Weekly Dish

I am late coming to this party, but food bloggers have been busy compiling lists of the 5 foods they would most recommend for everyone to try at least once in a lifetime, at the behest of Melissa at The Traveler’s Lunchbox. Sweet Claire of Cooking Is Medicine invited me to participate weeks ago, and I am just now getting around to it. Narrowing down my list of favorite foods to only five was quite a challenge, so I tried to pick things that were local to my little corner of the world (after all, to try all of the things on Melissa’s ever-growing list, travel must be part of the equation; why not add southern Louisiana to your list of places to visit?)
1. Fresh, raw oysters

Raw oysters will always remind me of my dad, who taught me to eat them. His method? First, mix up a big batch of cocktail sauce (ketchup, horseradish, fresh lemon juice, and salt), then cut a few lemons into wedges. Spread a saltine cracker with the cocktail sauce, top with an oyster and a squeeze of lemon, and slurp. This still remains my favorite way to enjoy these slippery little delights.

2. Fresh figs

My love affair with fresh figs has been no secret on this site, but the surprising thing about the comments I received on those posts was just how many people have never tried fresh figs. I guess because they are so delicate and can’t travel very far, they aren’t accessible to many people. And, most of the time they aren’t sold in grocery stores. But, please, for me, if you ever find yourself near a fig tree when its fruit are ripe, pluck one off and see what I mean for yourself. Or, if you feel the need to travel on down here to Louisiana about the middle of July, I’ll take you to Mr. Buddy Miller’s stand at the Red Stick Market on Saturday morning, and you can take home as many figs as you can carry.

3. Real southern fried chicken

Fried chicken is so ubiquitous now, I’m sure you can get it most anywhere. For me, a southern girl at heart, real southern fried chicken means chicken fried by a real southerner (or someone taught by a real southerner), soaked in buttermilk, and coated with the right mixture of flour and spices, served with homemade biscuits, mashed potatoes, and cream gravy, made from the chicken drippings. A meal like this one says Sunday dinner at home in Mississippi, and I wish everyone could have a taste of that at least once.

4. Crab cakes made with fresh lump crabmeat

I know I am terribly fortunate to live in a place that grants me access to such wonderful produce and Gulf-fresh seafood. Crab meat picked from fresh crabs tastes sweeter and more decadent than the meat from any other seafaring creature, in my opinion, and my very favorite way to enjoy it is packed into a cake, diluted with as few other ingredients as possible, and fried.

5. Boiled Louisiana crawfish (and the corn and potatoes too!)

A Louisiana crawfish boil is an experience everyone should have once in his or her lifetime. Lucky for me, I was born in to the tradition, and have feasted on mudbugs for as long as I can remember. From March to June, crawfish boils are how people celebrate most anything around here, from a baby’s baptism to a sunny Friday afternoon. Standing around a picnic table, peeling crawfish, and consuming mass quantities of the flavorful red meat, super-spicy corn and potatoes and cold beer with people you love (and some you don’t know) is a time-honored tradition that Louisianans love to share (so head on down here and pull up a bench!)

On the menu this week: nothing quite as adventurous or special as those 5 favorites, but food for a busy life instead.

Links:

• Mushroom Risotto
• Kalyn’s Marinated Pepper Salad (with goat cheese instead of Parmesan and no garbanzos)

I promise another recipe and food-related post is coming soon, but until then, here’s some reading to keep you busy. Blog Day is a day where bloggers share with their readers blogs they’ve recently discovered. Although I’m a day late, I did want to tell you about some of my favorite reads, all relatively new to me.

First, the foodies:

Although you may think her topic is about as far away from the kind of cooking I do, Susan at Fatfree Vegan Kitchen and I actually have a lot in common. We sort of traded places — I moved from Jackson, MS, to southern Louisiana, and Susan moved from southern Louisiana to Jackson. And, we both love figs (although I’m sorry to report that figs don’t appear as readily available in Susan’s new locale; if you know of a place where she can find them, please head to her site and leave her a comment!) Mostly, though, Susan’s dedication to being creative with super-healthy ingredients is really inspiring; she can take a plain, old garden eggplant, and turn it into a myriad of delicacies. Even if you aren’t a vegan or fatfree, you’re bound to find some ideas in her kitchen.

Another southerner I’ve enjoyed reading is Kate at Pie in the Sky. A recent college grad, Kate is a self-described “Georgia peach in the Big Apple.” Her recipes often represent her southern culinary heritage, but with a sophisticated city-girl twist, like her most recent post on Macaroni and Cheese with Brie and Rosemary. She also sometimes writes about food ethics and politics, which I always find informative and well-written. Plus, she makes the best mojito around.

Third on my foodie list (and then I’ll move on to other areas, as I’m supposed to), is Julie at A Mingling of Tastes. I first ran across Julie’s blog by doing a search for other bloggers writing about figs, when I came across her lovely post about three ways she’d used my favorite end-of-summer treats. She’s only been at the blogging thing for a few months, but already, I’ve found much inspiration from her concoctions. Keep up the good work, Julie!

