Mmmm, Okra!

The garden is mass producing okra at this point. This evening, after dinner, I took the time to prepare a couple of skillets full of fried okra. The okra is now resting gently in the fridge awaiting tomorrows feast.

In other cooking news, earlier this week I tried out a couple of new (for me) recipes. Monday I made guacamole using 2 avocados, onion, lime juice, and fresh cilantro from the garden. I also made a big bowl of salsa using tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro (all from the garden), and onion, with a splash of lime juice.

Wednesday's kitchen experiment involved homemade spaghetti sauce. Again most of the ingredients were from the garden: about 30 Roma Tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and jalapenos. Yep - jalapenos - I removed all the seeds so they were not hot - this turned out to be roughly the equivalent of using bell peppers. The sauce turned out pretty awesome, especially after it had a chance to rest in the fridge overnight. I will definitely be making this again.

Biscuits and Egg Rolls

When I was in high school, I worked at the golden arches for a couple years. During this time I worked a lot of weekend mornings making biscuits. No telling how many thousand biscuits I have made in my life.

Recently I decided I wanted to make some really good homemade biscuits. I have been hit by this desire before but have never found a recipe I really liked. Having recently eaten at Cracker Barrel I decided I would look up their recipe on the Internet. Their biscuits are usually pretty decent. After doing a little bit of reading online, I eventually decided the recipe I would try this time would be the one on the Lilly White bag of self rising flour: 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup butter milk, and 1/4 cup Crisco. Simplicity. Some would say that using self rising flour is cheating. I would say to them, "don't ask me for a biscuit."

After making biscuits four days in a row, I would say I can now make a pretty decent homemade biscuit. I would eventually like to find a good recipe that does not use shortening. Perhaps I shouldn't mess with a good thing though. I still wish I had the recipe Mrs. Tice used.

What's next? I would like to learn to make a mean egg roll before the cabbage in the garden is ready. Anyone have a recipe they would like to recommend?

For the record, I like mustard and bacon on my biscuits. Mmmm.

Push Button, Get More Bacon

The bacon explosion. Mmmm.