When the Beast is Too Much

Five pounds of chuck roast between 3 people can mean a whole lotta leftovers.  I really didn't want to freeze it & it wasn't really flavored right to turn it into shredded bbq beef sandwiches. Hmmm...what to do? 


In short, I threw the leftover meat, veggies & all of the broth into a pot. I squeezed out all the roasted garlic that had been in with the roast, added 2 cans of petite diced tomaotes, a can of black-eyed peas, 1 cup frozen corn, 1/2 cup frozen peas & heated it all up. I know Martha would grow & dice her own tomatoes, corn, & peas & probably would never consider a can of beans. But I've spent years trying to be Mary in a Martha world. Finally, medication has solved that for me! hahahahaha...I don't have to be Martha anymore. I'm not quite Mary either, but I float somewhere in between & my family seems to be good with that.


As usual, I digress.  Anyway, my boys loved the soup.  My son said, "That's some right tasty soup, Mom!"  Hubby had just started coming down with a cold, so it was just what he needed.  Today, I divided it into 1 cup portions in freezer storage bags, labeled them and laid them flat in the freezer for a future hot meal.


What do you do with your leftovers?  Please share!

California Dreamin'

I just returned from a vacation of self-indulgence.  I left my boys behind to go visit my sister-friend in Southern California.  It was a much needed vacation from reality - a respite to recharge.  I went with the intention of doing absolutely nothing & I believe I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.  

Source | Author Screaloc | Date | Permission | other_versions- cc-by-3.0 Category:San Clemente, California.

We drove down to San Clemente to spend the night at their beach house where I did a whole lot more of nothing.  In the morning I cooked one thing - a half-hearted egg sandwich for her hubby while she ran off to do some work.  That was it. Nothing fancy - probably barely edible & without an ounce of enthusiasm.  All I wanted to do was nap & read.  I read all my favorites - Bon' Apetite, Cooking Light, & Food & Wine. Piles of articles on my favorite subject & boy did it ever get my brain fired up!  

Needless to say, after 5 days of no cooking, I couldn't take another minute of it.  As soon as I landed, I headed for the grocery store to pick up some yummies.  I ended up with a roast & veggies. While Arizona is nowhere near claiming fall is in the air, all the magazines have these delicious comfort foods on the cover so I was ready for a fall meal.  For me it was all about the chuck roast.  So here's my version of it. Give it plenty of time to cook! Rushing it will only render a chewy slab of meat. Cook it on a low temp & plan to wait a while to eat. 

Heidi's Roast Beast

5lb chuck roast

kosher salt & freshly ground pepper (remember the mortar & pestal)

olive oil

2 bulbs garlic

2 sweet onions

3 carrots

1lb of mushrooms

1 cup red wine

1 cup beef broth

fresh thyme

Preheat your oven to 300. Salt & pepper your beast & set it aside to come up to room temp while you prepare your veggies.

On a medium flame, place a large stainless steel skillet (because a large cast iron skillet is still on my dream list) & drizzle your olive oil around the pan. I love olive oil so I tend to use maybe 2-3 Tbsp. I don't really know because I've never once measured it. :)  While the oil is warming, peel & quarter your onions & put them in the skillet to caramelize.  Now's a good time to go ahead & get your garlic ready too.  I like to have the buttery deliciousness of roasted garlic so I just cut off the top & put the whole bulb in there. In hindsight, I wish I had done 3 bulbs instead of two.

I put my onions & garlic in both at the same time. Try to keep the onions together as best you can and brown them on the cut sides. This helps the caramelizing process & flavors the oil at the same time. Sprinkle just a touch of kosher salt in there too.

While the onions & garlic are doing their thing, get your mushrooms ready. I had baby bellas on hand so I just dusted them off, cut them in half  & tossed them in the skillet. 

Next, cut your carrots into large chunks. I like to cut mine on a bit of a diagonal to be able to get more surface area in contact with what will soon be deliciously flavored oil. 

