Microwave Orange Honey Glazed Baby Carrots

Baby carrots, steamed in orange juice in the microwave, then glazed with honey, cane or maple syrup and butter.

Glazed Baby Carrots

A quick and easy side dish recipe, written for cooking in the microwave with holiday cooking in mind when the stovetop can be otherwise occupied. It can also be done on the stovetop too of course.

A simple mixture of butter with honey, is a perfect compliment to those homemade holiday yeast rolls, or even on a slice of homemade banana bread.

Whipped Honey Butter

Perfect on banana bread, cinnamon toast bread, or on those holiday yeast rolls!

 

Frozen or canned corn, dressed up with a little butter, salt and pepper and fresh parsley. A traditional holiday side dish in my family.

Parslied Corn

Parslied corn is just a fancy way of saying take some corn, add a little butter, some salt and pepper and a bit of fresh or dried parsley. Nothing to it, but it's a great way to dress up plain corn just a little bit, and since it's easy to microwave and will free up a burner on the stove, is great for the holidays.

Cube steaks, dredged in seasoned flour, browned and then cooked in an onion gravy. For richer color on the gravy as pictured, add a small splash of Kitchen Bouquet.

Southern-Style Cube Steaks and Gravy

Because they have similar ingredients, folks seem to confuse this dish with Chicken Fried Steak, but like Hamburger Steak with Creamy Onion Gravy, cube steaks are dredged in flour, browned then simmered in a brown gravy until cooked through. Cube steaks and gravy also usually include onion and often mushrooms, for those of us who like them. It's a dish that's been around for a long time.

Chicken Fried Steak is prepared similar to our fried chicken - hence the name - and is dredged in a flour coating similar to what we also use on our classic fried chicken and fried in oil, but it's not cooked in a gravy like cube steaks and gravy. A white milk or cream based gravy is prepared separately and is served spooned over the fried steaks instead and also served on the side.

You also wouldn't often see Chicken Fried Steak cooked with onions or mushrooms either.

You see? There is a little bit of a difference.

Beans and Weenies (Beans and Franks)

Beans and weenies, made from hot dogs, pork and beans, onion, and a tomato and ketchup based, brown sugar mustard sauce.

Beans and Weenies

The Cajun and I had the munchies tonight (and I wonder why I don't lose weight) sooooo I remembered that when I cleaned out the fridge of the bits and pieces of leftovers earlier today I'd run across some hot dogs I'd forgotten about.

So, beans and franks or beanie weenie as we call it, sounded like a plan. Really I just wanted to put it here so I'd remember what I did, but in case anybody's wandering by, measurements are basically guesstimates. Just taste it and see if you like it. Oh, and grab a yummy yeast dinner roll to sop up the juice for sure. I had a few in the freezer that I meant to serve with dinner, but forgot. Worked out now didn't it?

Pomona Salad Dressing made from apples, cucumbers, Greek yogurt and honey.

Pomona Salad Dressing

Well, you know what they say about good intentions. But hey ... ya gotta eat, right? And today I decided to have a salad for lunch.

Recently I was watching Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares show and they talked about a Pomona salad dressing that got me curious about what that is. Trouble is, when I googled it, I could only find one recipe and that was at SparkPeople. So technically I don't know if this really is a salad dressing, or if it's actually really known by a different name and maybe just only originated in Pomona. Dunno, but when I saw this recipe had a combination of apples, cucumbers, yogurt and honey, I thought it sounded like an curious enough combination of ingredients to give it a try.

A good basic yeast bread made from 100% whole wheat.

Whole Wheat Bread

So, I decided to give another whole wheat bread recipe a try. This time I used a 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe at the King Arthur Flour website.

As you see, I had a much better crown this time. Thankfully, this recipe gave the recommended pan dimensions, so I dug into the deep reaches of my pan cabinet and found my old air bake loaf pan that is 9 x 5 inch - as opposed to the pans I recently bought that are 10 x 5 inch. Definitely made a difference I think!

This bread is pretty good, though mine did come out really soft - not that there's anything wrong with that - and as a consequence of that, it was a bit too tender and crumbly. I think part of that was with my shaping. The texture and feel of the whole wheat dough is a bit different than a white bread dough too, so I don't think I did well in the shaping department.

Boiled icings are a southern favorite and this peanut butter one is no exception. It pairs as well with a yellow cake as it does with a chocolate cake and even works to ice brownies.

Old Fashioned Boiled Peanut Butter Icing

I just love the old fashioned boiled icings because they are so different from the usual buttercream or cream cheese icing.

This paired with a basic 1-2-3-4 yellow cake is how I most often make it, but it's also great spread over a pan of homemade brownies, or on a chocolate Texas Sheet Cake, and you got a really great dessert for any day of the week.

Lazy Man's KetMayo Sauce

A dipping sauce blend of equal parts ketchup and mayonnaise, nicknamed KetMayo, has loads of black pepper and a dab of horseradish and works well with a variety of foods.

Lazy Man's KetMayo Fry Sauce

This is The Cajun's favorite, general purpose dipping sauce. What can I say? He's a very simple man. I suspect most of it is that besides having a good taste, it's easy to remember. He uses this for just about anything - boiled seafood, fried seafood, and chicken strips, though it's good for French fries, onion rings, fried pickles, and well, a lot of things really, including as a sandwich spread. Since it's a simple combination of ketchup and mayonnaise, I call it KetMayo - akin to a sauce served by a similar name at one of our local restaurants.

One thing I will definitively say is that this is not Comeback Sauce.

The Secrets to the Best Ever, Perfect Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

There's not a lot that separates most Southern biscuit recipes from each other. They all include flour, buttermilk or milk, and some kind of fat - but there are a few southern secrets that'll help you make the best homemade biscuits ever, including using the right southern biscuit flour.

Classic 3-Ingredient Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

Perfect, light and fluffy, homemade buttermilk biscuits used to elude me until I learned a few "secrets" and I have perfect biscuits every time now.

Hand Formed Biscuits

Iron Skillet Biscuits

Back in the day, when folks ate biscuits multiple times a day, every day, a large lidded bowl, filled with self-rising flour was typically used for biscuit making.