Willy Cooks for Cattlemen's Meeting

Willy really had a lot of work but also a lot of fun cooking for a County Cattlemen's Meeting this week. Willy does this twice a year for two different counties. This can be lots of fun but it can be lots of work also.

This is the third year that Willy has done this and the first year was hamburgers. For some reason Willy inserted his number 10 shoe in his mouth and has had to cook steaks the last couple of years to save his honor.

The meal consisted of ribeye steak, baked potatoe, salad, roll and cookies for about 110 people. The easiest part was nbuying the salad mix and the cookies. Cleaning the potatoes and wrapping them to be cooked was a little bit of a pain. The steaks are cut fresh by a local meat cutter and are really good cuts.

The hardest part is timing of the cooking. We have use of a nice facility that has two ovens in it. The baked potatoes are put in to come out 1 hour before serving. They are then put in a large thermos cooler. This keeps the potatoes steaming hot until serving. In fact they were still to hot to handle an hour later with the bare hand.

When the potatoes come out then the ovens can be used to heat rolls and have them warm at serving.

We began the steak cooking process about 3 hours before the meal is to be fed. The cooker that we use belongs to the company and in my opinion is less than ideal for cooking steaks. It's design does not allow well to keep the steaks far enough from the charcoal to keep it from flaming and it is difficult to cook on a large scale in a method as to not burn on the outside and have to rare on the inside.

The charcoals are started 3 hours before. These are allowed to burn down about 30 minutes. While they are burning down we lay out about half of the steaks and season them with the proper seasoning. 2.5 hours before feeding we began to cook the steaks. The grill allows us (2 people cooking) to handle about 8 steaks on each side so we are cooking about 15 - 16 steaks at a time. As stated the flare up is very hard to control and it is hard to keep from charring the outside and leaving the inside to rare for most.

Taking our time the entire 110 steaks that we cooked were finished about 1hour prior to eating. Many people would think that this is too soon to finish. However, again we use the thermos type cooler lined with foil to put the steaks in as they come off of the grill. The attempt is to take them off in a medium rare state. During the next hour that they are in the cooker they steam which makes them even more tender and moves most of them to just a nice done state.

We do not even make an attempt to have different levels of done, even though I am sure that there are differences in the doneness of most of the steaks. However, the attempt is to have a done steak just enough to not be called any state of rare but not overdone.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. However, when the steaks are put on the plate an hour later they are still piping hot.

In all the evening came off very successful. Willy even made a sales pitch for his company that was accepted well. What could they say -- they had just been fed an excellent meal for free.

Irish Pot Roast

Willy thought since it was St. Patricks day that he would bring you a little Irish inspired recipe. Willy found this Beef pot roast that is Irish inspired. Check it out.

Looks like it would be good.

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Irish-Inspired Beef Pot Roast and Vegetables
Makes 6 to 8 servings.


Ingredients:
1 boneless beef bottom round rump roast or beef bottom round (3 to 3-1/4 pounds)

2 packages (24 ounces each) fresh pot roast vegetables (potatoes, onions, carrots, celery)

2 packages (.75 to .88 ounces each) mushroom or brown gravy mix

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 cup beer

Chopped fresh parsley (optional)




Instructions:

1. Prepare pot roast vegetables: cut potatoes in half (or into quarters if large), onions into 1/2-inch wedges, and carrots and celery into 2-inch pieces; set aside.
2. Combine gravy mixes, flour, salt and pepper in large bowl. Add vegetables to bowl; toss to coat well. Remove vegetables from flour mixture and place in 5 to 6-quart slow cooker. Add beef roast to bowl, turning to coat evenly with flour mixture. Remove roast and place in slow cooker in center of vegetables.
3. Whisk beer into remaining flour mixture until smooth; add to slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW 10 to 11 hours, or on HIGH 6 to 7 hours, or until beef and vegetables are fork-tender. (No stirring is necessary during cooking.)
4. Remove roast and vegetables. Skim fat from gravy. Carve roast into thin slices. Serve with vegetables and gravy. Sprinkle with parsley, if desired.


Nutrition information per serving (1/6 of recipe): 423 calories; 12 g fat (4 g saturated fat; 5 g monounsaturated fat); 147 mg cholesterol; 688 mg sodium; 23 g carbohydrate; 3.5 g fiber; 52 g protein; 10 mg niacin; 0.9 mg vitamin B6; 2.7 mcg vitamin B12; 4.7 mg iron; 57.2 mcg selenium; 8.6 mg zinc

Nutrition information per serving (1/8 of recipe): 318 calories; 9 g fat (3 g saturated fat; 3 g monounsaturated fat); 112 mg cholesterol; 516 mg sodium; 17 g carbohydrate; 2.6 g fiber; 39 g protein; 7.7 mg niacin; 0.6 mg vitamin B6; 2.0 mcg vitamin B12; 3.6 mg iron; 42.9 mcg selenium; 6.5 mg zinc.


Cook's Notes
Cook’s Tip: Packaged pot roast vegetables may also be referred to as stew or soup vegetables. One and one quarter pounds carrots, 1 pound small red potatoes, 2 small onions and 4 small ribs celery may be substituted for packaged pot roast vegetables. Prepare as directed above.

Cooking up a manipulation of the numbers!

Below is just a proof of how things on the Internet can be manipulated. I saw this typing test on a friends blog and decided to take the test. I really typed 65 words per minute. However, I manipulated the numbers so that I could look like I beat them.

133 words

Speed test

Cooking With Hillary and Obama!

You talk about cooking the books. America has such a screwed up system that at one time two states were told by the Democratic bosses that their primary carried no weight and the delegates were not to be seated at the convention.

Now these states appear to be going back and rehashing this and possibly having a new primary that does count. Lets just do whatever it takes to make it like we want it.

Some say that it is the democratic way of the old slave boss putting the black guy back in his place and putting the nail in his coffin. Not sure what that means but may be true.

Rule is - If it dont work like we want it to lets change it until we like the results.

This is really cooking the books in my opinion.

And that is What is cooking up with Willy today!

Whats Cooking for the White House

Willy tries to keep this blog mostly on cooking but in the early going Willy said that he might comment on what is cooking in Politics.

Well, after conversations with others this week Willy is getting scared about what is happening.

Willy believes that there is a real conspiracy cooking in America.

Willy believes that the Muslims are out to change America to Islamic Rule and idealogy.

Here is an excerpt from:

The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America
by Daniel Pipes
Commentary
November 2001

"Islamization agenda in North America."

For a fuller exposition of this outlook, one can do no better than to turn to a 1989 book by Shamim A. Siddiqi, an influential commentator on American Muslim issues. Cryptically titled Methodology of Dawah Ilallah in American Perspective (more idiomatically rendered as "The Need to Convert Americans to Islam"), this 168-page study, published in Brooklyn, remains largely unavailable to general readers (neither amazon.com nor bookfinder.com listed it over a period of months) but is widely posted on Islamist websites,2 where it enjoys a faithful readership. In it, in prose that makes up in intensity and vividness for what it lacks in sophistication and polish, Siddiqi lays out both a detailed rationale and a concrete plan for Islamists to take over the United States and establish "Islamic rule" (iqamat ad-din).

Willy believes that Hussein Obama becoming president is a major step in this process!