If a recipe ever says “Amish”, I’m interested. I have never eaten any Amish food that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. I eagerly await our annual pilgrimage to Lancaster County each spring, where we eat any and everything Amish - and lots of it. When I saw this recipe for Amish Butter Noodles, I had to give it a try and I must admit, this gives ordinary noodles a new lease on life. Here’s … [Read more...]

Ever get into one of those “soupy” moods, where nothing but a big bowl of hot soup will do? Yeah, me too. I was in one of those soupy stages recently and saw a recipe that drew my interest. It was for a 15-bean and smoked turkey wing soup. I haven’t cooked soup or beans with a smoked turkey wings in ages, so I headed to the only store in town where I absolutely knew I could find some smoked … [Read more...]

Ah, the perfect hamburger. Thick, juicy and exploding with flavor! Such is the case with the Perfect Hamburger and its two and only two ingredients – hamburger and Kosher salt. But the type of hamburger is critical. Modern hamburger is trending leaner. The meat departments offer 96/4 hamburger combinations, meaning 96% lean and only 4% fat. They have ground … [Read more...]

I grew up with a jar for bacon grease beside the stove. Sometimes it was a Mason Jar, sometimes an aluminum pot with a strainer or sometimes just a bowl, but we always had bacon grease to use as seasoning and as an oil with which to fry. When we got married, I continued that tradition much to my wife Nancy’s concern. Her folks came from the north. They used Crisco, while cooking with bacon grease … [Read more...]

A whole chicken is one of the great values in the grocery store. You have a main course entree fit for company, followed by either leftovers or killer sliced chicken sandwiches and you get all this for about $1.39 a pound compared to three or four times that amount for boneless, skinless chicken loins. It’s hard to screw up a whole roast chicken unless you serve it medium rare or if it’s cooked … [Read more...]

A number of years ago, there was a saying or an ad someplace that said, “Real men don’t eat quiche.” Being a real man, I didn’t eat it, though my wife Nancy loved it. However, being an amateur chef, I had to try my hand at a Quiche Lorraine and my version turned out so well that Nancy thinks it might even be better than her recipe. The word “quiche”, or so they believe, comes from the … [Read more...]

I have a love/hate relationship with thistles. The “hate” part comes back when I fly fish Mossy Creek. The stream is especially productive in September when leaping grasshoppers miss their mark and plop in the stream – to the delight of some large brown trout. But fly casting involves back casts where you flip the line backwards to load the rod, only to see the line settle in the stream with no … [Read more...]

Cubed steaks represent a great value in the meat department. An affordable cut of beef - usually top round or top sirloin – the extra lean cubed steaks have been flattened and pre-tenderized with a textured tool or machine. By pounding or running the meat through a tenderizer, the tough muscle fibers break down, but they can still give the old molars quite a workout – they’re still … [Read more...]

Sunday was a special day in our house when I was a boy. We went to Church every Sunday, often just to Sunday School, but when we came home, the house was filled with the heavenly smells of dinner cooking. We called it “dinner” not lunch, because it was our main meal for the day. That night we would eat leftovers and watch Walt Disney on TV, but a Sunday afternoon was a time for dinner. Sunday … [Read more...]

Sometimes, a bowl of cereal hits the spot for a nice breakfast, while other mornings might require eggs, toast and a patty of sausage. Every now and then I - for one - get the urge for a big fat muffin and a glass of juice to satisfy my breakfast cravings. That happened this week, so I decided to bake a batch of pumpkin muffins – my favorites. Just for the heck of it - and since I’m trying to … [Read more...]