Don't Be A Hater

Thought for the Day.....
What makes us the same is greater than what makes us different.

Enjoy!




Sluggy

Reduced Sodium Honey Garlic Sauce Recipe

Here is the recipe I talked about the other day, since I had some requests to share it.

First, the recipe I "freestyled" off of.....

HONEY GARLIC SAUCE

1/4 cup soy sauce Yikes!
1/4 cup honey
1 TB rice wine vinegar
1 tsp. ginger
1 TB garlic
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 tsp. cornstarch

And here is my Version

LOW SODIUM HONEY GARLIC SAUCE
2 TB reduced sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup honey + 1TB
3 TB rice wine vinegar
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger(powdered is ok)
3 TB garlic(minced)
1/2 tsp. ground pepper
1/8 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
2 tsp cornstarch(or more according to thickness of sauce)

You combine all but the cornstarch in a bowl and mix well.
To marinate your meat/protein, put raw meat into Ziploc bag, pour in marinade and refrigerate at least 30 minutes(an hour is better).
After 30 min.,  remove the meat and grill or pan sauté.  Reserve the liquid.

While meat is cooking, put marinade in small saucepan.  Pour all but 2 TB of marinade into pot.
Take the 2 TB of marinade and add your cornstarch to it, mixing onto no lumps remain.
Heat saucepan of marinade to boiling.  Slowly pour in cornstarch/marinade mixture, whisking or mixing as you add it.
Continue heating marinade mixture until it thickens to a sauce consistency.

Pour over your cooked meat, serve with rice, vegetables and/or other dishes.

Of course, you can monkey around with the proportions of the ingredients.  The sodium in this version is a lot better but still a bit high for me, because, well, reduced sodium soy sauce is an oxymoron.  Soy Sauce should be called Salt Sauce. lol
I cut the soy and added rice wine vinegar.

If you like garlic, add more garlic.....if you like spicy, add more of the red pepper flakes.
Or add more or less honey or vinegar to taste.

Next time I make this I'll sauté eggplant and make Garlic Eggplant.


Sluggy
 

The Banjoes Are Calling Me....

Last week I experienced a flurry of genealogy activity.
The week before while noodling around on the interweb I found a library in Lynchburg, VA that has a wealth of genealogical information.
It's called the Jones Memorial Library.
They specialize in local history and genealogy.
Among their holdings are a large amount of local newspaper obituaries.

So I started poking around and came up with quite a few of my ancestors who had been brick walls for me.
I sent away for 8 obituaries at a cost of $80($10 per)......oh how I wish I knew someone locally who could have copied these documents for me cheaper!
This documenting family can get expensive ya know......

Anyway, they arrived very quickly via 1st class mail last week into my hot little hands.

All of the obits were informative and 1 answered a question my brother and I had talked about when he was here for the graduation, as we reminisced about long dead relatives.

The folks in question here are my maternal grandfather's family(my mother's father's side of the family) and/or folks who married into this family.
They lived in the central part of Virginia.  Yes, my mother's mother's family back during the depression was The Waltons, only a little further south....

My grandfather, Wirt Ross Harper, was the oldest son of Robert William Harper and Jennie Vie Tucker Harper of Campbell County, VA.  Wirt had 5 brothers and 2 sisters(in chronological order they were Ollie, Wirt, Royal, Lillie Vie, Robert, Raymond, Ernest and Tucker).
They were all born between 1907 and 1924.
Unfortunately I don't have a group photograph of all of this family.

The most important information I gained from finding these obit listings online was it narrowed down some folks death dates to within a few days for me, even if I didn't send for the obit itself, which also listed the day of the actual death and not just the day it was published in the newspaper.

One of the brothers I had the least information on was Royal.  He died when I was 4 so I don't remember him at all. His obit pegged his birth year(as it gave his age at his death....he was 49).
It also told me that he had been a veteran(as he died in a veteran's hospital), he had been married(listed his widows name, including maiden name), and where he was buried.
What it didn't mention was also telling too.....no surviving children, meaning he was childless when he passed. 
I went to put his information into my family tree on Ancestry and found a new piece of info. there-the application for a veteran's grave marker filled out by his widow in 1963.  This confirmed the military service too.

