Fourth of July, 2022 dinner

[Cooking Goddess]

Perfect grilling weather on this almost mid-summer holiday here in central MA. For some inexplicable reason, I had a taste for Waldorf salad. While Mom made it often, this might be the first time I have in nearly 48 years of marriage. It was good! Other goodies were jazzed up canned baked beans, cut up watermelon, and hot dogs expertly grilled by Himself.

[taxlady]

I tried a new-to-me recipe, One Pot Chicken Lo Mein. That worked better than expected. I made half the recipe, 3 servings. We finished it. It was good. I left out the sugar, but basically followed the recipe. I did use more chicken than called for, but it was only used one chicken breast. I will tweak it to our taste, starting next time. The purple/black bits are purple carrot.

[pepperhead212]

I made a one dish meal - an Indian dal/subzi, in which I put 3/4 c each of toor dal, red chori, and whole sorghum berries, and soaked it for a couple of hours, then cooked that on slow cook, while out in the garden. Later, I removed that from the IP, rinsed it out, then cooked a chopped onion and about a half cup of chopped garlic scapes in some ghee. Then I added 3 tb of a new sambar masala I made recently, and about a cup of chopped tomatoes, and cooked on low, until the mix turned thick, then return the cooked dal to the IP. I tossed the diced eggplants in a wok, while that cooked, followed by the okra, and added them to the IP, then cooked again in the slow cook mode, while I was outside again. Probably took longer to type this in, than the work time for the dish!
Sorghum, rather jowar, added to the sambar, which eggplant and okra is cooked in. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

The okra, ready to stir fry briefly, in the leftover oil from the eggplant. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Finished dal with eggplant and okra, and some sorghum - a.k.a. jowar. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

I oven roasted Louisiana cut Pare ribs with a home made dry rub. These were savory, not sweet ribs. My own recipe Cole slaw, stove top Boston Baked beans with bacon, and trimmed meat from ribs, Mollases was primary sweetener here, fresh corn on the cob, with salted butteer, and finally, fresh watermellon cubes. Here's what it looked like. Oh, and ribs were spritzed with cherry juice every hour for the 6 hour cooking time at 200'f. The came out with a great crust, and were tender, and succulent.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North