Tara picnic thread

It IS decadent, Zada, and it's really not that difficult to make. I usually prefer one-step recipes, but sometimes it's worth a little more. This one is fudgy, creamy, and delicious, similar to a fudge cheesecake, only I think it's even better.

Where's Pam? She is going to really want this recipe!

Ya know, maybe we should start a recipe thread and have sections for main dishes, soups, perhaps, and desserts. We could all contribute. I have recipes for Mississippi Mud Pie, chocolate mayonaise cake, and potato chip cookies, to name a few. But I've put all my goody recipes away because I'm trying to lose some weight. That doesn't mean I can't dig them out.

Women! First they're fighting about something, then they decide to have a picnic with paint balls and water pistols (I assume it includes mud wrestling and a wet T-shirt competition so the men will stick around to watch) and now they are comparing recipes. They say we can't do without 'em but has anyone actually given it a try?

Shredded Beef Tacos

Simmer a 3 lb chuck roast with a can of beef stock and a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce in a 350 degree oven for about three hours. The meat should be very tender. Shred it with two forks and serve it in flour tortillas with some sour cream and pico de gallo (fresh,diced tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, and cilantro). Roast a few ears of corn topped with cilantro-lime butter(butter, ground cumin, finely diced cilantro, and lime juice).

People will forget all about the paint balls.

Ann

Dick is hoping for wet tshirts and lots of mud, so I don't think he really wants us to go away!

Marie, I don't know where your chicken recipe was; I guess I didn't see it for some reason.

Ann, your tacos sound good, but I can't do the 'hot' spicy stuff. Up here, they have something the little stores carry. It is shredded chicken in a very mild and slightly spicey cheese sauce, inside a rolled torilla and deep fried. They call then crispitos. I love them with lots of sour cream. (That's how I tame down the hot stuff)

Brenda, I think a recipe section is a great idea. There have been some good ones offered up before, but never on their own thread. Finding them would be time consuming. If they were all together it would be much easier.

Sounds good, Marie. But I would have to tone it down. Or bring on the sour cream.

I've been told, and it seems to work, that milk and milk products are the best way to tone down peppery spices. Water or tea makes it worse.

Ann

Marie, you had me at garlic. hee hee I'm a garlic whore. Whenever I make roasted potatoes, I add an onion, cherry tomatoes, red/green/orange peppers, thyme, olive oil and at least two bulbs of garlic. Yep, bulbs, not cloves! I adore garlic. My niece always teases me that she never worries about vampires when she's at my house because the scent of garlic is always in the air!

Ann, I've heard that milk is the thing to drink to help with spicy foods and that water makes it worse, too.

Milk soothes most everything that upsets my stomach. But I try to avoid foods that make me require milk.

Dick Stodghill wrote:

Women! First they're fighting about something, then they decide to have a picnic with paint balls and water pistols (I assume it includes mud wrestling and a wet T-shirt competition so the men will stick around to watch) and now they are comparing recipes. They say we can't do without 'em but has anyone actually given it a try?

Most women can fight almost to the death one moment, then make up and go arm in arm to lunch the next. We learned that by raising children. We had to, else we'd smite our rebellious teens into the next galaxy.

Might not be a bad idea. Start smiting.

Marie Pacha wrote:

Water after a jalapeno pepper is deadly, don't ask how I know!

Marie, do you think you can get away with a statement like that without me asking? Tell all.

I remember talking nicely on the phone to a friend one day when some of my children began fighting about some mundane situation. So I said, "Just a minute," put the phone down, went, yelled at the kids, and came back and said nicely, "Now where were we?''

Her comment was, "How do you do that?" Ah, experience.

Carol

PS Yep, Marie, we're asking even if you told us not to.

Oh tell us, tell us.

Carol

Jalapenos really don't taste as hot when you are used to them, but that guy should have given you a glass of milk much sooner.

I'd like to hear about that cigar, too. I remember my first cigarette. Several of my friends were having a slumber party, and someone brought a pack for us to try. We were so wicked, between eight and twelve of us with one pack of cigarettes and one six-pack of Lone Star.

Someone there said it was supposed to be easier to learn to inhale if you were lying on your stomach, so we tried that and it worked. My friend, Kim, who BTW looks a lot like Marie, pointed out a problem, though. "How cool will it be, after dinner at a restaurant, to say to your date, excuse me while I smoke..."
Ann

Time to go tutor young minds.

