Category Archives: breakfast

April 6, 2013

Bacon mushroom breakfast casserole

Bacon Mushroom Breakfast Casserole

So, here we are on Day 2 of the Mayhew/Harbin/Mayhew Reunion and so far we have not starved. We have gone through one Shepherd’s Pie; one crockpot of corned beef and cabbage with buttered potatoes, rice and rolls; a precious plenty of onion dip and ham dip, shortbread cookies from Scotland (thank you, Tammy!); assorted breakfast muffins; cinnamon rolls, three flavors of cheese in a can (yes!) with Ritz crackers; Kit-Kats; crunchy Cheetos and miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

However, I will proudly say that I think the most delicious offering yet is Noah’s breakfast casserole. Noah joined the rotation of cooks and/or snack providers this year. It is momentous. The last time Noah ascended to a major adult group was when Granddaddy, Mark and I invited him outside to the patio for our annual consumption of oysters on the half shell at Bunny’s Thanksgiving celebration. We did not issue the invitation lightly. Rituals are, well, rituals and the wrong participants can totally screw the whole thing up.

Noah thought for quite awhile about his debut dish at the reunion. I can unequivocally report that the bacon mushroom breakfast casserole was utterly delicious. He has been invited into the close circle of cooks and snack makers. Welcome, Noah.

Bacon Mushroom Breakfast Casserole (Recipe by Noah Mayhew)

1 pound of bacon

1 large onion

1 8-ounce package fresh sliced mushrooms

16 ounces fresh spinach

4 cups of bread, cubed

1 cup shredded pepperjack cheese

1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

8 eggs

1 ½ cups whole milk

½ cup sour cream

Fry the bacon until crisp. Reserve about 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease and sauté the mushrooms  and onions over medium heat until the mushrooms release all their juice and begin to brown. Add the spinach and continue to cook until the spinach is wilted.

Grease a 9-by-13 inch baking dish with butter.  Layer the bread cubes in the dish. Top with the cheeses and mushroom/spinach mixture. Whisk the eggs, milk and sour cream together. Pour over the bread mixture and top with crumbled bacon.

Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes covered. Uncover the dish and bake for another 30 minutes.

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February 3, 2013

Chicken and waffles

This is definitely one of those Southern things that people don’t “get” until they try it. Chicken and waffles. One of my guiltiest pleasures (besides Velveeta and bacon-wrapped cocktail weenies).

The history of chicken and waffles is a bit murky, but it is definitely a soul food thing.  Since there’s no real established history of the chicken and waffle, I can just run wild here and tell you what I think happened. Obviously, fried chicken started in the South. That’s why they call it Southern fried chicken, isn’t it. And, historically, who makes the best fried chicken? You know this one. African Americans. I can tell you without a doubt that if you ask about the top three fried chicken restaurants in Nashville, they will all be owned and/or staffed by black people. Okay, I’ll just tell you: Swett’s, Prince’s Hot Chicken and Monell’s.

However, I do not believe that post Civil War many black people were making waffles in the South. First off, nobody could afford flour. BUT! What freed slaves were doing in droves was getting the hell out of Dodge and moving North. In the case of chicken and waffles, they were specifically moving to Harlem, which is the epicenter of the Chicken and Waffles Movement (no, there is no such thing but it sounds important, doesn’t it?). There was flour up North, thereby making the likelihood of waffles more possible. If you Google chicken and waffles, the joints in Harlem will always be at the top of the list.

That is how I believe chicken and waffles started. Southern fried chicken + people move to Harlem + flour. There you have it.

But maybe you don’t care about the history of chicken and waffles. Maybe you just want to eat some.

Here’s how I do mine. First of all, I use waffle mix. As you can see, my waffle mix is right next to my beloved Bisquick in the freezer because in the South you do not store dry goods in the pantry. Bugs. No need to elaborate. Bisquick is good for pancakes, but it doesn’t have enough heft to make a waffle. I don’t need to tell you how to use a waffle iron, do I? I didn’t think so.

