Corn Pudding
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees
6 eggs
1 cup sour cream
2 frozen chub pack yellow creamed corn, thawed
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 stick of butter
1 tablespoon minced garlic
(it’s Thanksgiving Dinner, fat and calories DO NOT COUNT)
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
salt and pepper
Beat the eggs and sour cream until well combined. Add the creamed corn and mix well.
Saute’ the onion in the whole stick of butter (real please, I never use margarine). Add the garlic when the onions are translucent and cook another minute or two.
Stir it into the egg and corn mixture.
Sprinkle the cornmeal on top and stir in. Salt and pepper.
Grease well a 9×13 casserole dish.
Pour in the mixture and bake for about 45 minutes until it’s completely set and browning around the edges. Serve hot.

Now, what I did was bake it most of the way, until it was set but not brown, and did this the day before, then refrigerated it. About an hour before we ate, after the hand and turkey were finished in the oven, I put it in with the greenbean casserole (also made the day before) and let it finish browning.

It was universally pronounced delicious.
I can totally see herbing it up a bit, maybe some fresh thyme or chopped chives.

So… the request is…What are some of your favorite nibbles recipes?

Here for a bit I will post my favorite recipes,as I make them and get photos.

Brownies in English
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs
3/4 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa or HERSHEY’S SPECIAL DARK Cocoa
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
Directions
1 Heat oven to 350°F. Grease 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

2 Place butter in large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at MEDIUM (50%) 2 to 2-1/2 minutes or until melted. Stir in sugar and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with spoon after each addition. Add cocoa; beat until well blended. Add flour, baking powder and salt; beat well. Stir in nuts, if desired. Pour batter into prepared pan.

3 Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack.

Brownies translated into Russian then back into English
Ingredients oil or margarine 1 of cup (2 knobs) of 2 cups of sugar endurance of vanilla of 2 teaspoons of 4 eggs of the cocoa of 3/4 cups HERSHEY or cocoa HERSHEY SPECIAL DARK flour 1 of cup [universalnoaya]- is applied powder for [bypechki] of teaspoon of 1/2 1/[ya] of salts of teaspoon 1 of nut the interrupted by cup (optional) directions 1 furnace of heat to 350°F. to the chute of the baking of grease of 13x9x2-inch. Oil of 2 places in the large microwave- safe sphere. Microwave on MEANS (50%) 2 to 21/2 minutes or to it is molten. You will move inside sugar and vanilla. Add egg, one simultaneously, in the best way with the spoon after each addition. Add cocoa; impact to the mixed good. Add flour, powder for [bypechki] and salt; the good of impact. You will move inside the nut, if it is wished. Pour on betater into the prepared chute. 3 there will not be furnace 30 to 35 minutes or to [pirozhny] it will begin to draw out far from the sides of chute. Cool completely in the chute on the communication line wire.

Ok, so a long time ago, a Jewish friend of mine sent me the recipe for Jewish Penicillin and let me tell you it is delicious. It also take 24 hours and some work to make. When I get sick I don’t ahve 24 hours to sit around and wait and scoop schmaltz off the top of slow simmering soup. I just don’t want to and there’s no one else in the house who wants to either. If I get sick and whine “chicken soup” their interpretation is to open a can of Campbell’s (after driving to the store to get it because I don’t keep it in the house, How very UnAmerican) but I don’t want that. I want my own version,and naturally, even though I am feeble and weak from disease, I have to make it myself. Because they NEVER put in enough garlic or black pepper.

