Menu 11/10-11/6

I've been delinquent. And I got called out on it this past weekend. 

So, this is what we're eating this week. 

a sufficiency

Yeast Rolls from Last Year's Feast

Yay!  Turkey Day is coming!  Gobble Gobble Gobble.   

I love Thanksgiving.  I'm a food girl [I hear a collective "No scheisse, sweetheart"].  And at Christmas, while there may be great food, it's not the focus.  The focus is you know, a savior's advent, and lots of wrapping paper.  But on Turkey Day, well, it's all about the food. 

For a hot second, we thought we might be out of town for Thanksgiving, and I wouldn't get to perform the sixth consecutive hosting of the Feast this year.  But, no worries.  All taken care of; yay!  

[Proper use of semi colon?  Yay is an interjection, right?  What does one do with an interjection at the end of a sentence?  When we're diagramming at school, we call this one sentence, "Wow! Look at all those frogs!"  However, we punctuate it like it's two, obviously.  I have either entirely turned off or entirely turned on, to being a grammar nerd that is, every single one of my English grammar students this year.  You can see why.]

So, menu is decided upon.  No turning back now.  Still finalizing some specific recipes, but the food-dish-name-cards can be written up without fear.  

Make this this week. Bring me a piece.

Mine usually aren't quite this pretty, but I bet they taste better....                                                                                                   (I didn't take a picture of my cherry pie from this weekend, and yes, I'm regretting it)

I have recently written about my literary love affair with cherries.  Oh, lady macbeth, how do you make me delightfully somber.

But, let's be honest, we don't pit all the cherries for fun.  Really, we don't.  We pit them for a reason, and here it is mostly for cherry pie.  And I've recently discovered that a cherry can take fruit salad from blah to luxury in a hot second, or we've put them in a salsa, or in a fruit compote to top pavlova or white chocolate almond torte.  Okay, so there are a ton of ways to eat cherries, but Pie remains our favorite (prepared) way. 

Food 6/12/11 -7/2/11

Shockingly, I've been a delinquent blogger. 

But last night, the women and friends of our church got together to talk about feeding our families, and one of the tools of accountability we mentioned was actually writing down your menu. (Obviously).

And, so I remembered that I actually do have a spot to write down my menu. 

Right here.

So, going back in time a bit - 
Food from June 12th-June 18th:

Food 6/5/11-6/11/11

Food on the Ocean

We just got back from a fabulous week away from real life with my dad and my stepmother, Carrie. And a few interlopers.

It was awesome.

It was not real life.

Real life began this week.
I prefer the beach.

Well, I probably wouldn't after a while. But for now...


When a family goes on vacation, apparently, they still need to eat.  There are a couple of options about food. You can eat out, you can cook a bunch of food and freeze and take, or you can cook while down there.

We don't particularly like to eat out, in general. That needs clarification. I love, love to eat out. But, for me to enjoy, my requirements are as follows:

• The joint almost always be locally owned and operated. Chains just don't produce a good product, by and large.  There are always exceptions, but.... 
• The food must be as good or better than food I can cook. 
• And there shall be no discipline needed during the meal.
• Or the joint be Krystal or Taco Bell or Cheap (Tex) Mexican.

The first qualification and second qualifications sound quite snobby, but when you like to cook, it's very painful to pay for food that costs more and tastes worse than what you can do at home.  And by 'very painful' i mean 'mildly annoying'.  Regardless, the fourth qualification should alleviate snobby accusations.

All that to say, eating out at the beach isn't really on my to do list.  It results in mediocre, over priced meals interrupted by "sit down, Eason."  "use your fork, Collins" "sit down, Eason""Ada - remember how we talked about facing the knife inward?" "sit down, Collins." "Paul - can you help clean up the water spill?" "sit down, Eason."  "Ada - No, I don't know the exact difference in size between large and jumbo shrimp"  "sit down, Collins."
And so on and so forth.  None of it is bad.  I do it most nights at the supper table.  Which is fine.  And good.  And part of an important proccess.

But it's not something I'd like to pay to experience.


I could cook and freeze.  But I don't like pulling meals out of the freezer.  I have a few things that work really well like this, but only a few.  And I cannot do a week of casseroles.

