Chorizo Verde de Worth.
This stuff is delicious.
It produced about 6 pounds from a boneless 3.75 pound pork roast.

I bought three big bunches of cilantro and only used one whole bunch.
After all was said and done before I washed out the food processor I processed the rest of the cilantro and a couple of jalapenos along with some oil and salt.
Put it in an ice cube tray to freeze.
Next last weekends ground chuck needed immediate attention so it's cooking in the big 12 inch skillet.
It's not bad but I won't make a rare burger with it and I was too busy last week to make and freeze patties.
I've had food poisoning only once in my whole life and it was in Italy.
A total nightmare to say the least and not gonna happen on my watch.

Pasta with grape tomatoes, garlic olive oil, fresh basil and crushed red pepper. Forgot the crushed red pepper when I cooked the tomatoes so I just shook some on before I ate it.

The lovely and long suffering Mrs. Gotch finally assembled her Zoodle/Noodle dish; our Butternut Squarsh, Kale, Basil, Garlic Scape Pesto, 2024 crop Garlic, w/ added sausage, Fettuccine, Spinach, Spaghetti, Zukes, & what-not...the house smells ¡POSITIVAMENTE FABULOSO!: The Gotch

Ground alien meat sausage.
Yeah that's the ticket alien meat sausage.

What with all the cooking going on I decided to have fried fish for supper along with some fried okra and taters.
I'm one of those people that can't stand to eat food I've been fooling with and tasting all day.

I made my first batch of that lentil salad I make every year, once the tomatoes start ripening. The habaneros are from the freezer from last year, plus an Aji Dulce, for more of the flavor, but less heat. As always, I cooked some chana dal in the Instant Pot, on Slowcook medium, and after 30 minutes, added a half cup of rinsed freekeh - my favorite grain in this, and finished it at 2 hours and 10 minutes, then drained, while getting everything ready for it - the olive oil, red wine vinegar, habaneros, cilantro, garlic chives, feta, pine nuts, and close to 6 c of tomatoes.
Chana dal and freekah, cooked in Instant Pot on slowcook medium for 130 minutes. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Lentil salad, before stirring all the ingredients in, and adding almost 6 cups of tomatoes. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Finished lentil salad, after eating my first bowl of it for the season. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

I gotta Tex Mex thang going on.
It involves some really old black eyed peas I'm trying to make tender.
Ground brisket.
My homemade chorizo Verde.
Lettuce.
Cheese.
Tostada tortillas.
Maybe a jalapeno or Serrano chile.

Welp it's refried black eyed peas complete with bacon fat and chicken bullion powder.
I added a little homemade rice flour to help thicken.
I gotta tell y'all this rice flour has became the dust of a thousand uses.
Well anyway.
Here it is topped with Colby cheese and blue cheese dressing.
Chorizo Verde on the side.

I made an Indian dish this evening with a number of veggies from the garden - a sambar, using cubed bottle gourd, eggplants, and okra, along with onion and some of last year's garlic. I made a one dish meal, using some barley, which I soaked a few hours, so it would cook in the same time as the dal and the veggies.

I started with a large chopped onion, cooked in the IP on Sauté, medium, in a little oil. Then some diced bell pepper was cooked for a couple of minutes, then some ginger/garlic paste (something I made with the end of last season's garlic), cooked briefly, then 4 tb sambar masala, and cooked another 30 seconds, then added about 12 oz tomatoes, blended to a coarse purée, and cooked several minutes, with about half of the curry leaves (more in the tarka). Then I rinsed out the blender with 5 c of water, added this, and the barley, plus 4 types of dal, brought it up to a boil, and added all the vegetables. Then I added salt to taste, plus a little citric acid (easier than the tamarind, for tartness), and set on Manual, to cook 14 minutes, and let release, naturally. The dals and barley cooked in the same amount of time, due to the soaking of the barley. When finished, I prepared the tarka, and added the sizzling tarka to the sambar, for tempering, and stirred in about a quarter cup of cilantro.
The veggies for the sambar, plus some onions and tomatoes. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

The onions and bell peppers, sautéed with some ginger and garlic added at the end, with the sambar masala cooked about 30 seconds, before adding the tomatoes. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

The sambar, after adding the veggies, 4 dals, some soaked barley, and water, ready to pressure cook in the Instant Pot. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Sambar finished cooking, before stirring in the cilantro and tarka. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Ingredients ready for the tarka. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Sizzling tarka, ready to stir in, followed by the cilantro. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Sambar served, with some spicy pickles. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

They had USDA prime sirloin on sale for 7 something a pound.
I'm going to have some shrimp I thawed out in the refrigerator yesterday and the 24 ounce sirloin along with onion rings.

