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Homemade Potato Chips with House Seasoning
The humble potato is hands down probably the most favorite vegetable of every person I know. They are so versatile. There isn’t much you can’t do with a potato. You can make it into flour, into a pancake, you can mash, fry, slice, dice, grill, roast, puree and make them into soup. You can even make pasta with them. A potato is a pretty amazing little veggie! The Stud Muffin love potatoes. He’s the stereotypical meat and potatoes kind of guy. You’ll never catch him complaining if I don’t feel like making a green veggie to go with our meal as long as their is meat and some type of potato. Potato chips…
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Brown Sugar Maple Baked Beans with Bacon
Several weeks ago my grandkids came over for the weekend. I spent most of my time in the kitchen and my granddaughter, Little Miss B. helped me out. One thing she was particularly interested in helping me with was a baked bean recipe that I had found in one of my many cooking magazines. We were going to grill hamburgers one night and I thought baked beans would be a nice addition. Turns out I should have just opened a can. Kidding! Sorta. Let me explain… We followed the recipe to a ‘T’. Those beans soaked for at least 12 hours, and they baked in my oven for 7 hours, were lovingly tended…
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Grilled Parmesan Herbed Potatoes
It’s grilling season. A time of year that I used to love because that meant TSM was going to be cooking most nights. Now, somehow, since graduating from culinary school I seem to be cooking 99.5% of the time and TSM has turned the grilling over to me. I think it’s time to save up and buy him a smoker. He can be in charge of smoking and then maybe I can take part of each summer off while he experiments with smoking various meats. Sounds like a plan to me! Just for the summer I’m going to be taking a break from 30-Minute Monday Recipes. Don’t worry, I’ll still have plenty of…
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Creamed Corn with Bacon and Poblano Pepper
I’m pretty excited about today’s recipe. I really like corn. I especially like sweet corn. When we moved to South Carolina I noticed that they had all sorts of farm stands along the sides of the roads. I was in fresh produce heaven. That is, until I found out that the one I was frequenting got their produce from WalMart and I was buying GMO sweet corn. Yep, you guessed it. I was no longer in heaven. It’s getting harder and harder to find organic sweet corn. This makes me sad because I can do wonders with an ear of corn. When I was out and about running errands last week, I found…
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The Perfect Rustic Style Mashed Potatoes
Mashed potatoes. The quintessential comfort food. There isn’t anything that a bowl of smashed up taters drenched in melted butter and bursting forth with gravy can’t make better. Chopped off your thumb in a woodworking accident? Here, have some mashed potatoes. Boyfriend dumped you for your best friend? Psh- not to worry. Have some mashed potatoes–and you get extra gravy. Didn’t get the winning lottery ticket? Aww, stop buying lottery tickets and buy potatoes instead. Why? Because you can make mashed potatoes with potatoes and you can only make a book mark or a redneck toothpick with a lottery ticket. It’s a no brainer, really. I go in phases where I want…
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Asian Chicken Pasta Salad with Crispy Wontons
I grew up right in the heart of the Twin Cities. That’s in Minnesota, don’t-chya-know? Back in the day, before it was bought out by Macy’s, Dayton’s department store was a happening place to be. There was a restaurant located inside this Dayton’s (which eventually became Marshall Field’s), and on occasion when my sister and I would spend the weekend with my grandparents, we’d take the city bus to downtown St. Paul, and have lunch at Dayton’s restaurant. If we were really good, we got to go to the candy counter and pick out 1 or 2 suckers. They had the best suckers. They were rectangle shaped, and took forever to finish. Ahh, those…
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Cheesy Orzo with Broccoli
Earlier on in my blogging career I stumbled upon this side dish while wasting time trying to solve the toughest world problems by doing research online. Before the idea to start my blog was ever hatched in my special little mind, I used to follow quite a bit of non Real Food bloggers. No shame in that. A good recipe is a good recipe. Sometimes you just have to Real Foodify it, as I like to say. This recipe came from Iowa Girl Eats. She’s got a great little blog filled with some tasty recipes that are easy for me to adapt to our real food lifestyle. Many of her more current recipes…
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Simply Perfect Rice Pilaf
Are you intimidated by rice pilaf so you rely on that “San Fransisco Treat”? I used to be. Then I went to culinary school and learned a really easy way to make perfect rice pilaf. Each grain comes out nice and fluffy, not sticky or clumped together. I love rice. I could eat rice every day. The Stud Muffin isn’t a huge fan, but he’s coming around. He does like this pilaf, so whenever I make fish, chances are this rice will be on my plate. Rice can be flavorless and boring, but this rice is made with homemade chicken stock so it’s definitely not lacking in flavor department. I have found…
