More and more, I am cooking Mexican dishes - tacos, burritos, quesadillas and the like, but I struggle with side dishes. While a taco with lettuce, tomato, cheese, onions and sour cream doesn’t need a lot to accompany it, I feel like there should be something else besides refried beans, salsa and tortilla chips. Naturally, I experimented and came up with a Mexican Corn Salad and it … [Read more...]

  Most of my cooking involves simple, easy recipes. If it’s difficult, I let somebody else do it. For example, I make a lot of brownies, but just plain ol’ brownies. But they’re good. I saw a Betty Crocker recipe recently that inspired me to up my game a little so I decided to try a batch of Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies. They looked great, they tasted great and. … they were easy. Here’s … [Read more...]

  Nancy and I had met Larry Hastings at a Blue Ridge Builders meeting. He was pastor at Park Street Christian Church and invited us to attend. One Sunday we did. I always like to sit near the front, not the back of a church, so on this particular Sunday we went to the front and took a seat on the second pew. As it turns out, the Church was celebrating communion that morning. Our … [Read more...]

  Pure comfort! Comfort food that is. Hamburger Steak smothered in Country Gravy is the epitome of comfort food. I made a batch the other night. Good stuff. The secret,  I believe, is the right choice of ground beef. Ground chuck (80/20 or 85/15) is too greasy for my liking. The 96/4 burger doesn’t have enough grease for the gravy.  92/8 is just right. Here’s how I do mine. In … [Read more...]

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  Cornbread is one of those things we don’t cook enough. We – or at least I – get in a rut with breads and do rolls, hard bread,  biscuits, etc. Recently, I decided to do some cornbread muffins with a tiny twist. I added some actual corn. I was inspired when I passed by the cornmeal section and saw those familiar blue Jiffy Corn Muffin boxes. I bought a couple and went by the standard … [Read more...]

  In Dallas last week at the Lighting Show, we stopped by a showroom serving lunch – Mexican fare. One dish looked interesting, it looked like a quiche, a Mexican Quiche. I sampled some and it was delicious. Since the server was not fluent in English, I couldn’t get the recipe so I tried my own version when we returned from the Lone Star State. It turned out well.  Here’s how I did … [Read more...]

  During the life of most every church in America, at some point the ladies of the church gather and print their special recipes in a spiral bound cookbook. I have a number of these and they are among my most treasured books - the old recipe collections from churches of my past. I have a recipe book from the Centenary United Methodist Church in Clemmons, NC. This church was founded in … [Read more...]

  If you notice in my humble attempts at “Now We’re Cooking” articles, each one has the word “easy” in there someplace. I happen to believe that good food doesn’t have to be difficult to prepare. If it does, I let somebody else do it. I‘m all about easy when it comes to cooking. A dish I fixed the other night satisfies the “easy” requirement. It’s also a good way to squeeze another … [Read more...]