So here’s how I do it. First, I get some frozen chicken legs out. There are always chicken legs in the freezer because I prefer dark meat and I can get those 10 pound bags for $5 and I’m stunningly cheap.
4 chicken legs, nice and meaty.
The biggest pot I have, I reckon it’s about 2 gallons. I’ve never checked. Fill it with water and put the frozen chicken legs in.
Add a couple of BIG HEAPING spoonfuls of minced garlic. Or perhaps a whole head of garlic, smashed. I buy the minced stuff in the jar. I’m talking BIG HEAPING spoonfuls. I would even hazard to say it’s close to 1/4 cup worth.
Put in several nice long stems of fresh thyme. I reckon if you stripped the stems and measured, it would be about 2 teaspoons of thyme leaves. Or maybe 1/2 tsp of dried? I never use dried so I’m guessing there.
Likewise, several nice long stems of fresh oregano. I stripped it off the stems and chopped it. Definitely about 1/4 cup. Probably at least a tablespoon of dried.
Several generous grindings of coarse black pepper. I’m going to call it 2 teaspoons, maybe more.
Bring that all to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer until the chicken is falling off the bone. Scoop out the chicken and bones and stuff and set it aside to cool. Skim off the fat. I have one of those fancy fat skimmer things that makes it easy, or you could use a ladle or something. But get the fat out of it (blech, chicken fat…yuck)
Bring it back to a low simmer.
Add a big heaping spoonful of Better Than Boullion chicken base. It’s nice and salty.
Taste the broth to see if you need MORE SALT! I love salty stuff when I have a cold. It makes my throat feel good.
Grate up 4 carrots. Throw that in. Add some chopped parsley*.
*if you don’t grow parsley, buy it fresh from the store and cut it off the stems, then freeze it. Then you can crumble off however much you want, and it’s like having fresh, almost. It’s not garnish-worthy, but definitely cooking-worthy.
Add some form of carbohydratey sort of thing. Rice, noodles, yeah whatever. I like brown rice because it holds upwell for leftovers. Noodles turn to weird pastey stuff, so does white rice. About 1 cup of brown rice. Do you have leftover already cooked rice? Go for it, throw that in.
Shred up the cooled chicken and add that back in. (after picking out the bones and skin)
Sit on the couch, propped up with cushions and a dog at your feet, watch some Netflix Bollywood movie and sip the soup out of a mug. You own’t feel that much better right away, but everyone will get the message that you need to be left alone, at the same time being wildly impressed with your awesome culinary skills because I’m telling you the house will smell fabulous.

This week’s menus are going to be altered. I am going to eat a head of cabbage today.

A bag of carrots tomorrow

and a bunch of broccoli on Thursday. I actually don’t like broccoli very much.

I need fiber. Lots of fiber.

TMI? Too bad.

My gut is saying NO MORE! And frankly, rich and spicy foods are not very appealing. The menus (planned 2 weeks ago) read something like this:
lime chicken tacos (ugh)
BBQ pork sandwiches on grilled corn flatbread (UGH!)
…then it’s time to make more menus.

I don’t know yet what they’re going to be changed to, but you can bet your sweet bippy there will be no lime chicken or BBQ pork.

Food-wise, the grocery stores (4 of them, including Walmart Supercenter) offer a very large selection of prewrapped American cheese and hot dogs. Neither of which I eat. There is also an excellent fresh produce stand that makes up for it’s lack of variety by offering the best tomatoes and summer squash a person could want, and a lovely meat market that will will cheerfully cut a 2 inch thick sirloin if that’s what you’re craving.

But sometimes I’m wanting perfectly fresh bean sprouts (not canned), or those little round green eggplants, or a pile of sopessata and some Irish cheddar on a 2 hour old baguette. This leads to not-so-subtle hints and suggestions that perhaps a trip to Atlanta (3 hours away) might be in order. When such cravings coincide with (O JOY!) a couple of days off for Terry, and the happy circumstance of O LOOK! I found some money I’d forgotten about! (how does that happen? I do not know, but it did)…then hurried visits to Hotwire.com for a hotel room in some nice part of town (Midtown! With it’s myriad restaurants and trees and walking distance to many of Atlanta’s loveliest qualities), and the happy realization that the price of gas has dropped by 50 cents in the last day,and the bribing of older sons to keep an eye on younger son, it all falls together and turns into a semi-spontaneous trip to a wonderful city we have come to adore.

The entire trip revolved around food. Every single minute of it from searching on his crackberry for the best and biggest liquor stores (booze is food, right?) and where Farmburger is located in relation to The Dekalb Farmer’s Market and our hotel. We didn’t go to Farmburger, after all, because we decided to walk 100 yards uphill from the hotel to eat Thai at The Tamarind Seed where Terry fell in love with green pickled peppercorns in his plah duk pad phred, and I had 2 lychee mojitos which made me desperate to find lychee syrup (and did!). The next day involved a highly successful trip to The DFM and a buggy full of spices, cheeses and deli meats (turkey apple sausage for breakfast this morning…it’s cooking now and smells like fresh apples and sweet smoke) *and* fresh bean sprouts, 25 pounds of onions for a friend who’s making pickles, and a lovely piece of pistachio baklava.

