Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Food & Dining

The California Garden

We’re back at Casa Grande* for Easter weekend. When we arrived yesterday, we were surprised at how well the garden was doing with virtually no attention for over a month. The poppies were going crazy with their bright orange flowers and the artichoke had produced these wonderful flower buds, one of which we’re going to steam early next week and eat it for lunch. Click on the image to enlarge.

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* We’re now in to referring to the 2700 square foot two story house in California as Casa Grande (Big House) as opposed to the little Arizona home which we now call Casa Bonita (Pretty House).

22 Apr 2011 by California Food & Dining Home & Garden

Easter Sunday Dinner – A Week Early

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For tactical reasons, we’re unable to have this beautiful rib roast on Easter Sunday, so we prepared it a week early on Palm Sunday. My Mom’s 91st birthday is next week which requires a trip to California, and we can’t miss that. We had this great rib roast with garlic/cauliflower mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus and horseradish sauce. Yummers. 😀

17 Apr 2011 by Food & Dining

Serrano Pepper

The first things to appear in the Arizona garden this year were the tomatoes. Today, I photographed a tiny Serrano chili pepper in front of a pepper blossom which will soon be another pepper. These tomatoes and peppers are likely to be ingredients in salsa or a Tex-Mex recipe this summer. Click on the image to enlarge.

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10 Apr 2011 by Food & Dining Home & Garden

Sunday Dinner

We might be a little short of furnishings and decoration, but we’re not going to scrimp on our cuisine. This is today’s dinner – country style barbecued pork ribs (with Damsel’s killer homemade BBQ sauce), asparagus spears, the all-important beans and coleslaw. I enjoyed a bottle of Samuel Adams Winter Lager and Damsel sipped a glass of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. We ate this sumptuous dinner on the patio table and chairs which are temporarily serving as our dining room furniture. Click on the image to enlarge.

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30 Jan 2011 by Arizona Food & Dining Retirement

First Dinner at the New House

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Damsel bought a couple of really nice beef tenderloin steaks (a.k.a. Fillet Mignon) at the supermarket this morning, so we decided to break out the camping cookout gear and grill ’em up. All of the appliances are installed and working but we like steaks cooked outdoors, so this was the setup depicted in the image. Click to enlarge.

Damsel also bought some microwave steamed veggies and some microwave macaroni and cheese. We usually prepare our meals from scratch, but we don’t have all the cookware and utensils to do a good job, but in a few weeks we will.

So, for today’s sumptuous cuisine, we sat on camping chairs, ate from plastic plates served on a fold-up table. Despite all the improvisations, today’s first dinner at the new house was a huge success.

08 Jan 2011 by Arizona Food & Dining Retirement

Hybrid Cooked Baby Back Pork Ribs

hybrid-ribs.jpgThese get the term “hybrid’ because of the two methods used to cook the ribs. We slow cook them in the crock pot for several hours and transfer them to the grill for the final basting. Cooked this way, the meat almost literally falls off the bones.

We cut the rack of ribs in half so they can fit in the crock pot. Then they go in a plastic zip bag to marinade overnight. The marinade consists of fruit juices (apple, pineapple, orange) and a home grown BBQ sauce. The orange juice, by the way, came from oranges harvested yesterday from our backyard dwarf navel orange tree.

Damsel’s killer BBQ sauce is a key to this delectable entrée. It is vinegar based with brown sugar, savories (onion,garlic) tomato sauce (I used catchup), mesquite (or hickory) smoke flavoring and your favorite chili powder (cayenne, ancho).

We served the ribs with maple flavored baked beans and broccoli slaw marinated in Damsel’s tangy dressing. The image shows the final grilling stage of cooking. You can click on the image to enlarge it to drooling dimensions.

28 Nov 2010 by Food & Dining

Thanksgiving Day

I can’t believe I ate the whole thing . . .

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Turkey breast with all the trimmings: mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, cranberry jelly, Damsel’s killer dressing, candied yams, steamed broccoli and a buttermilk dinner roll. Thanksgiving dinner plus 3 NFL football games today equals thankfulness in our household.

We hope you enjoyed your day as much as we have. Click on the image to enlarge.

25 Nov 2010 by Culture Food & Dining

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