Choice Morsels

The Mama Kat blog writing prompt today is the word, "Fried." When I think of frying, I recall our first effort at making egg rolls back when I was a kid, around 1973. We did experimental cooking sometimes, trying out new things. We'd never made egg rolls before. I don't even know who's idea it was. But we got the stuff, made the filling and diligently rolled it up in egg-roll wrappers. Mother used her pasta-pot for the oil. It was a twin pan set with an inner-pan that was a colander, that could be lifted out easily for draining pasta.  Perfect for lowering an egg-roll in and out of hot oil! Actually, deep frying anything was practically unheard of in my family. It was considered too dangerous.  So several inches of hot cooking oil in a pasta pot was a rare adventure, but we were all old enough to be around it safely. We lowered our first egg-roll into the hot oil and it started frying, then---abruptly, it burst open in the middle, spilling filling ...

The 3 days of steady, light rain we had from Tropical Storm Cindy polished off my tomatoes & decimated the Bell Peppers.  The only things that really appreciated all that wet was the grass and the Bush Squash! I picked up some new Bell Peppers and a new Tomato this morning. I'll be putting them in the bed that runs along the South side of our house where I have blackberries & hybrid day lilies. There's plenty of room and it's a bit higher ground. I often use the area as my "back up" garden plot! Today's Garden Pic's: Hardy Hibiscus & Chinese Stonecrop Sedum! Hardy Red Hibiscus : This beauty is 7 feet tall! It is unique, though. Usually they limit themselves to 4 or 5 feet. So it puts on a grand show every summer! Chinese Stonecrop This is a kind of Sedum (sedum tetractinum). It is the most fantastic stuff! Resilient, easy to transplant, grows anywhere and in anything! It blooms pretty yellow flowers in spring, so it l...

The Mama Kat blog prompt this week was to revisit something I was writing about in June last year: I was participating as a guest blogger for a series called, "Between the Lines : Women Bloggers Over the Age of 50." An blogger acquaintance on Google+ invited me and many other women to be guest bloggers the series. I was initially told it would just be about how I got into blogging and would involve answering a few questions. I imagined I'd just be answering a survey, then she's put my answers together and post it on her blog with a back-link to mine. It wasn't like that at all. It involved me posting on my blog all her weekly lists of hyper-links of everyone else's guest posts she was hosting on her blog.  It felt it incredibly complicated to manage every week, though I stuck it out most of the way through. I did enjoy writing my guest post about how I got into blogging, which you can visit here, if you missed it the first time: Between the Lines Cho...

After 3 days of rain from a tropical storm, the sun is finally out! The rain garden has been full of water---maybe some of the Rain Lilies will be prompted to bloom this week! So much water, though---I don't know if all the veggies will survive. My Curly Parsley has become a nursery for Black Swallowtail caterpillars. There were quite a few, but caterpillars have a high mortality rate because they're a food source many insect predators: wasps, spiders, various bugs.  Originally there were nine. This morning there were three; now there is only one who is nearly full size. The good news is that leaves plenty of Parsley is still available for another round! Today's Garden Pic is one of my cheerful yellow & burgundy Day Lilies from my front bed.

This recipe is a Pinterest recipe from my "Food Ideas" board that I tried out:  Steak & Potato Nachos! It was good tasting. We liked it and since Hubby is a steak & potatoes guy, it was a great way to give him something he liked as well as give myself something new to try. However---Nachos are normally something arranged either over chips or eaten with chips. This recipe has replaced chips with real potatoes and didn't say in the directions how to serve it. It's kind of heavy, too and not very "scoop-able." So, I just winged it by plopping servings onto a plate. We ate it with a fork along with some whole-grain taco shells I had on hand. It's pretty much a meal and not really a crowd appetizer. The recipe only makes about  4 servings, but it is a great leftover that's better the next day. I did diverge from the recipe, which calls for baking & boiling, to have Hubby cook the steak and potatoes on the grill, then I arranged...

Today's Garden Pics are shots from around my Garden: From the Front Yard: This corner garden in front is looking just about perfect this year!  My plan when I planted it was for it to form natural screenbetween us and the neighbor's house, so it's a collection of tall and short plantings: Pampas grass, a skypencil shrub and an 8 foot Hardy Hibiscus form the back row and, in front, a bunch of 4 O'Clocks, a pot with Red Saliva and a dwarf Nadine shrub. This shot was about 6 p.m. on a cloudy day, so all the 4 O'clocks are open!  That one light pink one is about 40 inches tall! Unusual. The Back Yard Veggie Garden: You can see a summer bush squash, Bell Peppers and one of the tomatoes. That front squash is called  a bush squash"Enterprise," and makes a straight-neck yellow squash. Directly behind it is a bush Zucchini called "Spineless Beauty."   Not in view is a second tomato and Amy Melon vines in the corner beyond the bush...

In my "Summer of Potato Salad," here's is another Pinterest recipe try: Lemon Rosemary & Sundried Tomato Potato Salad! The appeal of this recipe was it called for fresh Rosemary & Parsley, both of which I have an abundance, so it was a chance to use my fresh herbs plus try a new recipe. I rate this potato salad recipe as "just okay."  It's a little too lemony for me. I think just using the zest would be enough. Making as directed, I found it necessary to add a tad of sweetness to cut the sour. The sun-dried tomatoes were probably the best part, but being mixed into the dressing made them really clumpy.  I recommend adding the herbs & chopped dried tomatoes directly to the chilled cut-up potatoes, then lightly stirring in, then adding the dressing afterwards. (photo is my own salad) Lemon Rosemary & Sundried Tomato Potato Salad Ingredients: 3 lbs of potatoes (about 6 or 7 medium red or gold) 1 Tablespoon salt 1/4 cup fi...