When i browsed the aisles of the produce department yesterday, I eyed the Swiss Chard again. I always keep meaning to try it, but in the past I have always past it up for more familiar greens, like collards, mustard, and turnips. Well yesterday, I finally decided to give Swiss Chard a chance. I got the biggest, prettiest bunch to take home with me. I cooked it very simply and before I went to grab my pepper sauce, I tasted them, expecting to find a bitter green in need of anything to give them a little help. However, I couldn’t believe what my taste-buds discovered, a wonderfully flavored, mild green, different than anything I’ve tasted. I was really disappointed in myself because I hadn’t tried them sooner. I have been missing out on such a wonderful vegetable.

Don’t forget to stop by my giveaway page to read about my recent Chicago trip to the McDonald’s headquarters and enter for a chance to win a McDonald’s prize pack valued at $100!(...)
Read the rest of Swiss Chard Recipe (107 words)

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I just realized that I have neglected to share a collard green recipe with you. This is my go to, lower in fat recipe that I use most often. I always buy a large bunch of greens and cut them up myself. I cut the leaves thin and leave the stalks in the leaves because I cook them long enough that they get very tender. This recipe was shared with me by a dear friend that passed away last year, Gary. Gary was just one of us girls. His life partner, a pharmacist, is a strong man who is still coping with his death. They were partners most of their lives. They were two southern men living in the south with an alternative lifestyle most others didn’t understand or accept. Gary grew up in rural Tennessee and shared so many stories with me of his childhood growing up on the farm. The last 20 or so years of his life, he lived in our neighborhood, bringing joy to everyone he came in contact with. I felt that early in our friendship, I took his stories for granted, not really appreciating the accomplishments in his life until I learned just what an inspiring and strong man he really was. You see Gary was a man’s man, truck driving, all around nice guy. It wasn’t till a few years after knowing him that I asked if he’d ever been married. And he replied, “Are you crazy? No! I’d never be married to a woman.” It was then I put two and two together. Call me ignorant, but for some reason I thought they were just “buds.” I guess they were just so use to hiding their lifestyle over the years, it was kind of hard to tell.
(...)
Read the rest of Collard Greens Recipe, Low Fat! (111 words)

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This is my easy, go to recipe for mac and cheese. I like to prepare mine on the stovetop. I make an easy roux based cheese sauce and add whatever shredded cheese I have on hand. My favorite is to do sharp cheddar cheese, but I have also done mac and cheese with every variety of cheese that comes shredded in a bag. I also vary the type of spices I use in the mac and cheese, depending on the food I am preparing it with and the type of cheese I am using. My son as well as my husband love this classic comfort food, and I prepare it about once a week. I have also used elbow pasta, as well as the rotini and penne pasta. I topped this mac and cheese with fresh tomatoes from my patio. I bought a Burpee hybrid tomato plant for a patio container. The plant and tomatoes are beautiful, but the taste of the tomato was disappointing. It was surprisingly bland and unexciting. Next year I’ll just plant a beefsteak tomato plant in a larger pot with a cage.(...)
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I think these potatoes really speak for themselves. There are countless ways to make great mashed potatoes. This is my favorite way though. Lots of fresh chives and sour cream with Yukon gold potatoes is the perfect compliment to just about anything. I leave the peels on the potatoes, but you can peel them if you like. I just used my potato masher, I like them to be a little chunky. You can also use a food mill to bet a finer texture. They are so perfect, they don’t even need gravy!

Mashed Potatoes with Sour Cream and Chives Recipe

Ingredients

• 4 – 6 Yukon gold potatoes
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 – 1 cup milk
• small bag or a large bunch of chives, chopped
• kosher salt to taste
• pepper

Method

1. Wash potatoes. Peel if desired. Cute in quarters and add to a saucepan. Cover potatoes with water, add salt, and bring to a boil. Boil over medium heat until potatoes are very tender.
2. Drain potatoes and add back to the saucepan. Add sour cream and 1/2 cup milk. Mash potatoes with a potato masher. Add more milk until you get the desired consistency. Add chives, adjust salt and pepper to taste.

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I love ratatouille roasted in the oven. It is so easy to just throw all the vegetables together on a baking sheet. Just make sure to place the vegetables are on a single layer in the roasting pan to ensure roasting and prevent steaming. I think its wonderful how you can put so many different vegetables together and make one beautiful dish. All the flavors compliment each other so nicely. I like to make this dish when I want to eat healthy. I served my ratatouille with a wonderful panko crusted chicken strip that I will share latter this week.

