Thursdays Are For Cooking….
Summertime, and the livin’ is hot, humid and downright badly in need of a shade tree and a hammock right now.
So here’s a quick easy dish to serve at an outdoor cookout (to get you out of the kitchen) or just as a filler. It is simple to fix, and can be made in the morning or the night before your cookout. It’s something my Dad’s mother used to make when we went to visit her in Nebraska.
Tomato & Cabbage Cole Slaw
Ingredients:
Cabbage – fresh and green, but you can add the red/purple cabbage for color, just shred it and mix well
Onions – peel and chop and toss into the bowl; if you decide to use green onions, include the tails chopped up instead of tossing the.
Tomatoes – at least two big, fat red ones, fresh from your garden if you have one; cut up and chop into small pieces, add to the bowl along with the juice from the tomatoes. The only things that should be tossed are the tomato stems.
Radishes – white icicle and red radishes are fine, just remove the tails and roots and make sure they are clean. Slicing them is fine, if you don’t want to bother with chopping.
Salt & pepper: season to taste, but don’t overdo.
You can also chop up a medium-sized zucchini and throw that into this mix. Just cut off the stem and the other end and do a coarse chop on this. No more than two medium zukes are needed. Why not use cucumber? It gets limp and soggy. Zucchini doesn’t, and yes, you can also use yellow squash as pictured above.
Make this first thing in the morning and then refrigerate it. Give this a real good stir and mixing, cover with cling wrap and refrigerate until supper time. This gives the slaw time to settle into its flavoring and chill all the way through. By the time you have the grill going and the meat cooking, the slaw will be awash in its own flavors and only needs a good stir before putting it on the table.
Make sure you have plenty of cold drinks on hand, too, because it’s summertime, and the livin’ should really be easy. The kids can be kept busy with hide & seek, Blind Man’s Bluff, and double dutch jump rope.
Maybe you’ll have a few hours when the idiocy going on will seem far away, where it belongs.
Pure GOLD.
speaking of a head of cabbage?
I likes rabbit food on occasion, gotta stay away from the onions and watch the cabbages sometimes cause of the heartburn. Got into the habit of dropping a prilosec before I have those, helps a little. All about some zookeenies, squash, and ‘maters. Speaking of ‘maters, here’s your best recipe for them boys. Gets you some of them big ol’ fat Better Boys or Beefsteak vine ripened ones that Graybeard has in the garden. Chill that puppy down, slice to about 1/2- 3/4 inch. Take some fresh light bread (toasted if preferred), spread both pieces of bread with Duke’s Mayo, install ‘mater pieces, salt and pepper. Add a Mason Jar of the House Wine (sweet iced tea). Repeat as needed.
This time of year, I’m no more intimate with my grill than I am with my oven. Grilling is done either very early of a morning or after dark 30. Shade tree? Naw…7 tons of HVAC Machinery and a “don’t give a damn attitude about the power bill” gets me thru these “How ’bout them Dawgs” Days of Summer.
Still got just a very few of my Nebraska baked cookies that are going real well with the assortment of ice creams in the freezerator.
Tanks Ml’Lady…Let’s Eat!
A Georgia boy ‘fraud of a little heat?! wth, Brother?
I’d be hunting hog in the jungled hollows iffn I was a free man, no matter the gauge read. (but i aint right)
Trade places?
My best tomato recipe goes like this:
-get yourself a big f**ker, baseball to softball size
-give it to the missus
-eat a steak
Don’t forget the salt & pepper on that cow!
Pairs well with a maduro for dessert.
Oh this Georgia Boy ain’t skeered of the heat he just can’t take it like he could ‘fore them strokes (chancre mechanic made mention that would happen). Plus they used to pay me the large $s to work in it 8,10,12 + hours a day to be hot. Nobody paying me to be out in it so here we are. Don’t even have to walk to the mail box for a check…Hellooo Direct Deposit from the 401 & SS. And you been to the Benning, Polk, or Stewart Schools for Wayward Chill’ren, then you know all about the humidity that goes along with the heat.
Trade places? Oh hells to the naw. Passed up a chance for a killer job as the Operations Manager of a Hotel/Cafe/Bar in the People’s Republic of Commiecutt back in the late 90s. Bt I can shorely make room for all kinds of deplorables here at Firebase Magnolia or at COP CRC Timber Ranch. Welcome South Brother. Sit on the back porch at the TR and nail Bambi, dove, quail everywhere with rabbits and black bear scat in evidence. 1/2 mile up the road from the Firebase is the fishing pond and a good swampy place to trap all the wild hogs you want. 2 hours to the Atlantic beaches, 3 hours to the Gulf, or the Smokey Mountains.
Ain’t nothing gooder than a 1&1/4-1&1/2 inch thick heavy Western Grain Fed USDA #1 Prime Nebraska Beef Beast grilled properly on some real coals. Kin folk out there send me a care package packed in dry ice on a semi regular basis. You can cut them marbled ribeyes with a plastic spoon they so tender. And yeah, I do got a multitude of shade trees, pecan, black walnut, and a Georgia Pine that 4 of us couldn’t wrap our arms around that is as tall as a…well…Georgia Pine.
Pardon while I remove the taste of foot outta my mouth with a little Beam. Sorry about the insensitive nature, truly.
One day, Good Lord willing, my bits will grace the fine state of Georgia once more and I’ll bring the A-1 (so we can mock it mercilessly while eating good meat where its services are not required), also in tow something malt or of Kentucky origin.
I can smell that early morning haze baking off the savanna of midlands GA right now… orange sun painting the tops of the trees indicating an oppressively hot day as the bug start their day songs: weeeeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.
(never did find out what makes those long, high pitched screams)
Still. That physical heat is much better than this political one.
You did yourself a solid, Reb. goodonya.
I’d eat that!
Ditto! Harvested our very first round of ‘mater’s last week. Got give that a try! Thank you, KoB and thank you for this post Ex-PH2
About three more weeks before we get ‘maters from the garden in NE Massachusetts. Squash and zucchini could not be more prolific. Zinnias are blooming.
We don’t get much summer but when we get it, we get a lot of it!