Thursday, July 25th - cook anything interesting today?

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pepperhead212

Master Chef
Joined
Nov 21, 2018
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Location
Woodbury, NJ
I'm almost out of all those leftovers, so I had to make some more! :LOL:

Tonight I made a one dish creole type meal; well, not really, since the veggies are cooked in a wok, and the BEPs are cooked separately, but it all ends up in one dish!

The first thing I did was I cooked some old black eyed peas, to use them up (they were dated 2015, and this shows how long beans last!). And I did what I do when cooking dal and other beans for salads, as it's easy to not overcook them - I use the slow cooker! Something told me to check early - after only 90 minutes - and they were done! I know they don't take as long as larger beans, but these were old! I rinsed them, and set aside.

I thawed 6 oz of cut up bacon, and put it in the Instant Pot on Sauté low, and stirred occasionally, while cutting up everything else - a pound of cremini, a medium eggplant, a medium green bell pepper, about 2 c of okra, about a cup of green beans, and about a cup of diced bottle gourds (just trying to use up all these veggies I had bits of). I also found any tomatoes that I had that had any bad spots, cut them out, and got about a quart of purée out of it, then rinsed the VM out with a little water, and this was set aside. The bacon was finished after all this, and I removed it to a PT on a plate, to drain. Then added a little olive oil to the IP, and a large chopped onion, cooked it about 5 minutes on Sauté medium, added 4 minced garlic cloves, some ground cloves, thyme, ground bay, some smoked paprika, a little ground Thai pepper (my cayenne pepper), and cooked about a minute or so, and stirred all that tomato purée in. Then I rinsed the last cup of brown rice I had, and set that to cook, while cooking the mushrooms in the wok - I first steam them 3 or 4 min, boil off the water, and add a tb of o, and cook them over medium heat, 7 or 8 min, added the okra and pepper, and cooked about 3 min, and set aside. When the rice finished, and the pressure had released, I opened that, stirred in about 1/4 c white vermouth, the veggies from the wok, and the cut up eggplant, bottle gourd, green beans, and cooked BEPs, stirred that up, added a little more salt and hot pepper, and let it simmer about 10 minutes, to finish.
The okra and bell pepper cooked briefly with the mushrooms, after they were almost done. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

All the veggies added to the cooked brown rice, along with some cooked black eyed peas. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Finished one dish Creole type dish, with bacon, cremini, okra, eggplant, bottle gourd, green beans, and black eyed peas. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
 
I went to a good friend's home to see her gardens and she is healing from a hip-back surgery. We spent the day painting together. I brought a cake/loaf raspberry walnut and tortilla pinwheels. Some of the pinwheels with whipped cream cheese spreads some with hummus. Peppers in many colors, matchstick carrots, zucchini, lettuce, rolled. Cut across they were beautiful, crunchy and creamy. We had russian dressing for dipping, but when I got home mr bliss was having some with notorious stir-fry sauce. I liked them plain. We might make more tomorrow or the next day because we really enjoyed them.
 
Pork meatball banh mi
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I finally got back to Dallas at noon, and my gate at the airport was right next to Pappadeaux restaurant. I could not resist. Catfish Po-boy. I could not eat the whole thing, but managed to eat more than half. I did not need anything for dinner.

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Yes, that is two big catfish filets on a NOLA bun.

CD
 
It wasn't very warm today, so I didn't think I wanted the broccoli salad that I had planned for supper. But, I looked at the can of Habitant pea soup and the jar of beef and barley soup and neither one appealed, even though I have enjoyed them in the past. I couldn't find either kind of lentil soup that I thought I had. So, I had a bowl of cereal, since I was tired and very, very hungry. I figured that would tide me over until I could come up with a better plan. Eventually I decided that the broccoli salad sounded pretty good, even if it was cool today. I tried a variation in the dressing. I used crème fraiche and white balsamic vinegar instead of mayo and apple cider vinegar. Turns out that there isn't a lot of dressing on this salad, so it really wasn't much of a difference. I made what should have been a single serving as a main dish. I have enough left to use as a side salad.

Broccoli salad with bacon sm.jpg
 
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I finally got back to Dallas at noon, and my gate at the airport was right next to Pappadeaux restaurant. I could not resist. Catfish Po-boy. I could not eat the whole thing, but managed to eat more than half. I did not need anything for dinner.

View attachment 70107

Yes, that is two big catfish filets on a NOLA bun.

CD
Now I got a hankering for catfish. It is difficult to find here without seasoning. I don't know why they are always preseasoned. Gives me the feeling that they are trying to cover something up.
Looks great casey, but I could do without the bun - just the fish and fries would be wonderful.
 
Short for a paper towel.

I just saw dragnlaw already answered this. So I'm not the only one that knew this. Sort of like the short for TP.

I see a lot of people were busy cooking last night!
The first time I saw TP - took me forever to figure it out! LOL! Context is your friend in most cases - don't think it would have been a PT boat (patrol torpedo, U.S.Navy) - I did have some Paisley Tissue, but that's wasn't very absorbent. :unsure: :-p
 
Around here, I actually see TP used in ads - I guess they're trying to cut down on their use of ink! Never see PT used in ads, though.

Remember PT 73?
 
Now I got a hankering for catfish. It is difficult to find here without seasoning. I don't know why they are always preseasoned. Gives me the feeling that they are trying to cover something up.
Looks great casey, but I could do without the bun - just the fish and fries would be wonderful.

You can get it that way, too. I go back and forth. I found a photo from the same place from a visit there last year...

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Just two massive pieces of fried catfish and fries.

I also make it at home, and have it with fries or some dirty rice. Here's my homemade version...

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CD
 
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