melting your mouth

I’m sorry I couldn’t get a better picture of this — our camera is still screwed up so that everything is coming out dark, so I’m having to use flash on all my pictures, which makes them not look as good. But, I hate to just stop blogging because I’m less than thrilled with the pictures I’m getting, so, you’re just going to have to take what you can get for a little while! Our camera is still within warranty, so we’re going to have to send it off to Nikon to be repaired, which means it may be a while before we get it back. So please be patient with us!

So anyway, I promise that pimento cheese is much tastier than it might look in the above photo. If you’re not a Southerner, you may not have heard of this spread, which is extremely easy to make, and is a pretty yummy snack. Since we’ve been exercising more, we’ve found the need to keep more quick and easy snacks or meals on hand, so I made a batch last week. We like to use it to fill celery sticks (so you can tell yourself you’re balancing out the healthiness of mixing cheese with mayo), or spread it on sandwiches. If you’re going to put it on a sandwich, I think it’s much, much better if you toast the sandwich (in a toaster oven, already filled with the spread, so the cheese gets gooey and melty), but there are those in my family that disagree and think it’s better without toasting. Either way, you should give it a try, as it takes all of 10 minutes to whip up a batch.

(more…)

This recipe comes from my grandmother Pat, my dad’s mom. I think of these marinated carrots as one of her specialties. They’re great because they don’t take too long to make, and they will keep for a couple weeks in the fridge. Pat always seems to keep them on hand, and they often appear as a side dish at lunchtime. I especially think of eating them at my grandparents’ house in Blowing Rock, NC, so they remind me of summer. The perfect accompaniment to a Memorial Day hot dog to kick off the start of the season!

Marinated Carrots

I keep these in a jar in the fridge, just like my grandmother. But we don’t actually preserve them or anything, so they do need to be refrigerated. They’ll keep for a couple weeks.

2 lbs sliced carrots
1 onion sliced thin
1 c chopped celery
1 can tomato soup
1 t prepared mustard
1 t Worcestershire sauce
1 c sugar
1/2 c salad oil
3/4 c vinegar
salt and pepper

Boil carrots until almost done but they still have a nice crunch (less than 5 minutes). Drain and cool. Mix in onion and celery.

Combine remaining ingredients and pour over carrot mixture. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate at least 12 hours. Drain to serve.

I remember this recipe from when I was a little kid and it is one of my favorites as I like almost any sort of pasta. My grandmother, whom I called Granny Pat, made this recipe for my mom many years. I latch on to traditions more than the rest of my family did when I was growing up. One tradition we had was having this for Christmas Eve either right before or right after a movie.

The sauce is a mix between chili and a traditional spaghetti sauce. I truly don’t know the origins of the recipe, but it very well could have come from a Campbell’s soup recipe book. I have written the recipe just as my mom has given to me, but it is fairly forgiving to add a few things for a change. I like to add garlic, fresh mushrooms, or a fresh spice like basil or oregano. One of these days I will try it in a crock pot. I hope you enjoy.

Recipe after the break.

(more…)

As Mary pointed out previously, I have had to take off my Sous Chef badge and take the helm for the next couple of weeks. Fortunately for you that means a few articles may yet get written. Unfortunately for you I am not as practiced as Mary in the art of cooking or the art of writing. So bear with me as at least I do in fact know how to cook and I am mostly using her recipes and guidance.

This chili is a wonderful warm and rich comfort food. I am sure we can learn several more recipes from the native Californians here, as I hear it is quite good. This recipe was perfect for me to cook this past week as it is really simple and relatively easy to clean up. Only two items that didn’t go in the dishwasher was the cast iron skillet used for the cornbread and the nonstick pan I used to brown the ground beef in. The reason it was so easy?…it is made the night before and assembled in a crockpot. Yes of you course you are smarter than me!, as I am sure that is not much of a novel idea.

Before we get going a couple of suggestions. First off we typically make this the night before and put in the refrigerator. If you like it spicy feel free to add more chili powder, the original recipe had 3 T. Be creative and find a topping that suits you. Since we weren’t worried about keeping it remotely healthy we added sour cream and cheese. If I weren’t too lazy I may have added some green onions. Walk it off, either after dinner or the next day. Thats about it, here we go.

(more…)

This is another recipe I’ve gotten from my grandmother Meme through my mom. It’s not originally her recipe, but comes from a church cookbook from Friedland, a small Moravian town outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The original recipe calls it a “Golden Corncake,” but I’ve always called it cornbread. Like my mom and my grandmother, I always make my cornbread in an iron skillet. We melt the butter in the skillet first, so the skillet’s hot when you add the batter and it gets a nice buttery crust.

I usually accompany cornbread with some kind of stewy, stick-to-your-bones kind of food, like chili, or in this case Jambalaya (thanks for the country ham, Mom!). It’s pretty good left over, but it’s definitely best hot out of the pan. I like to smear it with a little butter, and Matt’s taught me to make that honey butter, which is also a pretty good treat.

Cornbread

Ingredients:

3/4 c Corn meal (yellow)
1 c Flour
1/3 c Sugar
3 t Baking powder
3/4 t Salt
1 c Milk
1 Egg, well-beaten
2 T Margarine

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425 F. Mix and sift dry ingredients. Heat skillet in the oven and melt margarine in it. Add the melted margarine, milk, and egg to the dry ingredients. Pour into skillet. Bake for 20 minutes at 425 F, until golden and a little browned around the edges.