Thanksgiving is just around the corner, actually it’s going to happen this coming Thursday!  I love Thanksgiving and I especially love Oyster dressing!  I know it sounds terrible to mix a fishy little thing like an Oyster in with a turkey, but it’s the best!

So, how do you make it?

I’ll tell you this is the simplest dressing recipe in the world!  You need to mix it up the night before you are going to cook the turkey.

I like to buy the little bottles of Oysters and you usually only get 4 out of a bottle.  So, for me I like to put 4 bottles of oysters in my dressing.  When you open the bottles, save the liquid by pouring it into a cup.  Then finish dumping the oysters out.  Make sure you handle each one under running water, feeling to make sure the processor people didn’t leave some of the oyster shells attached to the oysters.  That will ruin your dressing for sure.

Now cut up the little buggers into small pieces.  I use a cutting board and try not to make a really big mess.

In a pretty good sized bowl, I will dump in two boxes of Mrs. Cubbisons seasoned and dried bread crumbs.  You don’t have to use the seasoned ones if you don’t have them.  But about 10 cups of the bread crumbs is what you are after.

Take a quarter pound stick of margarine or butter and heat it till it’s melted.

Pour the melted butter evenly over the bread crumbs.  Then get your hands into the mix and toss the crumbs around in the bowl to spread out the butter flavoring.  Try to keep most of the crumbs inside the bowl.

Now rinse your hands off and dice up a nice sized yellow onion.  Put that in with the buttery crumbs.

Then take 4 large celery sticks and dice them up pretty fine and add them to the crumbs and onions.

Now put in the oyster pieces, add the juice you saved when you opened the bottles and one cup of water.  Now get your hands into the mix again and make sure everything is mixed up really good.

OK!  Now cover the bowl with some plastic sheeting and put it in the fridge.  If your fridge doesn’t have room for a big old bowl of stuffing, then put the mix into smaller plastic bags and put them in the fridge.  There is always a way!

In the morning, you are going to stuff the turkey with this mix and put the bird in the oven to cook.

What happens is, over night the good flavors of all the stuff you just mixed up will gather and have a big old party in the fridge.  The party goes on all night long and the crumbs and other stuff gets all flavored up, the crumbs take on the onions and the onions take on the celery and everything takes on the oysters and butter.

Then after you stuff the bird crammed full and press as much into the birds’ cavity as you can (more can be put in the neck flap too) and the bird is beginning to cook.  The birds juices flow into the dressing and really adds to the already good flavors and moistens up the dressing even more than it was when you put it into the bird.  The turkey flavors and the oyster flavors trade places to some extent making the whole meal a taste bud treat that just can’t be beat!

I don’t like to add salt or pepper…and I don’t think you should either.  Let your guests do that to meet their individual tastes.

How much simpler can it get?  It can’t!

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Bears Butt

November 2013

I must be getting old.  Today I logged into my regular Firefox account and expected everything to be same-o, same-o….not so.  I was not really happy until I found a little folder looking thingy in the upper left side of the menu bar a thing called “most visited”.  I clicked on it and there I found my old favorites…like this site.  I was a happy guy once again.

I wish they could leave things the way they were.  Old people have a tough time adapting.  Maybe they are trying to weed us out by making us frustrated and have heart attacks.

Anyway, back to the reason I’m sitting here.

I am a firm believer that when you get a cold or just about any kind of sickness that puts you out of commission, and especially if you are running a fever, there is nothing better to fix you up than chicken fat and onion.  So, here is what I prescribe the next time you are down and out.  You can trust Dr. Bears Butt.

You will have to prepare a bit ahead of time and save the skin off a few pieces of chicken.  And don’t forget to save those large chunks of fat as well.  It’s great to eat healthy, but that is when you ARE healthy, this recipe is for when you are NOT healthy.  It will pick you up better than a Z-pack, trust me.

Take that bag of chicken skin and fat out of the freezer and toss it into a pan of water.  Bring to a boil and while waiting for the boiling to begin, dice up a whole yellow onion and put it in the pan with the chicken skin.  Salt and pepper to taste as things progress.

