Joy of Country Living

It’s been just too hot to do much this week – although against better judgement, David and I did start cleaning out the garage in anticipation of a new cement floor. To stay ahead of mealtimes, I’ve done a little extra cooking so that I can just re-heat and mix-n-match the leftovers.

That being said thought I share some of the low-fat recipes we’ve been enjoying.

Pork Tender Loin with Italian Herbs

• Pork tender loin sliced into single serving portions (about 1″ thick)
• Olive Oil
• Garlic power
• Onion Powder
• Italian Seasoning
• Thyme
• Salt
• Pepper

1. In a heavy skillet, heat enough olive oil to very thinly cover the bottom.
2.  Place the tenderloin slices into the pre-heated skillet and then sprinkle them with the spices. You can pretty much season to taste – no set amount or spice . . . and, if you don’t like something …. like garlic – don’t use it.
3. Allow the portions to brown and then turn over.
4. Continue cooking until browned on other side; they’re ready to serve or refrigerate for later.

Fettuccine Alfredo – low fat

A really tasty side dish for the pork tenderloin above is Fettuccine Alfredo – low fat.  This is one of my favorite recipes from the Healthy Homestyle Cookbook  … available from Amazon for under $10.00.   This recipe cuts the calories per serving by about 50% and cuts the fat content from 44g (traditional) to 13g (healthy style).

And, if you’re watching your cholesterol, an original recipe would typically have around 139mg of cholesterol,  while this recipe only has 35mg. Best part, it tastes just as good as the ‘richer ingredient’ version.

You’ll need:

• 12 Ounces fettuccine
• 1 Cup evaporated skim milk
• 1/2 Cup half-and-half
• 2 Tablespoons butter (cut these into small pieces)
• 1-1/2 Cups grated fresh Parmesan cheese
• 2 Tablespoons snipped fresh chives (green onions work well if you don’t have chives)

1. Cook pasta according to directions.
2. In the meantime, in a medium sized saucepan heat the milk, half-and-half and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted and the liquid is hot (not boiling).
3. Gradually stir in 1-1/4 cups of the Parmesan cheese. Continue to cook (and continue stirring) until the cheese has melted.
4. To this mixture add the cooked and drained pasta. Toss until well coated.
5. Serve by sprinkling some of the remaining Parmesan cheese over the top along with some chives to garnish. (Serves 6)

Leftovers

If you have any leftovers, both of these can be used for other meals. I like to use the leftover meat sliced and stir-fried with broccoli, onions and a little soy sauce. It’s extra good if you have a packet of  Chinese stir-fry seasoning to add in – just adds a little more flavor.

The Fettuccini noodles are really good re-heated and served with shrimp that have been sauteed in butter and garlic.

If you like more ‘sauce’ with your shrimp, give this a try. 

Once you’ve cooked the shrimp,  remove them to plate and to the same pan with the garlic/butter, add a little chicken broth (about 1/2 cup)  along with enough corn starch (1-2 teaspoons) to get the thickness you like.   Cook this sauce over medium-low heat, stirring continuously until thickened. 

You can adjust the sauce recipe to make more sauce if you like, but  be careful – if you add in too much chicken broth and corn starch, you’ll loose that nice buttery-garlic flavor. 

This recipe also works well with sliced chicken breast if you don’t like shrimp.

Update. . . . After a week of light scattered rain showers and some un-cooperative equipment, they got the hay baled. Got a good cut this time – and thought you’d like to see how big the rolls are.

And, don’t forget you can calculate the value of your gold jewelry before you sell it using the free online tools at Gold Coins-Silver Bullion.   Don’t do like a lady we heard about and take your jewelry to the pawn shop and get $7.00 for your 14K gold ring!!  That’s criminal.

Repainted the shutters on the house this last week. That is David did. After about 10 years of sun, rain and heat they were looking pretty shabby. It was easy enough to take them down and since they’re vinyl – and there wasn’t any damage just fading – we opted to paint them rather than buy new ones.

