Month: November 2024

Hello! I’m presenting the last throwback “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe with a VERY SAD heart as this is the day that I discovered I’d lost TWENTY-SIX days of my NaNoWriMo writing, including everything I’d written about what was my current work-in-progress! Such a devastating loss, but there’s nothing that can be done about an inadvertent combination of keyboard strokes. So… I’m trying to move forward by distracting myself — first with a UK Men’s Basketball game and then with this final “Tasty Tuesdays” post of “NaNo-vember” 2024.

As I’ve done for the past three weeks, I am featuring a recipe that was first published in my LiveJournal. This week’s “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe is for “Homemade Refrigerator Pickles”, and it was published on the 31st of January 2017. And now, without further ado, here is that post in its entirety:

Tasty Tuesdays: Homemade Refrigerator Pickles

Location: my office

mood: 🙁 hungry

music: UK pre-game show on WLAP (Go, Cats!)

“Tasty Tuesdays” are back! I know… I know… I’ve said this before (even in the previous entry!), so we’ll see if I’m able to keep it up. I’m striving for more consistency when it comes to posting “Tasty Tuesdays” recipes in 2017.

While going through the produce drawers in my refrigerator, I came across some cucumbers. Unfortunately, a couple of ’em had gone bad while sitting there — forgotten and lonely. BUT a couple of them were still good! This discovery reminded me that today is “Tasty Tuesday Day”. This reminder led me to the decision to post the recipe why all of those cucumbers were in my produce drawers: Homemade Refrigerator Pickles !!

I love pickles, but NOT the price of ’em in the grocery store! So… I decided to make my own. After scouring the Internet, I came across one that sounded easy at the allrecipes.com Web site. I tried it once and loved it. Consequently, it has become my “go to” recipe for pickles. Hopefully, it’ll become your “go to” pickle recipe. (If it isn’t, I’d love to see your “go to” pickle recipe, so please leave it in the comments below.)

Without further ado, here’s today’s “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe:

Homemade Refrigerator Pickles

Ingredients

1 cup distilled white vinegar

1 tablespoon salt

2 cups white sugar

6 cups sliced cucumbers

1 cup sliced onions

1 cup sliced green or red bell peppers

Optional:

2 tablespoons mustard seed

1 tablespoon celery seed

Directions

1. Place the cucumbers, onions, and bell peppers in a large bowl, adding the optional ingredients if desired. Set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring vinegar, salt and sugar to a boil. Boil until the sugar has dissolved, about 10 minutes.
3. Pour the vinegar mixture over the vegetables. Transfer to sterile containers and store in the refrigerator.

Personal Notes:

• The moment when the sugar finally dissolves is almost magical! This is my favorite part of making these pickles, and it usually happens right when I’m about to give up on this batch of pickles.
• I generally use a couple of quart-size Mason jars. At this point, this is the extent of my “canning” skills. One of these days, this will change, but until then, I’ll continue “canning” my own pickles, using this recipe.

So, there you have it: a quick and easy way to “can” pickles! Unfortunately, my canning skills haven’t improved much since this post was originally published back in 2017. Since then, I managed to can some apple and grape jelly (from fruit I picked from a neighbor’s apple trees and grape vines), but I haven’t been able to harvest enough cucumbers to attempt canning a batch of pickles. So, yeah… I continue using this recipe for homemade refrigerator pickles. In fact, I think I’ve got a couple of jars of these pickles that need to be eaten soon!

As always, please take a moment to leave me a comment about your experiences canning/making homemade pickles. Looking forward to hearing from you!

P.S. UK Men’s Basketball won their game tonight against Western Kentucky University with a final score of 87-68! Go, Cats!

“NaNo-vember” continues, and so do the throwback “Tasty Tuesdays” recipes this month. In today’s post, I’m going to be featuring a recipe that was originally published in my LiveJournal on January 5, 2016.

Hmmm… I just a bit of quick figurin’, and I discovered that the recipe I’m going to feature in this week’s “Tasty Tuesdays” post was published exactly TWO weeks after I originally published last week’s throwback “Tasty Tuesdays”. I suppose I could make you wait two weeks for this recipe, but that would mess up my original plan for publishing these posts: every year since 2014. Consequently, I decided that I wouldn’t do that!

So… Without further ado, here is this week’s throwback “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe — and my 2016 post in its entirety:

Jan. 5th, 2016

A tasty way to start a new year!

location: In my office

mood: A bit frustrated

music: The hum of a dishwasher and country music in the other room

Since my old New Year’s Eve/Day traditions just wouldn’t work (for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into right now) this year, I’ve started searching (the Internet, of course) for some new traditions that would work! One of the traditions that I kept coming across was to eat “prosperous foods” — like the traditional Southern dish called “Hoppin’ John”. So, I decided to try it ON New Year’s Day!

The trouble was that I hadn’t decided soon enough. Consequently, I needed to find a recipe that used ingredients that I already had on hand. I thought I had the main ingredient — some black-eyed peas — on hand, and I was pretty sure I had the rest of the ingredients in the pantry as well. So… I wasn’t too worried, especially when I found a simple recipe that utilized one of my favorite kitchen appliances: my Crock Pot.

