Monica Kochelee

The word is out that there is a Great American Seafood Cook off happening in New Orleans. The cook off is supposed to be using domestic sustainable seafood recipes.   This cook off is one of the most prestigious contests.  The winning chef will win the title of King of American Seafood.  I went onto the Internet to find out what I could about the contest.

I’m very excited about the event because it is featuring local, fresh food instead of something foreign, frozen or canned.  I think that promoting local seafood is important.   I’d love to be able to enter my Aunt Johnnie’s baked seafood recipe in a seafood cooking contest!

This is her recipe:

Aunt Johnnie’s baked seafood casserole

1 pound of fish (suggests scallops, shrimp, or crab)

2 T butter (or oleo)

2 T flour

1 c chicken broth

1/8 t nutmeg

salt & pepper

Parmesan cheese

Bread crumbs

To make veloute sauce:  In a saucepan, melt butter, stir in flour, slowly add broth.  Return to heat, stirring constantly until thick & smooth.  Blend in salt & pepper & nutmeg.  In a separate frying pan saute fish in butter for approximately five minutes.  Combine the fish with the veloute sauce and put all in a shallow baking dish.  Sprinkle top with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese and brown it quickly under the broiler.

This recipe does not specify what KIND of bread crumbs to use, whether to buy the canned seasoned bread crumbs, or crumbs made from fresh bread.  So I’ve tried it both ways and I think I like the the fresh bread crumbs version the best.

If you’d like to share your favorite recipe with me, I’d love to hear from you!  Feel free to leave a comment with your recipe in it!

I had a coupon for a Smithfield’s seasoned pork roast, so I decided to buy one last week and we tried it out last night.  It was the one that is seasoned with herbs and stuffed with Wild Rice.  It took longer to cook than it was supposed to, which I guess is normal for most roasts - it is aggravating when the directions say 22 minutes per pound and you have 1 1/2 pounds and it takes an hour to cook!  I know the temperature on my oven is good, I bought TWO oven thermometers and they say it is right on.  Anyway, it took longer to cook than it was supposed to, which is aggravating.

I guess my entire family is not a big fan of heavily seasoned items, we found this to be way too spicy hot with black pepper and way too heavy on the garlic.  We would have liked it much better if the seasoning was cut in half.  I might buy it again and then wipe off half of the seasoning before cooking it!

When I got home this evening I was hoping that my hubby was going to cook burgers on the grill outside.  I love it when he cooks burgers on the grill outside.  Let’s face it, I love it when he cooks ANYTHING outside!  Probably largely due to the fact that leaves me with one less pot or pan to clean up from cooking inside!  But also I like it during the summer because it helps to keep the house from getting overheated from cooking inside.  During the summertime, cooking outside is definitely the way to keep a house cooler! 

But my hubby was asleep when I got home, and he stayed asleep so I had to fend for myself.  I don’t like cooking on the grill outside.  I don’t know why the propane grill makes me nervous, I guess it’s because I have to make sure to turn the propane on and off again and I’m afraid I’ll forget.  Or maybe it’s the open flame, but I rather doubt that because I cook with propane inside!  I think I’d really like to buy one of the Outdoor Electric Grills for me to cook on, I would not be as nervous about that.  I’d probably keep it in the garage, though, and leave the garage door open.

Boy, let me tell you, cooking a pork anything in the crock-pot stinks up the house so badly! Yesterday I decided to cook a pork shoulder during the day, so we could have shredded pork barbecue sandwiches a few times this week. But I didn’t want to stink up the house, everyone was home and I knew that they would all complain about how badly the house smelled while it was cooking. And a pork shoulder has to cook a long time - one hour on high, then seven to nine hours on low!

So I decided to cook it in the crock-pot in our garage, where the stink wouldn’t bother us. It worked out just fine, I kept the big garage door open to help the stink escape the garage, and a fan blowing to circulate the air out as much as possible. So I plan to do that in the future, too, when cooking something stinky in the crock-pot!

I am getting tired of turning on the news and hearing about recalls!  Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad that we have more people “on the ball” and catching these things before it gets out of hand and thousands of people get sick and die, but I do wonder if there is more unhealthy things out there now, or if the improvements in the information technology is simply making us more aware?  It is getting so that I’m a little bit worried about eating any kind of produce or meat!  I’m afraid I’m going to starve!  Salmonella and e-coli are in the news so often that it no longer surprises me.