Sorry that swimming post was depressing. Let’s try something a little more cheerful. As you may recall, I recently made PB&J bars for a Navy football tailgate (or tailgater, as they call it). The midshipmen thoroughly enjoyed them, and apparently asked if I was making them for the next home game. Unfortunately, I learned this […]
Whether you call them cornmeal pancakes, hoecakes or Jen & Melissa cakes (I know, hilarious), these are delicious. I first had these around 2003 at Paula Deen’s Lady & Sons restaurant in Savannah with my mom and grandmother. We all loved them and I had been wanting to make them ever since. But I never […]
A few years ago, my mom got sick on Christmas. At that point, I had done a lot of baking and could cook a few dinner items (rigatoni, chicken tacos and spaghetti with tomato sauce, basically), but preparing an entire Christmas dinner was a little daunting. Luckily, my mom had already bought a ham and […]
I love mashed potatoes, but I think Toby loves them even more. His default meal for birthdays, homecomings (from deployment, not the high school football game variety) and other occasions is meat, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese and biscuits. Very nutritious, I know. So it wasn’t really a shock when he asked for some mashed […]
I had some dried ancho chile peppers left over from making that Esquire oatmeal, and this recipe was on the package. I figured I might as well try it. I halved the recipe because I didn’t have enough chile peppers and I didn’t really think we needed 3 pounds of pork. It ended up being […]
This is something I probably should have figured out for myself ages ago, but I didn’t really learn it until I took this class at Charleston Cooks. It is very easy and will minimize the time you need to spend cutting the onion, which should reduce onion-y tears as well. First, peel the top layer […]
You may remember my French vanilla incident this summer. Since then, I have been wanting to make eggless ice cream. And this recipe from the New York Times sounded especially yummy. There was a slight issue because I bought something called “Roman hazelnuts,” which don’t say anything about being roasted. But when I poured them […]
Last week I read this article in the New York Times about how Americans don’t eat enough vegetables. I am so guilty of this. So I decided to make a concerted effort to cook and eat more green (and orange and red and yellow) stuff. Spinach seemed like a good place to start. OK, obviously […]
The day before we were going to Hilary and Matt’s, I got a text message: Do you like broccoli? The answer, if you haven’t guessed, is yes. This is another recipe from the Deen brothers’ cookbook. I liked it, but I found it a bit salty so I am going to eliminate the salt from […]
This is one of my favorite things my mom makes. I am really weird because I don’t really like meat sauce, but I like tomato sauce that has been cooked with beef. Yeah, I have issues. Anyway, this is really good for me and for meat lovers who may be eating with me because I […]