Chili Tamale Pie

  January 30, 2013 - 7:14 am | , , , , , , , , , ,
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Tuesday was the last night in a week long freeze that had the whole family (and much of the Northeast) cooped up in the house. It’s too cold to play outside and too cold to take the twins out at all. The one time I did venture out for anything more than a grocery run or a trip to Ama and Papa’s house was a disaster. That’s when I discovered the hard way that it was so cold that even the baby wipes I keep in the car were frozen. Trust me when I say that you are very happy … Continue reading →

Texas Chili Means NO BEANS

  January 23, 2013 - 5:00 am | , , , , , , , ,
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Real Texas chili is good by itself or on almost anything–like enchiladas Chili is a highly personal food. Much like the variety of preferences in Thanksgiving stuffing, every Texan has their own idea of what makes Texas chili authentic. They agree on almost nothing: ground beef or cubed, spicy or mild, tomato or no tomato, beer or no beer, and especially the chilies. Two or three Shiner Bocks into any night in Texas, and you might find yourself in a heated debate on what makes it real Texas Red. Texans agree on only one thing about their chili–NO BEANS! I … Continue reading →

Vegetarian Boston-Style Baked Beans

  January 16, 2013 - 5:00 am | , , , , , , , , , , ,
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This past week marked the anniversary of a truly terrible and bizarre piece of Boston history; the great molasses flood of 1919 when a tsunami of molasses covered two blocks of Boston’s North End with a 15 foot wave of hot, sticky molasses. If you take a look at these pictures from the Boston Globe you’ll see the absolute devastation that the molasses flood brought to the densely packed neighborhood. Boston was the center of the molasses universe in those days as the area was home to many rum distilleries. Because of its abundance, molasses also was a key ingredient … Continue reading →

Bean and Sausage Stew

  January 9, 2013 - 10:18 pm | , , , , , , ,
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So far our legume series has featured two unusual ways to prepare them—fried in an appetizer and a french-fry substitute. This week we fall back to the tried and true, the traditional bean soup (or stew). People have been cooking up beans in a pot since before the invention of farming. They were first gathered from wild vines. My guess is that the first gatherers just popped a few freshly shelled beans in their mouth. They were tasty, but a bit later in the night, the digestive problems set in and they changed their minds. Beans have various complex sugars … Continue reading →

A Month of Legumes, Week 2: Chickpea Fries

  January 2, 2013 - 7:08 am | , ,
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With all the celebrating last week, I forgot to mention that I’m making good on a year old promise. Some of you may remember that last year I planned to do a series of recipes using the best winter staple: beans, or more particularly legumes. Of course last year I was severely lacking the energy to get up from the couch, much less do a series of posts on anything. So, last week’s Hoppin’ John Cakes was the first of these recipes and today’s post is edition number two. Never fear, these recipes aren’t the beans you fear. These recipes … Continue reading →

Happy New Year – Hoppin’ John Cakes

  December 28, 2012 - 10:45 pm | , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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  Although the new year is not quite here yet, I’ve already begun to celebrate it’s arrival. Since the Mayan’s were wrong about the end of the world last week, I now feel the need to hurry up and enjoy myself before we all slide off the Fiscal Cliff. So, I kicked off a week long party by reinventing a southern new year’s tradition; Hoppin’ John. Southern tradition dictates eating peas on New Year’s Day. Different parts of the south do this differently. Some parts say you need to eat black-eyed peas, others say it needs to be peas and … Continue reading →

Buttermilk Bread Pudding with Roasted Cranberries and Acorn Squash

  December 19, 2012 - 7:42 am | , , , , , , , , ,
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We’ve been busy celebrating Hanukkah and getting ready for Christmas (we are equal opportunity holiday celebrators around here!) I’m cooking all week this week getting ready for our big Christmas dinner next week. I’ll share a few details of our meal soon. In the meantime, with fall ending this Friday, I wanted to share this dish with you. This time of year I’m craving cranberries. I love them in relishes and sauces, but also baked in a savory dish like this bread pudding. We had this for dinner with nothing but a salad of field greens tossed with a mustard … Continue reading →

Fruitcake for a New Generation

  December 11, 2012 - 10:04 pm | , , , , , , ,
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When did the poor fruitcake loose it’s popularity? Of what crime against humanity is it guilty? How did it become the most maligned dessert in the world? Surely the fruitcake must have been good once, right? How did it win it’s starring role in the Christmas dessert canon if it never tasted good? Is it just because we tend not to like what our grandmothers liked? No, because my grand-mother liked peanut-butter pie, smother-fried steak and sage cornbread dressing and I don’t think those dishes would end up as the bad gag-gift at the Yankee swap. More probably like all … Continue reading →

Winter Salad

  December 6, 2012 - 9:07 pm | , , , ,
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For my first three years of school I attended an all-girls school in Baltimore. While I have many memories such as May day and the great tire swing I loved to play on during recess, there is one memory that is so ingrained in my mind that I keep coming back to it every time I smell an orange. Every year the school held a fund raiser selling citrus fruit (grapefruits and oranges). When the fruit would arrive directly from Florida it would make the entire building smell like a citrus grove. Imagine the worst smell you have ever smelled, … Continue reading →

Brown Sugar Walnut Pennies

  November 28, 2012 - 10:09 pm | , , , , , ,
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Perhaps I should tell you about “gasoline cookies.” That short story might save you the trouble of foraging for black walnuts sometime. My father, who forages his plot for anything edible, most of which turns into wine, hoarded bag after bag of black walnuts a few years ago on a year that produced more nuts than the squirrels could stow away. He had grand plans for these nuts, so he sat eagerly picking the tidbits of meat out of the impossible nuts. The phrase, “a tough nut to crack,” must have referred to black walnuts. After long hours of cracking … Continue reading →

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