For the chicken, I used boneless chicken breasts. The traditional chicken and waffles comes with bone-in pieces, but I find it irritating to navigate around the bones and then combine the perfect bite of chicken with waffle. Why make your food aggravating to eat? Isn’t there enough trouble in the world?

So the secret to my fried chicken – boned or not – is this: one 1-ounce package of ranch dressing mix to 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. You can thank me later.

Then once the chicken is done, make the waffles so that they’re nice and hot. Add the butter (real) and maple syrup. Please, for the love of God, do not buy those cheap name brands (rhymes with Hog Baggin’). Look at the label. If the first ingredient is corn syrup, that is not at all what you want. Don’t make me come after you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 30, 2012

Warriors with whisks

 

Kathy Berry glazing more than 300 scones

The English Tea presented by the Women of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church  is the closest thing I know of to a full-scale military assault. Relentless in expectation and precise to a fault. There is no room for cry babies at the English Tea. No room for whiners or laggards. No room for failure. There is a core group of tea sandwich makers and sweets producers who understand this. They are the lieutenants on the battlefield of chicken salad, pimento cheese and mint chocolate mousse cups.

Leslie Fraser - 15 batches mixed by hand

But nothing brings us closer to the precipice of disaster than the scones. They are the first thing our guests are offered. It is an English Tea, for God’s sake. The scones better be good. Truthfully, we’ve been hit and miss over the years and I am ashamed to say that as food chairman. Last year, we figured we’d hit the jackpot when a local baker who makes scones to die for baked them for us. And then disaster struck. She went out of business. Boo hoo. BOO HOO.

So after having several major anxiety attacks and a slight case of hives, I turned to my girls. The generals of the army. The women who run into battle, wooden spoons uplifted and whisks at the ready. One of them knew the baker. She got the recipe. We met at Wanda’s house, the tea chair, and just knocked them out. And they were good. They were more than good. They were great.

Wanda grated orange zest - how does the chair of the tea get the worst job?

We caught up on what is politely referred to as “news” in our church family, which would otherwise be categorized as gossip. Discretion prevents me from revealing the exact topics of “news” discussed, of course. And we debated the merits of various ways to clean a cast-iron skillet. We did not agree, but we are always kinder than we need to be so nobody’s feelings were hurt. And we fed Wanda and Leslie’s carpenter, who stopped by to deliver the bad news to Wanda that her new windows will send her over the fiscal cliff. He asked if he could have one of the “cookies” we were baking. We gave him one. And blessed his heart.

Disaster averted. Good time had by all. Scones now safely in the freezer until a week from Saturday. Oh, I suppose you now think I’m going to give you the recipe for the scones. No, I am not. Perhaps, with the baker’s permission, we will put it in a St. Paul’s Tea Cookbook at some point, relieve you of $25 and buy new kneelers for the sanctuary. Warriors for God. With whisks.

 

 

 

 

 

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Tagged as breads, butter, scones, south, southern cooking

November 24, 2012

Breakfast turkey quesadillas

Despite the fact that I ate an entire Thanksgiving dinner in Knoxville on Thursday, I felt compelled to make a turkey and sides Friday so the Mayhews could have…LEFTOVERS!

I hate leftovers normally. I just  like to eat a meal once and move along. But Thanksgiving is different. I crave the first turkey sandwich, heavy on the Duke’s. I adore cold dressing and cranberry sauce eaten right out of the leftover containers. And I now have a new favorite that Mark just created this morning. Breakfast turkey quesadillas. He ingeniously took all the turkey shards (you know, those bits you pull off the bone that will never find their way into a turkey sandwich), dusted them with taco seasoning and warmed them in a skillet. Then he added sauteed green pepper, red onion and a couple of beaten eggs. Spoon over half a flour tortilla, top with shredded cheese, brown the quesadillas in butter. Done. Delicious. A new post Thanksgiving recipe for the Mayhews.

