The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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Guests and Food We are at the time of year I call, Guests and Food. You have guests and family in and out of the house for a little over two months and both months are food months. A large meal on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas parties at home or work means busy times in the kitchen. Now is a good time to look in your refrigerator, pantry, and your freezer for leftovers and extra items you didn't use for the Thanksgiving feast. Most of the leftovers can be re-heated and served again. Remember...
I was having a difficult time coming up with recipes and ideas for this month’s article, but not because of writers block. With drought conditions and record heat, one does not think about autumn stews, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and hearty soups. Nor do you think about the reason there is the month of November, Thanksgiving Day! Thanks to Mother Nature, the rains came, the temperatures dropped and my mind cleared. Now my problem is I have so many ideas, tips, recipes and s...
Fall has not arrived so any mention of warm soups and stews, fruit pies just out of the oven and canning the fruits and vegetables I have in the freezer would be premature. I'm staying with the theme of preparing meals and dishes that are served cold or at least room temperature. And meals that do not require heating up the kitchen. The air conditioner for my kitchen is overwhelmed with heat from the dishwasher. I stand in front of the opened refrigerator not to get ideas for meals but to get...
I was looking through past issues of the Alabama Gazette to check on topics that I wrote about in past Septembers. It seems that I complained about the hot weather. The topic never changes. It is late summer, I live in central Alabama, and so what else is the topic of conversations? You do not have to mow your lawn in the heat, because the grass is dead. You do not have to work in the garden, because it is also dead. My garden looks like I stuck Charlie Brown’s leafless Christmas trees in a row...
According to my WSFA weather app, the heat index that day was up to 109 degrees. It was almost hard to breath. I was outside picking figs, tomatoes, jalapenos, and pears. Not being a complete fool, I would pick figs and go inside to cool off. Then pick tomatoes and go cool off. Repeating the picking and cooling until I could not stand the heat anymore. I had not finished the picking, but with that heat, I was thinking about waiting until autumn before I went out there again. I waited until...
When I want to introduce a recipe, I tell a story about how I found or why I use the recipe. It is a roundabout way to the topic I want to discuss. However, there are times when the story has a very thin line that leads to a recipe or a topic. This is one of them. There are many ways to make your experiences in a kitchen enjoyable, rewarding, and shareable. Start by using simple recipes and healthy ingredients. Here are two ways to include your friends and family, especially your children, in...
As I sit in what my wife and I call the Parlor, I am eating my favorite breakfast. Leftovers from the icebox. Here is a word that has lost its meaning over the years. No longer does a person deliver ice to your house to put in your icebox to keep your food cold. I am not old enough to live when we had ice delivered, but my parents were and they called a refrigerator an icebox. But as usual, I digress. The leftovers today were from a dinner we had last night with two other couples. It was an...
I made good use of some lovely Alabama spring weather to plant my garden. My wife planted her flowers; I planted my cherry tomatoes, mint, rosemary, and basil. My gardening philosophy is, “If you cannot eat it, do not plant it”. The sub-set to that philosophy is, “If you want beautiful, delicious, and non-labor intensive fruits and vegetables, go to the farmers market!” I planted cherry tomatoes because I have had luck with cherry tomatoes in my big planter pots. I can plant three tomato...
Even I have a “senior moment” when I have no idea why I am standing in the kitchen. Then it finally dawns on me. I came here to rummage through the kitchen cabinets, the freezer, the refrigerator, and the pantry to get some inspiration for what I am going to cook for dinner. Sometimes I can match the items together and make a meal. Sometimes nothing seems to match. I could eliminate that problem, if had planned a menu. A weekly menu would give me a grocery list. My trips to the grocery sto...
Have you ever watched a carpenter preparing to make a piece of furniture, or a artist starting to put their vision on a canvas? Or watched a professional chef prep for a meal? Have you noticed what anyone preparing to paint, assemble, repair, or prepare a meal have in common? They have all of the materials, be it paint, wood, tools, and if need be, instructions, on hand and easily accessible before they started. I have lightly covered this before. The term mise en place means "everything in its...
If you are a visual learner and would like to watch some of the best shows on the television for learning or to fine hone cooking skills, I found shows that fit the bill. America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country are both very good shows. They both have their own magazines, cookbooks, and streaming services. They both can get expensive the more you get involved with the programs. Good Eats with Alton Brown has been a long running show even to the point that Alton has updated his early shows wit...
Occasionally, there are programs on the television that are well worth viewing. The series CHEF TABLE on NETFLIX is one of them. I randomly watch some of the shows on RECIPE TV. They feature restaurants and foods from around the world. I was surfing through the channels and found the series by John Edge called TRUE SOUTH. According to Garden & Gun website, “the show is about the intertwining of food and culture in the South.” It is on the SEC Network. “Food and football”, that is the story o...
Pundits of the food industry and marketing have released their food trends for the upcoming year. Much of which is the same as last year. Healthier food is always an up and coming trend. Some of the trends were trendy in the past, then lost some of their appeal, and are now becoming trendy again. An example is tea. There are three cups of tea consumed in the world for every cup of coffee. Nevertheless, in the United States tea is making a comeback because of its health benefits. The health...