You’ve probably seen some of the new paints out there for plastic, vinyl, metal, concrete, etc. and wondered if they work. Well I can’t speak for the metal, concrete paint – but I can say that the Krylon plastic/vinyl paint works very well – and it has a spray head that sprays evenly.

After cleaning the shutters and allowing them to dry, the paint went on smoothly and with no drips. It dried in about half-hour and was ready for another coat. My only complaint – if you can call it that – is that we only found a very limited number of colors to choose from. Only about five or so at our store. You may find more in a larger city.

The shutters were originally dark green but since that color wasn’t available – we opted for red. I might add it was a very bright red, however, after applying it over the ‘green undercoat’ it mellowed out and looked pretty good. We were pleased and now we’ll wait to see how well it performs in the weather.  (Those are my paints on the table, I was in the middle of painting the totem pole when I decided to take the picture.  And, don’t those pink geraniums clash something awful with that red!  They will definitely have to be replaced….)

After re-hanging the clean shutters, the little totem pole I have on the front porch looked bad. So I got out my box of acrylic paints and gave it a freshening up. Did not do a thing to it before painting – didn’t even dust off the spider webs – just painted right over everything.  It was just too hot to fuss over it too much.   Have to say it turned out looking pretty good too.

While I was painting the totem pole, David was painting our target. We both practice target shooting right off the front porch. I’m not nearly as accurate as David but I can hit the big one! 

Peaches…Again

When we planted the peach trees, we planted different varieties so we could have fruit throughout the summer. But…. didn’t know this would mean I’d be fighting crows and squirrels all summer as well. They both just love peaches.

I haven’t put a bird-net over the tree this year (although I have one) but have tried putting net ‘socks’ over the limbs that have peaches about to ripen. These net socks are the plastic mesh bags the popsicles come in. We don’t throw much away and these bags seem to be working so far. It’s taken me all these many years to figure out how to manage the fruit trees, i.e., pruning, feeding, etc. – so I’m hopeful that next year I’ll have all my ducks in a row so that we get lots and lots of peaches.

Even though the harvest this year is a bit skinny, we’ve gotten enough to enjoy some fried pies and fruit salad. Chopped up some fresh peaches along with a cantelope and surprisingly – it was really good.

For those reading this that remember Grandma’s peach trees out on the farm, these peaches taste and smell just like the ones we used to pick all those many years ago. What a wonderful memory! Went looking for a picture I know I have of Grandma with a pail of peaches on her arm…. but sadly couldn’t find it. If I come across it anytime soon, I’ll put it up.

BTW – we’re not having a drought (brown field above), they’ve just cut the hay and will be baling it next day or so.  I hope.

Many years ago a friend of mine used to joke that all ‘country folks’ did was sit around, watch the grass grow, and the old car rust. At that time (being a full-time city girl), that sounded funny…. but after a dozen years of living in the country – I no longer agree. There’s so much more to see (and do)  - especially if you enjoy nature and being outside.

Living where we do there are no lights after dark. Sometimes it is so dark you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. This makes it perfect for sitting out in our zero-gravity chairs and watching the stars. That’s exactly what we did about 10 o’clock the other night. Hauled the chairs out into the front yard away from the trees and kicked back.   We could see the Big Dipper and the Milky Way – along with millions of other stars. Even saw some ‘shooting stars’ and satellites. We ended up staying out there until almost midnight – and hated to come in but we were both about to fall asleep.   Seems the longer we stayed the darker it got and the more stars we could see. There was a nice breeze and we had our ‘mosquito fans’ running. You’ve probably seen those on TV. We don’t have very many mosquitoes here – not like in Houston where they would just about carry you off .  Don’t know if it was the breeze, the fan or ‘lack of’  but we didn’t get one bite. Can’t wait for another clear night to do it again. Seeing all those stars sure makes you feel small.