Then dim sum at The Oriental Pearl. There’s nothing quite like being in a packed full restaurant that seats 300 and being the ONLY non-Asian in the bunch. How do you tell it’s good? That’s how. And yes, it was good. We plan our trips to Atlanta aournd Saturday mornings so we can get to the Oriental Pearl at 11, and spend the next 2 hours indulging in all manner of tasty tidbits and their amazing banana-leaf cooked sticky rice.

After that, a trip to the small Asian grocery store just down Chamblee-Tucker Blvd from the restaurant. It’s tucked in next to a Taqueria and 2 doors down from a Dentist/Pawn shop in a grubby little strip mall. I love the place. It smells fabulous, and the staff, every single time we go, expresses some scepticism at my white-lady ability to cook sticky rice. This time, I bought one of those aluminum spittoon shaped things and a cone basket, and received detailed lessons on the Proper Sticky Rice Method, and also approval that I was wanting to do it right. In the past, I’ve used a metal colander and a big pot, and had some success, but the guy at the store said cooking it in a bamboo cone basket gives it better flavor,so that’s what’s going to happen.

We never made it to Farmburger, alas. Too much dim sum resulted in apathy and a desire to go home and digest. However, once we got home (5 hours and 2 liquor stores later), hunger returned, and it was time to set out the deli largesse from The DFK.
O yes, we do love us some cheeses, meats and and a fine, fresh baguette (by this time is 9 hours old)

clockwise from the olives: garlic salami, schenkwurst, hunter's salami, hot sopessata

Clockwise from the hand: Irishcheddar with whiskey, blue shropshire, harlech somerdale, mimolette, 3 pepper chevre in the middle

excellent, excellent baguette.

Tonight: Roasted chicken and broccoli salad (cleaning out the fridge for Friday’s food buying expedition)
Thu: Veg soup and cornbread (more cleaning out)
Fri:Caesar style grilled stead salad- an Emeril recipe, I love his Caesar dressing. It’s easy and tasty.
Sat: Tuscan grilled chicken sandwich involving microgreens from the garden! Yummy!
Sun: Church potluck, a tomato salad with avocado and feta cheese. The local veg stand has amazing tomatoes.
Mon: Asian chicken salad
Tues: Spaghetti, salad from the garden, homemade garlic breadsticks. To appease the heathens.
Wed: Panzenella! Yay! my very own recipe!
Thur: Lemon Grilled pork loin, roasted potatoes, green beans
Fri: Larb gai spring rolls w/shredded cabbage and bean sprouts
Sat: homemade sausage pizza
Sun: Race Day! Memorial Day Weekend! Terry is off from work! Woot! BBq pork ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad
Mon: Terry’s still off! WHAT?! Spicy beef salad
Tue: Lime chicken tacos
Wed: BBQ pork sandwich on grilled jalapeno corn flatbread

And that’s the recipe round up. Most of them will get my own adaptation, because I am incapable of following a recipe exactly. Cooked chicken will happen early on, with leftovers going into the next recipe. The pork loin will provide meat for 2 meals and leftovers…it all works out. Also, while the meat is the first thing listed, it’s usually in a smaller quantity than the recipe, with fillers in the form of potatoes, grains or pasta. It’s cheaper that way. that’s the beauty of fixing a salad-lotsa veg, and just enough meat to say you had some.

Brownies, legally enhanced with these good, good things.

Brownie making stuff

Anyway, the other day she was going on about having made a pan of brownies from a recipe a friend gave her. I asked for it, and being a generous sort, she shared it.

Melted butter, sugar,vanilla. there is no better way to start a recipe.

Then we started talking about how to improve any sort of brownie recipe. “Nuts!” she exclaimed, “and chocolate chips!” Of course, that goes without saying. I don’t know of anything other than, perhaps, scrambled eggs, that isn’t improved with the addition of nuts.

Add some eggs. It gets better!

Then I started piling on stuff. I am not content with just a brownie, no matter how many nuts and chocolate chips are in them.

Cocoa powder! YAY!

“Ice cream! MOAR NUTS!” she shouted.

“WHIPPED CREAM!” I replied “SHAVED CHOCOLATE!”

“YESH!” she replied

The boring stuff: flour,baking powder, salt.

