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Almost Famous Real Food House Seasoning
Almost every restaurant that I’ve worked in has had a special house seasoning. They put it on virtually everything. I’ll spare you the colorful language that a kitchen full of prep-cooks and chefs use when referring to applying the seasoning to stuff, but suffice it to say, they love their house seasonings and they use them liberally and with enthusiasm. It got me to thinking- why don’t regular home cooks use house seasoning? How much tastier would things be if we had a little house seasoning to sprinkle on things? Tinker Bell has Pixie Dust, and Emeril has his famous “Kick it up a Notch” spices, so why not something special for…
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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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Easy BBQ Chicken on the Grill
Grilling chicken has always been a frustrating endeavor for many people. You either end up with charred outsides and dry insides, or perfectly cook outsides and raw insides. Neither of those is good eating in my opinion and I don’t blame people for getting frustrated with grilling. Now if you happen to be the ultimate grill master, this post isn’t for you. This is for those of us who have struggled to get perfectly cooked chicken from our grill. Over the years I’ve developed a few tricks that have helped me out tremendously. I’m sure if we had a charcoal grill I might not have to put forth such an effort to ensure…
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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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Lemon Blueberry Loaf Cake
I had in my possession, for about 20 years the most amazing lemon bread recipe. It was from one of my mom’s old friends, Mrs. Bratnober. That woman could bake. Over the years, each time that I made this bread I fought all urges to eat the whole loaf myself without sharing any. However, I wasn’t raised by wolves, so I shared it with The Stud Muffin. My mother would be so proud. About a month ago I went to my recipe box to grab the card and make this so I could feature it during my week of “All things lemon“. I kid you not, I went through every single card in…
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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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Minnesota Wild Rice Hotdish- A Recipe Remake
I’ve been working on remaking a family recipe that my Aunt MJ makes. Her recipe is great, but I thought it would taste even better if I added some plain Jasmine rice and a creamy sauce. I mentioned in the Perfect Wild Rice post that it has taken me a while to enjoy the taste of Wild Rice. My Aunt’s recipe uses all Wild Rice, and for my sensitive palate it’s a little too strong. And for The Stud Muffin, it’s just got too much rice. That man has never met a rice he liked. Unless Chipotle’s rice bowl fixin’s are dumped on top of it. Or if it is combined with Stir-Fry.…
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How to Make the Perfect Wild Rice
I’m from Minnesota. It’s the land of Wild Rice. Did you know that Wild Rice is actually an aquatic grass seed, not a rice grain? ‘Tis true my Food Hippies. It’s a coarse annual grass called “zizania aquatica”. Despite its name, the plant isn’t even related to rice. For me, Wild Rice was an acquired taste. I’m not sure if I just had dishes from people who didn’t cook it long enough, or if I just didn’t have the palate for it. Whatever the reason, I shied away from it. Fast forward to a few years ago when I was working in a restaurant and developing a soup recipe with one of the chefs. He wanted a chicken…
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