Dinner

TBT:   Sometimes I go all out...  

Home-made Spring Rolls, Onion Rings, and Fried Potatoes.  Diced steak with roasted red and green bell peppers.  Broccoli and tossed salad. Wine.  LOL!

The Mews wonder why I bother with all those "yucky" veggies...  Well, I don't ask them why they like mousies and kibbles so much.  😀

Thanksgiving Dinner

Before and after shots...

Smoked turkey thigh, corn on the cob, mashed sweet potato with honey and butter, tossed salad with italian dressing, asparagus with cheese sauce, assorted garnishes, and wine and a Cavebear Sling (1.5 oz gin, 1 oz of lemon juice, fill up glass with ginger ale over ice)...

 After...

Good holiday meal for oneself...  A bit late posting, but I enjoyed the meal. 

Garden Enclosure

Is starting to get built, FINALLY!  I have to dig 9 holes 2' deep.  And there's a reason I don't just grow my garden on the soil.  Its AWFUL!!!

I could have sold the soil to a gravel company.  Its rocks and clay a foot deep and after that its sand.  The sand is OK to dig through; the rocks and clay is the hard part.  It takes a breaker bar.

I can't even find a picture of what I have to show.  But imagine a 5' iron bar about 1.5" around with a chisel point.  You lift it and pound it down into the hole and you loosen the rocks and soil.  Then you use a post-hole-digger to grab the loosened soil and pull it out. 

≈






 The breaker bar weighes about 20 pounds.  And you have to pound it down about 30 times per hole.  Good exercise...  But it DOES loosen rocks and hard soil.


I dug 6 of the required 9 holes today.  I stopped when I sensed a blister coming...  But tomorrow needs only 3 more holes.


The holes are to support PVC pipes that will form a grid to support 1" chicken wire to keep out the varmints.  A lot of work, yeah.  But when the squirrels and groundhogs are unstoppable otherwise and you want a garden, you do what you have to do.


And I'll certainly show the garden enclosure pictures as it is built!


But the main thing is that I did the really hard holes today.  I think the best way to do any project is to do the hardest part first.  It only gets easier after that.  Besides, if the hard part is TOO hard and you have to give up, then you haven't wasted time on the easier parts that will be of no use.

The garden enclosure is surrounding 6 raised framed beds filled with 1/2 topsoil and 1/2 leaf compost.  It's going to be a great new garden, replacing the poorer ones I built 25 years ago which finally rotted out.


The new ones are larger and deeper.  And level!

The enclosure will be 20' by 20' by 8' high.  I still have to figure out how to attach a walk-in screen door..

Sweet and Sour Pork

Its NOT supposed to be batterred pork alone in some insipid sweet orange color sauce!

Batterred Pork is easy.  Deep fry 1" cubes of pork butt in a thick spicy batter.  Set aside.  I use a "Fry Baby".
Holds 1 pound of Crisco shortening.  Easy to deep fry small amounts in.


Cut coins/cubes of a dill pickle, green bell pepper, cherries, and pineapple.  Heat them anyway you like (saute', M/V).

Sauce:  1 cup cold water, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1 T sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T soy sauce, 2 or 3 T cornstarch.  Throw it all in a saucepan to thicken.  Viola, sweet/sour sauce for anything.  Not tricky cooking.

Drop the pickle, pepper, pineapple and cherry into the sauce to warm.  Add battered pork and stir lightly to mix. 

Now how hard is THAT?

It should look like this:

And not that orange but I added the restaurant crap sauce to my good sauce cuz it did smell a bit orangey/sweet. I wish I had not done that.

But here is what they gave me (without their orange color sauce).

Which would YOU prefer?

The local best Chinese restaurant couldn't do THAT...  Pathetic.  And they should be shunned for the awful Spring Rolls.  I actually took one Spring Roll apart to see what was in it.  Nothing!  Boiled cabbage as far as I could tell and nothing else*.

But I will say the Moo Goo Gai Pan was quite good.

*  A Spring Roll is supposed to be fancier than an Egg Roll.  A Spring Roll should have identifiable bits of shrimp, ground pork, and fancy chinese veggies like bean sprouts, water chestnuts, straw mushrooms, and bamboo shoots.  Not soggy cabbage mush.