So then, both of us fairly sure the end of the world is near, and thus counting calories and worrying about thinness is a pointless activity, a plan was conceived, and we called it The Brownie Apocalypse.

"does it all have to goin the pan? how much can I leave in the bowl?"

First, start with a good brownie recipe. I took the one she gave me, from the Hershey’s Kitchen website

The batter is approved of by the Inspector Captain

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs
3/4 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa or HERSHEY’S SPECIAL DARK Cocoa
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
Directions
1 Heat oven to 350°F. Grease 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

2 Place butter in large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at MEDIUM (50%) 2 to 2-1/2 minutes or until melted. Stir in sugar and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with spoon after each addition. Add cocoa; beat until well blended. Add flour, baking powder and salt; beat well. Stir in nuts, if desired. Pour batter into prepared pan.

3 Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack.

Now, I didn’t have any Hershey’s cocoa, so I used what I did have- Nestle’s,and the brownies did not burst into flames or die a weeping and tragic death. So I’d say just use the cocoa you have.
Now, you need other tasty things to take it from a plain old (but delicious) brownie to The Brownie Apocalypse.
You will need your favorite coffee ice cream. I used Breyers because it was on sale and wasn’t $4 for a pint like the Starbucks or Hagen Daz.
You will need some chopped pecans. Pecans please, not almonds or walnuts or hazelnuts. I suppose youcould use them IF YOU WANT TO but it won’t s The Brownie Apocalypse, but something else and you’ll have to come up with another name for it.
You will need whipped cream. Unsweetened, unsalted, just plain heavy cream whipped to firm peaks. Sweetened stuff, or (God forbid!) CoolWhip won’t cut it.
You will need some shaved dark chocolate. Not much.
I suppose IF YOU HAVE TO, you could put a cherry on top, but that would kind of affect the monochromatic subtlety of all the lovely tans and browns. I don’t recommend it.

When the brownies are done and have cooled a little (you want them warm here, so don’t let them cool too long. Maybe 15 minutes?)…

Toast the chopped pecans (okfine…whatever nuts. I say pecans because they’re superior nuts in such an application.) by tossing them with a teeny bit of vegetable oil (1/4 teaspoon or so) and a generous pinch of kosher salt. The salt is important because it is. Trust me. Put the nuts in a skillet on medium heat and stirr often until they start to smell toasted. Taste them to make sure (careful, they’re hot) then taste again JUST TO BE SURE. You can’t be too careful about these things.

Toasty toasty pecans, with a dash of oil and salt

Whip the heavy cream until it forms firm peaks. Any longer than that and you’ll wind up with butter (O DARN!) and have to start over. Don’t sweeten it! The brownies and ice cream are plenty sweet, you just want the whipped cream for egregious self indulgence richness and the “GOOD GRIEF” response you’ll get from fortunate recipients.

Whip it! Whip it good!

Now you’re ready to construct.

First, put a brownie on a plate. Keep it small, because honey, this pile is RICH. Too much and you’ll make yourself sick.

Then top the brownie with a small scoop of your favorite coffee ice cream. I like Breyers because it was on sale.

Sprinkle the ice cream with some of the salted nuts. Ok, a little more. Did they spill on the plate? OH NO! Put a few more on!

Now, top the ice cream and nuts with a nice spoonful of the plain whipped cream. Isn’t that pretty!

This is fun…

I used a lone Dove Dark chocolate I had laying around, left over from the last time I had PMS, and grated a bit of it on top of the whipped cream. Ok it was probably unnecessary, but it was fun and pretty.

The End Of The World As We Know It. Brownie Apocalypse

4 cups chicken broth
2 cups brown rice
1 large can cream of mushroom soup
1 can evaporated mild
5 boneless chicken breasts (smallish ones)
1 teaspoon each dried basil, garlic powder, onion powder

The night before your potluck lunch, or early the morning, if it’s an evening dinner:
Mix together the cream of mushroom soup and the evaporated milk in a bowl.
Then in this order, put everything in a large crock pot:
broth, rice, soup&milk, chicken breasts, seasonings.
Put the lid on it and set it on low.

The next morning, shred up the chicken with a couple of forks, right there on top of everything else. Then serve.
how easy is that?

The evaporated milk is optional, I like the creaminess it gives to it all.