Now I have done an exhaustive search on Find A Grave for this family line over the past year, and I have never turned up a memorial/known burial plot for Royal in any of the cemeteries my other Harpers are known to be planted in. 
The obit gave me that he was buried in Smith Cemetery, which I assumed to be near Brookneal, VA, where most of this family group lived.
But a search on F.A.G. came up with no such cemetery.

A few days later I found the Campbell County Historical Societies Website.  They have a Project to find the "Lost Cemeteries" in the county and I found the Smith Family Cemetery listed as one of these MIA burying grounds listed there.
I also went onto F.A.G.(aka Find A Grave) and put up a memorial for Royal there and requested a photo from a local volunteer.  I did explain in a note with the request about the issue with where the cemetery was located.  There are 75 local photo volunteers and I am hoping one of them has a clue where this cemetery is or can ask someone locally they know, where to find it.
Cross your fingers for me!

This week's free time has been spent tracking down whether my mother's side of the family dearly departed are listed on F.A.G. or not, and if so, to request that their memorials be transferred to my care so I can link them all up and post more details or photos of them on the site.  So far I have 14 Baker/Vassar/Tucker/Harper/Foster/ ancestors under my wing now.  
I am having a devil of a time getting my grandparents out from the grasp of one F.A.G. contributor.  He does NOT respond to emails or his public messages or memorial suggestions/edits.  I've been trying to get these grands for months now and I will turn this over to the admin on the site very soon.  I suspect the contributor may be dead or infirmed and no longer active.  Why else would he ignore me?  If it comes down to a pissing contest, they are MY grandparents and not his....my mother was an only child so besides my brother, I am the closest living relative, and F.A.G. gives precedence to the closet relative for ancestors within 4 generations.

I would like to take a trip down to Virginia this summer to do some genealogical research at the Campbell Co. Historical Society/Public Library.  I see that they have TONS of research available on site to comb through.  I am at the stage of the game now that online census reports and such have been exhausted and I need official certificates and wills books and old newspaper microfiche now to continue the search.  Plus I'd love to go visit some graveyards in the area too and pay my respects.

I heard that one of my mother's cousin's wife is the unofficial Baker/Vassar family historian in that area, who has photos and such that I don't have and might have some written down stories.  I'd love to get together with her, as well as the cousin of my mother on her father's side who still lives in the area for additional information on the Harper/Tucker lines.

Maybe I'll take #2 Son on a roadtrip once school is out in just over a week.  He can help with the driving now and be my legs when mine wear out.  Oh, I KNOW the thought of spending time with me, a library and cemeteries will thrill him to no end......but if I keep him full of pizza and crap and let him sleep to 2pm, he might not complain too much.  lol

Anybody out there live in South Central VA((Farmville, Lynchburg, Appomattox areas) and want a house guest sometime next month?? 8-)





Sluggy

Food & Eating on a Restricted Sodium Diet

I want to mention two grocery items I found lately that are super low in sodium, in case there are some folks reading me who want or need to lower their intake of that yummy but possibly unhealthy food.

I found this brand of salad dressing....

Braswell's brand of dressing.  This particular one is a peach vinaigrette.
It only has 30 mg sodium(compared to the 250 or much more in other commercial dressings).
The herb vinaigrette variety has only 100 mg as well. 
This peach flavor goes well with greens and nuts, not so good if you add tomato to your salad.
It's not cheap at $3.99 a bottle but it's been on sale at Weis(Poundmeintheass)Markets lately for $2.99(not on sale this week).  It comes in a reusable glass carafe....very convenient for your summer wine soirees. ;-)

I know I can probably makes this cheaper myself(I buy bulk bags of frozen peach slices at the restaurant supply store, so the cost of the fruit is lower than paying $3 or more for a 1lb. bag in the grocery store), but it's good to have on hand for those days when you don't have the time or energy to make 6 or so items from scratch because you can't have the commercially prepared equivalent anymore.

I also found a partial answer to my cheese dilemma.....I LOVE cheese, but it's basically all sodium, even fake cheese has tons of sodium in it.
HeluvaGood is my new "besty".....