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November 10, 2012

Old food

Mark and I were talking last night about cubed steak in the South versus cubed steak in the North. Down here, it’s breaded and fried like a lot of other things. We call it country fried steak.  It’s delicious. In my childhood in the North, it was broiled. Not much point in debating the merits of that.

But it got me to thinking about why my mother never made anything that required actual cooking. And that led me to wonder what foods she grew up on. My mother was born in 1916 so her food memories would have been made in the 1920s.

So I did a little research – and Bingo! – the secret to my mother’s love of boxed things revealed itself.

“The most striking development was the shift toward processed foods. Where housewives had previously prepared food from scratch at home (peeling potatoes, shelling peas, plucking chickens, or grinding coffee beans) an increasing number of Americans purchased foods that were ready-to-cook. World War I brought about new methods of food processing as manufacturers streamlined production methods of canned and frozen foods. Processed foods reduced the enormous amounts of time that had previously been taken up in peeling, grinding, and cutting.”  (1920-1930.com)

Processed foods were totally in my mother’s wheelhouse. They were considered modern.
And even more striking were the foods introduced in the 1920s that were so prevalent in the Chapin pantry of the 1950s. Take a look:
  • Wonder Bread (1920): I didn’t think there was any other kind of bread until I was in my 20s.
  • Welch’s Grape Jelly (1923): Ditto. What is this thing called strawberry jam? I had never heard of it until I was well out of childhood.
  • Peter Pan Peanut Butter (1928): The only brand in our house 30 years later.
  • Velveeta Cheese (1928): Truly astounding! Validation of my own continuing love of the processed cheese food. And, yes, a standard sandwich in the Chapin household of the ’50s was Velveeta sliced and placed atop a mayonnaise-laden piece of Wonder Bread.

 Other foods advertised in the 1920s were also hanging around our house 30 years later: Log Cabin Syrup, Van Camps Pork and Beans, Grape-Nuts (still my cereal of choice today!), Cream of Wheat (Northern grits – kind of), and Maxwell House Coffee (who knew our coffee was named after a Nashville hotel – maybe that’s what lured me to the South).

So now I’m thinking what will be hanging around Noah’s kitchen 30 years from now that’s sitting in my pantry today? Yes, Velveeta will still be sitting jauntily on the shelf, probably with exactly the same packaging. But he’ll also have DiGiorno Pesto Sauce for pasta, Thai Kitchen Cocoanut Milk for curries, and Supremo Chorizo for quesadillas. Will they seem as old-fashioned in 2042 as Wonder Bread seems today? Fascinating question, that.

 

 

 

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Tagged as cereal, coffee, peanut butter, velveeta, Wonder Bread

October 3, 2012

Shrimp and grits: The new signature dish of the South?

My friend and fellow Char-Broil All Star Blogger, Barry Martin, posed this question to me on Facebook: Is shrimp and grits the new signature dish of the South?

He got this idea from a story in the Charlotte Observer about every caterer and restauranteur in town serving shrimp and grits during the Democratic National Convention. And I have to imagine that many of the people from other parts of the country sampling shrimp and grits must have risen up in wonderment.

But the answer, I think, has to be this: How can any dish that’s been served for centuries in the Low Country of South Carolina be a “new” anything?  I mean Craig Claiborne wrote about them in the New York Times in 1985, for goodness sake. Even the ultimate New Yorker, Bobby Flay, has a recipe for shrimp and grits.

What I think is new is that restaurants are serving them for dinner (or supper, as we say down here). Shrimp and grits is a breakfast food. Brunch, if you’re stretching it. The original name for shrimp and grits was Breakfast Shrimp because that’s what Low Country fishermen ate in the morning. Shrimp were cheap and abundant. They practically jumped into the pot of grits.

