Barbecue Sauce Recipe

This is the sauce that my Grandpa Vern used to make for my parent's restaurant. The thing that cracks me up is one of the ingredients is BBQ sauce. The original recipe called for canned mushrooms but I use fresh.

Combine the following in a sauce pan and cook until the onions start to become translucent, don't brown the vegetables.

1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 package of fresh mushrooms chopped

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Add the following to the vegetables and heat thoroughly.

1 can of tomato soup
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons mustard
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder

The lovely photo came from Manuere at MorgueFile.com

Saffron Rice with Brazillain Style Egg

I recently went to the Loring Pasta Bar and they had a dish I really liked; it was beef tips with saffron rice and covered with a "Brazilian" style crispy fried egg. The beef tips tasted like my sausage and peppers but they added cilantro (I don't care for cilantro so I left it out). It would never have occurred to me to place a fried egg on rice. My saffron may have been getting old since it didn't color the rice much but I minced some carrot in the rice (I try to hide vegetables in foods).

Sausage and Peppers with Beef Tips

Combine and cook together in a skillet. I taste test the the vegetables and prefer the green pepper slightly crispy. You don't need both meats but I happened to have both in the refrigerator.

Beef - cut bite sized
Polish Sausage - cut on the diagonal bite sized
Onion - cut into large chunks
Green Pepper - bite sized chunks

When almost done add the tomatoes and cook until hot; there will be extra liquid. If you happen to get a very moist can of tomatoes reduce the liquid by cooking it down.

1 can of stewed tomatoes
pepper to taste

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Saffron Rice

Prepare the rice as would normally but add some saffron or a little turmeric to the water. Turmeric is similar to saffron and has an attractive yellow color but is more readily available and less expensive than saffron.

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Fried Egg

To get a nice crisp edge on a fried egg you need to cook it in butter or oil.

French Salad Dressing Recipe

This salad dressing was the house dressing at my parent's restaurant. Don't let the ingredients deter you, this is an excellent, sweet French dressing. The original had a lot more oil but I saw no reason to eat all that oil and I don't miss it in the recipe.

Combine the following and refrigerate

3 cups of sugar
1 tablespoon of celery seed
1 cup of oil
1 1/2 cups ketchup
3 chopped medium onions (don't chop too fine)
1 cup vinegar

Orange Zucchini Marmalade Recipe

I got this recipe from my Grandfather's girlfriend, Adleine.

combine the following and cook 3 minutes in a saucepan

3 cups peeled and shredded zucchini
1 cup drained crushed pineapple
1 package unsweetened orange Kool-Aid
1 orange sliced thin

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add and boil one minute

1 package Sure Gel

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add and boil 3-4 minutes

4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon butter (the butter is to keep the jam from foaming)

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Put hot jelly in sterilized jars and seal or simply put it a container in your refrigerator and make popovers. I prefer the later method.

I added this to the category of odd but tasty since it seems odd to make marmalade with zucchini and kool-aid.

Fresh Cranberry Orange Tart Recipe

This blog will be for simple recipes that I come up with that are slightly outside the norm. My daughter had friends over one night and she asked what was for dinner. I told her it was "odd but tasty" and it became the joke of the evening. Next time her friends were over for dinner they asked if I was serving "odd but tasty" and the name stuck.

I wanted pie tonight but something tart, not sweet so I came up with this recipe.

Take a prepared unbaked pie crust or make one if you are feeling ambitious and place it in a pie pan. I used a quiche pan.

Put in the unbaked pie crust

1 cup chopped pecans
1 bag of fresh cranberries
1 orange that you candied.

To candy an orange
Wash the orange and cut the ends off. Quarter the remainder and slice it thin. Put the orange in a sauce pan (peel and fruit are used) with 1 1/2 cups of sugar and a 1 1/2 cups of water. Simmer until the orange becomes somewhat translucent. Pour the candied oranges slices and the sugar water you cooked them in over the cranberries in the pie crust. You want to candy the orange because the pith will be bitter if it's not cooked in the syrup.

Bake at 350 until the crust is brown and the cranberries have popped.

The pie will be tart; if you like a sweeter variety increase the amount of the sugar water syrup mixture.