After a simple New Year’s Eve celebration (with another new tradition), I got up the next morning and set about assembling “Slow Cooker Hoppin’ John”, the recipe that I’ll be sharing with you for the first “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe of 2016. I wanted it to be ready upon my return from a third new tradition, my “First Day Adventure”, a hike at a local park that I visited once two summers ago and vowed to visit again.

Well… I didn’t get too far. When I went to retrieve the main ingredient, I COULD NOT find the bag of black-eyed peas that I thought I had in the pantry. After searching high and low for it AND doing a bit of thinking on the matter, I realized that I had probably tossed it because I wasn’t sure how long I’d had it. Probably not a problem given the fact that we’re talking about dried beans, but that decision left me without the main ingredient for my “prosperous food”!

Not willing to give up so quickly, I scanned the recipe’s list of ingredients and was relieved to find that I had every other ingredient for the “Slow Cooker Hoppin’ John”, except for the crushed red pepper which I wasn’t going to add, anyway, since my tummy doesn’t do spicy! Some quick calculations proved that I could start the “Hoppin’ John” once I got back from a quick trip to the grocery story AND my “First Day Adventure”.

So… Off I went! I decided to stop at the grocery store BEFORE I went on my hike because I figured that I might be too tired and/or forget to get the main ingredient — the black-eyed peas. Went to my local grocery store and purchased a bag of dried black-eyed peas since that’s what I had thrown away.

It wasn’t until I was taking a break midway through my hike that I realized cans of black-eyed peas might make the cooking of my “prosperous food” go faster, even though the original recipe called for dried black-eyed peas. With this thought in mind, I finished the hike (feet dragging as I neared the end of the trail) and then stopped at the first grocery store I saw on the way home. Well… I left empty-handed. The store didn’t have any cans of black-eyed peas. Hmmm… I have to take that back. They DID have cans of black-eyed peas — for $1.99 per can!

With canned black-eyed peas on my brain, I quickly grabbed two cans, and then I examined the shelf tags more carefully. The store brand was only $0.87, and the name brand was more than twice as much! At that point, the frugal side of me kicked in: “You’re going to pay THAT much for each can of beans? Are you crazy?! You’ve got the dried beans that the recipe called for in the car!” So… I put back the expensive brand-name cans of black-eyed peas.

However, I wasn’t ready to give up just yet! On my way back to the house, I decided to stop at my local grocery store, the place where I had purchased the bag of dried black-eyed peas before my hike. Since I hadn’t thought to check for cans of the main ingredient earlier, I wanted to see if that store had any cans of the store’s brand of black-eyed peas. Once there, I discovered the same situation, but because they were on the top shelf, I asked one of the employees if they had any.

He must not have heard me say “cans” because he went straight to the dried beans section. He was amazed, too. He said that he had a three-tier display of the bags of black-eyed peas, but they were all gone! (Guess I made the right decision to stop at the grocery store BEFORE the hike!) After that, I had him confirm that they didn’t have any more cans of the store brand (which were even cheaper at this store). They didn’t.

So… I went back to the house and got started on the recipe I’m about to share with you. Let me tell you, it smelled really good while it was cooking. After working up an appetite, I couldn’t wait for it to be ready to eat!

An now, without further ado, here is this week’s “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe for “Slow Cooker Hoppin’ John”:

Slow Cooker Hoppin’ John

Ingredients

4 strips thick-cut bacon, diced (I sacrificed the flavor a bit by using olive oil instead.)

1 small onion

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper (As I mentioned earlier, I omitted this ingredient.)

1 cup dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and picked over

1 (15-oz) can diced tomatoes, drained (Hmmm… I think I might have forgotten to drain the ‘matoes.)

1 1/2 cups long-grain rice (I believe I used brown rice instead.)

1 teaspoon salt

Preparation

1. Place bacon in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until just beginning to crisp. Add onion and cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Scrape bacon, bacon fat and onion into slow cooker. Add crushed red pepper, peas and 4 cups water (I used vegetable broth to give it a bit more flavor since I didn’t use the bacon.) and stir to combine. Cover and cook Low until peas are nearly tender, 3 to 4 hours. (I cooked ’em on High for 2 hours since time was of the essence).
2. Stir in tomatoes, rice and salt. Cover and continue to cook just until rice is tender and has absorbed all liquid, 1 to 1 1/2 hour. Fluff with a fork and serve.

Serves 6

So, there you have it: “Slow Cooker Hoppin’ John” AND the story behind it. I’m happy to report that it was delicious. The only trouble is that I’ve STILL got some Hoppin’ John left… four days later. Between New Year’s Day and now, I’ve had Hoppin’ John every which way, including Hoppin’ John burritos and Hoppin’ John quesadillas! I’d better have a VERY prosperous 2016 with the amount of Hoppin’ John I had for just little ol’ me!

