Friday I am preparing a meal for my daughter and her children.  Her small request was just chicken ‘n’ pastry and then she added greens and then I added fried chicken.  The menu has really grown and to my shock, I am looking forward to preparing the food.  She offered to help me, but I told her I would do it.  I know that I will be preparing for at least 8 people, 4 adult eaters and 4 children.

The menu:  chicken ‘n’ pastry

cornbread dressing (not a mix-made from scratch)

turnips w/mustard and turnip roots

fried chicken (wing pieces)

rice w/gravy

cranberry sauce (if I do not forget it)

watergate salad

If anyone wants dessert, they will just have to eat more of the main course unless I change my mind.  Coconut pie is sounding pretty good.

This will not be bad for me to prepare alone.  I can prepare the stewed chicken, dressing, turnips, and watergate salad ahead.  Turnips and salad probably on Tuesday or Wednesday, stew the chicken and bake the cornbread and mix the dressing on Thursday.  That will make the finishing up on Friday easy-peasy.

Would you like to join us–give me a call if you would, want to have enuff food for all.

Plans for Saturday–meeting new people and an oyster roast.

Thinking I would save on the electric bill as well as time, I purchased an inexpensive toaster, bake, convection and grill oven.  I have been wanting a steak, so that is the first thing I cooked in the new oven.  It was not dry and taste ok and maybe with time, I will be able to prepare one that is good.

I know that I will never prepare a steak that taste as delicious as the ones that Bill prepared on the charcoal grill.  The steaks he cooked were always so very tasty and never dry.

The dream was so real!  I was going to see my mom and knowing she liked liver pudding, I stopped at a store on the way there and bought some for our lunch.  After getting the pudding and traveling a few miles, I realized that my mom had died a few years back.  I then went to a friend’s house that lives in Clarkton and WE had the pudding for lunch.

I called Faye last night and she too likes liver pudding occasionally.  We had quite a few laughs about the odd stuff I have been dreaming lately.

Real life, I went to 2 grocery stores Thursday looking for liver pudding, they each had some but the wrong brand.  I settled for some souse meat–Yum Yum.

That may be the solution to my weight problem–only eat what I really want, not just graze all the time because the food is there or to try to satisfy a craving. Like I have said before, the best diet aids are not sold, but are self discipline by the individual wanting to loose the weight.

I do need to be more careful of what I eat but I will not start tonight—steak with baked potato and lots of butter!!  YUM! YUMMY!!!

Friday she asked for a fried egg.  By asking her questions, I determined that she wanted it over easy or maybe over-medium.  She ate one for breakfast, one for lunch and one for snack.

Today starts out a little different.  She came at 8:45 and by 10:45 she had eaten 3 eggs.  She asked that she have 2 for breakfast, which she readily ate.  mind you, this is nothing but the egg-no bread or grits or hash browns or rice.  Just a bare runny yolk egg.  Shortly after she ate, not more than 10 minutes, she ate 2 candy hearts and a very small bag of roasted peanuts and asked for more junk foods.  I said “no more junk, would you like another egg” and she said “YES” and ate it.

I need to do some research on the egg and see if it still poses the health hazard it did some years ago.  At least she is getting in some good protein.

BatMan likes eggs cooked this way, also.  SpideyMan does not like eggs.  I know of several people that eat ketchup with their eggs, I think I will ask him if he would like to try it.

Going to check FB home page and my farm in the FarmVille game, then I am going to work some on that crochet pattern I am trying to design.

I had been wanting soup for a while and with the temps so low, I thought it would hit the spot and it did.  My cornbread muffins were not as good as I would have liked but were edible.  I used Jiffy mix and added a little flour.  Next time I will make my own mix from scratch.

We think all that were there really enjoyed themselves and he too went home with the gift he had purchased.   Someone made the statement that maybe next year we will not play “Chinese Christmas” just show everyone what we bought for ourselves.

I do not think we will get together again until August at his beach house.  What fun we have there!

Told my brother I was preparing watergate salad and creamed corn for our lunch tomorrow but have decided to prepare 2 more dishes.  I will not have time to play any xbox 360 games.   I plan to also prepare the frozen field peas and snaps that the local grocery carries (they are really black-eyed peas before they are dried)and pasta salad.  My brother really likes the peas and I like the pasta salad.  He will probably fuss at me because I prepared too many dishes, but I bet he eats some of those peas.

I fried bacon slowly to get more grease from it and cooked the okra in the bacon grease.  I know it will be good.  We now have 3 pints of fried okra in the freezer.

FRIED/STEAMED OKRA 8-15-09

1 bag of 15 whole pods to place on top of beans or peas.

WHOLE POD OKRA

I have never frozen whole pods before. My mom use to freeze several packages a year in whole pods.

I do really enjoy preparing produce for the freezer.  Yes, it is time consuming and sometimes physically hard, not in strength, just tiring, but I am in my “element” when doing this.

The peaches are now soaking up sugar.  I should have them cooking but DH will be home in a few minutes so I am preparing his supper.  After we finish supper, I will start them.

I canned these yesterday.

8-14-09

This batch makes a total of 26 pints.  All but maybe a pound came from plants that DH put in the flower beds.

I made more peach jam Thursday using the recipe in the Sure-Jel Less Sugar Pectin package.  I doubled the recipe and it did fine.

PEACH JAM 8-13-09

The other recipe that I was using has better color.  I am going to experiment with those I prepare this afternoon, I am going to add maybe a tablespoon of pectin to the batch instead of the entire package.  Hope it works!!!  I’ll let you know.

DH came in from work yesterday saying, “I have more work for you to do” and handed me a grocery bag a little over half full of okra.  I also need to do it today.  Since the day is considered to be half gone, I need to get busy.