Let's Play Hookie

I have been looking forward to this day since late April. Why? Because today is the day I finally get to go the Miller Park where the Brewer's play baseball. And who are they playing today? How about the Chicago Cubs. I admit the Tigers are my favorite team but the Cubs come in a close second. As far as the Brewer's go I could care less about them. It has been great at work this week because everyone there are Brewer's fans. Sure does suck to be them this week because today the Cubbies were going for the sweep.

I was wondering what kind of crowd there would be today as I was driving into the stadium parking lot. Just about every other car had an Illinois license plate. Driving in I saw a couple of Cubbie fans with their brooms.

I did like how easy it was to get into the parking lots at Miller Park even though it took about a half hour. Once parked it was a matter of finding the people I was to meet there so I could get my ticket to get into the stadium. And let's not forget where we park.

If your memory is like mine it is not a bad idea to take a picture.

I started towards the stadium and the first thing I notice is all the tailgaters in the parking lot. There was the smell of bbq in the air, lots of beer, and people tossing footballs around.

This may not seem unusual to the people who go to football games but I have never seen tailgating to the extent there was today in Milwaukee. Most of the tailgaters were once again Cubs fans.

There were corporate tents set up all around the parking lots. There is even toilet facilities out there and sausage stand to buy a brat on the way into the game.


One thing in common with PNC Park in Pittsburgh is you have to cross a bridge to get to the stadium.

Now granted it isn't near as spectacular as crossing Clemente bridge but it is a nice bridge. It doesn't go over a river but actually crosses over Miller Parkway which is the road that brings you to the stadium.

Once across it is into the stadium. More on this tomorrow because it is late tonight and I need to go to bed.

Sunday Dinner Overtime

Recipes, recipes, recipes, you want them I got them. For everybody who wants the recipe from this week Sunday Dinner episode this is the place to get it.

It may be hard to believe but I don't make these meals up. Ok maybe it isn't so hard to believe but every now and then I do make one up. Like tonight I had a little chicken left over from the other day and I made up some chinese type meal with rice. What you may find unbelievable is it was edible too. I may have used a touch to much red pepper but hey, nothing ventured nothing gained.

But you are not reading this to hear about tonights meal, nope, you are reading this for the recipe for this weeks Sunday's Dinner episode. But just for a review here is what you will be making.............


Here is the list of ingredients you will need:


Here are the directions on how to put those ingredients together:


And here is a handy little hint (which I did use):


And like I said yesterday I used apple smoked bacon. I also soaked some apple wood chips in water and threw them on the charcoals when it came cooking time. Apple wood chips go so good with pork, just might be my favorite.

I think I also mentioned I would cut the salt down from this recipe. Keep in mind the bacon has plenty of salt in it already. If I would have thought about before I cooked the tenderloin I would have cut the salt in half from what the recipe calls for. And if you are using table salt I would cut it a quarter of what the recipe calls for.

I think 145-147 internal temperature is about perfect for pork tenderloin. I cooked it for 7 minutes on each side and then like the hint says I rolled it on the grill to crisp up the bacon. By the time you get done doing this it will be just about perfectly cooked.

And one more time this is what you are after............


Good luck and enjoy.

Sunday Dinner - 27 July 2008

I can't tell you how hard it's getting to be finding fresh ideas for my Sunday dinner series. It is getting real hard this summer because I have vowed not to repeat any meals on Sunday and all meals must be grilled. If anybody out there has any ideas I'm listening.

When I was home in early June someone asked me if I was (it was Mountain Man) grilling all these meals so I could put them on my blog. I can honestly say no I haven't been because I would have done most of them anyway even if nobody was paying attention. But with this weeks meal I will admit when I saw it my first reaction was "Boy that meal will look really good in pictures." So with that being said I will admit this is the first meal I cooked because of this blog and to also keep things fresh and looking good.

My goal is after people look at the pictures they are hungry enough to ask for the recipe. Another goal of mine is to get everybody using their grill more, their charcoal grill more. But I will settle for people using their gas grills too. Any meal I post on here is not difficult to do, believe me if I can do it everybody else out there can too. If you have a question about cooking one of these meals please ask. Don't do like I did and learn everything from trial and error and believe me I have had my share of errors. I will be the first to admit I don't know everything there is to know about grilling but I have come a long ways in the last 7 to 8 years since I started. I have learned a lot in the last year and my successes are starting to far outnumber the failures. If you have a question please ask and if you want a recipe please ask because I have no problem sharing with others. Ok I will share everything other than the bbq sauce recipe which I am still working on anyway.