After about a half hour of boiling, carefully remove each of the pieces of skin and cut them up into smaller pieces and put back into the boiling pan.  Once you have all the bigger pieces of skin cut up, that broth you are looking at is ready for you to enjoy!

Pour it into a cup and settle in to a comfy couch with your warmest robe around you, curl your legs up under your butt and sip away.  Breath in the vapors wafting out of the cup and smile often.  If after one cup you are sleepy, go ahead and take a nap, but don’t forget to turn the stove off first.  If you are not sleepy, have another cup and keep drinking it until it’s all gone.

You will begin to feel better almost instantly.

I don’t know what it is that is in chicken fat and onions but those two things always make me a happy guy when combined in a broth and salted down.

Enjoy and good night!  You will feel better real soon!

Bears Butt

Feb. 1, 2013 (Oh my heck, it’s already February)

A wonderful day to celebrate the National Holiday…it must involve food!  And it does!

National Deviled Egg Day!  I just love deviled eggs and so soon after Halloween too.

There are traditions in the family that must never be broken and one is Rut Runners Deviled Eggs!  No matter the party, she serves up THE BEST deviled eggs…Yummy!  I wish I had one right now.

So, her recipe is a secret, but I found one on line at Food Network dot Com and it lends itself a bit of a twist over Rut Runners, and I only post it up on here because it had over 200 reviews and maintained a 5 of 5 rating, so it must be pretty dang good.

Traditional Southern Deviled Eggs

Recipe courtesy Paula Deen

Show: Paula’s Home CookingEpisode: Southern Favorites

• Recipe categories: Eggs,
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• ratings & reviews(212)
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3 Videos | Photo: Traditional Southern Deviled Eggs Recipe

Rated 5 stars out of 5

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Total Time:

25 min

Prep

15 min

Cook

10 min

Yield:

14 eggs

Level:

Easy

Ingredients

• 7 large eggs, hard boiled and peeled
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
• 1 teaspoon prepared mustard
• Salt and pepper, for taste
• Paprika, for garnishing
• Sweet gherkin pickles sliced, for garnishing
• Pimentos, for garnishing

Directions

I hit Wyatt’s BS today for a semi annual haircut and while there an elderly gentleman mentioned his Aunt liking Head Cheese.  I asked him what was in head cheese and he admitted he did not know, nor did he care for head cheese.  So that conversation ended, but I said, it looks like Bears Butt will have to do some research and post it up.

My intense research brought up a whole bunch of different aspects of Head Cheese, but all of them pointed at a pigs head or a calf head as the main ingredient.

I continued my research and even found a you tube video of someone actually making it.  But, since I have not had lunch yet, I quit watching it after just a couple of minutes.  At the point where one of the ladies said she had to shave the pigs head before she began cooking it…that was it for me.

When the job is all done it actually looks like something I would like to eat or at least try some day, but someone else will have to make it.  I will use the excuse that I don’t have a pot big enough to put a whole pigs head in it.  Nuff said.

On another site I actually found a recipe for head cheese and it’s pretty much simple stuff that goes into it, but when I really think about what is being cooked out of and off of the pigs head it just doesn’t seem like something a person should really do and eat afterwords.  I mean, think about it, the head is stuck in the pot of water and boiled.  The eye balls are removed before sticking the head in, and I’m sure there is some really bizarre thing done with them.  But the head is boiled for several hours and then the meat is picked off and that is what goes into the head cheese.  The gelatinous stuff comes from off the head and out of the brains, sort of a clear jelly like stuff when it cools.  Picture if you will a freshly opened can of Vienna Sausages or Pickled Pigs feet (I like those baby’s), that is the gelatin I’m talking about.

Why head cheese?  Well, not everyone has the cash to go lay down for a good steak or even a burger and yet we all get hungry and when we get hungry enough we start to think of ways we can render a meal out of most anything we have available.  I picture some really poor people once seeing a butcher throwing a perfectly good pig head out into the trash and so they took that head and boiled it to make sure it wasn’t going to kill them and thus started the head cheese tradition.  Better than nothing huh?