Speaking of deliciously flavored oil, I found my new favorite store while I was in San Clemente. It's called Oliver's Olive Oil and Balsamic Tasting Gallery. OH. MY. GOODNESS.  I was only in the store a couple of minutes because we were waiting for a table at the restaurant next door.  But a couple of minutes was all it took to fall in love.  On my way out the door, Julie gave me a sample of her favorite balsamic - Fig Balsamic Vinegar - Italy.  Dreamy.  Absolutely dreamy.  I'm going to have to order it on line because I didn't make it back in time to buy any. I emailed them the next day to see if I could do so & what kind of Olive Oil was Julie's favorite since she was right on with the vinegar. So, I'll be ordering the Fig Balsamic & the Meyer Lemon Olive Oil - California. They also have an Olive Oil Club, plus in Nov & Dec they offer free shipping!  Mmmmm....I can't wait.  

So by now your onions/garlic are beautiful, but the mushrooms still need some time to get their juices flowing. Go ahead an plate your onions before they get too brown.

Let the mushrooms cook to until beautiful then add the carrots, browning them to perfection as well. 

After all your veggies are gorgeous brown & you've pulled them out of the skillet, it's time to sear the meat.

Turn the heat up on your skillet so when you get a nice sizzle out of it when you put the meat in. At this point, your meat's been sitting there for a half hour or so, coming up in temperature just a bit. This will help keep the temperature of the oil from dropping too much in the searing process. 

When the meat is seared nicely on each side, remove it and put it in a large pot. If you're lucky enough to have a cast iron Dutch Oven, you don't have to do this process. You'd be able to do all these steps in one pot.  For me though, I'm still dreaming of those days so here's what I do. I put it in a pot so it's hugged on all sides.

With all the goodness that's been happening in that skillet, it would be a shame for it all to go to waste. So keep the heat on that skillet and pour in the wine.

This will sputter a bit, but it will help get all those tasty little brown bits off the bottom of the skillet. I'm quite fond of them! LOL, pun intended.  "Fond" is French for bottom and the process is called deglazing.  I use a whisk to scrape it all up. Once this is done and the wine has cooked down a tad, I add the beef broth & toss in the thyme.

Now put your veggies on top of your meat and pour the juice over the whole thing. Put the lid on in and slide it into your oven.

In about 4 hours you'll have a roast to die for.  I served mine with mashed potatoes & steamed asparagus (which I left in a little longer than planned.)  Still, it was all delicious and my boys were happy to have me home again.  I was back!  Doing nothing is great and a much needed break. But feeding the ones I love is what I'm all about!  Enjoy!

Teasing the Appetite

First of all - thank you SO MUCH for taking time to read my incessant chatter!  I hope you enjoy. Please let me know if you have any favorite party foods you'd like to share. I'm always up for new ideas!


My sweet husband just turned 50 over the weekend. While I wish I had pictures of all the food in the making & on the service counter when it was all done, I don't.  I will give you the recipes though because they were really yummy.



We had Stuffed Jalapenos, Stuffed Dates, Smoked Ribs, Grilled Chicken, Carne Asada, Firecracker Cranberry Beans, & Cole Slaw.

Stuffed Jalapenos
24 jalapeno peppers, whole
12 oz breakfast sausage
1 8oz pkg cream cheese, room temp
2 cups Parmesan, grated
1 cup cheddar, shredded

Cut peppers in half, deseed & devein. I wear gloves when handling jalapenos because I wear contacts too. It never hurts taking them out, but the next time I put them in I may as well be jamming a hot fire poker into my eye. Capsaicin is the active ingredient in chili peppers & they mean business when it says "active". I love how Wikipedia says it can be an "irritant" to mammals, including humans. HA!

The Capsaicin Molecule even looks like an irritant!

Cook the sausage in a skillet, making sure to crumble it really well. Drain the fat and set aside to cool. Once it has cooled, add to it the cream cheese & the shredded cheeses and mix together.
Because I still have gloves on, I just use my hands to mix these together. That way too, I can easily pack them into the peppers - again protecting my eyes in the long run!  Put them on a sheet pan with a lip so it doesn't make a mess in your oven.