Now that I got all that crap out of the way let's get busy. Here is this weeks Sunday dinner................


This is such an easy meal, Pork tenderloin wrapped in apple smoked bacon (not that silly soy stuff)with stewed white beans.

Let's start with the stewed white beans. Here is the cast of characters for this side dish................


Before we can get started you know what we must do first? If you said "FIRE UP THE GRILL" you would be right. Because this recipe calls for grilled tomatoes. Once the tomatoes are gilled everything goes into the pot on the stove and cooks for 15 to 20 minutes. Once cooked add fresh basil to it just before serving. If you like bean soup you will like this. It kind of reminds me of bean soup with the fresh basil taste.

Let's be serious we are not here today to talk about stewed white beans. Oh no, we are here to talk about grilled pork tenderloin. Let's get on with it.

The cast of characters with an academy award nomination to the main character the pork tenderloin.....


The first thing we need to do is toast the fennel seeds over low heat....


Once toasted the fennel seeds get crushed and combined with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.....


After this cut up the pork tenderloin and wrap with bacon, stick it with a tooth pick to keep it all together. Another idea would be to put the pork on skewers. Once I had them wrapped in bacon I dusted them with the spice mixture.....


Now it is time for the most important thing I have learned this summer when it comes to grilling, or even cooking indoors, meat let the meat sit out for 20 to 30 minutes before grilling and come up to room temperature. Why? Because by doing this the inside of the meat will get to the desired temperature of doneness without burning the outside.

Ok enough BS lets get these beauties on the gill...


I used a little apple wood this week, don't you just love to see the smoke coming out of the grill? Ahhhh, it smells so good....


Once these academy award nominated beauties are done, remember 147 degrees internal temperature, this is what they look like...........


And again here is what it looks like on the plate..........


Oh so good, let's give it a 4.75 forks out of 5. It will be 5 forks next time because I won't use near as much salt as the original recipe calls for. I can't begin to tell you how good these were. I urge you give this a try but please use real bacon and if you can find it use apple smoked bacon and then grill them with a little apple wood too.

And this is why the academy award winner for this years best character in a Sunday dinner episode is ....................Pork Tenderloin with apple smoked bacon........


Thank you, thank you all. I owe this to that pig in Iowa that gave his life so that I could be here tonight.............blah, blah, blah.......

Pretty Slow Around Here

Not much really happening around here right now. The weather has been nice other than the storm last week the left a couple of barns around here without roofs. The local golf course lost some trees and a lot of other trees lost limbs. Most of the limbs I saw were partially hollow so maybe it was natures way of getting rid of the bad limbs. Today was in the low 80's and sunny, not very humid either.

We took a drive today before we went shopping in Fond Du Lac. Actually ended up in Osh Kosh so now I can scratch one off my bucket list and say "I've been to Osh Kosh by gosh." Osh Kosh looks like any other town I have been to in Wisconsin that has a population of 30,000 to 40,000 people. The one thing it has going for it is it sets on the shores of Lake Winnebago. Lake Winnebago is a large lake and I mean large. It is not like the great lakes but it is much, much larger than Houghton Lake.

Other than that not much happening around here. I should mention I have been working on a new whippy dip for Midland so for those of you that live around the Midland area you have that to look forward to shortly. It will be located in the Eastlawn Plaza in Midland.

I should also mention I have tickets to go watch the Cubbies play the Brewers next Thursday afternoon. Since they are both fighting for first place it should be a great game. Our seats are right behind the first base dugout. Stay tuned I should get some good pictures and have a post or two about something other than food. I should also say "Go Cubbies!!" I should probably keep it down a little bit in case some Brewer fans are listening.

I thought everybody, except peej, might be interested in my Saturday meal. I am still working on my food photography. If these pictures make you hungry or ask for the recipe then maybe I am making progress.



Do you like eggplant? If so you might want to give this a try. A little grilled eggplant, roasted red pepper, prosciutto, and smoke provolone cheese.



Mmm good. But do you see anything wrong? Got a guess?