Here is a recipe I found on one of the sites:

		Hogs Head Cheese PREP TIME: 3 Hours YIELDS: 4 (1 pound) trays
		COMMENT: Many cooks today feel that hogs head cheese is a country rendition of the more classical daube glace. Though similar in nature, I feel head cheese is the by-product of sausage making such as boudin, and has been around for hundreds of years INGREDIENTS: 1 hog head, split and cleaned 4 pig feet, scraped and cleaned 4 pounds pork butt 3 cups onions, finely diced 3 cups celery, finely diced 2 cups bell pepper, finely diced 1/2 cup garlic, finely diced 2 whole bay leaves 1 tsp dry thyme 1/4 cup peppercorns, whole 1/2 cup green onions, finely sliced 1/2 cup parsley, finely diced 1/2 cup red bell pepper, finely diced 1/2 cup carrots, finely diced salt and cracked black pepper to taste 3 envelopes unflavored gelatin, dissolved METHOD: In a 4-gallon stock pot, place all of the above ingredients up to and including the whole peppercorns. Add enough water to cover the contents by 3 inches and bring to a rolling boil. Using a ladle, skim all foam and other impurities that rise to the surface during the first half hour of boiling. Continue to cook until meat is tender and pulling away from the bones, approximately 2 1/2 hours. Remove all meat from the stock pot and lay out on a flat baking pan to cool. Reserve 10 cups of the cooking stock and return to a low boil. Add all remaining ingredients, except gelatin and salt and pepper, boil for 3 minutes and remove from heat. Season to taste using salt and cracked black pepper. Add dissolved gelatin and set aside. Once meat has cooled, remove all bones and finely chop in a food processor. Place equal amounts of the meat in four trays and ladle in hot seasoned stock. The mixture should be meaty with just enough stock to gel and hold the meat together. Cover with clear wrap and place in refrigerator to set overnight. Head cheese is best eaten as an appetizer with croutons or crackers.

From this you can see they not only used the pigs head, but also its feet and some of the better cuts from the butt to make this a bit more appealing.  But for a traditionalist, I think just the head should be used.  You decide.  I think I’ll go have a bologna sandwich, at least I don’t know what all is in that cut of meat.

Bears Butt

Oct. 23, 2012

For a quick breakfast today we decided to have bacon and tomato sandwiches on a single slice of toast.  Of course I cut the toast lengthwise to accommodate the length of the bacon pieces.

My problem this morning was the fact that I only had 3 slices of bacon to work with.  SOOOO, I cut one slice of bologna in two and used that on MY sandwich along with the third slice of bacon.

There was some doubt as to how it would taste, but it was actually quite good with the bacon sort of adding the smokey flavor to the relatively un-flavorful bologna.

Well, as usual, that got me thinking about bologna and what is in it.  Perhaps I should not have ventured into the internet world to find out exactly what goes into bologna, but I did and to my surprise there is nothing in there (or supposed to be in there) that violates USDA rules.  I suppose occasionally a worker could slip up and toss the floor sweepings into the grinder instead of the trash container, but then that worker would not be considered a true bologna chef.

In my research I found that it takes a true connoisseur to be a master bologna maker.  That meat is ground and pureed from beef, pork, chicken, turkey and even venison all mixed up together with seasonings and actually smoked or cooked to perfection.  I like bologna.

I even found a recipe for making it and I’ll share it with you right here.  Thanks to “E-How Foods”!

http://www.ehow.com/how_4473991_make-bologna.html

One of these days I’m going to try making some, but I don’t think I will make it in 15 pound increments.  At least not at first.

Bears Butt

Oct. 21, 2012

I just made this one up this morning and my palate says “Not Bad”!

I’ll call it “The Two Pan Omelet” and it will serve three very well.