Holiday Cooking Cooking shows on the Food Network have gone the way of music videos on MTV. You do not watch music videos on MTV. The cooking shows on the Food Network are becoming reality based and competition shows. There is very little instructional material or recipes that are useful. The cooking shows on the Food Network are also getting bad reviews. Do a search on GOOGLE for reviews of the Food Network and you will see the same complains I have. I do watch cooking shows on the Food...
An anniversary is the celebration of a recurrence of a date marking a notable event. Even though I was not a part of the Alabama Gazette when it first started, this October will be the anniversary of when I started writing my articles named SOUTHERN CUISINE. My first article appeared in the October 2014 issue. I have shared about one hundred and fifteen recipes, given advice on cooking methods, and told stories about some of the people and places that helped define Southern Cuisine. My first top...
I just read an article where a food writer discovered the Peanut Butter and Mayonnaise Sandwich! This writer must not read my article nor get around much. Even Garden and Gun has featured this sandwich, with the history of the sandwich dating back to the 1930's. The writer had a picture showing the ingredients: organic peanut butter and Hellmann's mayonnaise. Then commented, "To my surprise---it wasn't awful". If the sandwich is made with Duke's mayonnaise and Smucker's Natural Creamy peanut...
I started writing this article on Friday the 13th. I got stung by a red wasp reaching to shut the dining room door. I reached to grab the door so I could then grab the door knob. I grabbed a red wasp between my index finger and middle finger. It felt like someone was poking a pin in the side of my finger. It looked like it got my three times. My hand swelled up and looked like I was wearing a catcher’s mitt. Today is Saturday the 14th, which to some people is worse than Friday the 13th. So f...
There are signs everywhere that summer has arrived! Besides the obvious signs of it being too hot and too humid. There are more boats on the Alabama River, the plants in your garden are growing and starting to produce. I already have about two pounds of blueberries and a basket of peaches, thanks to neighbors and friends with great gardens. I have been picking peaches and pears but that much from my trees. Farmer Markets are in full swing. There is the smell of BBQ in the air almost everywhere....
If you are a retired chef, there is a good chance for your birthday you will receive a cookbook. If the gift giver knows that you write an article for the Alabama Gazette called Southern Cuisine, it is a better chance the cookbook will have recipes from the South. Moreover, if the book is from your sister, it will not be the run of the mill cookbook. It will be “The Southern Sympathy Cookbook, Funeral Food with a Twist”, by Perre Coleman Magness. This cookbook will compliment a funeral food coo...
Let us pray that May will be kinder to the food industry than it was with April. My wife and I spent an evening checking UPC codes on our egg cartons and trying to find out where our lettuce came from. Luckily, our eggs were not of the 200 million eggs that were recalled due to Salmonella fears. In addition, the romaine lettuce we had was not part of a prepackaged salad mix. The lettuce recall was for about 8,750 pounds of salad mix. I am not going to say I told you so but I did tell you...
It is time to update your word processor dictionary. Well, at least, time to add some culinary terms. Merriam-Webster has added more than 800 new words to its dictionary and there are many new food words. The dictionary company added these words because they have "widespread, sustained, and meaningful use". Now we know that Fond, the tasty bits of browned foods stuck to the bottom of a pan after browning or roasting has an official name. An Arnold Palmer is a drink that is a mix of tea and...
In past Southern Cuisine articles, cooking tips, preparation instructions, food safety, and individual recipes were highlighted. Recipes called for the produce that was usually available for the month the article was published. I rarely wrote an article that had an entire holiday menu with one theme. I believe it was a past Valentine's Day article when I last had a theme for an entire meal. I wanted to do an entire menu designed for a holiday and give my readers enough preparation time. Easter i...
Is there something wrong with this winter’s weather? We had two snowfalls of over three inches each, and days when the temperature never got above freezing, and a few days later three inches of rain in a couple of hours. One can look at what happened as a blessing. The freeze and snow will kill the mosquitoes, and the rain will raise the water table so the ground will be just right for planting this spring. We need to start now to be ready for the beautiful spring weather that will come s...
I can remember not too long ago I started one of my articles with a statement that it was August and I was hot. It is no longer August and I am no longer hot. I am sitting in my kitchen in front of a wall-mounted gas space heater with all three burners going and I am cold. It is only 42 degrees outside but it has been rainy and gray for days and the forecast is for clearing which will bring the temperatures down to the twenty's at night. The preceding weather information has changed four or...
Being Southern I read a column in a local paper a couple weeks back titled "What being Southern means to this ol' gal" written by Jaine Treadwell. It is a touching piece and since part of the story was about food in the South, I want to share some of the column with you. She writes, "Being Southern is hog killings, chitlin' suppers, cane grindings and syrup makings. It's pulling corn and picking velvet beans. It's shelling peas on the front porch and drying peaches on the tin roof of the barn....