Southern food, in general, is enjoying a moment in the national spotlight and that is precisely because it is so originally of this place, of this soil and sea. Fancy chefs may gussy it up with caviar or micro greens, but at the end of the day our food is simple, local and humble.

This whole shrimp and grits fascination is one more passing phase. Remember when just a few years ago, everyone outside the South was going nuts over fried chicken? They were serving it on china in New York City restaurants along with a knife and fork. Give me a break.

And by the way, while I’m on a roll, there are a million different recipes for shrimp and grits. It’s the casserole of the South. How about that for a signature dish? Some people make them with a tomato gravy. Others use a brown gravy. For me, it’s no gravy. Just buttery shrimp and creamy grits. With bacon.

Shrimp and grits

Regular or quick-cooking grits (not instant!)

6 strips bacon

1 red pepper, sliced into strips

1 yellow pepper, sliced into strips

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 ½ pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined

BBQ rub

Juice of one lemon

Prepare grits according to package directions, using milk instead of water and stirring for about 20 minutes so that they are exceptionally creamy. If you add a hunk of butter at the end the grits will be all the better for it. Salt and pepper to taste.

Fry the bacon until crisp. Set bacon aside but reserve bacon fat.

In another skillet, sauté the peppers in about 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat until browned. Add garlic and sauté for 30 seconds. Remove from heat and reserve.

Sprinkle shrimp liberally with your favorite BBQ rub. Add the lemon juice and the shrimp to the bacon fat and sauté for one minute on each side or until shrimp have just turned pink.

Crumble bacon.

To serve: Put a couple of ladles of grits in a bowl. Top with shrimp and peppers. Sprinkle with crumbled bacon.

Serves 4.

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Tagged as bobby flay, Craig Claiborne, Democratic National Convention, grits, shrimp, shrimp and grits, southern cooking

September 26, 2012

Alert, alert: Bacon crisis!

Listen up, people. This is serious. The drought may have messed with your yard and killed your pansies, but now there is a much more severe consequence. Agricultural experts are predicting a bacon shortage.

This, of course, will have a profound impact on one of the nation’s premiere pork events, Bacon Wednesday at the Community Resource Center. By the way, I haven’t told Betsy yet. Don’t tell. I’m going to have to sedate her before I break the news.

Why are we going to have a bacon shortage? Corn. It’s what pigs eat and corn just took a beating this summer. Less corn = less pigs. And less pigs = less bacon. There are other realms that will also be profoundly affected. Like your BBQ? Eat up, folks. There will be less of that, too. And ribs? Only two sets to a pig and there won’t be many of them to go around come summer of 2013. But, let’s face it, bacon is the real killer. Oh, sausage. Forgot about sausage. Are we thinking that 2012 is just going to suck? Possibly.

Of course, there will be those who prey on the weak and disenfranchised. I am speaking, of course, of the damnable turkey bacon producers. They will try to tell you it tastes just like bacon. It does not. It in no way resembles bacon in the slightest. But we may have to close our eyes, shut our noses and pretend.

Hoarding. I think that is the answer. First of all, don’t tell a single soul about this looming crisis. Every week when you go to the supermarket, just pick up eight or 10 packages of bacon, like you’re about to have  a party. In fact, tell the check-out lady that so she doesn’t get suspicious. You might have to cover your tracks and hit five or six different stores so you don’t attract attention. Don’t shop in Brentwood. That’s my territory.

While you’re at the store, pick up some water chestnuts and wrap them up in a little bit of pork gold. Don’t tell anyone you’re making them. You know you don’t want to share knowing what you know is coming.

Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts

Bacon

1 8-ounce can whole water chestnuts

½ cup ketchup

¼ cup dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line a rimmed cookie sheet with heavy duty tin foil. Cut the bacon slices into thirds. Wrap each water chestnut with a piece of bacon and secure with a wooden toothpick.

Bake for about 45 minutes, turning each piece once. If at the end of 45 minutes, the bacon is not crispy enough run it under the broiler for a few minutes.

