How was your New Year's Day? Are you Rose Bowl parade watchers? We are, and because I'm a bit weird like this, I spent much of it reviewing some of the highlights of the Tournament of Roses 125 year history. For example, did you know that the football game didn't start as an annual event until 1916? Did you know that the original games were things like chariot races and tug-o-war and a race between a camel and an elephant? (The elephant won.) Did you know that 1900 was the first year when the parade was filmed? But it took days, weeks and even months before anyone saw that parade on film? Did you know that 1893 was the first year since the Tournament of Roses began in 1890 that January 1 fell on a Sunday, which was a dilemma since that would interfere with church services, so they started the festival a day later, and the "Never on Sunday" tradition continues to this day?
And what struck me most about all of these facts was that a mere 100 years later, we are able to see it LIVE and even record it on a DVR/TiVo/name you rtechnology option so that we can watch it at our pace minus the commercials if we so choose? How fascinating is that? Soooo much has changed in our lives in the last 125 years since the Tournament of Roses began!
G says that I am easily fascinatable, but I am fascinated by that amount of change. No other time in history has brought about THAT much change to our everyday lives in such short a time as the last 100 years.
So that here we are, able to count on New Year's traditions like watching the Rose Bowl parade and spending the day watching college football bowl games and eating football food. Is this a great country or what?
Speaking of food, do you make new food for New Year's football games? Or is your fridge so stuffed from various leftovers that you eat "musgo"? That buffet of odd, eclectic food choices that simply Must Go? We are a musgo family. Tonight's dinner was little weinies in BBQ sauce, spinach and artichoke dip, au gratin potatoes plus leftover Mexican from last night's dinner. Someday I want to host a regular New Year's open house of football, food and fun, and I promise I will make new food for that event, but for now we eat musgo.
Which is not the point of this post at all. I really wanted to talk about what I cooked on Sunday - again to use up some leftovers - but the whole time I'm cooking these things I'm thinking about a new topic called "What's for Dinner Wednesdays".
My mind can be a scary place.
So what did I cook on Sunday? We were both sick that day, but I had this big old spiral sliced ham leftover, so I needed to start using this up. I also had a half an orange pepper, some bow-tie pasta and some frozen peas. So I sautéed up some onion, garlic and celery, tossed in the chopped up pepper with some of the ham, a bit of chicken stock and peas. I cooked that up a while and then on low heat I added some cream and grated cheeses, including Manchego, which is a hard cheese similar to Parm, and lo and behold, we had a pretty tasty pasta dish once we poured that over the cooked bow-ties. I can't offer much of a recipe, because I just did it by feel, but I can show you this.
I made quite a bit, so I froze the leftovers. But I did something I'd never done before. I packed it into a roasting bag, so that I could take it from the freezer to the oven without it drying out quite the way it can when packed in just foil containers. Have you ever done this? Here is what I did...
Make sense?
But that didn't use up all of the ham! So I used the rest to make some ham and bean soup. And here is the recipe for that...
1 ham bone
2 cups (or more) cooked ham (if you don't have that much on the ham bone)
16oz dried navy beans (or beans of choice) along with whatever seasoning packet comes with pkg.
2 T. olive oil
1 onion chopped
3 cloves garlic chopped
4 stalks celery chopped
4 carrots chopped
1 - 2 jalapenos chopped
3 cups chicken stock
3 cups water
15oz can chopped tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried parsley
2 T. brown sugar (or to taste)
2 T. maple syrup (or to taste)
Either soak the dried beans overnight or cover the beans with 2 inches of water and bring to a quick boil. Remove from the heat and let soak for 1 hour. (This is what I did since I didn't think about doing this the night before.)
Sauté the vegetables in the olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the beans along with the water, the ham bone, ham and chicken stock. If the beans are not covered, add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and cover. Cook for about 2 hours, checking periodically to confirm there is enough water to cook the beans. After about 2 hours, remove the ham bone and pull off any ham. Chop the ham and return to the pot. May return the bone to the pot, if you think you can get any more flavor out of it. Also add the can of tomatoes, the dried herbs (including the seasoning packet, if any, that came with your beans), brown sugar and maple syrup. Continue to cook until beans are tender. Adjust seasoning to taste.
This made at least 10 - 12 servings, so plenty for us to freeze for another cold, winter's night. Serve warm with jalapeno cornbread, a recipe I will pass along someday when I think I have it really right...
So that's what was for dinner on Sunday, only I'm telling you about it on What's for Dinner Wednesday because this is not a usual Wednesday.
Makes perfect sense, right?
How are those resolutions coming anyway? Bye for now!
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