Horseradish (or spicy mustard...we used horseradish)
2 TB minced parsley (I used about 1 1/2)

You can find the recipe for the dipping sauce and breading for the fish at Frenchs.com

To make the sauce, all you need to do is mix all those ingredients together, cover and chill in the fridge until you're ready to use it!

To bread the fish, we mixed milk and one egg (probably a cup or two of milk), and then put the fish fry in a separate bowl. You'll want to coat the fish in the liquid mixture and then shake the fish fry onto each piece! We used one of our Tupperware bowls with a lid and it worked great! This is the fish fry we used!!

Once you have your pieces coated you want to make sure that your oil is hot enough to fry! We have a small fryer (Cool Daddy Elite) which is a perfect size for a couple of people! I highly recommend getting one if you like to do this sort of thing! 

Fish right out of the fryer! Looks like someone already took a bite ;)

Here it is all said and done! Sauce, fish and we whipped up a pasta side to go with it! 

Utterly delicious!! 

Fishing was always a part of my family! My Papa was the fisherman, and was always taking us fishing! I still love to go out fishing and think about him often when I'm out there! I know he's up there cheering me on when I reel in the big ones (and little ones)! I had such a great example growing up! So happy that I get to carry on his fishing legacy! It's in that way, I can still feel him with me. If you happen to not have a fisherman in the family, you can always go to the store and buy some fresh fish to use! My favorite place close by for fresh fish is always Reasors! They have always had a good selection, and everything looks delicious over in the meat section! Stay tuned for a yummy pasta dish! Until then....

~Happy Eating~

Cheese Meatballs

This recipe comes from my Grandma Hendrix's kitchen! All of my grandparents have passed on, but their recipes will hopefully always remain in the family and be passed on from generation to generation (I know we will never lose the memories of these precious people) ! I LOVE this recipe, and it was one of my dad's favorites growing up! DJ wanted me to title this blog, cheese meatballs on a pancake! We had a huge leftover pancake from breakfast, and he took the rice, meatballs, and cheese sauce on top of the pancake and loved it! I didn't try it, but he said it was fantastic! So if you feel like going out there, and trying something that doesn't seem to "fit" together, you might be surprised!! Alright, let's get started!!

Ingredients

1 lb hamburger meat (we used ground venison)

salt and pepper

1/4 c. catsup

1/4 c milk

1 c crushed cornflakes

You are going to mix all these ingredients together with your hands! Make sure the cornflakes get incorporated, they tend to want to group together in the bowl! 

The cornflakes covered up the rest of my ingredients...But this is right before it was all mixed together

Once you have it all mixed together, you're going to want to shape them in to meatballs and brown them on all sides in a skillet! Once they are brown place them in a casserole dish!

Now you're going to want to take 3 TB butter (melted), and add 3 TB of flour gradually to the melted butter over low heat. Slowly stir in 1 1/2 c milk and whisk everything together until it gets thick (when I say "thick" think egg nog consistency.)  

To this mixture you're going to add 1 tsp mustard, 1 c grated American cheese, and stir until the cheese is melted. Pour this over meatballs and place in 300 degree oven for 30 minutes! 

In about the last 15 minutes of cooking time you're going to want to make some white rice to serve with the meatballs! 

Once everything is finished cooking, put some rice in the bottom of a bowl and cover with the meatballs and cheese sauce--Serve and enjoy!

I have always loved this recipe and couldn't be happier that D loved it to so now I have someone to share it with! Remember to stay tuned for a fun recipe of southern fried fish and a homemade tangy dipping sauce! Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Swiss steak and challenge update!

This recipe came from my Mema's kitchen! It was my mom's favorite thing her mom cooked! There's nothing like cooking family recipes that have been passed on from kitchen to kitchen! Because I'm doubling up this post with a recipe and the photo challenge, let's get started!

Ingredients
1 medium onion-chopped
1 green pepper-chopped
Flour (for coating meat)
Round Steak (or venison hind steak)
Oil for pan
2 c chopped, peeled (or canned) tomatoes
Water-Just a small amount. We used less than a cup

This is VERY easy! To start out you're going to want to brown the onion and pepper in a skillet with oil. Once they are tender and browned, transfer them out of the skillet.

Beat the flour into your tenderized steaks, and brown the steaks in the skillet with a small amount of oil.

Cover the steaks with the peppers and onions and tomatoes and add the small amount of water.