Mix together the ketchup, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Dip each bacon-wrapped water chestnut in the mixture and return to the oven for about 15 minutes.

 

 

 

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June 1, 2012

Grocery shopping for Noah

I may have gone overboard. Just a wee bit. At least Mark thinks so.

We have just installed Noah in his first apartment in Knoxville, where he is a rising junior at the University of Tennessee. I am asked to perform what may be my last motherly duty for awhile. While he arranges his new apartment, I go grocery shopping for him. Here’s how it went.

We start out in produce. He’ll need some lemons and garlic and sweet peppers and mushrooms. Oh, and some potatoes. Maybe some broccoli? Yes, he loves broccoli roasted with the gallon of olive oil I have already bought him from Costco (that was a $200 trip, but he has enough olive oil and Montreal Steak Seasoning to last him through graduation). I am starting to get agitated. What if I don’t get him enough food? How will he survive without his meal plan?

Meat. Hamburger, chicken breasts, pork chops, bacon and Lil’ Smokies.  The boy loves his Lil’ Smokies. This is supposed to last him a week. Did I mention he eats 10 meals a day?

Rice-A-Roni (3 boxes), Stovetop Stuffing (2 boxes), Ro-Tel diced tomatoes, Ramen and cream of mushroom soup. Sandwich stuff. Ham and cheese, bread (2 kinds). Milk. Growing boy needs milk. Butter (2 pounds – can’t have enough butter). Eggs. Sister Schubert yeast rolls. I am now out of control. I am trying to stuff everything in the grocery store into my buggy.

There was more. So much more. But finally Mark put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said, Stop. Just Stop.

I reluctantly head to the check-out. The clerk wants to engage me in conversation. This happens quite often in the South, but I am distraught at watching my meager contributions to Noah’s well-being slowly rolling down the conveyor belt. “Well, my brother just got back from six months at a camp for troubled youth. You just never know what he’s going to do. We’ve called the DCS and put them on notice. ” Too much information. I don’t even know you. Just check us out.

We head back to Noah’s new apartment. The trunk is completely full. The rear end of the car sags under the weight. And a miracle has occurred. My once-slovenly son has beautifully arranged his kitchen, albeit a kitchen the size of a broom closet. The glassware is arranged in a cabinet sorted by type and size. The dish towels are neatly folded in a drawer. He is calmly brewing his own tea and has invited a guest for supper.

It’s time to leave. I hate that part. I hug him hard. I am running out of things to do for him. It used to be so easy. Gluing puffy balls on a Santa cap for Funny Hat Day in elementary school. Disney World. That was a good trip. Running him around the lake in the back of our boat on a giant inflatable, watching his skinny legs flap up and down on the water. And now I’m reduced to a package of pork chops and a couple cans of soup. I’ll get over this. I always do. But nobody told me letting go would be so hard.

 

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Tagged as college students, costco, first apartments, grocery shopping, southern cooking

May 30, 2012

Pig Candy

 

The power of the pig

I will make this brief. We all have places to go and people to see.

If you want to bribe someone to do something unpleasant that they would ordinarily refuse to do, you just need to say two words. Pig Candy. If you promise to feed people Pig Candy they will do any odious job. Pig Candy is bacon topped with brown sugar and baked.

My colleague, Betsy, and I have Bacon Wednesdays each week at the Community Resource Center to either reward ourselves for a job well done or coax ourselves into doing a job that will be well done. We have a variety of bacon applications for Bacon Wednesday, but the Pig Candy is always a hit.

I offered to make the Pig Candy for Bacon Wednesday this week, not because I had to bribe Betsy to unload a truck full of heavy boxes from a donor because that is part of her job and she will do it no matter what. No, I made it to bribe Noah, my 20-year-old son, who does not have to unload heavy boxes. I used to order the boy around and was moderately successful at it. But I am losing my grip in this department.