Saw a strange site couple of days ago. At first it looked like a large, no it looked huge – plane being towed by a small plane. But have to say I’ve never heard of any airplane being towed while in flight. Called David to come take a look and he thought it must be a mid-air refueling. Whatever it was – it was something we’ve not seen up here . . . and we have seen some peculiar things since we seem to be in a fly-over path for some of the military planes.

The peaches on one tree have all ripened – at one time – and I now have bowls of peaches . . . with the other tree (a different type) also being loaded and getting ripe. Had so many peaches I went on line to see if I could freeze them somehow and maybe use them later.

Found a website that said you could freeze them whole, unwashed.   All you had to do was place the individual peach on a cookie sheet, place them in the freezer until frozen and transfer to a plastic freezer bag. (My freezer won’t hold a cookie sheet so I put them in a meat loaf pan – worked just as well and they didn’t roll anywhere.)  Then when you need some – take them out, run under water or microwave for a few seconds. I’ve got several bags of them frozen – it should be interesting to see how they taste and cook up later on.

Fortunately, freezing them doesn’t do anything to them. You can set a fresh peach next to a frozen peach  and not tell any difference. I thought they might turn dark … but they haven’t. They are hard as rocks though, I’ll have to be careful not to drop on on my foot.

If you haven’t had a chance – visit GoldCoins-SilverBullion.com.      I’ve got the pages up where you can calculate the current market value for your gold jewelry as long as you know the weight and karat. Once you’re on the website, click on the Free Online Tools link.

This is really good especially if you’re planning on selling some of your gold jewelry. You’ll have an idea of the value before you sell it.  One other thought, if you’re selling your gold for scrap – you might want to take the gem stones out before selling or shipping.  Doubt if you’ll get any extra $$ for the gems so why not keep them.

Plan on putting up a couple of new recipes on I Can’t Believe It’s Sugar Free  next few days (time permitting). We’re re-painting the shutters (actually David’s painting – I’m just holding the ladder) on the front of the house and it is a chore to get behind the shrubs to take them down. Back to the recipes – one is for Orange-Ginger Glazed Chicken and the other is for easy Creamed New Potatoes – made without whole milk or cream. The creamed potatoes are delicious and since they don’t use any milk keep a long time in the fridge if you have any leftovers. 

And, don’t forget if you want to enjoy restaurant  food at home without the expensive tab – get your copy of  Secret Restaurant Recipes  and for a limited time get  7 Free Bonus Cookbooks.

There’s Italian food, there’s Chinese food and then there’s ‘Judy’ food. I would venture to say that no one outside the family – except maybe those living in East Texas  – even know of Judy food.   By David’s definition, Judy food is anything prepared by my cousin Judy. She is a fabulous cook and anything she fixes is wonderful and delicious. . . . and David loves it.

On Sunday, we had the pleasure of attending a fish fry at their country place over the Fourth and per usual – everything was out of this world. We sat in lawn chairs out under the trees and just enjoyed the day. It was like a mini-reunion in that all the family living close by came – cousins, their grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc.   You can see there was a lot of visiting going on and it was nice to get caught up with what everyone is doing.  Wasn’t too hot and surprisingly there were no mosquitoes and no flies!

Of course, the food was great – fried fish, chicken, hush puppies, coleslaw, french fries, garden tomatoes, watermelon, two apple cakes . . . and some very interesting cucumber pickles. At first we thought they were pickled beets but after one bite you knew you’d eaten a cucumber – a red cucumber! Judy’s sister – Janice – had made them and they were wonderful. I’d not ever even seen any.  They crunched just like a pickle and tasted faintly of  those little cinnamon red hot candies. I looked the recipe up on the Net and found several variations… all of them lots of work. Don’t think we’ll be having any of those around here. When it comes to cooking, my motto is “quick and easy”.

Saw this beautiful sunset on the way home.

