Football Food

After our 3 mile charity walk yesterday, we went out to breakfast.  I figured I worked off enough calories to indulge in one of my guilty breakfast pleasures:  corned beef hash!

On a “The best think I ever ate” on FoodTV, Michael Symon had a guacamole that had blue cheese, sage and bacon in it.  While mine didn’t look a lot like the one he had (his had bigger chunks of blue cheese and probably center cut bacon) we both really liked it.  We discovered there is a range of blue cheeses out there – while we like blue cheese, we don’t like it when its too pungent.

So I had an idea to make steak taquitos.  We had this steak in the freezer that I defrosted the day before – not even sure what spencer steak is!

I cut the steak into strips, then in a corn tortilla put about a tablespoon of refried beans, some taco sauce, the steak and queso cheese.  I made a sauce on the side that Tony didn’t like at all, so his taquitos were a bit on the dry side.  And while I tasted the steak right after I cooked it and it was very flavorful and tender, once I deep fried it, the meat was overcooked.

So while Tony was watching football, I was able to search OnDemand in our back room, in my comfy chair with a nice breeze – I may or may not have taken a teeny tiny nap! 😀  So I was in HBO Documentaries, and I saw one on Altzheimer’s.  So while I did the charity walk yesterday, I have not known anyone personally who has gone through this with a loved one first hand.

My friends Helen and Susan have though, and this documentary was such an eye opener!   The first person they interviewed was about 60 years old.  He was holding up an old family picture of his mom, her siblings and cousins – 14 people in total.  The interviewer said “how many people in that photograph have died because of Altzheimer’s.”  The mans response was “it would be easier to tell you who didn’t!”  12 out of 14 people in that photo, including his mother, all died of Altzheimer’s disease.

Yet another family had a father they could no longer take care of.  He was put in a nursing home, but complications of some of the medications gave him insomnia, so they had to hire a personal caretaker, at the cost of $100 a night, to put their father back dozens of time during the night.

But the one that struck me the most was a man who was a caretaker for his wife for nine years.  They showed pictures of the couple when they were young, at the beach, having fun.   He was determined not to have his wife go in a nursing home.  They showed pictures of her from the first year she had Altzheimer’s and it showed how debilitating the disease gets as  the years go by.

But the one thing the man said was that he lost his life long companion.  It was like taking care of just a body, as the last 5 years of his wife’s illness, she was unable to communicate.  So I just wanted to thank everyone again for donating to my walk yesterday – it really opened my eyes to a disease I knew little about.

Alright, now back to the food!  My store had spare ribs on sale for $1.99 a pound.  And for some reason, my non-meat eating daughter loves these ribs – but only these ribs, not beef ribs, not baby back, just plain old spare ribs.

Thankfully Tony saw my first mistake, I had the oven temp too high – I started it off at 275, but it should bake at 200 degrees for four hours.

It was a gorgeous night!

New BSI host this week – Rucika Cooks chose Paneer.  Seems like our BSI is making its rounds in India these past several weeks!  Paneer is a fresh cheese, almost like cottage cheese.  So if you live in an area that you can’t find Paneer, they will accept cottage cheese as a good substitute.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  😀