I also want to share with you all a fun program I am participating in called Adopt a Blogger. Adopt a blogger is a program hosted by Kristen at Dine and Dish. Kristen is the nicest lady, always there to answer questions about blogging and photography. She never hesitants to help a newbie blogger like myself. In her spirit of helping newbie bloggers, she has put together this program in which a more experienced blogger is paired with a newbie blogger.

In this program, I have been paired with Jackie from Foodie Reflections. She has been blogging for almost 2 years, and has a professional culinary background, how exciting! Here is her story:

“I didn’t grow up cooking, unless you count occasionally making cookies or spaghetti. In fact, I first discovered cooking while studying abroad in Florence, Italy, during college which is where I took my first cooking class. After Italy, I returned to the U.S., finished my degree in journalism and got my first real job at a public relations agency. During that time I also continued to explore my growing interest in cooking and found myself getting more and more into it.

A few years later I was at a fork in the road and made the decision to leave PR and marketing and go to culinary school full-time. I enrolled at Kendall College in Chicago (where I’m from and had been living since college) and went through a year-and-a-half intensive, military-esque program in culinary arts. It was truly one of my most demanding accomplishments and I am still boggled by how much information I learned and retained in such a short period of time.

I’d always known my goal wasn’t to be a restaurant chef, but I did want to experience that life and did a short stint during culinary school at a local restaurant, which leads to a whole lot of other stories for another time.

After culinary school, I spent about two years working on various food-related projects, including as a personal chef, freelance food writer, recipe tester and food stylist, and six months of that was full-time on a cookbook about Asian noodles. It was during that time I started my blog as a way to practice my writing and quickly became obsessed with it and all things social media.

Most recently, I returned to my PR roots and am currently working at an agency on various food accounts. I still teach classes once a week for Common Threads, a nonprofit that teaches Chicago public school children cooking skills, nutrition and cultural diversity (it’s an amazing program and one I’m very passionate about).”

Roasted Ratatouille Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 large eggplant, diced
• 2 yellow squash, diced
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 yellow pepper, diced
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 2  zucchini squash, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs (oregano, basil, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, and sage)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine vegetables, olive oil, salt, and herbs in a large bowl. Mix well.
2. Place vegetables in a single layer on a large sheet pan. Roast vegetables until browned, about 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees.

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Today I am bringing you a simple recipe that will inspire you to have a home garden, that is if you don’t already. If you happened to catch my new year’s black eyed peas recipe, you know that I am not fond of dried black eyed peas, unless they have some serious flavor help, like my Spicy black eyed peas recipe. My husband has a great job, with amazing benefits. No not company benefits, benefits of food gifts, from patients. He had a wonderful, sweet lady last week that just so happens to have had a backyard garden full of delicious southern peas and greens. (...)
Read the rest of Green Black Eyed Peas (256 words)

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Herb Roasted Red Potatoes Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 lbs red potatoes, cut in similarly sized cubes
• olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Method

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prepare potatoes by washing and cutting. Combine the potatoes, garlic, herbs, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add enough olive oil to coat all the potatoes. Toss to coat.
2. Spread the potatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet, and bake at 450 degrees until golden brown. Toss the potatoes about halfway through the baking time to ensure even browning. Baking time will vary, about 30-45 min, depending on the size of your potatoes.

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This is a delicious recipe for black eyed peas. Even if you think you don’t like black eyed peas, you are going to like these. They are full of flavor, and perfect for any occasion, including A New Year’s celebration. When I was a kid, we only had black eyed peas that were green. We planted them in the garden, and ate them fresh. They were delicious. However, on New Year’s Day, my mother thought we had to have the white black eyed peas like everyone else, so she bought canned black eyed peas. I absolutely loathed them. I could barely choke down a couple on New Year’s Day.  So, when it was my time to make the beans, I tried them from dried. I found they aren’t much better unless they have some help from lots of flavorful ingredients. I experimented with different flavors, and researched different recipes, until I got a recipe for black eyed peas that even my husband would eat. Not only will my husband eat them, but he actually loves them.  This full flavor recipe is seasoned with smoky bacon and spicy picante sauce. I used a medium picante sauce, you could also use a mild or hot picante. For an even milder flavor, use a can of diced tomatoes and green chilies, and add 1/2 green pepper, diced. You can easily make this in a crock pot or dutch oven. I always use my crock pot for beans, so these were made in the crock pot on New Year’s Day. The instructions are included below.