For my last two on this list of 5, I’ve chosen areas of interest, rather than specific blogs. The fashion world has always been fascinating to me, but, perhaps a bit out of my price range. Two of my favorite daily reads are trying to bridge the gap from girl-next-door-without-a-huge-wardrobe-budget and runway fashion: the Frugal Fashionista features photos of celebrities (also a good way to get a quick daily celebrity fix!), and then tells you where you can duplicate their look for less. The Budget Fashionista keeps you up to date on online sales and highlights current trends that you can find for not much money. Both fashionistas have a keen eye for detail and some great tips for dressing well for less.

If you’re into design, you have to check out Inhabitat. This site is one of David’s favorites, and it has quickly become one of mine too. Especially of note is their feature, Pre-Fab Fridays, where they highlight fascinating architectural creations, all pre-fabricated. I love to scroll through the images and imagine myself in some clean, modern space with lots of light and empty space. And lastly, if you have ever dreamed of travelling through Italy, if you are into good art, or you simply like to admire beautiful writing or photographs, stroll on over to Jenny Vorwaller’s blog, True Nature. I first found Jenny through my friend Rorie, and I have to limit the amount of time I spend there, or I could while away my day living vicariously through her Italian escapades. Aaahh, Italy.

It’s so hard to narrow down my choices to only 5 (which I guess I haven’t really done), but if you find yourself with time on your hands, grab and cup of tea or coffee and set about exploring the intricate web of blogs out there. You’re bound to find some that interest you; I hope these will get you started!

And, I promise recipes and food-related posts are coming soon…

Oh, how I love the start of school. I’m such an undeniable nerd that I revel in the smallest of ritualistic pre-school activities. I meticulously fill my pencil case with new mechanical pencils and my favorite black pens. I open and close my new, perfectly organized 3-ring binder, imagining all the possiblities of filling the blank pages with brilliant insights. I print out my course roster and pore over the names of my students, creating these 22 people I get to teach for the semester in my head, delighting in who they might be. I type up extraordinarily detailed daily schedules for myself which I never, ever follow, but keep on my desktop. I make lots and lots of lists. I fret and worry and have nightmares (the kind where I always show up to my class inappropriately dressed and completely unprepared). Once the madness begins, for weeks, I thrive on the excited frenzy I’ve created for myself in the weeks leading up to the first day.

And I love every moment, even though complaining about school starting is usually part of the routine.

In all of this activity, I have little time for cooking (or blogging, for that matter, but I do have it on one of those detailed schedules!) But we have to eat, I’m entirely too picky for fast food, and we don’t have the budget to eat out, so I cook anyway. Our summer meals tended to be leisurely and sometimes labor-intensive, simply because they could be. What will follow in the coming months will be how we fit food into an already-packed schedule. Cooking becomes part of my planning obsession during school days, and part of my ritual. It won’t always be beautiful or gourmet, but I’ll do my best to make it healthy and delicious. The menu above represents the last week before the official start of school, but really the first week of my crazy frame of mind as I prepared. I don’t have links for you because I haven’t made any of those things before, but I promise to post about them soon.

Or at least, I have it written on my schedule.

Happy school days everyone!

Weekly Dish was born! I can honestly say that when I sat down at my computer this time last year and hit “publish” for the first time, I had no idea what I was in for. Over 200 posts later, as I click back through my archives, I realize that I’m looking at a year in my culinary life, a record of what I made and what I consumed. Which was partly the point of this whole endeavor, of course: documentation.

But it was also about honing my craft, both as a cook and a writer. The site has pushed me to be more conscious about what and how I cook, and having an audience has stretched my willingness to try new things, my technical abilities in the kitchen, and my knowledge of how this whole business of combining ingredients to create something new works in the first place. Weekly Dish has made me a better cook, plain and simple.

And a better writer: composing spontaneously (and quickly) several times a week has provided a welcome space for growth of my writing self. Thankfully for all of us, practice has also sharpened my photography skills. Slowly, over the course of the last year, horrendous, poorly lit exposures of uninteresting plates have given way to more thoughtfully composed presentations, which if still not where I’d like them to be, at least don’t make viewers shudder and turn away in horror (as some of my earliest pictures do for me now when I look at them!)

What I didn’t know to expect from Weekly Dish were all of the pleasant surprises that have come in the form of emails, comments, and other people’s blogs. Quite simply, you readers out there, have been the nicest surprise of all. Oh, sure, I expected that my grandmother would be delighted to read my posts and say that they were wonderful. But to have people who previously did not know me, come into my kitchen via this little corner of the web, pull up a virtual kitchen stool, and watch, listen, comment on, and participate in my culinary experiments alongside me has brought more joy than I fathomed possible. What began as a way to share recipes and ideas with a friend has turned into a (literal) web of friendships, cris-crossing the globe.

As I have shared with you before, making food is for me primarily an expression of love. So, to know that others out there are partaking in our meals — even just with their eyes — makes a world of difference. As I cook for my little family, and sometimes friends and neighbors, I also cook for you readers, hoping that along the way, you receive these meals and turn them into expressions of your own, sharing them with those you love.

