QUESADILLAS

Chop up any kind of cooked meat you like or have in the fridge. Also slice onions, jalapenos, green peppers, etc. Spread them on a tortilla and cover with lots of grated cheese. Put the other tortilla on top and cook on a flat pan about 3 minutes. Carefully tun and over and cook the other side till cheese has melted and the tortilla is brown. Serve with chopped lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and salsa.

HASH

This dish can be made with leftover corned beef or roast beef or pork. With beef, I usually use cooked potatoes. With pork, it's good with leftover sweet potatoes or cooked turnips. Chop onions and bell peppers (we also use jalapenos) into small pieces and saute them in bacon grease till they're soft. Then put the meat and veggies, which are also in small dice, in the pan and cook till it's all nice and brown.

HUNGARIAN GOULASH

• 2 lbs. stew meat
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 c ketchup
• 2 T Worcestershire
• 1/4 c flour
• 1 T brown sugar
• 2 t salt
• 2 t paprika
• 1/2 t dry mustard
• 1 c water

Put meat in crock pot, cover with sliced onion. Combine remaining ingredients, except flour, pour over meat. Cover and cook low 9 or 10 hours. Dissolve flour in small amount of cold water. Stir in to meat mixture and cook on high about ten minutes, till thickened. Serve over noodles or rice.

FROGMORE STEW (Low Country Boil)

• 1 T olive or peanut oil
• 1 1/2 lbs. smoke sausage (andouille)
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 2 cup chopped onion
• 2 qt shrimp broth (water)
• 1 T crab or shrimp boil
• 2 lbs. shrimp in shell
• 1 t salt
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 lbs. cubed potatoes
• 3 ears corn (cut into 6 pieces)
• 1 can tomatoes and/or fresh green beans

Brown the sausage in the oil. Then cook the celery and onion till soft. Put everything else except the shrimp into the pot. Cook until the veggies and sausage are done, probably about fifteen minutes, but check them, then add the shrimp last. They'll only need to cook about three minutes. This serves 6.

You can add other seafood if you like, or other veggies. It's fun to serve in big bowls on newspaper because it's messy. Good with a big hunk of Cuban bread. Great for a New Year's Eve party, especially in Florida because you can be outside!

NO LEFTOVERS AT THE WESTOVERS!

In 2009, a friend gave me an extra date book for the year. So I decided to write down all the dinners Rick and I had that year (anyone would think of that). At the end of 2009, I had a diary of meals and I didn't want to keep it up, so I decided to compile the recipes of the interesting foods we had eaten. Brad had asked me to write out some recipes a year or so before, and it seemed like a good way to do it. So in January, 2010, I started typing in the recipes and here they are.

This collection is not meant to be the best of all our recipes or all our favorites or every thing we've cooked and liked. It's just meals from one year. What I'd like is for all the family to use it and add to it. When you try something you like, email it to the rest of us and we can add it to the blog. So this is just a starting place.

My plan for next year is to do an hors d'oeuvres (I always have to look up the spelling of that word in Rick's college dictionary - and don't tell me about spell check - I trust the dictionary) chapter. You all know that hors d'oeuvres are my favorite foods. But lunch things and breakfast foods and special drinks would all be good.

So MERRY CHRISTMAS, 2010 and many more happy years and meals!