Where I grew up we had a couple chestnuts trees in our yard. You have to have at least 2 chestnut trees if you want to get chestnuts because the trees are self sterile. Our two trees were fantastic and and we always got lots of nuts from them. We ate the chestnuts in the typical methods of roasted and steamed, but my favorite way to eat chestnuts is in stuffing for turkey and chicken.
About Chestnuts
If you don’t have your own chestnut trees to gather the nuts from (before the squirrels do), then bare in mind that they are only briefly available in the grocery store from about Mid-October until just around Christmas. The chestnuts themselves are enclosed in a thin brown case with a furry inner lining. The nut of the chestnut is a soft, moist and woody tasting meat. They don’t keep well out of the shell, and should be kept in a moist part of your refrigerator until ready to use to keep them both from spoiling and drying out. If you gather fresh chestnuts, then you should wash the nuts, then treat them for worm eggs by placing them in a pot of water at 105° F for 10 minutes.
Homemade Chestnut Turkey Stuffing
Each year at Thanksgiving and Christmas we make our favorite Chestnut Stuffing for Turkey. We prefer to make this stuffing in a pan or casserole dish outside the bird but you could stuff the bird if you like.
Ingredients in Chestnut Turkey Stuffing
- 12 ounce bag unseasoned bread cubes for stuffing (one 1/2 24 ounce loaf of stale bread cut into cubes)
- 1 pound mild pork sausage
- 12 chestnuts
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1/3 cup celery pieces
- 1/3 cup diced onion
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups milk
- 1 1/2 tsp Poultry Seasoning
To make Chestnut Turkey Stuffing
- Make an x in the tops of the chestnuts, and bake in an oven at 350° F for 15 minutes. Then remove from oven, let cook, peel the chestnuts, and chop finely.
- Melt butter in a 3 quart non-stick saucepan.
- Add onion, celery, sausage and cook until sausage has cooked through ans is lightly browned, about 10 – 12 minutes.
- Place bread cubes in a large bowl. Mix in the chopped chestnuts, onion, celery and sausage. Sprinkle with poultry seasoning and mix well.
- Add milk, a little at a time, mixing with additions, until bread cubes are moist.
- Put the stuffing in a non-stick pan or casserole.
- Bake in a 350° F. oven covered for 1/2 hour. Remove cover and cook another 8 – 10 minutes until lightly browned on top.
Want something that’s quick to make on a weeknight, and yet has great flavor and nutrition; then try this recipe for Cajun Seasoned Pork Chops. In only takes about 20 minutes to cook the chops, and meanwhile you’re making the pasta salad, which is a jiffy when made with 
There is something to be said about enjoying fresh citrus fruit on a cold winter’s morning. When I look outside, and see the bare trees and the leaves all over the ground, the tropical grapefruit sections on the kitchen table brings thoughts of warm summer days, and bring flowers. We slice our grapefruit in half cutting across the fruit perpendicular to the stem end. Then we use a sharp paring knife to cut the grapefruit sections along each side of the membrane the separates the sections. Next, we use the same paring knife to free the sections by cutting the grapefruit along the rind. To serve, place the grapefruit sections in a cereal bowl, sprinkle the tops of the fruit with a little sugar or non-sugar sweetener, and serve with a small spoon. Use the spoon to dig out the grapefruit sections. When all of the sections have been eaten, grab the grapefruit in one hand, and squeeze the remaining juice out, catching in on the spoon. Repeat until no more grapefruit juice can be squeezed out.
1. Cut Grapefruit along each side of membrane.
2. Then cut along each section along rind and sprinkle with sugar.
3. After eating the sections there will be lots of juice left over. Simply squeeze the grapefruit in half, and catch the juice on a spoon to enjoy.
If you’ve never read the nutrition label on most pre-made store bought meatballs, you might be surprised at the fat content. Many times the daily value for fat is at 25% or higher, and that’s only for a few meatballs (the nutritional values are listed for an arbitrary serving which isn’t a portion). So because of that high fat content in the prepared meatballs, we always make our own using lean ground beef, ground turkey breast or ground chicken. It’s really not that hard to make meat balls, and all most all are made with 4 key ingredients: meat, bread crumbs, egg, and seasoning. The short story is you toss everything into a large bowl, mix well with your hands and then form the meat balls into 
balls with the palms of your hands. Place the formed meatball on a piece of wax paper and if making lots of meatballs, separate the layers with additional wax paper sheets.
As an alternative for serving this recipe over kluski noodles, you could instead make a Chicken Meatball Sandwich. Make the meatballs and Cheese White Sauce as described above. Spread the Cheese White Sauce on a kaiser roll, cut meat balls in half, and place on roll, and finely sprinkle with finely sliced lettuce.
On those busy weeknights or weekends for that matter, it’s nice to have a standby recipe that’s quick and easy to make. This recipe for Open Faced Beef Sandwiches is exactly one of those. Our sandwiches were served with Homemade Garlic Mashed Potatoes and they took 1/2 hour to make — but you could easily replace the mashed potatoes with instant mashed potatoes, potato salad, or macaroni salad to save that effort. Of course, this is only a quick meal if you have the ingredients on hand but it’s a great recipe to have to plan for those busy days ahead.
The typical breakfast omelet is made by pouring scrambled eggs into a hot frying pan, cooking the egg until firm, and then adding filling ingredients such as ham, cheese, tomatoes, green pepper and even blanched fresh asparagus. We regularly make omelets this way and have a post in our blog about the exact steps needed to make a good omelet. We’re always seeking change and variety in our meals, so todays post is about making an omelet in a different way.
The picture to the right here is of the finished omelet before adding the cheese as  discussed above. If you look closely, you’ll see how the ham is in the cooked egg mixture which is different from the standard omelet. This is a great way to serve the same omelet, and yet have it be different.
It is said that variety is the spice of life and variety is something we actively seek in our breakfast meals. Yesterday, we made poached eggs with ham on whole wheat toast topped with white cheddar cheese. This was a nice change of pace for us and we can’t remember the last time we made poached eggs.
There will be some thin egg white surrounding the poached eggs when they’re removed from the pan and these should be discarded.
Enjoying a delicious Hawaiian flavored pork ribs recipe on a cold winters night congers memories of warm tropical nights in the islands. Flavored with pineapple, ginger and garlic, these ribs are very tasty and it is a simple recipe for a weeknight as long as the ribs are thawed.
For some reason when December comes around our thoughts turn to cooking slow cooked foods for dinner. Some of our favorite slow cooked foods are beef stew, beef vegetable soup, chicken soup, and chuck roast and we make those all of the time. We wanted to make something different, and there were some very nice boneless pork ribs at the grocery store this week. We bought the boneless pork ribs with the idea of grinding up the pork to make pork meatballs. Since the grocer is too often tempted to get some value from the waste fat and toss extra fat into the grinder, we try to grind our own meat, as we are sure to leave out as much fat as possible. As it turns out, when we got home the ribs were just too nice to be turned into meatballs and we decided to make Country Boneless Pork Ribs with them instead.
We are always trying to add variety to our breakfast meals. So this recipe ranks high among our favorite new breakfast dishes. This last weekend we thought we would experiment with McCormick Greek Seasoning with our breakfast. What we came up with was a Mediterranean Tomato and Scrambled Egg dish that was wonderful.