Home Cooking – What’s to Eat?

From time to time, I like to post some of the food items or meals that we “play with” or create at home.  The question varies only slightly: “What’s to eat?” “What do you want for dinner?”  “I’ m hungry, what do you want me to make for lunch (or breakfast or dinner)?” “There’s some leftover 'whatever' in the refrigerator… Do you want some?”

So, here are some of the recent food finds, adaptations or creations that we’ve experienced…

Yes, this is a salad…my kind of salad!  I like meals with meat, even in dinner salads… Consequently, this salad included lettuce, raw zucchini, bacon flavored Spam and blue cheese dressing.  Yes, bacon does go better with everything, even Spam!  This was a nice change vs. some leftover bacon or chicken…

This is one of my favorite meals!  Laurie made this nice thick bone-in pork chop, breaded with spicy panko and then baked.  It was accompanied by some terrific seasoned and roasted Brussel sprouts…

I get hungry just looking at this photo! 

This is a leftover fried Tilapia filet from a meal that Laurie had ordered when we visited Hot Rod 50s Diner in Maryville Tennessee.  She had another filet of almost the same size for her meal and we brought this one home.  I’ve put it in the frying pan with a bit of butter to warm it up…so I can repurpose it!

To check out Hot Rod 50's, go to http://www.hotrods50sdiner.com/. 

They say that everything goes better with bacon…and I agree!  However, our son David II and I strongly believe that everything also goes better with cheese! (It must be a family trait…) I’ve added a slice and a half of sharp cheddar cheese from Costco to my fried fish filet.

Yes… The cheesy fried Tilapia filet is buried underneath those 2 Tabasco stained over-easy eggs!  This was a very satisfying and tasty breakfast…

Another day…another 'fishy' breakfast!  In this instance I had my over-easy eggs with a toasted English muffin, a couple of slices of Costco bacon and 2 leftover reheated salmon patties.  Salmon is a health food…right?!

Note: I did add my Tabasco to the eggs and salmon patties after this photo was taken.

We bought this meat at Publix… This was an impulse purchase that we both thought was worth a try.  It’s sliced hog jowl…

This is what the hog jowl looked like when I was done peppering and frying it. It looks good!  I will say that frying hog jowl is not a fun process!  Even at a medium heat it spit and sputtered, easily making twice the mess that frying bacon does!  I use a splatter screen but the hot pieces of hog jowl blew globs of grease right through the screen…

This is what breakfast with the fried and peppered hog jowl looked like.  It was accompanied by toast and a couple of easy-over eggs.  The hog jowl had a nice flavor…smoother than bacon…almost creamy.  While we liked it and I would eat it again, it would have to be in a restaurant!  We both like bacon better and sliced hog jowl is just too messy to fry at home…

That’s about it for now.  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to check out what’s to eat!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave