Category Archives: friday feedbag

My grandmother was a great cook and wonderful at coming up with new or adapted recipes. Her cheese ball recipe is one my sister’s favorite things ever, and another one that we often have as part of holiday meals. One thing it definitely is not is healthy!

Bemama’s Cheese Ball

16 ounces grated cheddar cheese
8 ounces cream cheese
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup milk
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
½ cup finely chopped pecans

Using food processor, pulse cheese in batches to chop into small pieces. Combine all ingredients in large bowl (stand mixer recommended) and mix until uniformly smooth (texture will be coarse). Refrigerate for several hours or overnight; remove, shape into 1 or 2 balls, and roll in chopped pecans. Serve with crackers.

For many years, my mom was big on giving parties. You name it, she played host: Christmas parties, birthday parties, baby showers, wedding showers, graduation parties, etc., etc. While age has meant she’s had to slow down, she still has a great collection of party foods of all types. One of our favorites is a veggie dip made with chopped eggs seasoned with liquid smoke. The taste is amazing and unique, and we often have it as an appetizer for Thanksgiving dinner, but it also makes some pretty darn good egg salad sandwiches!

Smoked Egg Dip

12 hard-boiled eggs, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon liquid hickory smoke flavoring
2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce
4 drops Tabasco (optional)
½ to ¾ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper

Place eggs into a large bowl. Add all other ingredients and mix well. Use more or less mayonnaise to desired taste and creaminess. Refrigerate several hours or overnight and mix again before serving.

Serve with raw vegetables for dipping: carrot sticks or baby carrots, celery, turnip root (peel and cut like potatoes for fries), bell pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, cherry tomatoes.

With the holidays approaching, I figured I’d revive the Friday Feedbag and share some of my favorite Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes. I love to cook (and eat), and I love to blend traditional dishes with shiny-new ones. I’m going to start off with tradition.

In much of the South, the primary side dish at Thanksgiving is cornbread dressing. It’s called dressing rather than stuffing because it’s baked in a pan separate from the turkey, not stuffed inside. (Or, at least, we’ve never stuffed it into the turkey in my family!) Using cornbread as the base brings in the Southern flavor, but otherwise, it’s very much like most basic bread stuffing recipes out there. Our version freezes easily, so we usually make it well in advance of the holiday to save time. It’s served with giblet gravy, made using the organ meat from that little paper bag inside the turkey. (This is the only time all year I eat organ meat, with the exception of the occasional fried chicken gizzard.)

Recipes after the jump! 🙂

Continue reading →

I haven’t done one of these in a while (okay, I haven’t done much of ANYTHING here in a while, LOL), but a tweet asking for meal ideas and recipes inspired me. So, here’s how I make Slow Cooker Pulled Pork.

Boston butt or pork tenderloin
Dry rub
Water

Either type of roast works well; Boston butts are more fatty but usually turn out juicier. Since I’m usually cooking just for two, I buy whole pork tenderloins sale and cut them into sections of about 1.5 to 2 pounds to freeze separately.

For dry rub, I sometimes buy premixed (Paula Deen Butt Massage is great—no, really), or I throw something together from my spice cabinet: paprika, garlic, onion, pepper, a little salt. Right now, I have a mesquite-flavor dry spice mix, which makes a great base for dry rub. You’ll need about 2 to 3 tablespoons of dry rub for a 2-pound roast.

Rub the dry rub all over the roast. Place roast in the crock of the slow cooker, fat side up if there’s an outer layer of fat. Add about 1 cup of water to the bottom of the crock (do not pour over roast or you’ll wash off the dry rub). Cover and cook on low 6 to 8 hours or until meat is fork-tender. (You can start with a frozen roast; it’ll just take more like 8 instead of 6 hours.)

Remove roast from crock and place into a large pan with sides (a 13 by 9 baking pan works well). Shred (“pull”) meat using two forks. Serve as is, or add barbecue sauce of your preference. (I like sweeter sauce but usually serve it on the side.) Makes great sandwiches!

I haven’t done a Friday food post in a while, so I thought I’d share one I wrote for Cup o’Porn a while back about Penzeys. 🙂

Continue reading →

Every year, my sister and I take a trip up to Ellijay in north Georgia to buy a heaping pile of apples and apple products. We went to the Georgia Apple Festival there for a couple of years, but we decided we’d rather miss the crowds and just visit a couple of apple-centric sellers instead: Panorama Farm Market and Penland’s Apple House.

We usually pick up a couple of varieties of apples, but our main focus is on the other products. We love apple fritters, apple cider (which we freeze for Thanksgiving), apple bread, apple slushies, apple butter… pretty much any kind of apple-y thing you can imagine. It’s a 3-hour round trip, and we’ll spend at least fifty bucks, but it will be worth every minute and penny.

As a bonus, we’ll stop in Jasper on the way home and have barbecue for lunch. If you’re ever in the area, hunt up Davis BBQ. Yum!

Image: akeeris / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m not a big soup fan, but when the weather turns chilly and wet, like it is here right now, not much is better to warm you right up. We have a close family friend who loves French onion soup and begs me to make my version almost every time we get together. It’s so quick and easy and so, so good.

Easy French Onion Soup
(modified from a Rachael Ray recipe)

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
6 medium onions, thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
1/2 cup dry sherry
6 cups beef broth or stock
4 thick slices crusty bread, cut into 1-inch chunks and toasted
About 2 cups shredded cheese (I like smoked gouda)

Heat a deep (soup) pot over medium-high heat. Add oil and butter and stir to melt, then add onions. Season with salt, pepper, and thyme. Cook onions about 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until caramel colored. Add bay leaf and sherry and deglaze. Add broth, cover pot, and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer about 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Arrange four small, deep soup bowls or crocks on a cookie sheet. Preheat broiler to high. Place bread in bowls and ladle soup over. Cover each bowl with a mound of cheese. Place cookie sheet with soup bowls on it under hot broiler until cheese melts and bubbles. Remove and serve immediately (and carefully!).

At my Day Job, one of my co-workers brings in baked goods of some kind every Friday. This can range from quick breads to scones to cobbler to foccacia. It’s a nice thing to look forward to during the week. 🙂

My favorite is Cheddar Cheese Dill Bread. It’s a basic quick bread packed with flavor. My co-worker was kind enough to share the recipe, and now I’m sharing it with all of you!

Cheddar Cheese Dill Bread

2 cups flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tbsp dried dill weed
1 tbsp dried minced onion
4 oz (about 1 cup) extra-sharp cheddar cheese
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 egg or ¼ cup egg substitute
1 cup low-fat buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degreesF. In large bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, dill, and minced onion. Coarsely grate cheese. Add to dry ingredients. Mix well so that cheese is coated with dry ingredients and no longer clumps together. Add, oil, egg, and buttermilk. Mix only until dry ingredients are incorporated (do not overmix!). Spoon batter into a greased or nonstick 9- × 5- × 3-inch loaf pan. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out clean. Cool bread in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan. Makes one (delicious!) loaf.

It isn’t like anyone in the world doesn’t know about Cake Wrecks, so I wouldn’t just say “ooo go look at this!” about them, like you haven’t seen them linked a billion times before. Nope, I’ve decided today is Opposite Day, so I’m going to recommend the good side of bad cakes: Sunday Sweets.

Every Sunday, Cake Wrecks takes a break from the worst of the worst to feature the best of the best. Cakes you won’t believe are actually cakes. Cakes that look like a million bucks (and in some cases, probably cost that much). Cakes that make you want to shellac them and keep them forever instead of actually eating them.

The themed cakes are unbelieveable (check out recent posts for Threadcakes, cakes based on Threadless t-shirt designs, and Harry Potter), but my favorites are actually the simpler ones, which mostly tend to be wedding cakes. I’m not a big fan of fondant for eating, but it certainly makes for some gorgeous creations. The minimalist design shown here is an excellent example.

So go forth and admire!

Okay, to start with, the title of this post is somewhat misleading. There is no one way to make Southern fried chicken. There are nearly as many variations as there are Southern cooks. But this is the way fried chicken has been cooked in my household (first my parents’ house, and now mine) my entire life. I love the taste, of course, but I also love the simplicity. No breading, battering, deep-frying, or double-frying required!

Continue reading →