So, we cook down there.  Which I enjoy, and have learned to bring my knives and a couple of pans.  Note to self - next year, bring a cutting board and some kitchen towels.

So, what did we eat?

Saturday Night 5/28:  Spicy Spinach Lasagna
Sunday Night 5/29:  Went to see Paul Thorne sing.  He's awesome.  And Funny. And great dancing music. We ate a smorgasbord of left overs and vendor distributed hot dogs. 
Monday Night 5/30: Redfish Annalowrey 
Tuesday Night 5/31:  Carrie created some awesome roasted garlic french alfredo
Wednesday Night 6/1:  Chicken Romano 
Thursday Night 6/2:  Elite Style Cheese and Onion Enchiladas
Friday Night 6/3: Carrie made shrimp scampi, but I missed out.  I'm sure it was divine!

It was all good, and the only day I felt like I spent a lot of time in the kitchen was on Monday.  But it was Carrie's birthday dinner.  So it was worth it!

I measured out my spices and grouped all of my ingredients together before I left for the trip.

It's the way to go!  Prepare well before you go and then cook down there!

We had a great week.

"never trust the sort of cooking...."

I am enjoying a low key vacation with my family this week. My daddy is a generous man and rented a little house on the Alabama gulf coast for himself, his bride and their kids.

I've spent time in the waves, time in the pool, time in the sand and time in the kitchen.

But, shockingly, that hasn't taken up all my hours. The rest of the time, I've been reading.

I brought Crime and Punishment to read, and have read some of it, but regardless of the gaping education hole that not having read the greatest Russian novel apparently leaves, it is not the most uplifting beach read.
Strike one.
I also went to the library and checked out some Agatha Christie stuff, only to find out that the novel collection I picked up are her six romance novels, rather than six of her 84 amazingly British murder mysteries.
Strike two.

But don't fret. I also picked up Forever Summer by Nigella Lawson, who gives Dame Christie a run for her money as my favorite British author. And my stepmother brought an Ina Garten cookbook. So, I know you're shocked, but I've been reading about food.

And have dishes to try to carry us through labor day.
But Nigella doesn't write recipes. She writes prefectly crafted essays that happen to be about food.

In one such essay, she echoed the sentiments of Robert Capon in his collection of essays on domestic life, Bed and Board. Capon opines about our relationship to Things. When we love a thing in itself, that is proper, Godly materialism, but when we love a thing for what it can do for us - convey social status, etc., that is far from good. Mistress Lawson is writing about Cheesecake Ice Cream.

She says, "I don't claim [cheesecake icecream] as an original idea...but striving for originality is frankly a grievous culinary crime. Never trust the sort of cooking that draws attention to the cook rather than to the food."

That's the lesson I've gleaned this week of reading and writing about food. It's also the reason all recipes should be shared. It isn't about what glory the food [or clothes, or work, or friendships, or anything] can bring to us; its about the glory that we, by way of the perfect dessert, can bring to God and His Creation.

I am so looking forward to being back in my own kitchen to hopefully draw attention to some yummy summer food.

Menu 5/9/11 - 5/15/11

ze menu: 5/2/11 - 5/8/11

Monday, 5/2:   
Lunch -  Peanut Butter and Honey.  Peanut butter and honey is a magnificent thing.
Supper - Red Beans and Rice, Biscuit Bread  (I'm trying to get over my seasonal issue with Red Beans and Rice....Who ever said you couldn't eat it when it's hot?  My father in law, apparently, ate it every Monday evening for 20 some odd years.  And my grandmother-in-law more like 50 some odd years.  It's great stuff.

of the black eyed variety

Every spring, I crave black-eyed peas.


This kind:


Not this kind, ever, especially post superbowl xlv:



I was about to say "I don't know why, but every spring I crave black-eyed peas" but that would be a lie.

I know exactly why.

My mother, whilst I was growing up, was not a meat and potatoes kind of girl, but, as in most of America, most of her meals had some type of meat in them. We weren't pot roast people or roast chicken people (like my family now is), but we were spaghetti sauce with ground beef and chicken enchilada people.

But every summer, from April through September, inclusive (because that is summer here), my mother would have what she deemed "vegetable night." This seems silly, because we had vegetables every night, and we were not always meat-ed people (meatless taco salad, cheese ravioli, red beans and rice, black bean soup are just four entrees I can remember that appeared sans meat).

