PAPERBACK WRITER!

The paperback version of "The Laugh & Times of Mushy" is up and ready at Lulu.com.

As I've said, it's a compilation of blog post from Mushy's Moochings (Also known as a blook!). This blog was started in early 2006 with the express intention of leaving some documentation of "who and what" I am/was to my children and grandchildren.

I was thrilled to find out that my memoirs were of interest to many other bloggers, and especially to those I have listed in my "blogrolls," which is really a list of all the new friends I made while engaged in this project.

With that said, I want everyone to know that you should feel no obligation to buy the new "self-published" book. After all, you have been privy to the posts as they happened! Therefore, please do not get the impression I am pushing this off on you. (Shhhhh, maybe folks just now arriving will be interested!)

The "proof copy" in hard cover, arrived a few days ago and I was thrilled with everything but the back cover. I have made some revisions, added a few more chapters, and I have admit the two (including Cross+Hairs) look pretty good sitting here on my desk!

Inside the latest, you will find over 113,000 words, 311 pages, made up of over 124 chapters, most of which were posted here.

Anyway, I wanted you all to know!

Thanks for your faithful following here!

Love you all...meant it!

CHICKEN AND VEGETABLE STIR

Chicken tenderloins are always in my freezer and they stand ready for a great salad, a meat side to cooked vegetables, or rice. I use them the most to cook, dice, and mix into an EVOO stir fried mixture frozen or fresh vegetables.

That what you see posted here, and stir fry of broccoli, green, yellow, and orange bell peppers, onions, and water chestnuts! I cooked them in what was left from frying the chicken in EVOO and pickled garlic! If you look closely at the vegetable shot, you can see the browned garlic deep into the mixture near the front of the photo.

It really takes so little effort and time whip up an impressive meal that’s good for you. Add your special touch by adding salt, pepper, and a touch of cayenne pepper to taste to the chicken as it cooks. Remember, frozen chicken does not have to be thawed before you cook it! Just heat up one side, add your seasoning and turn it over and add ingredients to the other side. Then just brown to your liking, cool and cut up, and sit aside until the vegetables are just about ready! Simple!

Of course, as always, I had a little shot of my favorite beverage sitting along side the stove as I cooked. In this case it was Chavis Regal scotch, straight up, but often times it’s Jose Cuervo Black, straight up, or George Dickel over ice. When the stock is being rationed, it will be a pale ale of either Sierra Nevada, Yuengling, or Bass. Anyway, it’s about the only time I drink at home and it makes for an enjoyable experience!

MUSHY IS CUTTING BACK…

…and cooking once again!

My son-in-law works maintenance for a local health club chain. He brought home a couple of exercise bikes that were to be thrown out. He managed to piece together two great functioning cycles from all the parts and he gave us one! Ours is a Lifecycle 9500HR, and man it is working both Judy and me out! The trick for us is to set it up in full view of the big screen, instead of down in the cool basement!

Seriously, neither of us will ever be health models, but it does keep us moving between naps!

At minimum, we try to ride 30 minutes a day and I think that’s plenty, even if you split it up into 2 or 3 sessions. Fifteen minutes equals around 5 miles. But, you do need to keep the heart rate up! Thus far I’m up to 15 minutes at a time, and the only reason I get off then is that it puts very uncomfortable pressure on my prostate area! Yep, it just kills me sometimes and even puts little Mushy to sleep! I have to force myself to the back part of the seat or I get this very unpleasant feeling that takes hours to go away.

Anyway, so much for my personal problems, the real reason I’m posting is to document a couple of recipes – this one about pork tenderloin and the following one, which may be the better of the two, about how I prepared grouper!

Pre-prepare some raw broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and onions for cooking, by cutting them into bite size pieces. Sprinkle a few almonds into the mixture for extra flavor and crunch. Then put them on a paper plate to await their turn in the skillet!

As per my habit, put a small amount of EVOO (Rachel Ray’s acronym for extra virgin olive oil) in a skillet, put in a generous amount of crushed garlic, and a few sprinkles of your favorite hot sauce. I love Ring of Fire, and I sometimes use too much for my wife’s taste, so be careful.

Then after slicing the pork tenderloin into ½ to 1” pieces, place them into medium hot EVOO. Season the up side with salt and pepper, and then turn them over and do the same to the other side. Then allow the down side to cook to a golden brown before turning again. Turn them once more and when black areas begin to appear, take them out. You are now ready for the vegetables you have previously prepared.

Dump the entire plate of vegetables and nuts into the hot skillet. You should not have to add more oil.

Toss the vegetables around until they just begin to get limp and hot throughout. I like mine about half raw, so cook to your taste. Then serve!

This is a very good low fat meal. 3 to 4 slices of pork should be enough for one meal, leaving you a few more slices for other meals, or to slip to your “baby dog” (Baylee) who is waiting patiently near the stove!

We actually got two additional meals – one was breakfast when we reheated the meat beside a couple of over easy eggs (skillet sprayed lightly with EVOO or some other light oil), and then again another day for lunch. We were dying for a “grilled cheese” sandwich, so we used whole wheat bread, some 2% cheese, and the remaining tenderloin.

Judy sprayed the bread with butter spray and toasted each side of the sandwich, which melted the cheese all over the pork! OMG…it was so good! I wish I had photographed the sandwich, but it was gone before I thought about it!

If you don’t cheat just a little, you will never make any sort of weight reduction program!

NUT-ENCRUSTED GROUPER

Let me say right up front, that this is the best tasting fish I’ve had in ages. Not since my mother-in-law Ruth fried Crappie, have I enjoyed fish more!

We bought several packages of frozen fish, some grouper and flounder, the other day to see which we preferred. As it turned out, we like them both!

Coincidentally, just a day before going to the store, Judy read about a “nut breading” technique in her “Curves” magazine. So, that is what we tried.

We thawed a 3-piece package of the grouper out overnight in the refrigerator and cooked it the next day.

She chopped up a mixture of almonds and walnuts on a paper plate. She then whipped up a single egg in a shallow bowl, adding salt, pepper, and a little lemon juice. She then stepped back and handed the hot cooking to me!

All the while we were baking 2 small potatoes in the oven, which we planned to eat with the fish.

I separately rolled each piece of fish in the egg mixture, then rolled them in the nuts, and placed them into a hot skillet of EVOO, no garlic or hot sauce added!

I then pressed the timer for 3 minutes! When the timer went off I gently turned the fish and reset the timer for 3 minutes. So not cook it any longer! A hot skillet at 3 minutes is plenty. Even at 3 minutes, you’ll get a nice dark brown to blackened look, which is just perfect.

When the timer went off the second time, Judy had the potatoes opened, salt and peppered, and butter sprayed! I placed a piece on each plate, beside the lovely potato.

I tasted first and went into a swooning groan of pleasure! Man! The taste of the fish was heavenly. There was a crunchy outer shell with tender fish inside, and the combination of tastes is indescribable! You must try this at home!