They make a reduced sodium cheddar cheese.
25 mg per 2 oz. serving.
I found the only place around here that carries it is Wegman's.  It's $2.49 an 8 oz. package.
Now I say this is a PARTIAL solution for two reasons.

1-They only make this reduced sodium cheese in a cheddar variety.  Cheddar cheese is a very small part of the Fromage Universe and being restricted to 1 type of cheese for life chaps my butt.
But at least there IS some cheese I can have in quantity.

2-It tastes terrible.  Ok....maybe not terrible but it's not as good as cheddar cheese make with salt.
It's terrible as an "let's have cheese on crackers" cheese, but it's good as a "melted in a sandwich or in a casserole" cheese.  It just doesn't have much flavor at all.  And I am telling you this as someone who's palate is use to not having salt and finding flavor in bland food now.
Mostly I'll probably be using this WITH a real cheese, to extend the amount I can have but have the flavor of reg. cheddar, on days when I have seriously restricted all other sodium consumed so I have lots of room left in my sodium allotment.

I did use this reduced sodium cheese thusly a couple of weeks back.
Weis(PMITA)Markets had Cubanelle peppers on sale for $1.29 lb.  I bought some and made Chile Rellenos one night for dinner.
Though I have enjoyed this dish in restaurants before, I had never made this myself before and was a bit intimidated.
It really wasn't too bad but it was difficult as you need to be quick once you get the egg whites whipped up.
Here are the peppers once I had put them to char on the grill and then sweat in a plastic bag.....

I should have charred them more as the skins would have been easier to pull off.   But luckily the skins of cubanelle peppers aren't as tough as poblano peppers so the dish was still edible.
I did the traditional frying of the egg white batter dipped peppers(the most difficult part was coating the peppers) but next time I'll try baking them instead.  I stuffed my pepper with my special RS cheese but still put some reg. Monterey jack cheese on top when I baked them off in the casserole dish.  It was enough to give it cheese flavor but not so much that I went over my sodium limit for the day.

Sorry I forgot to snap a photo of the finish dish, but trust me, everyone ate them right up! lol

Last week I had a 2lb. bag of large shrimp(21-30 ct. I think?) I wanted to use.
Not wanting to go the battered and fried route, I tired grilling them on skewers.  I went searching online for a honey garlic sauce recipe.
Found one and then did my monkeying around with it to make it almost sodium-free but still tasty.
Let the shrimp skewers marinate for an hour before I threw them on the grill and used a can of coconut milk to make coconut rice to go along with the shrimp.
Then I thickened the marinade with cornstarch and served the resulting sauce over the shrimp.
Hubs & I agreed that the sauce tasted just like the Garlic Sauce they put on Eggplant at our favorite Chinese restaurant!
I could have sworn I snapped a picture of the finished dish but can't seem to find it in my files....

The sauce was so good, I used leftover sauce to form the base of a new batch of sauce last Saturday and made Garlic Chicken and Broccoli over leftover Coconut Rice.  I also added water chestnuts to give the dish a little crunch....

"Good enough to eat" close-up.....

I'm so spiffy, the dish coordinates with my dinnerware colors! lol
We have 2 servings of this dish left so it will be on the menu either tonight or tomorrow as it's too hot to cook here the next couple of days.

If anyone would like my reduced-sodium Honey Garlic marinade and sauce recipe, just give out a holler and I'll post it.

I'm off to another dr. appt. in a bit here....oh goody!

Sluggy

Non-Stop Toilet Cleaning

Hubs and I are going into the Designer Hotel business.

HERE

It needs work but it's a steal!
Look at the trim work inside on that staircase.
The only draw back is the number of toilets.
I just wish I could talk him into it.

He wants to leave his job soooo badly and doesn't want to wait the few years he needs to stay before he retires from there.

I told him he can leave now, we can fix this up and run it.
After a few years, when it's a going operation, we can hire a manager to run it, and then sit back and count the profits.

That's what childhood friends of Hubs did when they retired as teachers.  They bought a B&B in the Berkshires, eventually hired a manager, retiring from the B&B biz and had a passive income stream.

I guess I'll have to save this idea for my second husband...... ;-)

Sluggy