But I understand it now. These vegetable nights were when she could serve vegetables that tasted like God meant them to taste. These vegetable nights were to showcase the vegetables. We didn't have broccoli or carrots or salad like on every other night. These vegetable nights almost always followed a trip to the farmers market.

We had tomatoes, served alone, with dash of salt and pepper. We had corn on the cob, boiled for just a hot minute and then buttered (or, per my mother, margarined, don't get me started, bless her heart), salt and peppered. We usually had cornbread. And we had peas. Sometimes purple hull peas, sometimes I don't even know what, sometimes just the plain ol' pea of the black-eyed variety. If we were lucky, we got fried okra to along with it, or if my mother had her way, sauteed squash, heavy on the onions. And if my baby brother, her baby child, was around, we also had a tomato tart. Because, see, it's his favorite.

These nights found my mother at her best, that is, my mother without measuring spoons. She was just throwing stuff in pots and pans, as she well should be. It is harder for her to do that than it is for me; her motto is, "If I make it the way the recipe says and it tastes good, why would I mess with it?"

Mine is, "I like variety and have an overconfidence that often leads to greatness, but at least as often leads to 'I should have just followed the recipe.'"

Thus, I walk the line.

But I look back on these hot, summer evenings with great joy in my heart. She just threw in butter, salt, sugar, pepper with abandon.

Mama was always working from farmers market peas. She, except on new years, never bought non-fresh peas. She didn't like them enough to try to dress up a supermarket distant fourth place when she could just be patient and wait for a Mississippi backyard blue ribbon champion.

I did inherited neither her wed-to-recipe-ness nor her patience. But I did inherit, with a vengeance, her love of food and her seasonality.

I am growing my herbs (more on that later this week). Paul has planted his tomatoes. My children have been playing in the sprinkler. The air conditioning is on; if I have to sweat, I also get to eat summer vegetables.

I've been incorporating summer veggies into our menus for the last few weeks: I've made a tomato tart (but had to buy basil for it), we've had corn on the cob, and I've made squash.

But this week, I felt it come on. A need for a veggie night.

So, tonight we did it. Though, we'll have better ones later in the year, when all the veggies can be farmers market.

We had corn on the cob (which Ada slathered with butter, I protested, she said, "I gave up butter for lent, Mama, I have to enjoy Easter"); we had biscuit bread - as southern as southern can be; we had a big green salad; we had leftover Easter mac and cheese; and we had black-eyed peas.

Now, fresh black-eyed peas should be nearing unadulterated. God made them a certain way, and you should only add a little onion, salt and pepper to them.

But dried peas in a bag from Kroger need a little more help. And since it ain't culinary summer quite yet, we had the latter.

So I googled and messed around and so forth. Ultimately, I fiddled with a Paula Deen recipe.

And this is what I did. Paul and I highly recommend it. If you have "but I don't like pie-see food Mama" people at your house, cut down on the pepper, chili powder and onion. But as is, this is not a spicy dish - just a little hint of a kick.

1 lb dried black eyed peas, soaked (I used the quick soak method taught on the bag, and was very satisfied - that's a first time for me)

1 onion, sized to preference - I used large - are you shocked? Cut into whatever size pieces of cooked onion you prefer

In a pan over high heat, put a mixture of olive oil and bacon grease, the second of which you have dutifully saved in a jar in your refrigerator for occasions such as this. If you have not done so, you can fry up some bacon really quickly and crumble to throw on top of the black eyed peas. Or you can skip the bacon grease and go with some butter. I think my mixture was about a tablespoon of each.

Throw in onion, saute over medium heat for about 6 minutes, until soft - you don't have to get it to a translucent point.
Then add:

1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
3/4 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 can Rotel (Or, obviously, store brand tomatoes and green chilies, but don't you think everyone knows what Rotel is better than "Can of Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies", huh, don't ya?)

Stir around for a bit.

Toss in soaked beans and 4-5 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Cover. Cook on Medium or Medium-Low heat for 45 minutes to an hour.

Serve and enjoy! On veggie night or whenever the mood so strikes.

Food 4/25/11 - 5/1/11

Monday 4/25: Bless you, Bean Burritos. Bless you for all that you have been, are and will be again. Bless you for your ease of preparation and for the excitement of each family member when they smell the cumin. Bless you still, for while we eat you often, we are never sick of you. Most especially last night, because it had been almost 2 months since our last visit.

