Senior's lunch March 22nd.

Just in case anyone's curious, here's what we've been feeding our senior's the past two weeks.   We do a weekly lunch for a small donation, and work very hard to make balanced, good tasting food.    And I think on the whole we succeed.     Sometimes we have missteps, like me today, I managed to scorch a chocolate sauce I was making and ended up chucking it, but, I persevered and make a good one to pour over the angel food cake we had.   I've said before I'll let you know when I make something that's inedible, it doesn't happen often mind you, but it does happen. 

Last week we had fun.    Actually, we seem to have fun most weeks.   And sometimes our timing is off, but for the most part we have the food ready to go by noon.   Lousy picture up there, but the menu was:
Hamburger Steak with Onions
or Shrimp Salad
Green Beans
Roast Potatoes
Harvard Beets
Glazed Carrots
Rolls and Homemade Butter

We do give people a choice of either meat, and I think for a $3.00 donation, we do pretty good.
Robin made the Hamburger Steaks and she and Janey made the patties. 

  I got busy with Sarge peeling a whole buncha Shrimp that had been donated and since they'd already been cooked we decided to make a salad with them.  And I have to say, it was a hit.    

and of course we also had our other vegetable dishes;

Grilled Onions and those are glazed carrots in the background.

Green Beans

Roast Potatoes

Harvard Beets

Hungry yet?   Just kidding, and this was last weeks lunch.   I'll post our adventures from this week tomorrow, right now I'm heading for a soft chair and footstool for a little while before I head out the door to go to Trivia Night at a 2Al's Restaurant.   

Tapa's Night for March

 It's Tapa's time again, well it was on Saturday.   I try to do two dishes each time, one new recipe and one that seems popular with everyone.   I was just looking a blog called Newyorkerbyheart .  It's a Danish blog I've bookmarked and followed for a couple years now.   And the other day she had made this recipe, just one of those 'thrown together' type recipes and I had to 'steal' it, or at least part of it.  I thought it lent itself so nicely to appetizers.   
So simple, so easy and finger food friendly.    I made it in smaller pieces than she did, but OMG, was it good.

Chicken Bites

And for my everybody friendly dish, I made some Cheese Quesadilla's, some with jalapeno inside and some without.   I served them with some salsa for dipping.

Quesadilla's

I also did a third dish, well, it was supposed to be served with bread, but I forgot to pull the Sourdough bread out of the freezer so I served it as a dip with potato chips.   The dip itself disappeared, or at least most of it did, but it would have been so much better on some bread or in a wrap or...

Feta Cheese dip

Then there were the following dishes which were brought by our guests;

Key Lime Pie

Taco dip

Strawberry Crostini

Tuna Spread

Potato and Tuna Salad with Deviled Eggs and Tomatoes

Broccoli and Mozzarella Bake

Hot Crab Dip

Little Sausages in BBQ sauce

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Baked Brie with Chopped Nuts

Chicken Fingers 

And to top off the evening, we even had LIVE entertainment, Debi Jordan graced us with a couple of songs and was accompanied by Doug on the drum.   

I'll post the Chicken Bites and Feta Cheese dip recipes and how-to's tomorrow.

Cooking Demo- Saubraten and Leberknodel Soup

I've talked about the Cooking Demo's at the Crooked River Grill before, and they are always fun.   I got to present a Danish Menu last year, and had a blast doing it.    And have been fortunate enough to attend most of the dinners since then.   This week we had a German menu.   I got to try Saurbraten for the first time.   And better yet, a soup that I'm still dreaming over, Leberknodel Suppe.  The recipe for which is at the end of this post.  The soup, well, let me just say I filled up on it and could have made that my entire meal.   But then again, I like liver.  Sorry, but I do.   

For starters there was a lovely salad, and the soup.   Sigh, I took pictures of it, but didn't know what the ingredients were beforehand, so I kinda put a bunch of the little meatballs in my bowl, didn't know what kind they were until I ate one.   And fell in love, well, serious like at any rate.    Then my table mates told me it was liver, and I smiled.   And now I have the recipe for it, and I'll share, I do share stuff from time to time.

 
The meat for the Saurbraten is actually marinated for several days before you brown it and then cook it slowly in the oven.   It was served with Potato Dumplings and Red Cabbage.   Quite tasty, and now I've finally tasted Saurbraten, and I'm glad I did.

  

Leberknodel Suppe
2-3 quarts of chicken or beef broth
1/2 pound of finely ground beef or veal liver
2 small onions, finely chopped
2 tbsp. parsley finely chopped
2 tbsp. chives, finely chopped
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg beaten
Salt and Pepper
1 1/2 tsp. grated lemon rind

Heat broth, combine all other ingredients to make a dough.    Make small dumplings about 1 tsp. in diameter and drop gently into the boiling broth.  Simmer about 8 minutes or until the dumplings rise to the top.  Garnish with chopped parsley and chives.   Serve right away.

And for dessert, a Black Forest cake, which I neglected to take a picture of, sigh.

