We all love pie in my family and a big tradition when we gather the clan is arguing about the best kind. Everyone has an opinion, especially the children, who never waver from chocolate. Mom likes fresh peach, Dad loves pecan, and my brother wants strawberry - the kind with whipped cream on top. We are so interested in the subject that my mom once received a pie flavor tournament bracket for her birthday and proudly delays it in her pantry. This is a peculiar family tradition- pie debates- but not out of keeping ...
My mother is, perhaps, the most disciplined eater I have ever known. She can bake dozens of homemade chocolate chip cookies and eat only one. She can open a bag of potato chips before dinner and eat a small handful, place the bag back into the pantry and not think of going back for more. I have found stale chocolate in plain sight in her kitchen cabinet and I have never seen her take a second helping of anything. This would be a sore trial to my green-eyed greedy guts self except for my witnessing her one food ...
I love salads. I look forward to them the way some people look forward to diving into the breadbasket, which, I also love but feel slightly guilty about when it reaches me. With salads, though, I never feel I need to hold back. It is from the salad portion of the menu that I have the most trouble choosing and I find that I often pick a place to return to eat based on its salads. Nordstrom’s has a crab and shrimp Louis salad that brings me into the store regularly which certainly doesn’t hurt sales in the ...
I crave Coca-Cola at Christmastime and I blame those adorable cartoon polar bear commercials. It is positively Pavlovian that my mind now, when seeing any polar bear, immediately wishes for a coke. How did they succeed at that association and why in the world does it work? When I see black bears (not so unusual in the Smoky Mountains) soda never crosses my mind. Black bears make me think of pancakes. When I was little my mother kept big frosted glass bottles of Coca-Cola in the avocado green fridge which we returned to the A&P for ...
I started cooking as a child standing on a chair so that I could reach the table and I learned to cook for six or seven people most of the time and up to fifteen or more during the wheat harvest. It was a real shock when I had to limit my efforts to my new husband and myself. Cooking for two is not easy when you’ve been accustomed to making vats of soup, big skillets full of cornbread, and three pies at a time. I cheered up when we had three children to add to the ...
Around the time of my birthday when I was a little girl, my mother always asked me what I would like for her to cook for my birthday supper and bake for my birthday cake. At the time, I had no idea there was any such a thing as a bakery cake with plastic toy decorations and fat, colored icing roses. I thought the height of sophistication in cakes was my mother’s red velvet cake sprinkled with red sugar on top of her antique glass cake stand. She always made whatever I asked for from scratch ...
By the time I was nine my mother had lost so many library books she had to either become a librarian or go to jail. Each Thursday night she worked late and my father was in charge of dinner. My Father was in the Air Force before I was born and was stationed all over the world. In the service he developed a love of super fiery foods and brought this great love back to the United States. My mother has never shared his taste for hot food. So when Thursdays rolled around he took the ...
In a day and age when we can get just about any ingredient our hearts desire from Himalayan pink salt to stone ground Mexican chocolate, I find myself feeling still bitter about the discontinuation of my favorite cornmeal -Three Rivers. When White Lily Flour, owner of the Three Rivers brand of cornmeal, was acquired by Smucker’s the tie to Tennessee was severed and the familiar brown and yellow bag of cornmeal with its slightly coarser texture was eliminated. We eat a lot of cornbread at our house as I was raised with either cornbread or biscuits at almost every ...
I read recently that if you were offered a diet consisting only of sweet potatoes and water that you could survive for years until you flung yourself off a cliff for being so sick of them. Mountainous piles of sweet potatoes fill the produce department almost forcing you to buy them whether you like them or not. Growing up in the South, I am accustom to seeing sweet potatoes topped with marshmallow or pecans at every single holiday meal with the exception of the Fourth of July when we celebrate the birth of the United States with fireworks and ...
I love salads. I look forward to them the way some people look forward to diving into the breadbasket, which, I also love but feel slightly guilty about when it reaches me. With salads, though, I never feel I need to hold back. It is from the salad portion of the menu that I have the most trouble choosing and I find that I often pick a place to return to eat based on its salads. Nordstrom’s has a crab and shrimp Louis salad that brings me into the store regularly which certainly doesn’t hurt sales in the ...
My family’s farm, Cliffview, is located on the very edge of the Great Smoky Mountains and shadowed by the bona fide Rocky Top mountain which rises to the east above a bend in the French Broad river where my ancestors have lived for over seven generations. We are genuine hillbillies descended from the North of [...]
{ 1 comment }
Menu planning, grocery shopping, and preparing dinner each evening, even if you enjoy cooking, is often overwhelming if you simultaneously must be at cub scouts and swim team practice, while figuring out how to make a Paul Revere costume out of an old undershirt and a pirate hat leftover from a birthday party.
{ 3 comments }
Enter two new gourmet gadgets that may just be the perfect solution for IPads in the kitchen – the Belkin Fridge Mount and the Belkin Kitchen Cabinet Mount.
{ 3 comments }
We all love pie in my family and a big tradition when we gather the clan is arguing about the best kind. The trick to a good lemon meringue pie is to cook the filling until it is stiff enough to set up when the pie is cooled so when cutting slices the filling does not run.
{ 2 comments }
Gourmet Gadget Gal, Jane Gaither demonstrates how to make an easy Jalapeno Creamed Spinach that is great as a dip or delicious as a side dish.
{ 2 comments }
Fresh Sugar Snap Peas, Strawberries and Brown Sugar Toasted Pecans with homemade Poppy Seed Dressing makes for a refreshing, delightful salad that everyone asks for time and time again.
{ 1 comment }
When I first met my husband, we had one of those whirlwind passionate young romances that needed little fuel for the fire. Romance was as easy as a package of tealight candles and a box of pink wine. For our first Valentines Day, though, we made plans to meet early to share breakfast and while [...]
{ 4 comments }