Once you've got them all stuffed and ready to go, pop 'em in a preheated 350 degree oven and let 'em bake until the cheese melts and they start turning a golden brown.  I often make these up a day ahead.  They're done in about 20-25 minutes.

Stuffed Dates

1-2lbs of dates

4lbs bacon, cooked

1 cup bleu cheese

Now this is one sticky, gooey, time consuming job. For all you moms out there, consider it like having a baby. Once the baby is born you've forgotten the pain of contractions. Once these little treats come out of the oven, you'll forget the amount of time they take to make.  Plan to do them at least a day in advance & get a friend to help you, perhaps have on hand a nice bottle of Reisling to share. Before you know it, they'll be all wrapped up and ready for the oven.

I cooked the bacon a couple days ahead of time, storing it between layers of paper towels.  Place the bacon strips on 11x13 stoneware bar pans & put them in a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes.  Doing it this way allows the bacon to stay flat while it cooks & gives me time to do other stuff too. (Can you tell I'm a multi-tasker?) It's ok if the bacon doesn't cook fully. You don't want it to get crispy at all. If you like, you can buy precooked bacon, but for the money it was easier to do it myself.  The trick when it's done is not to go hog wild with BLT's because tomorrow you're going to need to wrap the dates.

Now, on to the sugary little gems we know & love. Dates are an ancient food that have been around since prehistoric Egyptian times.  They also are considered a stone fruit, which puts them in the same family as avocados.  While they have little vitamin power, they are loaded with iron & fiber. But who am I kidding?  There's bacon & bleu cheese in them thar dates!!! Any health value they have will soon be out the window. (Though I have another, healthier version on the way.)

Gently slice your gems down one side & pop out the pit. Stuff it with the bleu cheese before handing it off to your friend, whom you've bribed with a bottle of wine, to wrap it with a strip of bacon, securing it with a toothpick.  Make sure it's someone you trust - after all, they're sitting there with 4lbs of cooked bacon & a pile of toothpicks. You never know what that much bacon may cause a person to do! Mmmmmmm...bacon. (drooling on the keyboard)  I do encourage you both to maybe drop one or two that have to be eaten immediately to live within the 5 second rule. ;-)

I stored them overnight in a storage bag in the fridge. After the guest of honor arrived, we put them on a tray heading into the 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.  Trust me, people won't give them time to cool off before they are gone. 


Alright, that will get your party started. My next post will have the meat rubs & marinades. Have a blessed day & feed the ones you love!

Breakfast of Champions

I don't know about you, but I LOVE breakfast! Without question, it is my favorite meal of the day.  Plus, once again I have bread that needs a job, so I decided to put it to work. While I am not a fan of French toast, my boys love it. Since it's my hubby's 50th birthday week, I decided to make him something he loves for breakfast on his work-from-home day this week. French toast it is then. 

The thing about French toast is that you've got to take your time. Low & slow, baby. Low & slow. Everything - from the very beginning has to be done slowly if you want the absolute best, most delicious results. Now, I tend to plan for 1 less egg than the number of slices of bread I intend to cook. In this case it was 4, so I used 3 eggs. Add to that a 1/3 cup of 1/2 & 1/2 (that's what I used anyway because it's what I had on hand), 1Tbsp of sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla & a sprinkling of cinnamon.  I use a deep dish pie plate because it's the perfect size for my family.Whisk it until it's well blended.


OK. French toast on the way for my men. My son offers to cut up a banana for me. Oh! Sure, that'd be great! Thanks for offering. Then he wants to know where's the preserves & where's the peanut butter. Huh? OH riiiiiggghttt... He's not forgotten the recipe from one of his kid cookbooks. Let me tell you, this is a French toast I can sink my teeth into!


As you can see, I have 4 slices of that beautiful bread my child made. I used the one with sugar sprinkled on the top, for obvious reasons.  Now, get some peanut butter, bananas, & fruit preserves. Make yourself a pbutter/banana/jam sandwich. My son likes strawberry preserves the best, my hubby had guava preserves on his.