6 eggs

6 slices of bacon

1/4 cup diced onion

1/4 cup diced green peppers

2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Cook the bacon until nearly crip, then cut or crumble into smallish sizes

Heat the onions and peppers and add the bacon to that.  Turn off the heat.  Place mixture into a small bowl.

Spray pam in one of the frying pans, beat three of the eggs in a bowl and pour into pan, sprinkle about 1/2 cup of cheese over eggs in pan.

Cook until nearly done, meanwhile begin heating the second frying pan, when there is still some runny eggs stuff on top of the one cooking, turn the pan with the egg in it over the pan that is heating and the egg will drop into the second pan.  Turn off the heat to the second pan.

Spray pam into the first pan again and mix up the last three eggs and pour it into the pan.  Sprinkle 1/2 cup of cheese on the egg in the pan and cook until it is nearly done, some uncooked egg will show, add the bacon, onion and peppers mix onto the cooking eggs and spread it around.

Add the last cup of cheese on top of the bacon mix and then take the first “plop” of egg from the second pan and place it on top of the egg being cooked in the first pan.  Turn off the heat and remove the pan placing it on a cool surface.  In about 5 minutes it’s ready to eat!

Serve with toast, jelly, milk or juice.  Enjoy!

Bears Butt

Sept. 13, 2012

I have asked this question many times in my life and once again here I go with it.  What causes sausage links to move about in the pan while they are cooking?  They do it on their own without being touched.  They will roll one way and then back again, sometimes stopping for just a moment.  It’s rather amusing to watch and they do it until they are nearly done, at which time they stop and finish cooking.

I went on the web to find the answer and ran into a site with an explanation that sort of makes sense and then the next person chimed in with another thought and my mind went wandering off.

The guy with the best explanation said it was moisture inside the sausage link that was heating to steam and escaping out through tiny pores in the sausage skin.  This makes perfect sense to me as these modern skins are not made of the real thing and probably do have tiny holes in them.

Then another person popped in and said that in England using sausages with real gut skin around them they would cook and suddenly burst open, and they called them “bangers”.  A common breakfast would be sausages and fried mashed potatoes.  And they called it “bangers and mash”.  I like that!

So, I still don’t have a satisfactory answer to my question, but I have added a new breakfast name to my vocabulary.  Bangers and mash!  I think I’ll go cook some up right now!

Bears Butt

August 1, 2012 (can you believe it’s August already?)

At a rendezvous one year a shoot had just been completed where every contestant had their own raw egg to shoot at and if you didn’t hit it you had to eat it.  All us losers were standing in a large circle holding the eggs we had just taken the top of the shells off and with the white oozing and dripping down the outside of the remaining shell, we said a toast to the club and sucked them down as quickly as we could.

After all the choking and spitting and yuk saying and drinking a bit of beer to help keep the yolks down, Just George yelled out, “Don’t forget to pick up the dishes”!

What he meant was for everyone to pick up the egg shells they had tossed on the ground.  I’ll never forget that saying.

This posting is not about eating raw eggs, far from that, but it does have to do with the egg shells.

Earlier I have posted about a new world record that could just possibly be the first to be attempted and that was to see how many eggs one could crack open using a single egg to do it.  Crack eggs until the one being used as the “hammer” finally breaks.  But again, this story is not about that.  But it does have to do with the egg shells.

God was pretty cleaver in everything he did.  Eggs are one of those things.  A very neatly packaged source of protein and other stuff we need to keep our bodies going.  If I had to pick only one choice of something to eat I think I would choose eggs.  You can boil them, fry them, poach them, pickle them, eat them raw and last night I discovered you can grill them!

Grill them?  Yes.  I put an egg on the bbq grill and slowly turned it around and around for about 15 minutes and then cracked the shell off and Sherry and I shared what was a perfectly done egg, much like a hard boiled egg.  Salted and yummy!

Who needs to fry them when on a camping trip?  A dozen grilled eggs coming right up!

Bears Butt

July 18, 2012

Last nights supper was “clean out the fridge” night.  We do that about once each week.  Whatever is in there is what’s for dinner.  Last night there was a bit of corned beef, some taco meat mixed with refried beans and cheese and a bit of this and a touch of that.  Kind of a weird combo of foods.  Each one is very good by itself, but will the combo be good as a group?

