Sallie's Kitchen Corner
Get Toasted for Halloween
Happy Halloween! I bet you have a pumpkin to carve. My favorite thing about pumpkin carving is toasting the seeds. For years I’ve carefully cleaned, washed, and dried the seeds, then tried to roast them to an edible texture. The taste was great, but I never had a perfect balance between crunch and, well, tree bark. …
Stuffed with Pumpkin
Hey everyone – Caroline here, filling in for Sallie while she’s off enjoying a much-deserved girls’ weekend! When Sallie asked me to blog in her stead, I met her request with a certain degree of trepidation. I knew from her recent blogs that it’s pumpkin week, and on Monday I had a rather disastrous pumpkin encounter.
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Cheesecake in Paradise
This is the quickest blog in the world because I’m writing it as I’m cooking, getting ready to do some college tutoring, and also go out of town. Yikes! The going out of town part will be great. It’s a girl trip, a bunch of us are headed to a friend’s lake house. …
Rainy Day Pumpkin? Chili
It was a dark and stormy night and I needed to cook with pumpkin. A pie seemed too light hearted for the dismal day. No it had to be rainy day chili, pumpkin rainy day chili. Bear with me; this will not be gross (I hope). My recent taste testing of canned pumpkin proved to me that pumpkin is not naturally all that sweet. …
A Fall Cupcake
The most marvelous smells are coming from my kitchen. I’m making pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for my knit group. It’s an easy recipe that starts with a yellow cake mix. I always get the ones that require butter in the ingredients instead of oil and here’s why – when someone hands you a nice warm piece of toast do you dither around about whether to put canola oil or butter on it? …
Halloween Soup
In honor of the season, I’m planning to cook with pumpkin the rest of the week. This is problematic because, as a child, Sammy once ate a whole pumpkin pie and apparently was spectacularly ill. He refuses to touch anything made with pumpkin, which I understand in principal, but I would like to believe that maybe 55 years later he could revisit the issue. …
Raising the Potato Bar
The only highlight of an absolutely hideous football afternoon was that not only did Richard come over, but I got to grab my nephew Phelps after church and bring him home to watch the game. Well, I hope the food was a highlight too, because we devoured a feast.
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A Great Pumpkin Cake
I missed blogging during my week off, but I definitely kept busy in the kitchen. We had fun with vacation cooking at the beach - always spaghetti for first night, and since we’ve been home, the porch has thrown it’s usual number of impromptu parties. …
A Tale of Two Muffins and Three Cakes
Yesterday I had a porch party. It was really a late birthday lunch for four of my wonderful friends who all happen to be Marys. The porch cooperated with perfect weather, a little sun and lots of falling leaves. We had gouyeres with a glass of wine before lunch. …
A Perfect Birthday
Well I got spoiled rotten on my birthday yesterday. My sister Mary, who is no slouch in the kitchen herself, made me the best birthday dinner. She was assisted by husband Tom, who I suspect is vaguely more useful in a culinary manner than Sammy. …
A Sandwich Saves the Dinner
Those $200 tomatoes from our garden may not be quite worth the price, but they did save dinner last night. When the busy part of my day ended after 6:30 instead of around 5:00 as planned, it was a scramble to get a tasty dinner on the table. …
A Well-Dressed Table
Sometimes it’s as much fun to set the table as it is to plan the menu and prepare the food. You don’t have to spend much time with me to figure out that my camera is my favorite accessory. For years I’ve used it to take pictures of beautiful table settings. …
Richard's Soup du jour
While my mother is away, I decided I've been cooking enough of her recipes recently that it would be okay if I jumped in for one day.
I decided to make two soups for my girlfriend: a Butternut Squash Soup and a French Onion Soup. …
A Dinner Party
I’m getting to do my favorite thing again - plan a party. This one is just the best; it’s a “Destination Party”, at least for me. This morning I’m going to Monteagle with Caroline’s mom to whip up a dinner party for 10 or so of our favorite Sewanee Angels. …
The $200 Tomato Harvest
This is it, our entire tomato harvest for the summer. No kidding, I found these this morning.
In April, with much anticipation, we tilled and fertilized both vegetable gardens. Relying on previous good results with Bradley’s, Better Boys…
Soup of the Day
Yesterday morning Chicken Noodle Soup sounded fine, but by last night, after two sick days when all food tastes like sawdust, I was ready for a little spice. It still had to be a sinus clearing soup, so I gave the matter a little thought.
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Jelly's Last Jam
I’m just back from my first “destination wedding”. I’d always thought I’d get asked to one on a beach or in a vineyard, so I was a little let down to discover that that my first destination wedding was going to be in Birmingham. Well here’s the deal, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. …
A Sick Day
I have a nasty cold and I’m feeling terribly sorry for myself. Not so much because I have a cold, I get one every fall, and it’s irritating but hardly life threatening. No, I’m sad because last night I had to miss two of my favorite things, my book club and my study group. …
PB&J + The Titans
Well, Sallie was away for a night and it seems only right that I should show my own culinary expertise. Is this a great looking peanut butter sandwich or what? Crust intact, not cut in half, extra jelly. That’s my specialty and what we had to watch the Titan’s game.…
An Unplanned Porch Party
I did not make pepper jelly. I did host an accidental luncheon. Here’s what happened. I had a picture perfect day planned of antiquing with the Marys, and a grown-up lunch with wine! The antiquing went extremely well. (See goat – made in Italy!) …
The Five Letter "F" Word
Frost. I heard the word bandied around on two different weather reports last night. I just went out to do a garden check and see what might not make it. What I found was a bunch of peppers. I planted red and yellow bell peppers and poblano peppers. …