Since Monday was a holiday – I got caught up on picking peaches, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes and peas. David kept busy cleaning the goldfish pond pump which is always a bit of a pain but since we planted the Iris plants in the biological filter doesn’t seem we clean it quite as often. The iris plants thrive on the ‘enriched’ pond water.

David also replaced the bakers rack we had on the deck with a barn wood shelf that looks and fits in much better with the rustic look. It’s an old one we bought at auction. It’s kind of wobbly and not exactly square but we like it. It has lots of character along with brands burned on it so it goes well with rest of the stuff out there.

David had to raise the shelf up a little off the floor so that air could circulate and hopefully help keep the rain from puddling under it and rotting the boards. He then screwed it to the deck floor so that it wouldn’t blow over. He used his DeWalt 18V power screwdriver for that – makes quick work of anything. Those battery operated tools (drills, saws, etc.) are really nice for working away from the house where there’s no electricity – but, you need more than one battery. David had a couple of the batteries but one died.    (I’m not so sure it totally died – just wouldn’t hold a charge long enough.)

The 18V batteries are not cheap if you’re out shopping – but we found them online at Amazon.com – DeWalt Batteries for about $65.00 and we got free shipping! What a deal!! That’s a far cry from the $100+ at some of the stores where we priced them. In fact some of the stores were so expensive, we could buy two from Amazon for the price of one store battery. 

The battery arrived yesterday via UPS and is just exactly the same as the higher priced ones at the stores. We’re thrilled. Until we moved to the country, we never did much ordering online but have found that in most cases we can get the exact same item for less money and get free shipping to boot. Nothing wrong with that.

Although I’ve been busy lately, I’m finding it difficult to find something to talk about. I’m going to blame that on the weather. I’m definitely a sunshine kind of girl and we’ve been having rain – which is good. But having grown up on the Gulf, the sky looks very much like hurricane weather. For those familiar with hurricanes – you know what I mean…. the heavy air, the swirled, low grey clouds with something almost tangible in the air that feels like a premonition of ‘something coming’.

There is a storm in the Gulf (just watched the 10 o’clock news and it’s made landfall) – and it would seem that maybe we’re getting a small part of that storm . . . . the really far northeast part. I do hope we’re able to sneak by without getting any major hurricanes this year. I really don’t like them nor all the damage they do.

Have been busy this week mostly with computer work. Little bit of client work – but major part of the time has been spent putting some pages together for our new site www.goldcoins-silverbullion.com.   

These pages should be helpful because if you want to get an idea of what your jewelry is worth before you sell it - you can input a little  information  – gram weight and karat mark - then hit a ‘get estimate button’ to calculate its estimated gold value. Does all the work and gives you a page with the info ready to print. This way no one can take advantage of you if you take it somewhere to sell because you’ll have an idea of its gold value before you go. Really pushing to get these pages finished by the weekend.

Squeezed in time to make a new cake. I’m not sure what to call it – it’s a caramel-lemon concoction. Uses a regular cake mix (with added pudding), lemon mousse and caramel. It’s served chilled and is very tasty. I’ll be putting the recipe up on I Can’t Believe It’s Sugar Free later this week. Would loved to have made this one sugar free but could only manage part of it being SF by using SF pudding and SF whipped topping. Guess you might say it’s 20% sugar free?

High point of the week was finding a song on YouTube that I’d heard 30+ years ago (YIKES!!  has it been that long?!)  and could only remember one line of the lyrics… “if you should see a red dog running free…”.

The reason I could finally do this was because we just recently were able to get DLS out here.  (YEAH!!)   So now we can listen to music and watch all those videos on line without having to wait for them to download.   Anyway – I ‘googled’ the one and only bit of lyric I could remember and got a couple of hits that eventually lead me to the song. It’s a crazy kind of song – one that sticks in your head ( duh….no kidding – it’s been knocking around in my head for years!) It’s called Abergavenny… which FYI is a city in Wales.   If you’ve got a couple of minutes – give it a listen.