After you've peanut buttered, banana'd & jellied your bread slices, slap 'em together  and put the whole sammich in the egg mixture.

WAIT! Don't just flip it over. Let it sit for 5 minutes or so. Then, ever so gently so as not to spill out the deliciousness, turn it over and let it soak  a bit. You can save time if you can put both sandwiches in at once and let them soak up all the goodness. 

While the bread is taking a bath, put your griddle on a very low heat to begin warming up. Add to it a light coat of vegetable oil - maybe a Tbsp, but be sure it spreads evenly over the surface of the pan. Once the second side is pretty well soaked, most of the egg mixture should now be part of the bread. Very carefully lay it on your pre-warmed griddle. Any egg mix that's left in the pie plate, can gently be poured on top of the toast to soak up the last little bit.

VERY LOW heat

The trick is to keep it low, cook it as slow as you can. It requires patience - trust me this is not my best attribute. 

This may take a little bit, but don't walk away. Wash some strawberries or prep your favorite fruit & get it on your plate. In about 5 minutes, you're going to need to turn it over and slowly begin the other side. Once you've flipped it over (again, carefully) watch it to be sure it's cooking slow enough that the bread begins to puff up a little bit & stops looking wet.


When it's golden brown on both sides, put it on the plate, drizzle a little bit of REAL maple syrup (not that corn syrup/water kind),  & give it a dusting of powdered sugar.

Your family's going to LOVE it! Even if you don't like French toast, you've really got to give this a try. It is fabulous!!!


Have a beautiful weekend!  Eat some fresh food & enjoy the process of feeding the ones you love!  

After the Bread is Made

So before the bread is gobbled up, let me show you what we did with it. First of all, and most importantly was the torturous 20 minute wait between the time that the loaves came out of the oven and the husband got home from work. We stood salivating over them, dreaming of how delicious they were going to be, my son begging me to just cut off the end so we could taste the glory of it. "Nope. Got to wait for Dad to get home. It's his birthday week. It wouldn't be fair."  (more begging and pleading) We waited. A long wait.

The wait was worth it. He loved the surprise, loved hearing the tale & loved - most of all - that we waited for him and that we all shared the moment together. Holy moly! It was good.  So we each had a couple of slices.

To me, that was dinner. But a couple hours later, there was grumbling among the troops about hunger. I really didn't want to cook, but I had taken some chicken tenders out of the freezer that morning so I pressed on. I figured I'd just cook them, no frills, so the boys could eat.

I dragged myself to the kitchen, put my grill pan on the stove, half-heartedly drizzled olive oil into the pan (a couple laps around the pan) & pulled out the chicken. While the oil was waking up, I sprinkled a pinch of dried basil, a pinch of oregano, a little kosher salt & some freshly crushed black peppercorns that were standing by in my mortar & pestle. If you don't have one, please invest. They bring all kinds of things to life. I have two & I use & love them both.

I scrounged around the fridge and found half an onion, saw the mushrooms & thought I may as well throw them in there too. Hey! I still have roasted tomatoes! Mmmmmm...now the creative juices are flowing & I've forgotten I had decided not to cook that night. Once the desperately dried spices were somewhat rehydrated by the oil, I threw in the other veggies. By the way, those crunchy little herbs could have come back to life if I had decided to crush them in my mortar & pestle to bring their oils out - but remember I "wasn't cooking tonight" when this all began.  After the veggies had sweated like they'd been running in the Arizona heat,

 I added the chicken tenders and put a lid on the whole shabang - although not a tight lid since I was putting a round lid on a square pan.

So I let this cook until the chicken was done & everything was nice and juicy.  It took maybe 15 minutes - the longest part of the whole process. During all of this, I had put salted water on & dumped some rotini in to cook. Now normally I follow the Alton Brown rule that "water brings nothing to the party" but again - when I started, I "wasn't cooking." I usually cook pasta, rice or anything else possible with chicken stock instead of water. Make your own, it's easy, delicious and you know what's in it! Watch for a later post. Anyway, back where I started. Add the rotini to the chicken & veg & turn off the fire.

