Traditional Irish Soda Bread Recipe

Posted on 03/18/2012 by Walter Blevins

This is a day late, but most assuredly not a dollar short.  Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, the one day of the year when everybody is Irish.

There’s one thing about St. Patrick’s Day 2012 that kind of rankles me.  How come none of the myriad cable channels bothered to broadcast the “ultimate” Irish movie—even though the lead character is decidedly non-Irish—John Wayne’s, 1952 classic “The Quiet Man”?

I cooked up the traditional St. Patrick’s dinner yesterday—corned beef and cabbage.  And, I even made Traditional Irish Soda Bread—dense and flavorful.

corn beef and cabbage and soda bread

Cheap Bastid's St. Patrick's Day "Feast"

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The Spring’s First Asparagus

Posted on 03/16/2012 by Walter Blevins

It’s that time of the year again when asparagus shows up at our grocery store.  I love the spears that I call “pencils” because they’re tasty and still a bit delicate.  Sometimes I put them in a pan on the grill and sometimes I’ll cut them up and toss them in the wok.

But I was cooking a whole meal and wanted some fresh vegetables with a bit of acid flavor to complement pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy (which I’ll write about in another post).

So I took a slightly different approach, I tossed them in a saute pan with a couple of glugs of Italian dressing.  I was being lazy—the dressing had oil, vinegar and seasoning, everything I wanted for the asparagus. This is quick and easy way to enjoy fresh sautéed asparagus.  And I was being cheap too.  I bought the dressing at the dollar store.

fresh spring asparagus Continue reading →

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Cutting the Cheese with Cheap Bastid

Posted on 03/15/2012 by Walter Blevins

We went to our local grocery store today—Stater Brothers.  We’re pretty systematic about it and go with a list and a plan every time we shop.  So, while there I decided to check out the cheese prices.

We go through quite a bit of cheese.  It’s healthy, adds flavor and we like eating it—although for the life of me I haven’t been able to get Mrs. CB to like cheeseburgers.

What I wanted to do was check out the prices of 2 cheeses we buy a lot—feta and American.  Except we quit buying it at Stater Brothers.  The store brand American cheese is $4.00 a pound and the feta is $3-$3.50 for 4 ounces.

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Homemade Apple Pie

Posted on 03/14/2012 by Walter Blevins

Every once in a while I get a hankering for pie—especially a homemade apple pie.  I can’t stand the notion of a store bought or frozen pie and from time to time I’m willing to go through the effort to make one from scratch.

Now baking a pie from scratch takes just a little bit of effort.  It’s not brain surgery, but if you’re like me and don’t do it all the time, it takes a bit of patience and an expectation that what eventually comes out of the oven is going to taste really, really good but it’s look might not be what would win the blue ribbon at the County Fair.  It’ll be just a bit more “rustic” than that.  But who cares as long as it tastes exactly what your taste buds are hungry for.

homemade apple pie fresh from the oven Continue reading →

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Who’s Up For a “Pink Slime” Burger?

Posted on 03/11/2012 by Walter Blevins

Doesn’t that sound good?  A big old double-stacker of Pink Slime.  Last week, “pink slime” leaped to the top of the standing in Google searches after a series of stories hit the news about 5 million pounds of it being sold to school lunch programs.

All of a sudden people were questioning whether or not their kids should be eating such stuff.  Well hell, they’ve been eating it for a while in the burgers and tacos they snarf down at fast food joints.

wimpy eating pink slime burgerBeef Products, Inc. of South Dakota (or BPI) is apparently the main purveyor of this tasty product which they call “finely textured lean beef”.  Dr. Gerald Zirnstein of the USDA coined the term “pink slime” in a memo a while back defining it as “boneless beef trimmings”, or such products that have gone through a centrifuge.” Continue reading →

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