Rosie Tries Broccoli Rabe.

This is what the weather looks like down here today.

Strong winds, rain, flood warnings, nor'easter blowing. And when I say strong winds, I'm talking about gusts that blow my quite sizable grill across the deck. Dixie refuses to go outside. Now, this is a dog who will happily spend an entire day playing in the pool, but she won't go out in the rain. And I know she has to pee and poop. All she'll do is go to the open door, sniff, and turn around and go back to her pillow. With weather like this, it's a good time for me to catch up posting my latest meal - last night's dinner.

Naturally, dessert is first. Hey, life is short. I had leftover key limes, so I'm thinking about lime custard pots de creme.

Here, I have 1 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, 3 jumbo egg yolks, and my limes. (Now, I have leftover egg whites and I was going to make some type of meringue, but with the weather being like it is, that will have to wait.)

I needed 16 limes to get 1/2 cup of juice. And I have about 1 TB of lime zest.

I whipped my yolks ...

until they were thickened and lightened.

Then the can of sweetened condensed milk went in.

And the lime juice. Mix thoroughly.

Zest gets mixed in by hand.

The custard mixture gets poured into 6 ramekins.

Then I poured hot water in the baking dish to about 1/2 inch from the tops of the ramekins, covered the dish with foil, and placed in a 350 degree preheated oven.

The two smallest ramekins, I took out after 11 minutes. The medium-sized ones came out after 15 minutes, and the large ones came out after 17 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

I placed the pot-de-creme in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes, then inverted it onto a plate, topped it with whipped cream, and drizzled it with the butterscotch leftover from my bacon/apple/butterscotch,thyme on a sex swing. Do I need to tell you how this tasted? I didn't think so. Next up, leftover anchovies. Yay! Gosh, doesn't that sound appetizing? Leftover anchovies. Yummo.

I googled "anchovy recipes" and found Jansson's Temptation, basically, potato gratin with anchovies. I halved the number of potatoes and onions and added more cream, more butter, more bread crumbs, and some of my crumbled croutons, for good measure.

First I buttered my baking dish, put down a layer of sliced onions, then the rinsed anchovies went on top.

Next, thinly cut strips of potatoes went on top along with salt and pepper.

Then the heavy cream got poured over.

I used about 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs, 1/4 cup of my crushed croutons, and drizzled with a few tablespoons of melted butter.

The casserole went into a preheated 425 degree oven for 45 minutes. I'm always up to expanding my culinary horizons (hello, anchovies) so I bought some broccoli rabe the other day. After consulting with Google and looking over several different recipes, I decided on an amalgam thereof.

Here I have my broccoli rabe, olive oil, salt and pepper, parmesan cheese, a little roll of chorizo sausage, garlic, and that wheel in the back is my good butter I get from the Amish market in Yanceyville, NC, that's better than Land o' Lakes unsalted.

First I rinsed off the rabe

Then poured hot water over top.

Next, I cooked the chorizo.

Then decided to add in some bacon, because bacon makes everything better, right?

I minced my garlic along with a large shallot. Yes, I'm making this up as I go along. Nothing new there.

Bacon and chorizo.

I sauteed the garlic and shallots in a little bit of the bacon grease, or bacon joos to you Fandra's out there.

Chorizo and bacon gets added in.

Then the broccoli rabe goes into the mix.

I didn't think a little bit of sugar would hurt. (Sadly, I don't think it helped either.)

I let it cook for a few minutes.

While the broccoli rabe was cooking, I sliced some of the leftover chicken thighs from my marinated chicken we had the other night.

And heated them up in a little butter and olive oil.

Chicken strips get added to the broccoli rabe.

And everything gets heated through.

Before serving, I grated some parmesan cheese over top.

OK. I guess broccoli rabe is an acquired taste. It's bitter. If anybody has a recipe for broccoli rabe that they like, please send it to me. I'm willing to try again.

Now ... the potatoes. The whole time I'm eating them, I'm thinking , "There could be an anchovy in the next bite. EEWWWWW." Thankfully, I couldn't taste the anchovies, and another plus, I never saw an anchovy. I think they must have dissolved or something. That said, I will never open up a tin of anchovies to make this. The potato casserole was very good. But it didn't need anchovies. The onions, potatoes, breadcrumbs, croutons, cream, and butter would be just fine on their own. Even better with some cheese on top.

Tried it again for lunch today.

Dixie really liked this.