So I offered Pig Candy. His eyes lit up and he immediately snapped to attention. I lured him to the truck at the dock door with a slice of thick-cut bacon loaded with caramelized brown sugar and he just hopped right onto the truck bed and started shoveling boxes.

So here’s how you make it. Take any bacon you like and lay it out on a cookie sheet covered with foil. I like thick-cut bacon. Spread a generous amount of brown sugar on each slice. It doesn’t matter if its light or dark brown sugar. Bake it at 400 degrees until the bacon is crisp. Here’s a very important tip. Don’t drain it on paper towels. It will stick. Use some more foil.

I expect Pig Candy to be used more frequently in workplace development now that you know its powers. In fact, I think I’ll add this to the employee manual tomorrow.

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Tagged as bacon, brown sugar, community resource center, pig candy, southern cooking, thick-cut bacon

May 3, 2012

Queen for 1.5 days

Living high off the hog

It’s good to be Queen, even for a day and a half. Here I am in “my” $1.8 million home in the luxurious planned community of Serenbe, just outside Atlanta. Please note that I have all the essentials of the good life. Wine, Vaseline, cigarettes and a bag of Char-Broil goodies. One of my roomies, Julie Reinhardt, snapped the photo.

“Our” pool and pool house

We are two of eight Char-Broil All-Star Bloggers invited to Serenbe to commune with the company executives, cook next to a picturesque lake, enjoy cocktails and fabulous dinners at the Inn at Serenbe and just basically have a good time. It’s a hard-knock life.

So this is one of those times when it’s good that “there’s no room at the inn.” After a long and arduous ride in a limousine fully equipped with a bar, which we took advantage of, we were regretfully forced to bivouac at a four-bedroom luxury home with pool, cabana, waterfall and our very own golf cart to toddle around the property on.

Serenbe is set up like a collection of English villages surrounded by lush forests, farmland and meadows. It is beyond beautiful. After we put away our meager belongings, we jump in the golf cart for a brisk ride down a country road to dinner at the Inn. Our other roomie, Danielle Dimovski, is the

Chicken with a red pepper jelly glaze

driver. Actually, brisk is an understatement. For the next day and a half Julie and I hold on for all we’re worth as Danielle lurches along the road at top golf cart speed. Thank goodness we’d been drinking.

Is it possible for anything to be too perfect? I think not. The Inn is a picturesque former farmhouse. Many of the menu items are grown on Serenbe’s organic farms. We have more cocktails. We feast on organic chicken glazed with Serenbe’s own pepper jelly, sitting jauntily on a cloud of mashed potatoes with green beans from the garden. I am immediately so so very happy that a year ago I picked up the phone to hear a stranger say, “We’d like you to blog for Char-Broil.” Barry Martin, I love you man.

Well, the whole 1.5 days is just a dream and a half. Breakfast at the Inn – French toast with strawberries from the farm and crispy bacon. Lunch? The Char-Broil folks present about 15 pounds of various cuts of chicken, steak, sausages and fish to us so we can play on the bevy of grills they’ve set up at the Lake Pavilion. We do not even have to dirty our dainty digits turning the grills on. They are already lit. Then a tour of the HGTV Dream Home at Serenbe, which is sponsored by Char-Broil, and more cocktails. Dinner? Oh, yes, we have not eaten nearly enough. The frogs chirp as we enjoy a late night glass of wine in the courtyard of our $1.8 million house overlooking the pool. We wonder if anyone would notice if we simply do not leave. Ever.

It is exactly one week later as I write this, sitting in my garage because we don’t smoke in the house anymore. I am back to being a serf. In about two hours I will be a day laborer at the Community Resource Center, unloading donations from a major retailer. Where is my golf cart? Where are the drinks by the pool? Where in the hell is my organic salad and steak with horseradish cream? It was good to be the Queen.

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Tagged as char-broil, french toast, HGTV Green Home, pepper jelly, Serenbe, southern cooking