If you said "Why the knucklehead forgot to put the basil in the Eggplant, Prosciutto and Provolone sandwiches" you would be right. I can't believe I forgot the basil. It was good anyway but I think it would be much better with a little fresh basil on it.



The stuff on the right is a little grilled chicken and portabello mushrooms in pasta. Pretty darned good in its own right. Either of these can be a meal by itself and I think next time that is what I will do. It is just to hard trying to grill two meals at the same time.

Sunday Dinner - 20 July 2008

I am a little embarrassed to be posting my Sunday dinner this week because I have tried to only do grilled dinners this summer. Even though this dinner started out on the grill it was only there for 8 minutes and in the oven for 4 hours. Oh sure I could have cooked it in the grill for the 4 hours but I just wasn't in the mood for tending the coals for that length of time. And with it being braised in a dutch oven for the full 4 hours I just couldn't see the advantage of burning all the charcoal required or fighting with the coals to keep the grill at 300 degrees.

What did I cook this week? How about beef brisket.


I know a true Texan would smoke this brisket for hours and turn it into bbq but that wasn't what I was after. I had a recipe from my new grilling cook book I wanted to try. As you will see it turned into more of a roast by the end.

Start out with a rub consisting of garlic salt, pepper, dill weed, and granulated onion. Then let set in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

Time to "FIRE UP THE GRILL" and brown on both sides.


Oh don't forget to always grill with the lid on....


Now it is time to get out that old friend I haven't seen since winter, the dutch oven.


Slip that browned brisket in there and some braising liquid. My choice for braising liquid this week.....

A combination of Jack Danial's and beef broth. Yes Jack Danial's. I hate JD. The last time I drank it was when I was a freshman in college. After that I swore it off forever....and no I didn't get sick on it. I just can't stand the taste of it but I thought I would follow the recipe so I bought some. As you can see it was the smallest bottle I could find.

Anyway 2 hours in the braising liquid and then add the potatoes on the bottom and onions and carrots on top and cook for anther 2 hours.

This is what you're left with.....


I will give it a 2.5 out of 5 forks because this isn't a summertime grilling meal. This should be a comfort meal for the winter time. If I was rating it for the winter time I would give it a 4.25 out of 5 forks. The beef brisket came out so tender it could be cut with a fork. It also had a different taste to it, a hint of Jack Danial's, not bad either. Definitely a keeper for the winter time.

But just to redeem myself look what I made tonight.....


Oh yeah bbq chicken with the chicken marinated in beer and several other items. And totally cooked on the grill. How about 5 out of 5 forks good.

The Long Days of Summer

There really hasn't been much happening around here lately except for experimenting with new meals from one of my new cookbooks. The cookbook is loaded with ideas for grilling and what I like is almost all the recipes use ingredients that are easy to find in your local grocery store, unless you live somewhere near Pittsburgh. Todays choice from the cookbook is Roasted Corn with Andouille Sausage.


Start by roasting some corn on the grill.......


Meanwhile throw some andouille sausage in a pan with some olive oil......


While all this is going on crack open a beer. How about a Lienie's Summer Shandy flavored with lemonade, a good choice for grill cooking in the summer.


Now after the important part of cooking is taken care of, the beer, it is time to start dropping the rest of the ingredients into the pan.


A little onion, yellow pepper, red pepper, and garlic. Let this cook for awhile and then add chopped tomatoes, basil, chicken broth, and white wine vinegar. The last item to take care of is to cut the corn off the cob and add the roasted corn to the rest of the mixture.


You are supposed to use arugula salad greens but since our grocery store didn't have arugula I opted for the spinach.



Pretty good and something a little different for a change. The wife and I decided it is a recipe worth keeping.

Post Overtime
Here is the recipe, I hope you can read it. This would be easy to adapt to winter time use too by using frozen corn instead of grilled corn. If you have trouble finding good tomatoes in the winter I would go for the diced canned tomatoes and drain them good. There I just gave out a great dinner idea that can be made easily in under 30 minutes.

Enjoy.


I should also mention if this is the only item on the dinner menu for the night the ingredients list works out perfectly for two people.

