Bless My Heart I Married A Yankee

I do not even know where or how to begin.  I mean, this day has been crazy.  Have you ever had one of those days where you have no clue how you have had the energy to do anything because you have had like zero sleep?   Let me tell you how it began.  Which means I have to go back to last night.  I was tired but I could not sleep so I went into the bedroom to watch a Christmas movie.  At 11:01 pm, Scott came to bed and I cut off the lights. Cut and dry, right?  Well, NO.  I woke up 5 times or more between the time the lights went out till 3:03 am.  So help me I am not lying.  As I was laying there at 3:03 am  trying to go back to sleep... BOOM!!!  Yep, you heard me or read that correctly.  There was a loud boom in my house.  It sounded like a door being slammed rather loudly.  I screamed to Scott that someone had just slammed a door.  Why in the world I felt I had to scream is beyond me consid...

I do not know if you have ever heard of pimento cheese but in my neck of the woods, it is one of the best spreads for a sandwich.  Oh yeah, it is a simple but good ole thing here in the South.   I think I have loved pimento cheese since birth.  Well, it sure does seem like it.  I have never really given it much thought.  I mean it is sharp cheddar cheese shredded, mayo, chopped pimentos, and a few spices and voila you have it.  However, I have heard many people that are not from the South think it is a very weird combination.  I guess it is if you did not grow up on it.  Here in the South, it is a tradition.  It is simply delicious.  Oh me, oh my, it is mmm mmm good.   Before making homemade pimento cheese, I was rather picky about which brand I would buy.  Since I was the one I would buy was not cheap.  I never could understand why it was so expensive until I started making it myself.  I figure...

I do not know if you have ever had IKEA's Swedish meatballs BUT if you have this is the recipe for you.  If you have not tried it anyway.  It is such a good recipe.   I have made it several times in the past and I keep on tweaking it to make it taste better.  I am not calling it a copycat recipe because it is not entirely to the same flavor as the ones from IKEA but it is still excellent and lord knows I love meatballs.   This dish is so great served with egg noodles and a side of green peas.  Well, I love sweet peas but a lot of people do not so you can serve it with any veggie you wish.   We had friends stop by and I have to apologize I did not get a picture of this plated.  That is because the entire skillet of food kind of disappeared quicker then I thought it would.  I think that is called a winning meal.  I normally gather my ingredients together first and go from there.   Combine...

A few years back I found a recipe for Salisbury Steak.  At first, I was a bit skeptical because my thoughts drifted back to the horrible TV dinners that had this nasty piece of some kind of meat they called steak with an equally gross gravy.  As I was reading recipes I remembered a hamburger steak recipe I was given about 20 years ago that had a mushroom gravy.  I really enjoyed that recipe and as I was looking and comparing the recipes I realized this might be really good.  I made this dish for Scott.  I had no clue how he would feel about it but he LOVED it.   For some reason, this dish is a fall or a winter dish in my mind.  Please, you do not have to have my feelings.  It is a great dish but with it being such a warm dish I like it better in cooler or cold months because it warms your bones.  I know it would be really good to fix in the warmer months too.   You will need some time to make this recipe the way I make ...

Everyone that recipes my blog, knows I hate waste.  I literally get excited when I come up with a way to save money and have little waste.  So, when we were making  Aji Amarillo sauce  for pasta and I thought why not keep the skins of the roasted Aji Amarillo peppers and dehydrate them to make a powder, I was giddy with happiness.  It was like a light bulb went off in my head and I was doing the Snoopy dance.  Scott could not understand what I was doing as we were peeling the skins off the roasted peppers.  Once I explained I wanted to experiment with drying the skins and making a powder, as I do with tomato skins to make  Tomato Powder , he totally was all in with my idea.   It really was easy.  I just kept the skins and put them on my dehydrating trays.  I put the temperature on 125 and let it go.  They turned out nice and crispy.  As you can see in the picture above and below.  Once the skin...