I have tried several different recipes and one enchilada one was horrible.  Last nights combo of Mexican and Irish was actually quite tasty together.  Tasty enough I wrote it down so as not to forget to look it up today.

I looked up Corned Beef Tacos and what to my wondering eyes did appear….a recipe for it!  Actually a lot of recipes for it.  Here is a simple one that you just might like to try.  It’s from Food.com….

• 1 corned beef brisket (including seasoning packet)
• 12 flour tortillas or 12 corn tortillas or 12 crisp taco shells, warmed
• 3 cups shredded cabbage or 3 cups lettuce
• 1 1/2 cups shredded aged cheddar cheese
• sliced green onion
• diced tomato
• taco sauce (optional)

As young boys, my brother No Grimace and I found ourselves out on the back lawn in a small tent cooking some chicken.  We were hungry and thought chicken would serve us well until mom got home and made us a healthy supper.  It was summer time but I don’t recall it being really hot outside or inside the tent.

We had captured us up a candle, matches and a chicken leg.  Gathered up a tin can lid out of the burning barrel and seated the candle onto it so the wax wouldn’t mess up the grass inside the tent.  The candle lit and we were in business cooking chicken.  We held the chicken by the bone end and slowly turned it over the flame.  As a team we would take turns holding and turning the chicken bone.

We imagined how wonderful this chicken was going to taste as we watched it turn from flesh colored to more of a blackened look.  It crackled and popped and started to smell like fried chicken.

I don’t know how long we did this before we decided it must be done and I took a big bite out of the side of it.

YUK!  Waxie, bloody, nasty…spit that out sort of a taste!  No Grimace decided he didn’t want any chicken after that and didn’t take a bite!  It’s funny I like chicken to this day, but I do, it’s one of my favorites.

Now I know this is in the recipe section, but I don’t really have much of a recipe for BBQ Chicken, as you just have to put it on the BBQ grill and keep turning it.

Chicken is a fatty meat and it’s always best to cook it with the skin on when using the BBQ grill.  You can peel the skin off at the last stage of cooking if you don’t like to eat chicken skin, but most of the time I leave it on and eat it.  There is medicinal goodness in chicken skin in my humble opinion.

Anyway, a layer of fat lies between the chicken skin and the meat and this stuff takes a long, long time to cook out.  That is one way to tell when the chicken is nearly done, it stops splattering and fire flaring when it is getting close.  With that, chicken has to be baby sat while it cooks.  You have to be standing right there with it or it will catch fire and burn to a blackened mess (see message above, yuk, but the blackened mess above was from the wax candle, not the burning of the meat on the grill).  It is dangerous to leave chicken on the grill unattended as well, as the fat will drip and catch fire and actually burn the grill to a fiery molten mess if let go.  Flammables around the grill are in danger as well.

So keep turning and moving the chicken parts around and away from the flare ups that will occur during cooking.  It’s a long and arduous chore I know, but one that treats you with a wonderful meal when done.

In the last stages of cooking, the meat will stop dripping reddish pink juices when poked with a fork and you know then the chicken is nearly done.  At this point I like to get a serving bowl and squeeze some BBQ sauce in it, about 1/2 inch deep.  (Oh ya, if you are inclined to take the skin off the meat, now is the time to do that).  Then I take the chicken pieces off the grill one at a time and put it into the sauce and roll it around.  Once completely covered with sauce I put it back on the grill and grab another piece of chicken.  I do this until all the pieces of chicken are covered and back on the grill.  Then turn them over and over until the sauce is cooked adequately on the outside of the chicken pieces.  Once they are done, they all go back into the serving bowl on top of the sauce that is left and they are ready to serve and eat!

As usual the chicken pieces that go into the bowl first are really sticky with sauce, but hey!  That’s what BBQ is all about!  Just serve with a lot of paper towels and a couple more brews!

Bears Butt

June 24, 2012