More Cooking Tidbits.....Just for PeeJ

I got a call the other day from one of my offspring telling the reason he isn't blogging anymore is because all I ever post is food. Oh he gave me some other excuses too like computer to slow, don't know what to write, and the dog has to go out and take a crap. Yeah you're thinking the same thing I am all poor excuses. So just for him I am doing this post about food, again. I'm not to worried about him seeing it since I am not sure he even knows how to turn a computer on anymore.

Enough about excuses let's get to the food.

I came home from lunch yesterday and decided to marinate some pork chops for dinner. I flipped through one of my cookbooks and there starring me in the face was a recipe for marinading with Hoisin sauce. I knew I had some in the refrigerator so it looked like a good marinade to use. The only problem was I didn't have everything in the recipe. Oh well time to adapt.



If you ever want to add some great flavor to your meals this is the stuff to use. It is in the chinese or ethnic food section at your local grocery store. It is also a great base for a bbq sauce which is really how I ended up using it on the pork chops.

I mixed the Hoisin Sauce with some ground ginger, garlic, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and couple of other things I don't remember off the top of my head. Someday I just might decide to write some of these things down as I do them. I put everything in a zip lock bag to marinade until I got home for dinner.

Once I got home for dinner I fired up the grill and got it smoking hot. Next, you guessed it put the pork chops on there for about 6 minutes per side. While the pork chops were cooking I decided to turn the marinade into a sauce. I had read you can do this with marinade as long as you heat it up and boil it for at least 1 minute to kill the bacteria. I added a little vinegar and honey to it too.

Here is the finished product.....


The asparagus is marinated in sesame seed oil and balsamic vinegar and then after it is cooked topped with parmesean/reggiano cheese and sesame seeds.

Here is another view.....


A little closer look....


And one last picture for peej......


I know peej likes his pork chops so I hope he ends up enjoying this post afterall. They were good.

Sunday Dinner - July 13, 2008

Ok I waited long enough and it is time to use these items this week....

I got these lovely little items for my half century birthday a couple of weeks ago from my sisters. I was hoping they would forget but they didn't. It didn't help I was with my much older sister the day after my birthday.

Just in case you don't know what these little beauties do they make beer can chicken or for you that don't drink beer soda pop chicken. Believe it or not all the grilling I have done I have never made beer can chicken. I meant to but for some reason or other I have never done it. Well that is all about to change, just follow along.

Here is this weeks cast of supporting characters....


Along with these supporting characters too.....


You may want to know where the star of the show is, well it just took up to much room to include in these pictures. Besides raw chicken around my spices and raw vegetables, I don't think so.

First things first and the spice rub must be mixed up.


This rub includes fresh rosemary, dried thyme, paprika, salt (kosher), fresh ground pepper, and granulated garlic. There could be a couple of other things but I forget what it might be.

Let's get some good ole apple wood soaking....


And now do you know what time it is? That's right "TIME TO FIRE UP THE GRILL!!!!!"


Once the charcoal is ready it is time to put the chicken on the grill.


I should mention inside the chicken roaster is some of my honey wiess homemade beer with a sprig or two of rosemary.

Cook at 350 degrees for about 1-1/2 or the digital thermometer reads 165 degrees when inserted to the thigh bone.


After a half hour or so it is time to put the vegetables on.


The vegetables, except for the red potatoes, have been marinated in antipasta oil. Don't ask me what is in it but it is very good. It also has a bit of a kick to it.

And the cooked meal.....


Mmmm, looks good and for the most part it was. The only problem was the red potatoes. I don't think the Wisconsin farmers and gardeners know how to grow good red potatoes. I even bought these on Saturday at the local farmers market. They are nothing like we used to grow. I am truly disappointed.

Enough about that here is the finished product......


The vegetables were great (other than the potatoes). The chicken, real good. I didn't brine the chicken like I normally would because I wanted to see how moist the beer can chicken was without the brine. The legs and thighs were very moist, the breast was interesting. It started out fine on the outside (not as juicy as a brined chicken) but the closer I ate towards the interior the juicier the meat got and the more I could taste the rosemary that I had put into the beer. Very, very good once I got to the bone. I think little sister might have the right way to cook this chicken though and that is to brine it first and then cook it as beer can chicken.

That is what I will be doing next time, oh yeah there will be a next time it is worth that. I just need to find some better red potatoes.

There you have it Sunday dinner, July 13, 2008.

Next week we will be looking into using these somehow....


Got any ideas?