I wish I had a photo – I took some quick shots, but when I pulled them off the memory card, they were blurry – and I’d already finished the grits by then.  (I’m quite certain I’ll be making this again, so there is hope that I can get a shot.)

Best Cheese Grits Ever:

1/4 c. old fashioned grits (NOT instant)
1 1/8 c. chicken stock or broth
2 ounces shredded chipotle cheddar cheese
salt & pepper

Bring the stock to a boil, add grits, stir well.  Set heat to LOW and cover.  After about 6 minutes I hit it with the salt & pepper.  Then at the 12 minute mark, I stir in the cheese.  I did notice that with the chicken stock, it was still a touch soupy at the 12 minute mark, so I let it go another minute or so.  (In the future I may just cut it back to 1 cup of stock.)

Once the cheese is stirred in, sit back and enjoy!

According to the grits package, 1/4 c of grits is 2 servings.  Maybe if you’re eating it with something else.  Otherwise, it’s one perfect serving on it’s own.

Now, I haven’t made these in about 10 years.  I pulled the recipe from the Betty Crocker/Bisquick website.  I thought the proportions seemed quite a bit off – 3 cups of bisquick, 4 cups of cheese?  To just one pound of sausage?  But then I thought, hey, it’s Bisquick’s own recipe!  They of all people should have it right.

I should have trusted my instincts and found another recipe.  They were awful.  Ended up as sort of a cheesy dough with bits of sausage and just terrible.

Next time I’ll be using this recipe from Consumer Web Help – the proportions seem much more reasonable and the sausage isn’t so far outnumbered by the cheese & Bisquick.

Ah well, lesson learned.  Onward and upward!

I really do.  When I gave my brother a choice of baked or fried potatoes with dinner and he chose baked, I certainly couldn’t argue it.

So easy, so simple, so good.  Prep time of a whole 2 minutes of washing them off, poking them a couple times with a fork and tossing in a pan. An hour in the oven at 400 degrees and that’s that.  Even twice baked are easy, another 5 minutes of mashing them up and a couple minutes back under the broiler.

They’re healthy (even with toppings – just don’t use an entire pint of sour cream) and easy and one of my favorite sides.

All hail the lovely baking potato!

Would a gherkin by any other name taste as sweet?  I certainly hope so.

No matter how modern the holiday relish tray may become, you will still sit at centre stage of the crystal tray.

Your sweet crunchiness hits the spot every time, and your tiny diced up bits do lovely things to tuna and ham salads, and my hot dogs would be empty without your relish.

Let us all raise a pickle to the man who first sweet brined a tiny cucumber!

*crunch*

You may have noticed that we don’t necessarily focus on “gourmet” stuff here so much as “stuff that just tastes good”.   I suspect Salsa Jack cheese falls into that category.

I spied it at the grocery store while doing the Thanksgiving shopping and thought, “Why not?”

It’s really tasty.  It’s the same idea as Pepper Jack cheese, but with salsa ingredients instead, ie, tomatoes, onion, peppers, etc.  It’s not as hot as some Pepper Jack cheeses, but still has a hint of heat, so it’s not boring.

My market sold it under their private label brand, but I do know there are other companies out there that produce it.  So if you see it, give it a whirl!

(No pics, cause I ate it.)

When I was younger, Thanksgiving was great for two things: mashed potatoes and stuffing.  Turkey?  Eh.  This was back in the days when brining was unheard of, and invariably, I found turkey to be dry and pretty awful, and useful for not much more than a delivery system for more gravy.

Oh what a difference a new cooking technique can make.  I really adore roasted turkey now – thank you brining!!  I don’t really make it outside the holidays, and I really should.  It’s not terribly expensive, it’s pretty healthy, and oh yes, I like it.

Leftovers aren’t an issue either.  I don’t have any recipes that take turkey, because I don’t need them.  My brother makes sandwiches, and I just eat it straight out of the fridge.  I may go nuts later this evening and fry up a couple pieces of bacon and make myself a club sandwich.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to whoever it was out there that informed me of this wonderful thing called brining.

We do a turkey breast and carve it in the kitchen and bring the goodies out on a platter to the table.  And it always makes a mess, even though I let the turkey rest, there’s still turkey juice going everywhere as I cut it up.

I had a flash yesterday.  (Doesn’t happen often!)  I have baking sheets that have a lip on them that is about 3/4″ high.  I have a cutting board big enough for the turkey breast that still fits within the baking sheet.  Result: The turkey juice that runs off the cutting board is caught by the baking sheet instead of running all over the kitchen counters!