Toss it around really good until everything is beautifully coated in the juicy goodness in the pan. Now, just because I love it, I added a little pat of butter to the top and let it melt away while tossing.

Then dish it up, sprinkle some feta on top, slice up another piece of the bread you made earlier (I used the one I had topped kosher salt & garlic.) Bon' Apetite! Dinner, I wasn't going to cook done in less than a half hour. Probably would have taken less time if I hadn't stopped to photograph every step! HA!

Let me know if you try it and what you think!  Thanks for stoppin' by!

Science is Delicious!

I'm off on a new adventure this year. We made to decision to homeschool our son. Now, I've heard all kinds of responses to this from "Good for you!" to "homeschooling is for religious zealots." I'm well aware that there's much passion over the subject on both sides. Right now though, let's just pretend we all agree so we can get on with the subject at hand. SCIENCE.
Science unlocks a world of mystery. There’s nothing quite like watching the lights go on in the eyes of your kid. As if that’s not cool enough, making a science experiment delicious is icing on the cake - although I’m not talking about cake today. Today, it’s the wonderful world of bread.

Oh my goodness, the smell of bread baking in your home is out of this world! Sure, there are candles that supposedly smell that way, but they gag me. There is really no way that smell can be created any other way than the fantastical experience of making it yourself. However, trying to get a 10 year old boy interested in such things is a bit more of a challenge. Today, I was determined we were going to make science happen in the kitchen. “Mom, what has making bread got to do with science?” Oh kiddo, making bread is all science. You just wait & see!

I decided to use a tried & true recipe from one of my favorite old coloring cookbooks, The Vegetarian Epicure Book 2, by Anna Thomas. This book has been through the ringer in my house. In a different version of myself 15 years ago, I was a militant vegetarian with an axe to grind. (Not that I have any issues with vegetarians, it's just that I was a bit of a handful.) I’ve mellowed tremendously since those days, but 5 ½ months into pregnancy that I stepped back over to the dark side & started eating bacon. That’s a whole other story in itself. I do tend to ramble along the way, but I’ll try to stick with the story of the today.

Anna's recipe is beautiful, simple, delicious, & has never failed even me. The magic starts with 2 pkgs of yeast and a 1/3 of a cup of warm water. Let them sit quietly while you put 2 cups of milk into a pan for scalding. See, kid? Two steps in & we've got TWO kinds of SCIENCE happening!


Saccharomyces cerevisiae — baker's yeast. by Bob Blaylock

The first is the yeast & warm water - remember a week or so ago when we were talking about the Fungus Kingdom? Yeast is a fungus that makes bread rise & the action begins in the warm water. Be careful! Too hot and you'll kill those poor little self-reproducing spores, but too cold and they'll stay sleeping in their dormant state. SCIENCE!

The second is scalding milk. If you didn't scald the milk, the whey protein in the milk would weaken the gluten, & that's no bueno. (Whey protein is the name of globular proteins that can be isolated from whey. It is typically a mixture of globinstagers beta-lactoglobulin (~65%), alpha-lactalbumin (~25%), and serum albumin (~8%), which are soluble in their native culture forms, independent of pH. - says Wikipedia) The scalding process breaks down the whey protein so your bread has no issues rising. SCIENCE!

Once you've got your scalded milk off the heat, pour it into your mixing bowl, add 3TBSP butter, & 2TBSP of sugar & let it sit to cool. While it's cooling, get 7 - 7 1/2 cups of flour into another bowl & add 1TBSP of salt to it.

When you are absolutely certain the milk is cooled to lukewarm in temperature, add the yeast. Which by the way, my son took one look at & freaked at how big the yeast had grown! Ahhh...visible science!

With an electric beater, mix into the milk/yeast combo 2 cups of your flour salt combo using a low speed on your mixer until it is nice and smooth. Being an egg bread, of course we'd be remiss to leave them out. So you'll need 4 egg yolks & 1 whole egg, lightly beaten together. Reserve 2 TBSP of the beaten egg mixture & add the rest to the batter. Beat again until smooth.