Please don't talk about me while I'm gone.

Maybe Marie's cigar story will be waiting when you return.

Carol

While we're waiting for that cigar story...

Jalapenos are my favorite hot peppers, and McIlhenny's has a "Green
Pepper Sauce" that uses them. This is what we make our "Green Wings"
with. I grill the wings till done, then at the table, turn them green
with the sauce.

There is a milder version of jalapenos, called TAM Mild. They were produced at Texas A&M. I grow some of them every year.

I am also fond of "Hot Poppers". They are whole jalapenos filled with cream cheese, battered and deep-fried. Yummy!

Ah, growing jalapenos, and then canning them, and the canning person did not realize she should wear gloves when doing so. Her hands turned bright red and trying to wash away any jalapeno residue that might be causing the problem did no good. They did heal in a couple of days.

Carol

Funny story, Marie! Reminds me of the first time I tried chewing
tobacco. Bull of the Woods it was, and I was 13 going on 30 when I bit
off that first chaw. The other guys were spitting, but I figured that
the best way to get the real effect was to swallow the juice.

Wrong.

I have never been so sick in my life and to this day I feel queasy when I smell the stuff.

(I am checking to see that my husband isn't looking over my shoulder before I go on here. Okay, it is safe.)

When my husband and his friends played baseball, they wanted to emulate the pros who chewed tobacco. But they didn't want to chew tobacco, so they chewed wads of coconut instead. To this day he hates coconut.

Carol

That guy with the peppers was a dirty rat and I wouild have punched him out for hurting you.

But what happened to the rest of that cigar? I hope it didn't go to waste.

While in the Army during the Korean War I chewed tobacco all the time. It was very handy unless we were called to attention. That made spitting difficult. I'd still be chewing tobacco if women weren't so dead set against it. I mean what do they have sweepers and mops for if they can't clean up a little tobacco juice?

Posted twice, deleted one of them.

The early fifties were days of exploration for those of us of a certain age, and we experimented with many things. I've related the story of sitting at an old black guys house one afternoon when I was 14 and him giving me and my friend hot barbecue and ice cold beer to sing a few country songs.

My first attempt to chew tobacco came about the same time. I played shortstop and it was a hot dog day August afternoon, and I decided to emulate the pro players of the day. I stuck a big wad of my dad's homemade plug into my lip, took my position at shortstop, and everything went very well until a hard grounder hit a rock, took a bad bounce over my glove, and hit me in the forehead. Hurt like hell, but it also caused me to swallow the tobacco. It was the last inning and we headed for the creek to cool off a bit, and by the time I hit the water, the tobacco hit my constitution, and I spent about an hour on the bank throwing up into the creek and letting it wash away down stream.

CC McCartney is one of the very best radio personalities in the country, having been nominated by the CMA as well as the ACM for DJ Of The Year several times, and was inducted into the Texas DJ Hall of Fame last fall. (Or the Texas Radio Hall of Fame,) He is also one of our greatest friends in the world. CC dearly loves hot peppers, and one Thanksgiving we decided to put some on the table just for him. Our son was 10 or 11 at the time and he also loves jalepenos, so we were pretty sure he'd try a few also. At some point in the meal, CC picked up a pepper, smilled at the group of us and bit the end off. He almost choked. Now and then you get one that is much hotter than the rest, and it can be hard on the mouth. That's the kind CC got. We watched him cough and weep for a few mintues, then saw the milk put out the fire, and then I noticed Derek had picked up one of the peppers.

"Son, put that dang thing down, if you value your mouth," CC cautioned. "Don't eat it."

Derek bit it in half, chewed it up, swallowed, and smiled at us much as CC had done. Didn't affect him a bit. CC got upset, thinking that the pepper was burning Derek's mouth, and that he was not showing it just to embarrass CC. He just didn't believe it when Derek said over and over that the pepper wasn't hot. My aunt, wanting to get it settled, picked up the end of the pepper that Derek and eaten, took a big bite, and said, "Why this isn't hot at all.'

CC tried it, and to his surprise it was one of the peppers that didn't have any heat. It had come from the same bunch as the one he'd eaten, lay on the table side by side, but one was too hot to handle, while the other was not much worse that a bell pepper.

Stories, stories, stories.