After carving about 1/2 of it (that was more than enough for dinner and a couple midnight sandwiches) I took the remainder and just put the entire thing in one of those GIANT Ziploc bags to put in the fridge.  That way, I can carve the rest of it today when it is cold (and easier to cut up – I don’t know about anyone else, but I have trouble with the meat shredding when I cut it when it’s just out of the oven) and it was one less thing to need to do last night when I was in a turkey food coma.

In my fridge there is a 7.92# Shady Brook Farms turkey breast!  The first market I went to last evening had at least a dozen of them.  Much better than the year I had to go to 3 different stores to find one.

I always get the biggest one I can get my hands on, because the leftovers will NOT go to waste.  I like turkey, but don’t eat it a whole lot.  My brother LOVES turkey.  Last year he had 8 meals in a row of turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving.  We’ll see if he can break the record this year.

As it stands, we will again have enough food for a small army, even though it’s just my brother & myself.  But I won’t have to cook for at least 3 days afterwards!

The cheese & sausage plate will be a meal in and of itself.  I’ve got summer sausage, hard pepperoni and…  There’s one other thing and I can’t remember what it is off the top of my head but it’s in the fridge.  For cheeses, we have good old sharp cheddar, pepper jack, salsa jack (never heard of it before, but it looked interesting,) smoked gouda and dill havarti.  I also have a roll of Salame Panino.  (Salame rolled in mozzarella!) It just looked really yummy.

Can’t wait!

First, Thanksgiving may be weighing too heavily on my mind – I could have sworn I heard a turkey in the neighborhood this morning.  And I don’t live in an area where we have wild turkeys wandering about.

I have just about everything I need for Turkey Day – except the Turkey, and today will kick off that quest.  I usually get a fresh* turkey breast, and it is always a little more challenging than I expect it to be.  You can’t buy it too far ahead of time, or you’ll have to freeze it, which kind of defeats the purpose of getting a fresh one, and if you wait too long, then they’re all gone.  And there have been years where one of the stores I shop at just never got them in!  (The poor butcher that I pestered several days in a row was as perplexed as I was – every day he was told they would be arriving and they never did.)

And I need to do a bit of rearranging of the fridge contents so it has a spot until Thursday morning.

Wish me luck!

*I don’t think that frozen is terrible or anything, I’ve just heard too many horror stories of the turkey refusing to defrost…

Ah, the beach. Where my diligent monitoring of calories expended vs. consumed goes out the window. Not only is there food, wonderful food, but tons and tons of SEAFOOD. Sure, we’ve got the bay right next door back home, but it’s not quite the same.

Last night we hit what has become our traditional first night spot – Awful Arthur’s. Sure, I suppose it could be considered a tourist trap, but you could say that about every place down where between May and September. And the food is great, so, whatever. No matter what time we go, it’s always an hour wait. But that’s not so bad, because after they inform you of the wait time, the hostess says, “But you can go up to the bar and we’ll come get you when the table is ready.” Gosh, go upstairs and drink beer and have a great view of the ocean. Yes, that sucks.

So we went upstairs and knocked a few back and watched the waves and Nascar and TdF, and in a near Rainman move, my brother closed out the bar tab a mere 2 minutes before the hostess arrived to take us to our table.

I have had a craving for clams casino all week, so a half dozen of those was a given. Fresh clams, sweet peppers, butter and bacon. Tell me how that could possibly go wrong? Oh – it can’t. We were also right under one of the a/c vents so coup was a must as well. The crab and lobster bisque is awesome. It’s think and creamy and tomato-y and just spot on. And then there were hushpuppies. Don’t think you can really go wrong with fried cornmeal and butter, either.

Little bro got the soup and the crabmeat in butter. I’d say it’s a classic rookies mistake of getting two insanely rich items, but I’ve made the same error myself many times. The crab in butter was great, too. I supposed it’s a good think I have a 5 mile run this weekend.

Matt – I didn’t get the oyster shot, but there is still plenty of time.

Tonight it’s Meridian 42, which in the past has been fantastic. I’m a tad concerned it’s been basically Mediterranean influenced seafood and such, and now they’re billing themselves as “Italiano” – which could mean new owners and/or management, or someone just decided that Italiano sounded a little less intimidating somehow. I’m hoping for the latter, as the couple items on the sample menu looked to be in the same vein as years past, and I really hope they haven’t “dumbed down” the food. If nothing else, they make a killer dirty Goose martini.

If you’re seeing this twice, it’s also over at my personal journal, so no stealing has occurred. Pretty much all the beach/food posts will be in both places.