Food From Ages Past

I've been very delinquent in food blogging and somewhat delinquent in food preparing - which, admittedly for me, means cooking 3-4 suppers a week instead of 6, but such is life.

Saddle her back up and hop back on.

Going backwards a bit:

(This is an exercise in warding off alzheimers - try to remember what you've eaten for each meal for the last 5 some odd weeks)

shhhhiiiccccken romano.

(excuse the phone photo.... I was too done to get the real camera out).


So, when my mother was a newlywed, my father saw this recipe somewhere. Maybe southern living magazine, but I think it was in the newspaper. Maybe in Durham, N.C., where Daddy went to law school. But, I don't know. They do. I don't. Oh well.

And Mama cooked it right up. Well, she fiddled a bit, but basically she cooked it right up.

And, like God on the sixth or seventh day, or whenever he said it, Mama and Daddy looked at the creation and saw that it was good.

And growing up, I agreed. And then I got married, and Paul agreed as well.

This recipe stays in our rotation, because:

• It's fancy enough for company.

(though I largely object to that classification - one of the best company-foods is makeyourown paninis served with homemade soup...which would traditionally have not been considered company fare..., but the point is - Chicken Romano, an ironic name as you'll see, is a food fit for kings. Or at least anyone you'd have in your house)

• It's fairly simple. The hardest part is to make sure the chicken is free of those little tendons that you are wont to bite into and gag....
  
• It is made of all real food
• It is fairly good for you. Not revolutionary or anything, but certainly should be guiltless, unless you're currently under special dietary restrictions.
• I think that it's hard to make white meat, skinless chicken taste good, and this does it.
  

So, to the recipe, which I present unadulterated: (Well, my mother actually adulterated the fire out of it originally, but I haven't done anything further, though my measurements are not always precise).

You need:

1-2 lbs chicken - I use boneless, skinless chicken breast tenders.
Some flour - 2 cups ish
2 tsps salt
2 tsps pepper
4 T or so of butter

1 large onion, chopped (though, if you're onion squeamish, first of all, get a life, and second of all, cut the onion in half, or even into a fourth... i'd think you do want some, though for flavoring the sauce)
Perhaps a glug of olive oil
1 64 oz can tomato juice
3 T sugar
6 Generous Tablespoons parmesan cheese

(just get the stuff in the container.... You can get it that's 100% cheese now, and the texture just makes the sauce better than if you grate your own. I've tried. It's now the only thing I use containerparmesan for, but, well, I try to cook what tastes good, not just what's trendy... =) )

1 1/2 tsps garlic salt
1 1/2 tsps oregano
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
2 bay leaves
1 T parsley
1 T vinegar

1 lb pasta of your choice - see note below.

Once you have what you need, get out a gallon size baggie. Throw your flour, salt and pepper in there. Then put your cut-up chicken in there. Seal it. Hand it to the nearest child, and ask them to shake shake shake. (This is the realfood version of shake and bake and i helped....).

In a large pot (The widest one you have that is still deep enough to hold sauce.... an extra deep skillet is perfect), melt about 4 T butter. Once it is good and hot, put the chicken in, one piece at a time, shaking off excess flour. If your pot is not wide enough, you'll have to do it in two batches, but regardless, brown chicken on each side for about 4 - 5 minutes on Medium Heat.

Remove chicken to plate. Swat away greedy hands. Not just because you're selfish, but because it's probably not entirely cooked. Salmonella is bad, still, apparently.

Add to pot a little more butter or a glug of olive oil to prevent onion from sticking. Add onion and scrape up the chicken goodness left behind.

Saute onion until it's, you know, good and sauteed.

Add next 9 ingredients. It sounds like a lot of sugar, but the sauce is not sweet at all. You need that sugar to counteract the straight, acidic tomato juice. It's why V8 is V8, not just Tomato juice...

Make sure you scrape the browned chicken, onion bits off of the bottom. It gives the sauce depth. (Something I swore I'd never say concerning food...depth.... oh well, never say never).

Add your chicken back to the pan and simmer for 30 or so minutes on Medium Low Heat.

