{"id":7545,"date":"2025-08-20T01:14:55","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/?p=7545"},"modified":"2025-08-20T01:14:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:14:56","slug":"leg-status-ok-but-ugly-and-a-new-recipe-for-your-enjoyment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/20\/leg-status-ok-but-ugly-and-a-new-recipe-for-your-enjoyment\/","title":{"rendered":"Leg Status (OK but UGLY) and a New Recipe for Your Enjoyment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings and Salutations!
At least the swelling has gone down significantly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As gross as it is, ALL the discoloration on the lower part of the leg is due to the knee rebuild surgery and shrapnel damage that fucked up all of my “up and down” veins. The varicose veins started when I was still on active duty, and pretty much end at where the tops of my jungle boots would end.

Believe it or not, it’s not that bad. Bad Lighting doesn’t help. The bruising however? Yep. Almost “All American” in that it’s Red White and Blue as well as Purple and Black in some areas. Also it turns out that lil zit on the leg? That right there was a piece of metal that it would seem got ‘worked loose’ beneath he skin… the reason I know this was I took a big ‘fishing magnet’ I have, and it pulled that sucker right out to the surface. So now it’s all good. These things happen every few years…

So otherwise…
Tonight I have a new recipe for y’all.
Philly Cheesesteak Pasta Bake.

It’s pretty simple. I’ll lay out what I used, and y’all can make it by size, as needed. The ingredients:

Philly Meat and Veggie filling:<\/strong>
24oz (2 packages) Fine Shaved Ribeye. (see below)
1x Large Green Pepper
1x Large Sweet (Vidalia if you can get it) Onion
3oz fresh diced Garlic (call it a full peeled clove)

Cheese Sauce:<\/strong>
2 12oz packages of Cabot Creamery Mac n’ Cheese Blend.
2x slices of Provolone Cheese
1x stick of salted butter
1\/2 cuppa milk

Spices:<\/strong>
Salt and Pepper as needed
2x tablespoons Aleppo Pepper or more or cayenne as a substitute. Your choice. I like the mild Aleppo.
Italian Seasoning to finish

Pasta:<\/strong>
1 1\/2 Boxes of Pasta as preferred.
I used spirals as it hold the cheese in quite nicely.

Stove Prep:<\/strong> Set it to 375 to bake after the prep is done.

Step One:<\/strong> Start the water boiling, salt as needed.

Step Two:<\/strong> Slice the pepper and onion into decent size slices. I don’t recommend dicing as they’ll cook down to nothing by the time you’re done.

Step Three:<\/strong> Start cooking the meat. Spice it with the garlic, and salt and pepper, and about 1\/4 tablespoon of Aleppo pepper. When it’s about half cooked, add the sliced veggies. Cook until the meat is done, and the veggies are softened, but not fully cooked. That will be finished during the bake phase.

Step Four:<\/strong> Somewhere in the middle of cooking the meat, the water should be boiling. Cook the pasta until Al Dente.

Step Five:<\/strong> Once the meat and peppers are done, pull them, and set aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As you can see, the veggies are blanched, but not overcooked, and the meat is fully cooked. Mind you if one were so inclined that on it’s own, that dish? stuffed in a bun would be good to go. However, for this exercise? Once the pasta is done, pull it too:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mind the steam.

Now
Step Six:<\/strong> On a low setting, place one stick of salted butter in a smol pot, and about 1\/2 cup of milk on the stove. Set it to a low boil. As soon as it begins to boil, add the cheese (both of them):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a reminder, use the whole bag of mac n’cheese blend, and 2x slices (if wanted) of the provolone. Stir constantly and evenly<\/strong>

It should only take about 5-6 minutes on low to medium heat to get the cheese, butter and milk to melt and fuse together. Do Not Overcook It.<\/strong> If you overcook it, instead of it gelling, it’ll start to separate, which is a no-no. As stated Stir continually<\/strong>, and keep an eye on it. It should all be smooth, no lumps and blended together. Once it’s done, pull it aside. Do NOT<\/strong> let it get too cool. You need to pour it over the pasta\/meat\/veg mix to finish it in a few.

Step Seven: <\/strong>Mix the pasta and meat mix, and place in a baking dish. Once you have it in the appropriate dish (or dishes as I did tonight) pour in half of the cheese sauce mix (while still hot and liquid-y, and mix it in thoroughly to insure a maximum blend throughout:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looks good donnit?

Step Eight:<\/strong> Once you get it there, with everything mixed and smoothed out, the second bag of mac and cheese blend comes into play. Pour THAT evenly <\/strong>over the top of the now-mixed pasta. Make a nice even coating as needed. Dust with the Italian seasoning.

Final Step or as they say Step Nine:<\/strong> Place the baking dish into the stove covered. <\/strong>Set the timer for 15-20 minutes depending on the size. Once that timer is done, uncover<\/strong> the dish and bake for 30 minutes more. Now you can reverse this depending on your likes\/dislikes. Sapper and I love the crunchy crust, so we did 15 covered, 30 uncovered, and we got this out of doing so:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh yeah baby
A meal fit for the Kitchen King.

Tasted pretty damned good too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Considering I had only had ONE cuppa yogurt for my brekkie, the evening meal? Yeah I chowed on 2.5 full bowls of that lovely and delicious meal.

My recipe about as you see makes a LOT of the bake. You could cut it in half if you only want one meal for one, with 2-3 days worth of leftovers… either way, the cost of this meal would be about $20 for the shaved ribeye now, and about $5-10 for the rest of the ‘stuff’. However, the meat I bought and pulled from the deep freeze, so it was from September of 2024… and I only paid $7.50 per 12oz. The one I used was from Publix:<\/p>\n\n\n

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No idea the current price, but it can’t be anywhere near what I paid for about almost a year ago… it’s probably double that now… either way, YMMV.

And as far as making a double batch?

The other<\/em> white baking dish I did NOT bake, but threw into the deep freeze for later use, as I expect some guests here in the future, and the BIG pot will do as a ‘don’t have to expend $$$’ while entertaining relations, as well as being able to impress with my cooking skills.

I mean I made this meal up… there might<\/em> be something similar out there, as after all… the food on this planet has been pretty much the same for the past 40-6,0000 YEARS so at best, mine is a variation on a theme. Said theme being “Throwing meat, pasta, veggies and cheese into a pot and baking it”

However plebian this may be, I figured some of y’all enjoy my cooking adventures, so there is that right?

So tomorrow?
Molasses cookies again.
I’ve had the fixings laying out forever. I need to get off my duff and just ‘git ‘er done’ like the man used to say.

So More >URP!< Later
(The “I’m FULL now”) Big Country<\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings and Salutations!At least the swelling has gone down significantly: As gross as it is, ALL the discoloration on the lower part of the leg is due to the knee rebuild surgery and shrapnel damage that fucked up all of my “up and down” veins. The varicose veins started when I was still on active … Continue reading “Leg Status (OK but UGLY) and a New Recipe for Your Enjoyment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7555,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545\/revisions\/7555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}