Then gradually add enough flour to make a stiff dough. When the dough is too stiff to be stirred with a spoon, turn it out onto a well floured surface. Knead 10 to 15 minutes, adding more flour as necessary, until the dough is smooth & elastic.

Form the dough into a ball & put it in a large, buttered bowl, turning it over once so it is coated on all sides. Cover the bowl with a towel and put it in a draft free place until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours.

Punch the dough down & cut it into 2 pieces. Pat each piece into a smooth oblong, about 14" long and 6" wide. Slice the oblongs into 3 even strips, leaving them connected at one end. Starting at the connected end, form a thick braid, tucking under the last bit and pinching it to the others.

Place the braids in 2 buttered medium-sized loaf pans.Cover the loaves lightly with a towel & let sit for 30 minutes or until about 1/2 again as large. Now here I changed things up a bit. The recipe says to add 1tsp cream to the reserved egg & brush the loaves with it, which I did. But then, to one loaf, we sprinkled the top with kosher salt and garlic powder. To the 2nd loaf, we sprinkled a bit of sugar. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 for 45-50 minutes. I have Stoneware loaf pans, so I baked mine at 350 instead. They took right at 45 minutes.

Speak Softly & Carry a Big Knife

Ok, maybe that's not really the way it goes. Teddy Roosevelt uttered the West African proverb in the early 1900's.  At the time he was the governor of New York but by the time he was thrust into the presidency that phrase would become a trademark description of Roosevelt’s foreign policy. The whole proverb is actually "Speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far."   Still, I’m not here for the politics. I’m all about food, so I’m talking about the big knife.

The most common misunderstanding I see in the kitchen is the idea that the big sharp knife is the dangerous one, hence it always stays sharp because people have unfounded fear of using it. The large knife gets a bad rap, much the way a rottweiler is a "bad dog." The truth is, a small dull knife is the most dangerous one in the house. Pair that with your favorite glass cutting board and you may as well go ahead and make a reservation in the ER.

WRONG knife for the job.

Right knife for the job.

The trick is to keep the blades sharp and to use the right size knife for the job. I am a knife junkie. For me personally, the smallest I can even stand to work with is an 8" chef's blade. I do love my little paring knives for small, quick jobs like topping off strawberries or coring tomatoes. I would never consider a knife that small to do any kind of chopping, yet I’ve seen people do it. SCARY.

My babies.

Another important tip about cutting things is always giving yourself a flat surface.  If you’re dicing potatoes or onions or a myriad of any other roly poly veggies, it’s best if you cut them in half and lay them flat side down to dice them into small pieces. Roly poly slicing is another way to get to know your local ER staff.

You also need a few really good cutting boards.  Make ‘em BIG!  Give yourself plenty of room for makin’ a mess.  Give meat & veggies each their own boards. My veggie board is bamboo. My meat board is polypropylene. Bamboo can be soaked with vinegar to kill bacteria. The meat board can be bleached or go in the dishwasher.  Never bleach a wood board & if you put it in the dishwasher, you may just hear it crying. Please don’t (ever) use a glass cutting board. They’re dangerous & they’ll dull your blades.

Lesson of the day?  Don’t fear the big knife!  Treat it with kindness and love. Keep it sharpened & use a nice BIG cutting board.  I don’t know much about the “speak softly” part of that proverb. I’m kinda obnoxious and loud. But most definitely - carry a Big Knife!  

Now how ‘bout some choppin’ practice?

Michael’s Favorite Salad

1 head green leaf lettuce
1 head romaine lettuce.
1 red onion
3 stalks celery
strawberries (however many you like - we like a lot!)
1 Granny Smith apple
1 Pink Lady apple (or Gala if Pink Lady isn’t available)
handful of crumbled feta

Chop Chop!!!

I'll have him make up a batch of his yummy dressing tonight and this time we'll actually measure the ingredients so we can teach others how to make it too. Keep an eye out for it!

Thanks for stopping by!!! Peace out!