Now, to the pasta. My mother thinks Angel Hair Pasta is pretty much the only pasta worth its space in her pantry. Well, maybe a macaroni noodle or two. I, however, have lost this prejudice (after much work....), and like a host of pastas. I usually do serve this over angel hair, but have tried other things - traditional spaghetti, and last night we did it with penne. We like it with everything so far....
Regardless, this is enough sauce for 16 ounces of cooked pasta. Why some pastas come in 12 ounce containers and others in 16 ounce containers befuddles me. I feel like George Banks ripping open hotdogbun bags...


So, boil up some pasta, spoon sauce and chicken on top, serve with green salad and bread and feast away.

Makes 6-8 adult servings.

Toasted with Swiss Cheese, please

Well, how would you like to have someone come along and pick something off of you?
Oh dear! I keep forgetting I'm not in Kansas!


It's apple season. I heart/love/am obsessed with apples.

When I was in first, second and third grade, I took apples to school every day in my lunch. And then dipped them in ketchup.
How gross is that?

I was ridiculed. But I was stubborn and stuck by it.

Gross Gross Gross.

But anyway, apples are amazing.

And come October, I want to cook apples - I love sauteed apples with cinnamon and butter and sugar; I love apple pies; I love apple cakes (I made one just this weekend - with cinnamon cream cheese icing) - it is still being yummy.

Paul loves apple cider.

The kids love apples. Period.

I love apples and peanut butter - a snack my dad taught me to love - I am forever indebted.

But you know what else I love?
Tuna Salad.

Relevant?
yes, because the best bites in tuna salad are crisp, cold Fuji or Gala apples.

My sweet Paul and I disagree vehemently about this.
No fruit salads -and that includes Tuna Salad.

But, he's wrong.

Anyway, Ada Brooks requested Tuna Salad for lunch today.
By the time she made such a request, she had opened a can of tuna, so I couldn't exactly turn her down.

4 - 5 oz cans of white tuna (get dolphin safe. really. they've probably killed dolphins in the process still, but if it's not dolphin safe, it means they've specifically targeted dolphin populations to find the tuna, and that's an ugly thing to do - it's bad stewardship and it's the worst kind of dominion over the creatures)

approximately 1/3 cup of lite mayo (When i make chicken salad, i often make my own mayo. It's easy, and is reason number 145 to have your own food processor. But with tuna salad, the tuna taste is so strong that making one's own mayo would be a waste. In this case, it's just serving as a binding agent)

1/2 of a large fuji or gala apple (red delicious and golden delicious will be a bit too mealy and granny smith will be too tart - others might work, but I can always get a fuji or a gala, so I don't usually experiment)

3-4 Tablespoons of sweet pickle relish (now, here, I'll make a confession. I always put about 2 T of regular sweet pickle relish, but the other 2 T are my homemade hot/sweet pickles chopped up really finely. This is what makes the Tuna Salad epic. If you want some pickles for your tuna salad, run by here and honk, I've got a gallon made up right now - I'll run out a jar to you)

Generous sprinklings of Salt and Pepper. Especially Pepper.

Do not put egg in your Tuna Salad.
Do not put celery in your Tuna Salad.

(Well, you do whatever you feel like, but I'll roll my eyes).

Best served cold over a pile of greens, beside wheat crackers.
Or best of all with a slice of swiss on good, buttered wheat bread toasted in the toaster oven on both sides.

Do not make your tuna melts with American Cheese. Even though I eat them greedily like that from Brent's Drugstore - that doesn't mean other people can get away with that.

And now I sit down to this, with a diet sunkist and an episode of Monk.


Thank the Lord for apple season. And for naptime.

Redfish annalowrey

My favorite restaurant in Jackson is Walker's Drive-In. It's just good. Others are good as well, but not as consistently great as Walker's.

One of it's most bestest menu items is Redfish Anna. It's been on the menu since I can remember ordering it for the first time some ten years ago (perhaps much longer), and it's always been great.

It is a paneed redfish with creamy crabmeat and lemon butter on top. Usually served with mashed taters and either asparagus or thin beans. It's just amazing...

My favorite cookbook, I think, maybe.... Okay fine, in my top five cookbooks is this one:

I got it as a gift from a dear friend, maybe for a birthday, or maybe for a just because present. i don't know, becky sue, when was it?