The steaks are under there :)

Cover the skillet and cook until the steak is tender. To add some seasoning we used, Greek seasoning and salt and pepper (just a dash of each). Once your steak is tender you're ready to eat! YUM!!!

Delicious!

Okay, let's move on to the photo challenge this week (I cheated...again! Eeek! I have to stop doing that)!

Something you saw

What you did

Corner

Electric

Stripes

Landscape

Together

Last Sunday was my first day of "for real" hunting...and now I know that the animals don't always just go where you want them to! It was still fun to be out in the blind where the world was waking up all around us! You really can't beat spending time outdoors!! (My duck blind is out there...can you find it?)

Monday I got the fun opportunity to go with one of my best friends to look at a wedding location for her upcoming wedding this summer! This is a picture of where her wedding will be located, inside the Mayo hotel in Tulsa! Absolutely beautiful, and can not wait to share this experience with her! (The bride and groom stand at the stop of the staircase! How fairy tale is this??!!)

This is a picture of the corner of the bulletin board in our kitchen! I "try" to add what all is on the menu for the next couple weeks so I don't forget what all I buy ingredients for! Don't you hate it when you're down to the last of your groceries, but you can't remember all those cooking ideas you had before the grocery shopping took place :) or is that just me?

My electricity picture is of my Valentine lights I have hanging! Love keeping the home festive! 

My stripes came from a roll of wrapping paper I have stashed away! It's always a good idea to keep gift bags, tissue paper, ribbon, and wrapping paper around the house, you never know when you're going to need to rush out the door with the gift, and you realize you forgot something to put it in! I'm really bad at this...so I try to keep some on hand :)

Okay, here is where I cheated! Fridays picture was supposed to be landscape! Friday I was so sore from the gym I could barely hobble around, so I didn't move much! I knew the next day we were going hiking and fishing so I opted to just wait and get a truly pretty picture of landscape! But at least now because of the blog I can look through and remember that Friday=not moving, Saturday=fun in the outdoors!

My together picture is of a fire D built for us on our "private sandy beach" on Keystone Lake! We had a perfect little hole in the rocks, with "stone chairs" for us to sit on, and a nice sandy little area (our own private beach)! Absolutely perfect way to spend the day together! 

So there it is! Only 5 more days in January! So stay tuned for last of the challenge this month and a recipe tomorrow from my Grandma Hendrix's kitchen! Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Chicken and Rice Soup

I got a wonderful late Christmas gift from my mom the other day, which was a handwritten recipe book of some our family's favorite recipes! I was so excited to start cooking from it, and by the very next day we had chicken and rice soup for dinner! This recipe says, "Betty Hamilton's chicken and rice soup". Betty is a dear neighbor friend of my families! The first house they ever bought in Broken Arrow, Betty was their neighbor (I wasn't born at this time). Later, when I was in my 20's they moved back to the same house, and Betty was still there! She is such a sweet lady, and we absolutely loved her soup recipe! So let's get started on it!

Here is the recipe page with my mom's handwriting

Ingredients

32 oz Chicken Broth (more if needed...We FOR SURE needed more)

1 c chopped onion

2 c chopped celery

1 c grated carrots

1 c cooked rice (She prefers brown, or long grain and wild rice--we used long grain & wild)

1/4 tsp Cavender's Greek seasoning

1/2 tsp poultry seasoning

black pepper to taste

finely chopped cooked chicken (about 1 1/2 cups)

All you need to do is combine all these ingredients together (except for the chicken) until the veggies are tender and the rice is done. During the cooking time our rice about soaked up ALL of the chicken broth, I just added more until we had a desired consistency. Once everything is done, just add the chicken, and serve! It is truly THAT easy to make this soup! I'm not sure if it was the Greek seasoning, or the poultry seasoning, but it had a little spicy "kick" to it! Absolutely a wonderful and easy recipe! 

This is the Greek seasoning you're going to look for! At our Wal-Mart it was near the bottom with all the spices! I always like pictures of spices I'm going to hunt down because the sea of spices can get overwhelming!

This is the box of rice we got! It takes the whole box to make one cup! Cooking time is about 30-40 minutes! Keep a watch on it so you can add more broth accordingly!

Here it all is put together! YUM!

Stay tuned for a Swiss steak recipe from my Mema in the next couple days! 

Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Pork Tenderloin for dinner

Before our big outdoor weekend, we enjoyed a delicious pork tenderloin recipe from Chef Mommy. This was extremely easy to put together, and we added some cheesy rice and broccoli to serve as a side! I'm all for the recipes that you can throw together and tastes like you spent hours on it! I know I write a lot about the benefits of eating venison because it's healthier for you! On the same note, pork tenderloin is full of goodies that your body needs and loves! If you don't believe me, check out this information on Livestrong. Of course you're not going to want to take down the whole pound of tenderloin for yourself, but it's a healthy meal if you keep your portions adjusted! So let's get started with this recipe!

Ingredients
1/2 c olive oil
1/3 c soy sauce (you can use low sodium)
1/4 c red wine vinegar
Juice of a lemon
1-2 TB Worcestershire sauce
1-2 TB parsley
2 tsp dry mustard
pepper
4 cloves of garlic-minced
1 lb pork tenderloin

You are going to want to start out with the marinade for the tenderloin. Mix all the above ingredients together and place in a Ziploc bag with the tenderloin and place it in your fridge for 3-4 hours! (NOTE: SAVE 3 TABLESPOONS OF THE MARINADE AND SET ASIDE FOR THE PAN SAUCE) You can marinade overnight for extra flavor, just cover the extra marinade with some foil or saran-wrap!

Once you have left the pork in the marinade in the fridge for a few hours, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. In a skillet, you're going to want to sear the tenderloin on all sides. Place it in a pan and cook (uncovered) for 30-40 minutes. Once you pull it out of the oven allow it rest for up to 5 minutes before slicing it!

Now to make the pan sauce here are the ingredients you're going to need:

Pan scrapings from pork 

1/2 c chicken broth

2-3 TB marinade (the reserve)

1-2 tsp butter

Place the skillet over medium heat and add the chicken broth. This will loosen the scrapings from the bottom of the pan and stir together. Add the marinade and simmer for a couple of minutes. Then add the butter and you're done! I kept my skillet over low/medium heat until the pork was out of the oven and I was ready for it! Once your pork has cooled, and you have sliced the tenderloin (see the lines on the tenderloin in the picture above, just slice along the lines for perfect slices) pour the pan sauce over the tenderloin and you're done!! THAT EASY! This tenderloin was full of flavor and we will definitely be making it again soon! 

Tonight, I'm making a chicken and rice soup for us before D heads to work and I head off to a pampered chef party (woo-hoo)! Stay tuned for the recipe!! Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Challenge Update 1/21/2013

Well, we had a very fun and relaxing weekend! We went fishing (I caught a nice 4-5 lb catfish, he broke the line once I got him to the shore, and took off back to his water when D tired to catch him). I got to go out and sit in the duck blind for the first time! No ducks came, the only day this week they decided to go to another pond...thanks weather! However, it was fun to get to watch the world wake up around us, and I had great company with DJ there and our friend Jason! Hopefully next time we go I'll have something more exciting report about! The weather here in OK has been CRAZY!! It was beautiful and sunny and warm all weekend, and today we are back to bitter cold! (That's why they say here in OK, if you don't like the weather, just wait a couple hours!) This is going to be a very short and to the point post, and tomorrow, I'll share another recipe with ya'll!! Until then, here was my photo challenge this week!

Circle
Something yellow
An ordinary moment
Two things
Ready
Shadow
Delicious (Totally messed up the day on this one so I actually took the pic the day before)

This is a beautiful candle my sister gave me awhile back! It smells delicious (snicker-doodle)! I'm almost down to nothing, but I'm going to figure out something fun to do with it once I've burned it all! 

My something yellow was a half of a lemon I was squeezing into my glass of water! If you want to know how it can be important to drink lemon water check out this information on Water Benefits Health

This is my "ordinary moment" every morning! I get my coffee, sit down and catch up on the shows I missed the night before, and enjoy the moments of relaxation and quiet while D is still sleeping, and before I start thinking about what to make for our late lunch!! 

My two things, are two things that are always in our living room! D's ukulele and his guitar! Like I said in the last post, I always feel right at home with all this music around me! 

My "ready" photo, was a picture of my keys in the car ready to run to Wal-Mart to pick up some things we ran out of in the last couple of weeks! "Ready" to go!

My shadow photo was the shadow of some rails on a walk-way! All lined up so perfectly in the beautiful sunny skies this week! 

