My love of pimento cheese started long before I moved to the South. My parents would raise pimentos is their garden for themselves and my grandmother to pickle and can. In fact, my grandmother was well known for her pickled pimentos. Although my dad rarely cooked, he usually helped my mom use the canned pickled […]
Archives for February 2014
Sticky Rice with Mango
My favorite dessert in Thai and Vietnamese restaurants is sticky rice with mango. It also happens to be one of the few Asian dishes I cook at home. I used a short-grained brown sweet rice for the dish pictured. Although I used a different brand (I bought mine at a natural foods store), I noticed […]
John’s Family Restaurant
The panhandles of the state of West Virginia are the most obvious geographically and socioeconomically different areas of the state. To me, the Eastern panhandle seems to reflect the outer Washington D.C. area of Maryland and Virginia rather than the still rather diverse rest of the state. That reflection is also in the areas cuisine. […]
Beef Shank Stew
My memories of homemade beef stew are kind of fuzzy. I remember my paternal grandmother making it, but I think I was too young to really pay much attention to how she did it. I remember my mother making it in a cast iron skillet, but it was not something she made very often. She […]
Easy, Classic Chicken Noodle Soup
Easy, simple homemade chicken noodle soup is great on a cold day and/or when you have a cold. If you have cooked chicken and homemade stock/broth in the freezer, you can easily have truly made from scratch chicken soup whenever you want. If not, you can either cook it all that day or supplement with […]
Snow Cream or Snow Ice Cream
While growing up in the Mid-Ohio Valley, I heard my mother tell of making ice cream out of snow (snow cream) when she was a child in rural West Virginia far from any industries. It was never something that she (or I) ever considered doing in our city or farm homes closer to the manufacturing […]
Thai Phooket in Nashville
As I pulled into a parking space in front of Thai Phooket I had serious doubts that I should be taking my 8-year-old to eat at this establishment. A quick double check on Urbanspoon somewhat reassured me that it was indeed “kid friendly” and had decent food. If it had not been a Sunday afternoon […]
Quick and Easy Chicken Pot Pie
Sometimes when I want warm comfort food, I don’t want to spend a lot of time or energy making it. Chicken (or turkey) pot pie is a great dish on these occasions. It is one of those dishes that you can make totally from scratch that day, use some items you’ve pre-made, use mostly store-bought […]