Alabama Gazette - The people's voice of reason

You are ready to try a new dish. You went to the market and bought the freshest items you could find, and they were from a local farm. You get home and open the cookbook and the instructions are as co...

To decide on the subject for my column, I do a great deal of research. I search through cooking websites, magazines, recipes I developed or modified from my chef days, recipes that were given to me,...

I just got back from a trip to Texas after seeing friends, relatives, and seeing how the places where I use to live and hung-out have changed. My friends and relatives have grown older but they have...

I was doing my usual “surfing the net”, thumbing through old recipes, thinking of a restaurant I want visit, and watching cooking shows, trying to think of a topic for this month’s article. It...

Even when I thought winter would never come, I did wish that it would come gently into the night. As I write this, I was wondering what happened to the gentle part. I wake up one morning and it is...

If you mark out every passing day on your calendar, you will notice there is not much left to mark out. The year 2016 is coming to a close and what a year this has been. In the culinary world, Sous...

I believe that Thanksgiving is one of the last bastions of family traditions in this country. A celebration when the different generations of a family gather for a meal that has been part of the...

I just returned from one of my "Escape the Summer Heat Tours." This time the escape was to Iowa. Even though it is further north than Alabama, they can have hot and humid summers but at least this...

I packed my lunch for work this morning. It would be the usual mix of leftovers from a dinner my wife and I had earlier in the week or something my wife and I made to have for lunch for the week. My l...

I downloaded a brochure from the luxury RV manufacturer, NEWMAR, titled "50 Plates in 50 States." A listing of their favorite regional dishes. I was curious just what dishes they picked from Southern...

I am sitting in the kitchen, looking outside and wondering how hot is. It doesn’t make any difference. I know it’s hot. My phone says its 97 and feels like 101. It is time to water my garden. I...

Sign in a restaurant. I don't know where except I bet below the Mason Dixon Line. It reads, “ ALL OUR FOOD IS SEASONED. CUZ WE'RE IN THE SOUTH AND WE LIKE IT THAT WAY.” I admit that I'm a hot...

No, I did not misspell great, I meant grate. I saw that sign below another sign that said “Ban Pre-shredded Cheese.” This is as far as I am going to comment on the political season we are now in....

I like the month of April. It is a great month to celebrate FOOD. April is National BLT Sandwich Month, National Grilled Cheese Month and National Garlic Month. The week of April 12th to the 18th is...

I was reading about Southern cooking traditions, the standards that define a Southern kitchen and a Southern cook and realized that the knowledge on how to fix these staples, these meals, these time...

We made it through the Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, with the stuffing, dressings, casseroles and too many sweets. We ate until we were going to burst and then we ate the leftovers. We spent...

The word of the day is Compendium. The definition of compendium is; a collection of detailed information about a particular subject. The particular subject here is Southern Cuisine and cooking in...

We made it half-way through two of the biggest holiday meals. Thanksgiving is the holiday when the meal is the showcase and the time to show off your skills to the family and friends that are gathered...

October and Halloween are over and everyone has had their fill of Candy Corn, Jell-O Shooters, Mummy Hot Dogs, Skull Cheese Balls, "Boo"nana Pops, and Green Slimed Popcorn. Now is the time for some se...

I missed International Bacon Day, which is observed on the Saturday before Labor Day. I don’t remember what I was doing that day, but since it was a Saturday, I was probably eating bacon anyway....

It was August and I was hot, so I decided to do something about it. I couldn’t change the humidity, the temperature or the dew point here in Alabama, so I decided to change my location. I wanted to...

I have to get started early in the morning if I am going to work outside. I can build up a tolerance to the heat as it rises throughout the morning but around 2 o’clock in the afternoon I am toast....

Community cookbooks have a head start on the community based web sites such as PINTEREST and Food52 and the gazillion sites that inhabit the blog universe. For as far back as I can remember these spir...

Recipe: A series of step-by-step instructions for preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in utensils you don’t own, to make a dish the dog wouldn’t eat. Author Unknown. You should try to minimiz...

Something A Little Different I love watching the “Chopped” series on Food Network. How else are you going to learn to prepare an entree with a whole catfish, a bottle of cherry soda, broccoli and...