Anyway - it is the recipe book from my favorite town in the world, Oxford, Mississippi.
I fell in love there, I nurtured my love of food there, I married there, I taught my baby to love the park and pool and also to walk and talk there.

And I ate. A lot.

I'm realizing at this moment in my writing that I cannot do a post on Oxford/Square Table and on Redfish Annalowrey or it will be novella length, so perhaps I'll do a series on cookbooks, because, well, I take them to bed like some women take romance novels.

And, and you'll be shocked at this: I have opinions about cookbooks.

So, I was flipping through Square Table some years ago - right after I received it, and I saw this recipe for Paneed Redfish.

I'm not a huge fish girl - I'm a shrimp girl, but you won't find me eating Salmon, Ahi Tuna (although I'll mow down a tuna melt), or many other little swimmers. But I love redfish.

Mainly because of my adolescent introduction to Redfish Anna.

So, I'm flipping through, see Paneed Redfish, read it, and think "I've found redfish anna, but really it's even better because it has shrimp on top instead of crabmeat, which I tend to prefer"

And I made it. And I've never had a dirtier kitchen or a more inefficient night (I was a toddler cook at the time), but it was SO good. And then I tinkered with it, and became a much better cook, and now it is mine. All mine.

So, here we go.

Early in the day - say 1 pm ish - (it is not necessary to start this early - just a tip for your cooking energy/sanity), chop up an onion - medium to large. small to medium dice. Put it in a pot with about 3 - 4 T butter. Do not turn on.

Then take a can of artichoke hearts and drain it and put them on your cutting board.


Then go at them like you've got a chance to chop up the precious comic books of your least favorite high school teacher. Or some other thing you have a secret desire to destroy.

And in a few minutes, you'll have:


And you'll feel better.

Add those to the pot. Put the top on.


Walk away.

Now hear this. Butter, artichokes and onions will not go bad in the span of an afternoon. This way you can get an annoying prep work step out of the way, cut your cooking time later by twenty minutes, and feel better about life. Do not listen to people about the boogie man of going bad things.
Butter takes a good couple of days to go bad at room temp. I have a friend whose dad insists on soft butter in the morning with his breakfast. Her mother puts it out for him each night. Never has there been an adverse reaction (except perhaps to his demanding nature.... =) ).

Now, later in the day, after you're ready to make the sauce for real, as early as 2 hours pre meal and as late as 45 minutes pre meal, come back to the stove.


Turn on pot. Medium heat. Stir occasionally. Let onions and artichokes cook down, you'll want to eat it with a spoon.

After about 10 minutes, grab the flour.

Flour is the best thing with which to thicken a sauce or soup, it just has to be done well.

Dump in 3 T.

Stir vigorously and turn down to low.

Now, grab the two best ingredients in the history of white sauces. Maybe in the history of the world.
Heavy Cream and Dry Vermouth.

Trust me.

In a measuring cup, put 1 cup of heavy cream. Get over it. It's a cream sauce. What did you expect? Soy products?

Lick your lips as you pour it into the artichokes and onions.

Now, in the same measuring cup, put 1/2 cup of the vermouth. Pour it in.

Now grab the best ingredient EVER:


One of my dearest, darling groomsmen in our wedding eats this stuff on chips. That's a bit extreme, but only a bit.

Throw in a few dashes. Tabasco is one of the only items about which I think a "dash" is an appropriate measure. 2 if you're squeamish, 5 if you're brave, 3-4 if you're me.
Stir. Turn up to medium to medium high.

Now, take 1/2 lb shrimp. I need an entire blog post on what shrimp is worth what money and what you should use in what, but for now: 1/2 lb most any size shrimp, chopped into pieces that are about as big as your thumbnail. We are not mincing, but we are not just chopping medium shrimp in half.
I used 31-40 size shrimp (Shrimp is sized with the number of shrimp per pound - so 8-10 shrimp are HUGE and 71-80 shrimp are teenincy) Medium shrimp are usually 30-50 shrimp. So i took one of my medium shrimp and chopped it into 5 pieces approximately, but trust me, I was not counting....

I regret no pictures of the shrimp chopping. I've had to use too many words.

Throw them in the pot. Stir. Put top on. Turn off pot. There is enough heat in that little pot to plenty cook those little diced up shrimp. Believe you me.