I sous vide @121° for about 75 minutes two de-boned 1” thick porterhouses last night, so two filets and two New York sirloin strips. Seasoned one side of the beef with Perry’s (famous Houston steakhouse) steakhouse seasoning and seared on 575° hot cast iron for about 45 seconds per side. Sous Vide steak, with this particular seasoning, and a sear at the temperature has become our house gold standard of steak making.

One side dish was oven roasted split lengthways and seasoned and spritz with olive oil okra at 385° for 20 minutes. The other side was seeded, opened up, spritzed, seasoned and roasted skin side down Calabrian caviar and Gatherer’s Gold peppers next to the okra.

I really can’t get enough of okra cooked this way. The thin types of okra get a little crunchy like an oven fry and the fat types are creamy delicious, but not slimy. I like the mix of the two types of okra. Fresh okra has such a great flavor.

Gatherer’s Gold is growing on me. First one I tasted was too much like orange juice, but oven roasted it was really nice. Calabrian caviar has a great rich sweet pepper flavor roasted in the oven. Too delicate for the grill, but on a cookie sheet in the oven, yes, fantastic . Zero, absolutely zero on the scoville scale for both. These are sweet peppers. I did also do a hot Hungarian wax pepper that was orangey red. HOT, but too hot, one bite was enough and that was at the end of the meal.

I’m working through the leftover steak today. Lunch was sliced thin cold new york strip, mayonnaise, a very ripe pink tomato, and iceberg lettuce on white bread.

Dinner was supposed to be halibut at a fancy wedding in a fancy hotel in Austin, but the wife had to tag along to the wedding with a couple of the children without me. I’m managing storm recovery for a couple of interests and needed to be local. Hearing from the wife a number of expected attendees are MIA. Our son is the best man and had to miss the rehearsal dinner due to work commitments, but he narrowly got to get off work just long enough for the ceremony and reception.

Extraordinary times.

I ended up filling up on fried coconut shrimp.
I even mixed the remaining coconut with the batter and fried it.
But didn't eat but one everything was so rich.
Stuffed to the hills.

Today, getting ready for this heat coming again, I made a batch of that favorite pasta salad of mine. This time I cooked some soaked white beans and some whole oats to add to it, instead of just pasta, and cooked that in the slow cooker mode of the Instant Pot, and drained those, and set aside, while preparing everything else. The shells are just the right size for this, holding a bunch of the tomatoes, and other things in them. I just shook most of the water out of them, until not much was dripping from the colander, then dumped the hot pasta on the rest of the salad, and mixed it up.
A little more than 3 lbs of tomatoes, cut up for the pasta salad. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Almost 2 cups of basil leaves, to cut up for the paste salad, along with some capers, anchovies, olives, and garlic scapes. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Finished salad, with some white beans and whole oats, added to the pound of pasta, with all those seasonings. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

I ended up having two hand sliced pork jowls rind on, 4 fried eggs and buttered toast with apricot preserves.
It was delicious.

Brenda fixed biscuits and gravy for breakfast this morning before we went to church. I should have known better, dosed off a couple of times during the sermon. Just finishing up lunch, Thunder and Lightning ( all home grown with Balsamic Vinegar and several ripe peppers thrown in) and seasoned fries. Think I am done for the day, may go out and check the bird feeders later. Pretty brutal, temp wise, already.

I no longer grow bells, have found some that taste better and that are much more productive. Now I am working on making them larger.

Bone-In Center Loin Rib Pork Chops, Thick Cut in the crockpot. Can of cream of mushroom soup, a little water, salt and pepper.

Sides will be white rice and cucumbers dressed in sour cream and a little vinegar.

Somehow I got a hankering for cornbread after I filled up my new vollrath 14 ounce glass syrup dispenser with Steen's 100% pure cane syrup.
I opened up a new can and the smell was heavenly.

Habanero raisin cornbread.
Who would have thought.

@worth1 my dad loves Steen’s cane syrup. Does it still come in the yellow can? Hot from the oven cornbread with plenty of melting butter and some Steen’s was something we had many times growing up. I like Jalapeño Cornbread, can’t say I’ve had Habanero cornbread.