Taco Salad

I was hungry for taco salad and I have some leftover chili, queso dip, and salad fixins. I took some flour tortillas and formed them into bowls, then baked in the oven. Assembled the salads with fresh avocado slices on top. Oh yea, ate every bit.

Metal cutting time

Finally after a long hiatus I fired up the plasma table to cut some metal. I got a job to enhance some old saws for a resale shop. I made up some text that would fit on the saw and went to cutting. It was fun but not using to equipment for such time was a challenge for success. It didn't take long to get it back in sync tho. I hope they sell well for them.

Hummus patty

I was pressured into bringing a dish for St. Patricks Day luncheon at the office. I volunteered to bring some hummus dip. Nothing special goes into the dip but I wanted to make it special for the occasion, so I added green food coloring. It tastes great but does not look so appetizing. I will see if they still eat it.

Sausage Time

I procured a couple of pounds of venison and thought this would be a great addition to my homemade sausage endeavor. So I set to making a batch of smoked cured sausage.
Ingredients:
Venison, Pork, Bacon, Chipotles, Jalapenos, curing salt, garlic/onion powder, cumin, ground mustard seed, and spices.
I chopped the chipotles and jalapeno in the food processor then mixed all ingredients in bowl. Sent through to the grinder to get it all mixed and sized. Stuffed in natural hog casings, and hung on a rack to go to the smoker. I am smoking them with charcoal and pecan wood.

You can really smell the smoked chipotles before I cooked them. I am just guessing on how much peppers to add for the batch. I want it to be spicy but not painful.

Here we go.

Smoked pork loin

The next episode on the pursuit of the best pork loin. I picked up a large loin at the local supermarket big meat sale. This is a 1/3 of the loin and I am smoking it in similar fashion to the last.
So dry rub with brown sugar, paprika, garlic/onion powder, crushed red pepper, black pepper, salt. Put in the smoker for X hours.

Red meat

Is ribeye steaks tonight. The bucher was having big sale so I picked up a 15lbs chunk of boneless ribeye, cut into 1" slices, and stacked the freezer. Onto the grill with with some sweet potatoes. Good stuff.

Salmon snack

Last night I loaded the smoker with pork steaks, salmon, bratwurst, stuffed mushrooms, and scalloped potatoes. All were wonderful and we stuffed ourselves. I had a partner coming over for a lunch meeting today. So I made a quick snack plate using the leftover salmon, some cheese slices, and olives. Nice refreshing snack, and that salmon is so good after sitting in reefer over night.
I can't wait to get my cold smoker built so can smoke some cheeses.