Spicy Black Eyed Peas Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 package, 16 oz black eyed peas
• 1/2 lb smoky bacon, diced
• 1 sweet onion, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 2 cups picante sauce
• 3 cups water

Method

1. Soak the beans overnight in the water. Cook bacon until crisp. Add bacon and the fat to the beans. Add celery, onion, and picante sauce.
2. Bring the beans to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Cook beans until they are tender, 45 min to 1 hour.
3. If using the crock pot, cook on low for 6-8 hours, or until tender. Or you can also use a dutch oven in a 250 degree oven for 6-8 hours.

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Buttermilk mashed potatoes are a delicious alternative to traditional mashed potatoes. The tang of the buttermilk is very good, and the added garlic makes this version of mashed potatoes full of flavor, but not fat. You can lower the fat in this recipe even more by omitting the butter, and just adding more buttermilk. Buttermilk is lower in fat than whole milk, and because of the acids it contains, it is a bit lower in lactose. Therefore, it can be tolerated better by some lactose intolerant people, like myself. I love to make this recipe when I am not going to be preparing a pan gravy. These potatoes are so good, you will not even miss the gravy. You can mash them so that they are still a little chunky, like I have done in the picture, or use a food mill or ricer to get a smoother texture.

Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 lbs potatoes, red skins, yukon golds, or russet potatoes, scrubbed clean, and cut in similarly sized pieces
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Method

1. Bring a saucepan of water and the kosher salt to a boil. Peel potatoes, if desired. Cut potatoes in similarly sized chunks, and add to boiling water. Make sure the chunks are pretty large. If using small potatoes, just boil whole. Add garlic cloves. Boil the potatoes over medium heat, until they are very tender.
2. Drain potatoes, and add back to the saucepan. Place the potatoes back on the warm burner, and allow the extra water to evaporate. Mash them up with a potato masher, process in a food mill, or use a ricer. When potatoes are mashed, add butter, and stir to combine. Add buttermilk, until you get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remember not to over mix, or the potatoes can get a glue like consistency.

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Happy New Year everyone! Its New Years Eve, and I am making preparations for tomorrow’s New Year’s Day dinner. We always have the traditional southern New Year’s Day dinner, revamped a bit. We have abandoned the fatty hog jowls for a delicious spiral ham. Actually, my family abandoned the hog jowls, when my grandfather became a butcher back in the 60′s. He decided we could eat a little more extravagantly. We still have the turnip greens and black eyed peas though.  We eat turnips, because they use to be the cheapest green. The plant makes greens and roots, so you get double the product. Recently, though, I haven’t seen much of a savings between them and other greens, but we enjoy them anyway!   I also can hardly find turnips and their roots anymore, so I usually just buy them separately. My family also does cornbread, and sometimes, deviled eggs. So that is my menu for tomorrow. I wanted to share my Granny’s recipe for turnip greens today. The smell of turnips is one of the most comforting smells in the world to me, because it reminds me of being with my Granny. She was a wonderful, superstitious, god-fearing southern Baptist. She read her bible everyday, never missed a day church, and couldn’t leave an approximately nine mile radius, because she would have to cross a train track. She was deathly afraid of trains, and stayed in her little community for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I spent alot of time with her, cooking, fishing, sewing, tending to the chickens, taking care of the garden, and picking up pecans in the yard. I have many found memories of her, she was a loving and caring woman.
So here is her delicious recipe for turnips. These are so good, I don’t even use pepper vinegar on them, but you can if you like. Enjoy!

Southern Turnip Greens Recipe

Ingredients

• turnip greens and their roots, or
• a small bag of turnip roots, about 6, diced and
• about 1 lb turnip greens, a large bunch or bag, cut
• 1 large sweet onion, diced
• a smoke bone, ham or turkey
• olive or vegetable oil
• kosher salt
• water

Method

1. Dice onions and turnip roots.
2. Preheat a large soup pot. Drizzle with oil. Add turnip roots and onions. Add a little kosher salt. Saute until the roots begin to be transparent.
3. Add greens, then add water about 1/3 way up the pot, so that 1/3 of the fresh un wilted greens are in the water. Add a little more kosher salt. Don’t stir for a while, leave the roots and onions on the bottom so they can cook more.
4. Cook the greens and their roots for a couple of hours, over medium low heat. Cook until almost all of the water has evaporated.

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