I can’t remember how prosperous 2016 was for me, but I hope you enjoyed this throwback “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe for “Slow Cooker Hoppin’ John” AND the (rather long-winded) story behind it. If you know the recipes for other “prosperous foods”, please leave me a comment below. I’d love to see ’em!

As I mentioned in the first “Tasty Tuesdays” post of November, I’m going to be busy with NaNoWriMo, so I’m going back to the past for inspiration when it comes to these posts. In the previous “Tasty Tuesdays” post, I featured my first such post — one that was originally published back in 2014. For this second throwback “Tasty Tuesdays” post, I’m going to feature one that was first published in my LiveJournal on 22 December 2015. Here is that post in its entirety:

12/22/15

Food for a “winter picnic”

location: In my office

mood: goofy

Last week, I had made arrangements to get together with a family member, and it wasn’t too long before the topic of food arose. Tired of the usual fast food, I decided to indulge my love of picnics — even though it was almost winter!

So I promptly did some research (Thanks, Google!) to find out what kind of food would be appropriate for a “winter picnic” — and what wasn’t. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I needed to serve something hot. The trouble was I don’t have a Thermos, something most of the sites I visited recommended for serving hot food. Well… I decided to go for what I thought was the next best thing: a Crock Pot, especially since the one I’ve got has a locking lid AND my vehicle has an electrical outlet in it!

Once I’d decided to use a Crock Pot to keep the food warm, I then searched for an appropriate recipe. First, I checked my cookbook collection, but didn’t find anything that I though my picnic companion would like. At that point, I did another Google search. Thankfully, I found quite a few potential recipes, so the next step was to narrow down the choices. To do this, I looked at the lists of ingredients and selected the one for which I had virtually all of the ingredients in the pantry. And this recipe was…

Wait for it…

Betty Crocker’s Slow-Cooker Vegetable Minestrone!

Without further ado, here is this week’s “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe:

Ingredients

4 cups vegetable broth (which I used) or Progresso chicken broth (from 32-oz carton)

4 cups tomato juice

1 tablespoon dried basil leaves

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 medium carrots, sliced (1 cup)

2 medium celery stalks, chopped (1 cup)

1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)

1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms (3 oz)

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 can (28 oz) Muir Glen organic diced tomatoes, undrained (I used 2 14-oz cans of diced tomatoes that I already had in the pantry.)

1 1/2 cups uncooked rotini pasta (4 1/2 oz)

Shredded Parmesan cheese, if desired

Directions

1. In 4- to 5-quart slow cooker, mix all ingredients except pasta and cheese.
2. Cover; cook on Low heat setting 7 to 8 hours.
3. Stir in pasta. Increase heat setting to High; cover and cook 15 to 20 minutes longer or until pasta is tender. Sprinkle each serving with cheese.

Note: This recipe was tested in slow cookers with heating elements in the side and bottom of the cooker, not in cookers that stand only on a heated base. For slow cookers with just a heated base, follow the manufacturer’s directions for layering ingredients and choosing a temperature.

My Notes:

Although I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of slow cooker I’ve got, I just dumped in all of the ingredients (except the pasta and cheese, as directed) and mixed ’em all up rather than digging out the manufacturer’s instructions to figure out how to layer the ingredients.

As I was typing this post, I realized that I forgot to bring the cheese with me when I left the house, so I couldn’t “sprinkle each serving with cheese”. Good thing the cheese was “if desired”!

Regarding the pasta… I followed the directions by stirring in the pasta, increasing the heat setting and cooking for an additional 15 to 20 minutes longer. Had I been serving the soup right away, these instructions would have been fine. The trouble was I ended up not being able to serve the soup until almost six hours later!

At the end of the additional cooking time, I set my slow cooker to “Warm”, loaded it into my vehicle, picked up my picnic companions and finally arrived at a suitable park. When I took off the lid to unveil the main course of our picnic, I was dismayed to find that my Vegetable Minestrone looked more like a stew than the soup I was expecting to see! The pasta had absorbed most of the liquid, leaving very fat spirals and chunks of vegetables. It still tasted fine, but… The next time I make it (especially for a picnic), I’m going to pre-cook the pasta before I leave, pack it in a separate container, and then add it to the soup just before serving. I’m pretty sure that should alleviate the “very fat spirals” problem I encountered the first time I made this recipe.

In addition to the Vegetable Minestrone, I served grilled cheese san’iches (wrapped in foil to keep ’em warm), fresh fruit (apples and pears) with a caramel dip (Pears and caramel = an awesome combination!), and some frosted sugar cookies since we were getting together to do some holiday shopping. I’m please to report that my picnic companions enjoyed the food that was served. The only trouble was the weather… It’s hard to enjoy the food when there’s a cold wind blowing!!

As always, I’d love to hear how this “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe turned out for you. Please take a moment to leave me a comment about your experience with this recipe — or even a similar one, for that matter.

I hope that you’re enjoying these throwback “Tasty Tuesdays” recipes! Looking forward to hearing what you think about (1) my idea of going back to the past for inspiration and (2) this particular recipe, so please leave me a comment below.