Here is my "mess up" day! I haven't shared this recipe with you yet (coming tomorrow), however I did snack on the leftover Saturday before we left for our outdoor weekend! My delicious pork tenderloin! Ya'll won't want to miss it!!

So to recap, here is what we have so far for January

Something New

Heart

The view from here

Movement

Mine

Street

Something beginning with "t"

paper

One o'clock

Water

Surprise

Circle

Something yellow

An ordinary moment

Two things

Ready

Shadow

Delicious

See you guys tomorrow for a delicious pork tenderloin recipe! Until then....

~Happy Eating~

Dangerously Delicious Pasta Bake

I love pasta. I love cheese. I love tomatoes. I love garlic bread. I love lamp. (JK) Well I guess with my mixture of Italian and Japanese background it would be only right to share with you this pasta bake right after we had an Asian dish! It was delicious!! Each bite was full of flavor and definitely made enough to go around!! I found this recipe on Tracey's Culinary Adventure (still absolutely LOVING all her recipes)!  So let's stop the chit chat and get right down to it!!

Ingredients
1 (28 oz) can whole peeled tomatoes
1 lb. Italian sausage (Casing removed) hot or sweet
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
3 C water
12 oz Ziti
1/2 c heavy cream
1 oz Parmesan cheese
Dash or two or three of parsley (flavor according to your liking)
4 oz Mozzarella cheese

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.

Add your can of tomatoes to a food processor and pulse about 10-12 times until all the large pieces are broken down and you have "tomato sauce".

Set a LARGE skillet on the stove over medium heat. Add the sausage (casings removed) and cook until no longer pink. All the while take a wooden fork or spatula and break up the sausage as you cook. 

The casings are still on in this picture. The easiest way to remove them (if you never have) is to take a small knife and slide it under the casing the whole length of the sausage. If you try and peel it off it can get messy and squishy (couldn't think of a better word lol). This way once you have a slit the entire length of the sausage you can just peel it back and it comes right off! 

Once the sausage is cooked, go ahead and add in the garlic and red pepper. Cook about 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until it gets fragrant (I promise this won't take very long)! 

Garlic-I can smell it cooking just looking at it

Stir in your tomato blend and salt. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. 

I threw in some green onion at the last minute! Added color and little pop of flavor! 

Once you have simmered this mixture on the stove, add the 3 cups of water and pasta to the skillet (I told you that you would need a BIG skillet)!! Cover and turn up the heat back medium and cook about 15 minutes! You are going to want to stir this frequently or else it will all start to stick together and to the pan!!

After about 15 minutes (I checked the pasta to see if was soft) you're going to want to add the heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. Stir this all together and season with salt and pepper. 

Heavy cream to help thicken the sauce

Okay, now if you have a skillet that is oven safe, you're going to want to top the pasta with Mozzarella cheese and place it in the oven for 10 minutes to bake. My skillet is NOT oven safe so I transferred mine to a baking dish, topped it with cheese and baked for 10 minutes! Threw in a couple slices of bread (in the toaster) to make garlic bread slices while the pasta was cooking! After the 10 minutes of cooking, your cheese should be melted and slightly browned on top! WARNING: this is a heavy dish and will make plenty! So, pace yourself!! I wanted to eat it ALL but also didn't want to wake up the next morning and only be able to fit in stretchy pants for the next few days! Moral of the story here: A small helping with go a long way because it's rich with flavor and the sausage adds some "meat" to any helping! (Sorry, no pun was intended there! That was cheesy (again sorry))!! Sheesh!! 

Pre-Bake

Right out of the oven

Ready to eat!

A good indication that it was delicious! 

Wiped the plate down with my last bite of bread (just in case you were thinking, Did she lick the plate clean?)

So, there you have it! A delicious weeknight meal that will last you and yours a couple of days!! Check back soon for a pork tenderloin recipe!! Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Soba Noodle Stir-Fry

Have you all been introduced to the 5,000+ recipes from Joy of Kosher? There are so many on there, I don't have time to sift through them all!! They have a magazine with great articles, a blog, and countless articles you can look through! I'm always a sucker for a good Asian dish, and came across the Soba noodle stir-fry and couldn't help myself! The only drawback I came across was that the amount of oil that goes into the vinaigrette, in my personal opinion was too oily. Next time we make it, I'm going to reduce the oil, you make it how you want to though! It still tasted great! Let's get started...

