Johnson City Lumber Yard Stewed Tomatoes

Coming back to Dallas from a weekend in The Hill Country, we stopped for lunch at a cafe and antique mall in a former lumber yard in Johnson City.  I ordered a plate lunch special with meatloaf, stewed tomatoes and something that wasn't very memorable.  The tomatoes were off the charts wonderful.  Sweet and savory with an under-layer of heat.  I came straight home and made up a batch before I forgot the flavor mix.  The recipe that follows pretty well nails it.  This recipe is going to become my standard accompaniment for meat loaf.  I have decided that what I want to go with it is mashed sweet potatoes.  Those 3 together will suit one another just fine.

Johnson City Lumber Yard Stewed Tomatoes

Drain the juice off a large can of diced tomatoes.  Reserve the tomatoes.  Put the juice into a pan on medium heat and reduce.  You will need to watch it because tomatoes have an unhappy way of scorching...so, stir the juice every few minutes.  When the juice has been reduced by half, add the tomatoes and 3 heaping Tbsp of brown sugar (I used brown sugar Splenda and it was just fine), 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar, 1/8 tsp cinnamon and just a trace of cayenne.  Return to the heat and allow flavors to mix.  Serve and enjoy.

Levitt Pavilion in Arlington

I recently came across a Live Music Venue in Arlington that has a whole lot going for it. It is the right price (free). They obviously focus on providing a variety of musical genres. It doesn't matter what sort of music you enjoy, they are going to have someone on their calendar that does it!




Check 'em out!



http://www.levittpavilionarlington.org/

Pear Chutney and Pork Loin

Chutney is a traditional sauce used on the side of Indian food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Grey's_Chutney  I developed a taste for chutney as a child.  I can tell you where I was sitting the first time anyone fed me a curry.  I was hooked. 

The main problem with chutney is that it is expensive.  Major Grey's is a little bitty bottle with a great big price.  I have substituted mango preserves into recipes that called for chutney, but it isn't the same.  My friend, Jennifer, has often told me how easy it is to make chutney.  I just have never done it, not until now.  Recently as I was walking into a friend's house, I noticed that she has a pear tree in her yard that was covered (and I do mean covered) with fruit ready to pick. Pears don't ripen on the tree. They need to be picked and brought inside and watched over as they ripen. She let me have about 5 pounds of fruit. I came home and made Pear Chutney with it. http://www.food.com/recipe/ginger-pear-chutney-100006

So, now, here I am with over a gallon of Chutney. I will be giving friends half of that and I will use a fair amount of it as my contribution to covered-dish events through the Christmas Holidays (chutney over a block of cream cheese + water crackers and I have something to take to every covered dish event I get invited to for the next 4 months!). But, I need to do something else with the chutney. What I did was I used it to cook pork loin steaks in my small crock pot.

The Recipe:   You will need a medium sweet potato and 4 slices of pork loin or 4 pork chops.  Peel the sweet potato and cut it into wedges.   Put a teaspoon of chutney into the bottom of a small crock pot.  Add half the potato wedges to the crock pot.  Slather potatoes with just a bit of chutney. Cover potatoes with half  the pork.   Spread a teaspoon of chutney on each piece of pork.  Repeat the layers.  Cook  on high, for about 3 1/2 hours, or on low for 7 hours. 

This combination would freeze well.  Sweet potato will freeze, unlike the Irish Potato.

When I buy a whole pork loin, I cut it into "steaks" about 3/4th of an inch thick.  Then I freeze the "steaks" in bundles of 2 servings.  It makes it easy to use.  The next time I get a pork loin, I think I may go on and make up the pear chutney pork loin and sweet potato mix so I can freeze cooked portions and have my own version of Meals Ready To Eat!  All I would have to do is cook a side vegetable or make a salad and dinner is d-o-n-e!

Great Menu Planner Website

How about a website that knows what is on sale at your neighborhood grocery store and has recipes that take advantage of those sales!  Is that cool or what?  FoodOnTheTable is a subscription service that also has a  free teaser membership that gives you a chance to test drive the service.  The Teaser membership limits you to 3 grocery stores.  I chose a Tom Thumb, a Kroger and Central Market.  I tried to add Whole Foods which is how I found out about the limit of 3 stores.   Once those stores are identified, you specify which meats appeal to your tastes.  The website then does a side-by-side list of which store has those items on sale, giving you a choice of which store you want to shop in.  I asked the website to give me 3 menus.  The recipes generate a grocery list that can be emailed to yourself so it shows up on your phone as a list.  Now, THAT is a feature I can use!

http://www.foodonthetable.com/

The grocery list also has coupons for in-store specials.  I couldn't find how to print the grocery list, but obviously there has to be a way to do it!

North Texas Traditional Dance Society

Should you find yourself with a free Saturday night, consider going Contra Dancing with the North Texas Traditional Dance Society (NTTDS).   http://www.nttds.org/  It is fun. It costs very little.   It is good exercise without being being too far off the charts in terms of physical effort. 

NTTDS has been around since the early 1980s.  They have a dance pretty much every Saturday night with live music.  Check their calendar for location.  They welcome strangers.  You don't have to show up with a partner.  The group encourages everyone to change partners for each dance.  There are usually more women than men so it is common for women to dance together.  These people don't let much stand in the way of having a good time!

What is Contra Dancing?  It is sort of like square dance, kind of like the old fashioned English country dancing they show in the Jane Austin movies.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_dance.  You will want to take a bottle of water with you.  Dress is casual.  Ladies wear skirts mostly because it feels good to dance in a skirt!  Show up early and they will walk New-comers through the basics (currently between 7:30 and 8 when the dancing begins).

Foreign Parts

I love my job. I get to learn something new just about every day!   I have had 3 situations recently that required me to think about how things done locally have to mesh with things done in Foreign Parts.

In the first instance, a Canadian National wanted to buy a condo in Dallas.  What I found out is that for her to do that, she would have to pay cash.  In order for her to borrow money, it could only be with a US lending institution.  And, her Canadian credit history won't help her.  She has to establish credit in the US.  And, it would take 2 years for that to happen.

The other two deals both involved a real estate sale by a US citizen who is currently working out of the country.  In both cases, it was necessary for the seller to travel to the closest US embassy to have papers notarized in a form that is recordable in the US.  One of my sellers decided that he didn't need to travel that distance.  He got the papers executed by a local French notary and then paid to overnight those papers to the title company.  That set off the Tilt Meter at the title company.  The seller got to do it again, this time traveling 200 Km to the embassy.

Buying a Condo? Are you getting a Mortgage or Paying Cash?

If you are buying a condo and you plan to get a mortgage, you need to find out if the complex is FHA Approved.  You need that information even if you are getting a Conventional Loan. It used to be possible to get FHA “spot approval” for an individual unit. That option has been completely eliminated as of February 2010. Now the complex has to get approved. It didn’t used to matter at all because there really weren’t that many differences between FHA and Conventional financing. Currently, unless you have 20% to put down, the only kind of condo financing reliably available is FHA.

I recently had a deal where the buyer paid cash for the condo. He told me that it doesn’t matter to him that the complex isn’t FHA Approved. I told him that he may not care now, but eventually it will matter because he will need to sell it. The bigger the pool of potential buyers, the higher the demand there will be for the property. The higher the demand, the more likely the sales prices will go up. The more difficult it is to get a loan for units in the complex, the more likely it is that prices will be stagnant, or Heaven Forbid, go down.

To find out if the complex is on the FHA Approved List,

https://entp.hud.gov/idapp/html/condlook.cfm