It’s almost strawberry season. My little backyard patch is blooming, and the grocery stores are receiving daily shipments of luscious, red-ripe strawberries. It’s hard to go wrong with strawberries – eat ‘em plain, in short cakes, over ice cream - it’s all good. But recently I saw a recipe for Strawberry Puff Pastry Tarts and since I had some Puff Pastry in my freezer, I decided to give it a go. … [Read more...]

One of the easiest and best received entrees of all is a whole, roasted chicken. When you serve one, it’s like a Mini-Thanksgiving dinner. Increasingly, people just pick up a whole rotisserie bird from Sam’s or Costco and hope they haven’t been languishing under the heat lamps too long. I like to do my own birds. Cooking a whole chicken is not rocket science. Just make sure the chicken is done … [Read more...]

I have written about my love for split chicken breasts in the past. They are far and away the best buy of any white meat chicken. Boneless, skinless loins can be tough, dry and tasteless – plus they are expensive. You pay several dollars extra a pound to have the butcher peel off the skin and remove the small bone. With skin-on, bone-in split chicken breasts you can remove skin and bones after … [Read more...]

I bought Nancy a large head of cabbage for coleslaw. She makes the best coleslaw in the Southeast, by the way, a perfect complement to seafood or barbeque, but she only used half of the cabbage. Now, what to do with the rest? My go-to cabbage recipe is to simply boil it in salted water till it falls apart. It’s okay that way, but not great. I have also attempted to roast cabbage and that pretty … [Read more...]

I’m still trying to get rid of a huge box of Old Fashioned Quaker Oats I bought for Nancy by mistake. She wanted instant Quaker Oatmeal, and what I bought wasn’t instant. It takes a while. I have since used the oats in muffins, in cookies and as an actual breakfast cereal, but I still have half a box. As I said, it was a big box. Hey, why not use Quaker Oats in a meatloaf? I did and it was very … [Read more...]

I hit on a good recipe recently; one that is simple, delicious and reasonably healthy. The recipe called for Garlic Butter Chicken Bites which I converted into Garlic Butter Chicken over Stuffing. This is a company-worthy dish that comes together quickly. The recipe called for bites, but I didn’t want bites. I found a good buy on 2-lbs. thin cut chicken breasts and cut them into smaller pieces … [Read more...]

It was a summer day on Jennings Street in Beckley, WV. The guys were trying to rustle up enough players for a baseball contest in our version of Yankee Stadium. We found 4 available boys, obviously not enough for a ball game, but there were 4 girls up the street playing hopscotch. I conferred with Carolyn Meadows, manager of the Hopscotch team and we came to terms. If the boys played a few games … [Read more...]

I was with my long-time fly-fishing buddy, Tom Reisdorf, last weekend and produced a Hash Brown Sausage casserole I was cooking for our breakfast. “Those are the same hash browns I use for my potato salad,” he said. They were Southern Style Diced Potatoes. I had bought them in a hurry at Food Lion, not realizing at the time that they were diced potatoes instead of shredded, my usual choice. … [Read more...]

Ground Pork is one of the best buys in the grocery store. It generally sells a for about $3.99 pound and it’s 100% edible – no waste whatsoever. And because it’s been ground, there is enough fat added to keep the pork moist and flavorful, unlike many dry and flavorless pork chops and loins. But when I’m planning out my meals, I often forget about it. Last week, I was searching for an … [Read more...]

Aldi’s is my grocery store of choice when I want to save money. It’s hands-down the least expensive, but when I want a little variety, I like to stop by Food Lion. Their meat department is especially diverse. Last week, I poked around in their meat case and saw a package of boneless rib-eye pork chops, and they had been marked down. That was an easy choice. I fried the tender chops and they … [Read more...]