Ingredients
Vinaigrette
1/2 c rice vinegar
1/4 c soy sauce
1 TB minced ginger
2 tsp. sesame oil
1/4 c olive oil

Stir-Fry
1 TB canola or olive oil
1 carton fresh mushrooms sliced
1 TB minced ginger root
1 clove minced garlic
1/3 c green onions
2 TB tasted sesame seeds
salt & pepper
1 pkg. dried soba noodles

To start out, you're going to want to mix all the ingredients to the vinaigrette together and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large skillet and saute the mushrooms over medium heat. After a few minutes add a pinch of salt, the minced ginger root, and garlic and turn the heat to low and allow to heat through for a couple more minutes! By this time. you should be smelling the ginger and garlic aromas throughout the whole house! YUM! Stir in the pepper, 3 TB of the vinaigrette, and I added some green onion just because! Mix all this together and turn off the heat!

Cook the noodles according to the package directions (it took about 3 minutes once we added the noodles to the boiling water). Drain the noodles, run cold water over them and add them to a serving bowl.

Mix in the stir-fry and the remaining vinaigrette and garnish with the sesame seeds! Not too much work goes into this delicious meal, and the best part is you can eat it hold or cold. Either way tastes great, so you can make this ahead of time then pop it in the fridge and serve it later!

Stay tuned for some delicious baked ziti pasta, and until then...

~Happy Eating~

Sausage Biscuit Sandwich for Breakfast

One of my favorite sites to look through is GameandGarden.com. Stacy does a wonderful job explaining through photos and videos how to cook fresh meals for your family. If you have a hunter in the family, or you have your own garden where you grow fresh produce, she's your gal!! She has cookbooks and we first discovered her doing a segment on the outdoor channel! We tried her venison breakfast sausage (ours was already made, she explains how to make your own), and homemade biscuits! You can of course use regular pork sausage if you don't have venison ready in your freezer! Venison is a much healthier less greasy alternative to pork sausage! You actually have to add a little oil in the pan because you hardly get any grease off the meat! We love venison in our house, but if you don't have a hunter then of course you can substitute in the meat you do have. We made her biscuits quite a bit smaller than a regular biscuit because D loves to make sandwiches with just about anything! So to make it easier on us to eat, we made them thinner so we could easily eat them as a sausage biscuit sandwich!  You can find her recipe here, on her brand new updated site (it's really beautiful and easy to navigate)! So let's get started!

Ingredients
3 c of flour +some for dusting
1 TB Baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 stick (1/2 c) butter
3 TB shortening (cold)
1 c buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Mix all your dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Cut the butter into small, pea sized pieces and add them to the dry mixture. Work it all together until it resembles oatmeal texture. Be careful to not overwork the butter into the dry mix because it can alter the outcome of your biscuits!

After the butter has been integrated into the dry mix, add the buttermilk into the mixture and mix well. Place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out until it is about 1 1/2 inches thick. Cut into rounds (I couldn't find a circle cut, however I did find a nice flower shaped cookie cutter that worked just fine), and place onto a greased cookie sheet!

Make sure the biscuits are touching when you add them to the sheet.

If you are making "thicker" biscuits, make a thumb print in the middle of each

biscuit to ensure they rise properly. 

Place them in the preheated oven for 10 minutes then brush the tops with melted butter, and bake for another 10 minutes (20 minutes total). While the biscuits were cooking DJ made sausage patties on the stove top! Once everything was finished we put them together to make our breakfast sandwiches and thoroughly enjoyed our homemade biscuits and sausage!! Her recipe is easy, and delicious, and puts making "Bisquick" biscuits to shame! 

Incredibly delicious!! You can even freeze them and pop them in the microwave to re-heat for an easy on the go breakfast!! 

I hope ya'll go check out Stacy's site! She has a flavor boosting herb butter that we can't wait to try on some of our dishes!! She'll give you tips on gardening, hunting (along with some videos from her and her husband), cooking, beekeeping (would LOVE some fresh honey with these biscuits), and sustainable living tips!! We will be all over her fish recipes this spring/summer when we get back out to the lakes and ponds with our fishing poles!! She also has a Facebook page you can follow, which you can find here. Go give her page a like and follow her work, I promise you won't be disappointed!!

Until next time...

~Happy Eating~