Zesty Italian Vegetables

My resolution for the new year is to organize my recipe pictures from the last seven years!  This is a huge task that I started this weekend on our 7 hour drive taking our middle daughter Bethany to graduate school at Texas Tech University.

If you know me, I love to take pictures and with the thousands I've taken my recipe one are scatted throughout them all. Ughhhh....  It's what you might call a 'gaudy goal' that may not be attainable...but I put a good stab at it this weekend and am feeling accomplished.

The Zesty Italian Vegetables is a recipe I forgot that there was a picture of.  It shows you the vegetables before they were cooked in the picture below, but you get the idea. 

This recipe is the only way my husband will eat green beans now and being creative I placed in some yellow squash along with the potatoes.   More times than I can count we've cooked our green beans this way with Zesty Italian Dressing.

If you want an entire meal from this dish, just add uncooked chicken thighs or breast or even pork chops in the center and cook.  It's a 'Ranchman Approved' recipe at our house and so simply that several of my daughter's friends cook saying it's the first dish of The Ranch Kitchen site they ever made.  That makes me the most proud when new cooks use my recipes. 

Click here for the recipe for Zesty Italian Vegetables

Stay warm, safe and enjoy this cold wintery weather.  Now I have to decide what to cook for dinner and this may just be the ticket!

Enjoy! 

Alise - The Ranch Kitchen

Grandma's Potatoes

Greasy potatoes were a staple at my husband's parents house growing up and they were wonderful!  Nothing quite compares to the flavor you get from pan frying potatoes in a cast iron skillet with lots and lots of grease. My mother-in-law Billie Nolan had this potatoe dish down to an art that I'll never be able to duplicate. If my husband had a favorite meal from growing up in Indian Rock it would be this and her deer steak. Years of cooking for four men had helped her refine her cooking skills! 

Last night as I cooked birthday dinner for our 22 year old Bethany these were the potatoes she wanted. I tried to replicate this dish as I could without the artery clogging qualities and it still turned out well. I used a wok in place of a cast iron skillet and my potatoes turn out a bit crispier. 

Simple seasonings like garlic salt and pepper are my choices to use.  I also fry a small white cooking onion and chopped green pepper with the potatoes from our garden. 

I do not drain these potatoes on a paper towel as Scott's mom did as my version cooks most of the oil out of them. I like to use my Teflon coated wok as it has a larger cooking surface to cook my potatoes faster. You can even add cheese to the top at the end, but we preferred it without. 

One note of advice for young cooks and even older ones when cooking these potatoes or anything else.....wear an apron when you cook!  I cannot tell you the large number of both my professional clothes and t-shirts I have gotten oil stains on from popping grease. I know my Granny is smiling from above as she always harped on this advice.  So...wear an apron and you'll thank me later! Below you'll see a cute one with my The Ranch Kitchen logo that my sweet husband surprised me with for my girls and I 'times four' to wear in the kitchen!  My daughters were impressed that it was his own original idea! He of course made sure it was printed on a Nolan green apron!

 

Simple and easy, these potatoes never fail and are always a favorite at our house!  Recipes don't have to be full of ingredients or steps to be the best!  

Click here at for the recipe for Grandma's Potatoes. 

Alise - The Ranch Kitchen