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Nothing beats a nice juicy Italian Beef Sandwich on a rainy night.
Wednesday nights are busy around our house, as they are in many homes. Carrie often works late, and the kids have youth group, so getting everyone together for dinner is hard. Sometimes that means eating out, but I prefer to cook something in the crockpot that is easy for everyone to eat.
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Memorial Day Weekend is traditionally the first time we Americans break out the BBQ's. These beans will be a great addition to your meal, and are dead simple in the crock pot.
I love baked beans, and I like chili so I came up with a combination of the two that the family loved. These will make a great meal or the perfect addition to your holiday meal. The sweetness of the honey barbecue sauce combined with the spice of the garlic and hot peppers and the wonderful flavors of bacon and ground beef. You all need to try these beans, this is FatBoyHeaven in a bowl.
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Beef slow cooked in marinara. I served it with Polenta and topped it with grated parmesan
I love italian food almost as much as I love my slow cooker. I had some thin cut bottom round steaks (sold as Carne Asada steaks in these parts) that I purchased on sale a while ago and they were in the freezer. I took them out to thaw last night and spent the morning trying to decide how I was going to use them and decided that Pizzaiola sounded perfect.
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When we were on our recent trip to Kentucky we visited the Brown Hotel for a Hot Brown, a signature of the hotel that has become a state-wide classic. Every restaurant in the state has their own take on the tradition, and it varies from city to city. Some places use country ham instead of bacon. Some use a sharp cheddar in place of Romano cheese in the mornay sauce.
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A traditional Loosemeat (or Tavern) Sandwich served with regular potato chips. Nothing fancy, just good old fashioned comfort food.
Tonights dinner came about because of my son's crazy TV viewing habits. For some reason, he is a huge fan of the old Rosanne Show, which he found somehow on NetFlix. On the show Rosanne and her sister start a Loosemeat restaurant called "The Lunch Box", where they serve only trays and trays of this midwest classic.
Read moreI had some London broil left over from the Mediterranean salad I made the other day, and decided tacos would be a great way to use it on a warm spring day here in Oregon (a pretty rare occurrence). I found this recipe in my email from PureWow, and decided that with some simple modifications it would work well. The only change I made was due to my meat already being cooked medium rare last night when I started. I sliced it up, tossed it in the rub seasoning from the recipe, and heated it through in the cast iron skillet, making prep time much shorter.
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Some family friends made this a couple of years ago for a gathering, and it has become a spring/summer go to for our family every since. A nice salad of chickpeas, thinly sliced red onions, and feta cheese is dressed with a spicy vinaigrette and topped with thinly sliced medium-rare steak. This can also be made with lamb instead of beef if you prefer, which I sometimes do. Even the kids love this one, and how can a fatboy go wrong with steak on a salad?
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Sausage, Peppers, Onions, and rich tomato sauce combine for a simple comfort. Served here on a toasted ciabatta roll.
I love good, old fashioned comfort food, as anyone who has read this blog should realize. One of my favorite foods is a nice Italian specialty that my Dad used to make once in a while (but never as often as I asked for it), sausage and peppers. He would do it on a flat top griddle, with homemade marinara cooked in a separate pot and served over the sausage and peppers on a hoagie roll.
Read moreI love my crock pot. Like a slow oven, it can make any cut of meat a tender and delicious masterpiece with little effort. I have used this basic recipe for pork ribs in the slow cooker before, but decided to see how it would do with beef spare ribs, as i love how meaty and flavorful they can be.
Read moreCarrie took a trip to South Carolina a few months ago, and brought me back a large bag of stone ground grits, a food I love but is impossible to find in Oregon where we live. When we were looking for something to make for dinner the other night she found this recipe. Most traditional shrimp and grits recipes include a spicy andouille sausage, so this was a surprisingly lighter alternative with bacon instead.
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I found a great Paleo friendly recipe for a classic Greek stew called Stifatho, and decided it would be great to try for dinner tonight. The great flavor of beef combines so well with the traditional Greek spice combination of cinnamon and cloves that I am amazed they are not used more in savory American cooking. The sweetness of the spices is cut by the slight acidity of the tomato sauce, and complimented by the currants and feta. Give this a try folks. Healthy and amazing flavor combined to create Fat Boy Heaven.
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Pasties are a traditional cornish hand pie made popular in the mining and timber towns of early America. Most often containing beef or pork along with root vegetables like rutabaga, potatoes, and carrots pasties were something that could easily be prepared and carried to work for a filing lunch on the job site. In the U.S. they are most commonly found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other northern states.
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Chicken Cutlet with creamy, cheesy grits.
I was looking for something to make with the amazing Stone Ground Grits that Carrie brought me back from her trip to South Carolina last week, and decided that since the kids didn't like shrimp I would need to avoid the old standby. I decided on a pounded and breaded chicken cutlet with creamy, cheesy grits that I made with smoked cheddar. AMAZING! Talk about Fat Boy Heaven on a plate, this was it.
Read moreIn my last post, I talked about the great pulled pork I made. Here is another dinner I made with it, and it was another winner. What this shows more than anything is that some base proteins can be used for endless meals if they are versatile enough to be re-seasoned to fit the flavor profile of the type of food you want to prepare.
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Pulled Pork and Beer Cheese grilled to perfection. We'll call this the Grilled FatBoy from now on.
Chili served over Cornbread Waffles...awesome!
Dinner tonight was a low carb adventure. I found a great recipe for Fried Cabbage that looked amazing, so I decided to give it a try. It really was simple to prep with an amazing new addition to my freezer - Frozen Diced Onions.
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OK, this isn't the first time a meal hasn't gone the way I wanted it to, but it went so bad that I ended up having to run out to McDonalds to buy dinner last night. I was making chili, and made a base of sofrito using onions, garlic, bell peppers and tomatoes. I was in a hurry and, and made a critical mistake....I didn't taste the sofrito before I comined everything in the pot. I'm not sure if it was one of the bell peppers or the onions, but something was bad. I took one taste to check my seasoning and realized that I had killed my dinner.
Let this be a warning to you all, bad ingredients make bad food. There is no way around it.
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