Browsing: Food & Dining

Many classic recipes were the product of necessity and in many poor countries the staple diet is rice and beans. It just doesn’t get more affordable than dried beans and rice, slowly cooked with what every leftover you might have.

There is hardly a more popular handheld food in many parts of the world than the taco. There are a hand full of fast food chains that feature them, and an uncountable number of Mexican restaurants and street stalls that specialize in tacos, and it is also a food that is easy to make at home

Bacon has been around since about 1500 BCE, with the Chinese the first to salt and cure pork belly. The Romans also had a hand making bacon from pork belly and eating it with bread and cheese. Medieval Europe carried on the tradition and eventually it spread to the rest of the world. The pig itself came to us from Eurasia and northern Africa and is now also a staple around the world.

I’ve been on a Southern kick recently, and nothing is more Southern than black eyed peas

But don’t despair! There is another option, an option that talented cooks can turn into an art form: leftovers! Leftovers should not be delegated to a last course option, when treated with care, your family will welcome your creativity, and your food budget won’t take a hit.

Fall has got to be my favorite time of the year. What a blessing it is to wake in the morning to a cool dawn, after suffering through another brutal South Mississippi summer. It’s a great time to go for a walk in the Desoto National Forest or a bike ride around the old Biloxi cemetery. 

When most people think of Coastal cuisine, gumbo and jambalaya almost always come to mind, and those are two very good and classic examples.

There probably is no more iconic American food than a good old-fashioned hamburger. Its about as American as you can get. It’s a food that can easily be made at home, but once the fast food industry took off with the idea, our eating habits changed forever.

Tradition, elegance, and history define Mississippi’s oldest restaurant, Weidmann’s. Located in Meridian, the iconic restaurant was established in 1870 by Felix Weidmann, a Swiss immigrant chef on a transatlantic steamship.

Not a lot of people may share this opinion, but I think that a good hot dog is hard to beat. You know, wieners, franks, tube steaks, or just plain hot dogs, the German creation that has become such an American tradition, just isn‘t  for everyone it seems. Do you love them or hate them?

If you regularly read my musings, or you might to prefer to a call them ramblings, you know I have an affinity for fried pork chops (fried anything really). What could be better than a battered and fried pork chop with pan gravy?

Tough times call for being very frugal in the kitchen, stone soup comes immediately to mind, but I do not think I would go quite that far. Not to worry, though, there are lots of other good recipes that you can turn to, recipes that stretch ingredients and aren’t overly expensive. It’s a style of cooking most often referred to as country cooking. 

Football season has returned to Mississippi! This season brings watch parties, tailgating, and cooler weather (eventually). A great pot of chili is a welcome addition to all three. Chili is quick to toss together, requires little active cooking time (thanks to a slow cooker) and feeds a crowd. Setting up a toppings bar is a fun way to customize for guests.  

n of my favorite things to do in an expensive restaurant, is to order a selection of appetizers. It dramatically reduces the cost of the meal, but you get a good feel for what the chef is capable of. The Italians, who have as many as eight courses, call the first one antipasto, or “before the meal,” and the Spanish call it tapas.

Typically, breakfast is not just my thing. A decent cup of coffee and I am good to go. The German’s mid-morning meal of fresh baked brotchen (still hot from the oven of course), a little tab of butter and jam, with coffee, is pretty good, but good brotchen is just so hard to find. Americans are getting better at it, but most folks just don’t seem to appreciate fresh bread in the morning. 

If you have followed my ramblings for any length of time, you know I have talked endlessly about the quality of ingredients being a very important key to your cooking success.