Muffuletta's and Sub Sandwich's for Boat Club

I was racking my brain trying to figure out something to make and bring to Boat Club this month, and as I was gazing at some lovely Hoagie Rolls, inspiration struck, and it didn't hurt a bit.  Then, when I asked my DH if he had any ideas for what I could make, inspiration struck him too.  

So we both had the idea of making subs out of the rolls, but then I had to go one better.   I've been craving salty/pickle type stuff so I thought I would make a Muffuletta style sandwich out of two of the sub rolls.   Nothing like multipurpose is there?  

One of my favorite things.  Well, one of many...

I think we all know now to make a sub sandwich, and since I'm making this to serve a lot of people, I'll be cutting each sub roll into quarters or fifths.   Just large enough for the filling to stay inside, but not quite enough for a meal, well part of a meal that is.   As you may know if you've read my blog, there is always a surfeit of food at one of our potlucks.

To start with I'm spreading some mustard on one side of the roll, and layering the meat and some cheese on top of that.   And to top that off, I'll add some sliced tomatoes and some shredded lettuce.   I'm putting a wonderful hot pepper relish on the side, as well just in case someone wants to doctor the sub up a little.   Some people like a little hot with their sandwiches.

Look at the pretty tomatoes.   I had a yellow tomato as well as the regular red ones.

I just wrapped up the sandwiches in some plastic wrap and cut them when we reached the club, that way the fillings didn't fall out.    I'm lucky I have a large tray I can place them on.

Now for the fun one.   As I said in the beginning I've been craving something pickled and salty and decided to make some Muffuletta style sandwiches out of a couple of the Hoagie Rolls.    I know these are not real authentic, but they taste good.    I was in the "big city" (well, it's bigger than the one I live in), and saw some Olive Salad on the shelf there, but it looked like it was mostly green olives and pimento's so I decided to use some black olives in there as well as some Kalamata olives to augment it.  

Hey, it's my blog and I can augment if I want to.

At any rate, I did do a taste test first, and then added the chopped black olives as well as a bunch of the Kalamata olives and it looked very pretty, tasted good too.

The red and green and black olives all look so pretty chopped up.

 I do love my little 2 cup food processor.   Makes life just a little easier.  The mixture of the olives looked so pretty, the red of the Kalamata, the green, the black, and it tasted good too.  And I threw in a couple of my favorite garlic stuffed olives as well.    Oh,  and before I forget,  I did add a tablespoon or so of EVOO to the mixture, and placed it in the fridge for a couple of hours for the flavors to mingle and get to know each other and generally hang out for awhile.   Less of a shock to them that way.

After that I got my sandwich meat out of the fridge, I started to put the sandwiches together.   I've discovered this brand is great for a quick Sub Sandwich and I usually have it on hand.

I know a true Muffuleta will have  a lot of other Italian meats, but this is my version and you're stuck with it.  
Drizzle a little EVOO over both sides of the bread

 then spread  it with the olive mixture.

After that, layer the meats and cheeses on top of the olive salad (next time I make this, I'll cut back on the black olives a little, they weren't tangy enough, but it still tasted good).

Spread more olive salad on the other side of the rolls and place very carefully on top of the meat mixture.   Then wrap them tightly in some plastic wrap and place a heavy weight on top of them for about an hour in the fridge.  I did skip the weight part, didn't have room in my fridge to do this properly.  Just wrapped the Sandwiches very tightly.

See, all wrapped up and ready to go to the party.

And here they were.    I did cut them into smaller slices, and they seemed to go over well.    I have to admit to having some Muffuletta left over, but that may be because I didn't put it out?   At any rate, I got to nosh on it for lunch yesterday.   And it was still awesome.

**  I just cut a piece off of the leftover Muffuletta and decided to try heating it a little in the Microwave, and have to say WOW!!!!  I think that's the way to go with this sandwich for me in the future.
Here's a picture of it, before I consumed it and licked the plate.   Just kidding about licking the plate, I licked my fingers instead.

Gotta go and think of something to make for Tapa's night now.   It's coming up this weekend.    

Boat Club Potluck for March

  Boat Club this month was delayed a week, but that's OK, we still had a great turnout.    I'll be doing a post on the sandwiches I made later, and I will post some pictures later on.   In the meantime here are the dishes from last night.

Meatballs (love the serving dish)

Potato Salad

Deviled Eggs

Banana Bread

'Greens'  (I think I love the South, especially Greens).

Subs

Tabouli

Spanish Mackeral and hush puppies

Smoked Beef

Chicken and Apple Salad with Butter Lettuce  (isn't that a pretty bowl?)

 

Smoked Pork Butt

Chips and Salsa

7 Layer Bar

Assorted peanuts (cool serving dish)

Chocolate Brownies

As always, way too much good food.    sigh.   We really do have some totally awesome cooks in this community, and I do enjoy tasting their offerings. 

Next post I'll tell you all about making 'Subs' and 'Muffuleta's'.