Take a bunch of asparagus. Lop off the bottom 20%. Do this before you take it out of the rubber bands. You'll thank me later.


Admire the beauty God gives us in food. Asparagus is pretty. No denying it. Of course, my favorite color is green....


Bring a giant pot of salted water to a boil. Throw in asparagus. Do not walk away. Do 45 jumping jacks (which should take you approximately 120 seconds). Take out asparagus, if it's small like this. If it's not small, give it another minute or two. Do not cook this asparagus for less than two minutes or more than five.

Then pull get it out of there.


See how bright green?

Now for the redfish. I admit, I failed at taking pictures of the following process, so you'll have to forgive me.

You need about 1/2 a fillet a person, or 1/3 of a lb. I allow 1/2 a lb, but always have left overs.

Put the fillet pieces (you don't want to cook them in whole fillets. Cut 'em in half. Perfect serving size.) Put 'em on a cookie sheet or somefin'. Sprinkle with garlic salt and lemon pepper.


Then dredge them in flour.

Then, 10 minutes before you want to sit down, put 4 T butter in the biggest skillet you have. Turn on Medium High. Give it a second. Put in fillets.
Follow these instructions precisely:
Turn on sauce, medium, stir.
Turn around and preheat your oven broiler to high.
Go to pantry, get out worcestershire sauce.
Flip fillets in pan. If you are having to do these in batches, you're going to have to adjust. Your goal is 2 minutes on each side. But really, buy a bigger skillet. You won't regret it.
Measure 1/2 cup worcestershire into a liquid measuring cup.
Juice a lemon into the measuring cup. (Should be about 3 -4 Tbsps. I won't tell if you used bottled stuff). Stir together with worcestershire.
Put fillets into a jelly roll or roasting pan or something with sides.
Pour lemon juice/worcestershire mixture over them.
Pop in oven.
Stir Sauce.
Pile four to six plates with mashed taters (which you've made during this process....).
Pop fillets out of oven (2-3 minutes in oven).
Plop fish leaning against mashed potatoes.
Place asparagus on top of that.
Pour sauce on top of all.

Unbutton pants and proceed to feast like a king.

Yes, the last ten minutes of this cooking experience are kind of frantic, but that's how you get Walker's quality food.. =) And you can see why there aren't any pictures of the last ten minutes.

What do the kids eat on nights like this? (I'm not opposed to giving them redfish - they'll eat it the next day - but when we have feasts like this, they usually go to sleep before we eat... so....





lots of times they get a sampler plate. Carrots, lettuce, chicken, pasta salad. All with a ramekin of ranch in which to dip it.

And a popsicle.

I'm tired now. And kind of hungry.

feeding the masses.

People have many things that matter to them.

Things they love.

Things at which they're gifted.

Things to which they look forward.

Mine all revolve around food. Which can be a problem, although I've come to understand it as perfectly normal, and perhaps even a good thing. I mentioned in the post on birthdays that I think we makers of homes are called to create these celebrations to point to the fact that life has meaning. I think we do the same thing with food (a fact highlighted dramatically in the Old Testament).

I love to host with food - to have small, intimate gatherings, big, boisterous gatherings, casual and fancy. I love it all.

But the primary thing we do with food each day and week is to figure out a way to keep all these people nourished.

Yes, I could keep them nourished on a grilled chicken/big green salad diet, and that would do the job. But this is when it comes back to my love for the planning, shopping, preparing of food. Sure, if I didn't love it, we wouldn't be up a creek.

And not everyone does, which is fine.

But I do.

So, I'm going to endeavor to more often than not post our weekly menu. I'd like the kids to remember what they ate as kids, and for me to know what I fed us, and for my couple of friends out there who request menu info to benefit from it now. I love to know what people are cooking.

What are you people out there cooking?

Friday: We're hosting 12 extra children tonight for supper. Some dear friends of ours are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a fancy dinner party. Their children, and so consequently their grand children are all in town to celebrate with them. Paul and I are hosting 12 of the 14 grandkids at our house, plus our kids. I've decided to have a truly decadent child menu. They're not my kids, so I can do this to them.

Boxed Mac & Cheese, Pizza Rolls or Bagel Bites, which ever is cheaper at the store, Broccoli with Cheese Sauce, Fruit, Ice Cream Sandwiches. I'm pumped. Ada and Eason will not know what hit them, which will be so fun. Yes!

Saturday: My daddy and his lady are coming for supper. She's a pescetarian. We're having Redfish with mashed potatoes, asparagus and shrimp cream sauce. It's a favorite of mine and I'm kind of excited. Also, I'm making peach pan dowdy (like a combination of a crisp and a cobbler), which is Daddy's favorite and we're kind of celebrating his birthday three weeks late.

Sunday: We have different friends here for lunch and supper (Sunday is for feasting, and who better to feast with than friends) - for lunch, a new recipe i've not made for chicken enchiladas (I roasted chickens this week and have tons of yummy shredded chicken to use). For supper, I'm cooking with two girlfriends, and I think spaghetti and meat balls. Yes sir ree bob.

Monday: We're having Baked Potato Soup and Veggie Paninis. We do soup and paninis about once a week. I vary the soup and the panini options. We really, really enjoy our panini maker. I highly recommend one.

Tuesday: Chicken Romano. My mother has been making this for years and years and years and years. And we love it. It is angel hair pasta with a red sauce and lightly breaded and pan sauteed chicken. Sometimes I do it without the chicken. It's not quite as good, not quite as filling, but better for us, cheaper and weeknight appropriate It is a staple, fairly easy, and yes we're having pasta twice in one week. It just worked out that way.

Wednesday: This is always my night off - we usually go to church, where there is supper served.

Thursday: I think yes, we're having enchiladas twice in one week as well. We have my daddy and baby brother coming to visit with Paul about their upcoming camping trip. Daddy's favorite food in the world is cheese and onion enchiladas. Which is secretly my favorite food as well. So, I use him as an excuse to make them.


So, that's what we're eating. I don't plan out vegetables and sides - I just keep green things and starchy things on hand. Big Sam's box of mixed greens, broccoli, green beans, rice, pasta, risotto, potatoes.
I try for one red meat, one chicken, and one seafood each week. Then i fill in with bean and veggie dishes. This week is a bit meat heavy (because of the leftover chicken, mainly).


This week is a bit atypical - it's kind of food-heavy. But I haven't cooked anything that has left overs (other than the chickens) in a couple of weeks and the fridge has seemed bare. So, if we have too many, I'll freeze some or deliver some to friends.

I have people other than my immediate family at my dinner table two or three nights each week, and we like it that way. We love to feast with friends, especially casually.

If something comes up in the week (i have a bad day or we have an impromptu invitation somewhere), I try to have at least one to two meals that will keep for the next week. You don't want to plan out an entire menu that is a bunch of fresh ingredients or, obviously one that is a bunch of canned or processed stuff. I try to frontload the week with fresh stuff and backload it with less fresh requirements.

For breakfast, we have cereal and fruit. For lunches: leftovers; good cheese, bread and fruit; or peanut butter and honey sandwiches - diners choice. For snacks, I keep raw carrots, celery, pretzel sticks and plenty of fruit. The sheer amount of fruit we go through is ridiculous.

I highly recommend shopping the same day each week and doing it as close to the beginning of your prime cooking/eating times. We eat more and better stuff on the weekend, and so if I shop on Thursday or Friday, my best, freshest stuff (redfish) is for the weekend, while my more staple stuff (potato soup) is for a week night.

As for the economics of it all, I do not use coupons (don't have the patience and fortitude), but I shop sales - I review the McDades and Kroger circulars and I know what things usually cost at Sam's. I base all of our fruit decisions on what's in season and cheapest. I do believe in frozen vegetables - from what I know, they are just as nutrient rich as the produce you buy in the grocery store, if not more so, but if you can get farmers market stuff, obviously that's best.

I do try to have 'treats' during the week. We have Monday Muffins (usually banana - so good for everyone and the family favorite, but this time of year, clearly berries make appearances), and I make dessert once or twice a week - usually for Saturdays or Sundays.

Ada Brooks and increasingly Eason get in the kitchen with me. They make things take longer, but ada brooks can do amazing fractions in her head all because of measuring spoons, and Eason is learning to be more careful with his physical surroundings because I'm training him to pour ingredients into pots and mixing bowls. I love cooking with people - little and big.



Now, if I only I felt this way about laundry.