So today, I want to say a great big THANK YOU to all of you who have joined me over the past 12 months to partake in what has turned out to be a terrifically fulfilling adventure. I hope you will continue to stop in and occasionally let me hear from you — your comments, stories, recipes, ideas are always welcome here.

To celebrate: cupcakes!

Birthday Cupcakes (Chocolate with Mocha Buttercream Frosting)

3 1/2 ounces (200 grams) 60% or 70% cocoa high-quality chocolate, chopped
2 sticks butter
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 T. strong coffee

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Fill the cups of a muffin tin with paper or tin baking cups; spray with cooking spray.

In the top of a double-boiler over boiling water (or your mixing bowl placed over a pot of boiling water if you don’t have a double-boiler), melt the chocolate, stirring until smooth. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugars in an electric mixer, until thoroughly combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well as you go.

In a separate bowl, stir the flour, soda, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder together (sift them if you’re so inclined).

Also stir together the buttermilk and coffee (I do this in a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout).

With the mixer on low, add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk mixture alternately to the butter and sugar, until all ingredients are well-incorporated. Last, stir in the chocolate.

Pour the batter into the paper or tin cups in the muffin tin, filling the cups about 3/4 full. Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. When cool, top with frosting. Makes 24 cupcakes.

Mocha Buttercream Frosting

5 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
1 egg white
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 T. strong coffee
2 T. instant coffee granules (espresso powder also works)
2 sticks butter, softened
4 cups confectioner’s sugar

Melt the chocolate in the top of a double-boiler and set aside to cool. In a glass bowl or measuring cup, stir together the cream, coffee, and instant coffee until the coffee granules dissolve. In an electric mixer, whip the butter until creamy. Add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, until completely combined with the butter. With the mixer on medium, add the chocolate. Next, beat in the coffee mixture, whipping on high speed until the icing forms soft peaks. This frosting works best if you use it immediately, but if you have to refrigerate it, you’ll need to leave it out for a while to soften so it will be spreadable. This recipe makes plenty to frost 24 cupcakes and still have some leftover.

–Adapted from Sara Foster’s Fresh Everyday and the Foster’s Market Cookbook 

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was known for its pallatial beachfront homes. At the end of one particular drive lined with a towering plot of regal old oaks, gracefully wearing their age in their stature and in the silver locks of Spanish moss dripping from their branches, lay a sprawling white bed and breakfast called Green Oaks.

My first job out of college, as the editor of a small, regional magazine, took me to Green Oaks with my friend and co-worker, Lori, many summers ago. For a special issue on the Coast, we stayed for a few days, attending the blessing of the fleet, a tradition that marks the beginning of shrimping season, wandering around the maritime museum, and eating and photographing some fabulous food. The afternoon we first arrived, after we’d made our way up the winding front stairs, the hostess showed us to our room and then on to the front porch, where aging rocking chairs, a lazy yellow cat named Bill Clinton, and a tray of mint juleps and cucumber sandwiches awaited.

Truth be told, I could have spent the next several days in that rocking chair, listening to the ocean and taking in the warm, salty breeze. I recently opened the issue of the magazine that resulted from that trip, and I could almost smell the heavy, sea-tinged air.
Looking through those stories and photographs now was so strange–like reading about somewhere far away–because so much of what we experienced is no longer there.

My favorite meal we ate was the breakfast the hostess of Green Oaks prepared the morning we were leaving: a soupy bed of red pepper cream sauce, a crispy fried green tomato, and a soft, poached egg, topped with a smattering of fresh, lump crabmeat.

For Memorial Day weekend this year, I tried to recreate that memorable Green Oaks breakfast.

The lovely Green Oaks and its surrounding community may have to be rebuilt from the ground up, but the rich culinary heritage of that coastal region remains. The next time you make crab cakes, I urge you to reserve a couple of tablespoons of the crab meat and try this dish. If you close your eyes really tightly and take a deep breath, you might just be able to smell the salty Gulf air. And if not, I promise you’ll be able to taste it.

Eggs Green Oaks

For the fried green tomatoes:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup corn meal
1 T. Tony Chacheres (or other Cajun seasoning)
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
Buttermilk, to soak the tomatoes
3 green tomatoes
1 cup canola oil
Slice the tomatoes into thick rounds. Salt and pepper; soak in the buttermilk while you prepare the batter and the oil. Mix the flour, corn meal, and the seasoning on a plate. Whisk together the milk and eggs. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot (and not before! A drop of water should sizzle immediately), dip the tomato slices in the egg-milk mixture and then dredge in the seasoned flour. Fry until golden brown, about 5-7 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels and keep warm.

For the spicy cream sauce:
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped finely
1/4 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon Seasoned Salt
Juice of 1 lemon
2 T. half and half
1/4 cup fresh, lump crab meat
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low. Add the pepper and onion and cook until soft, about 6-8 minutes. Season with the seasoned salt, and add the lemon juice and cream. Cook until all is combined; cover and keep warm. Add the crab meat and stir gently, just before serving. You want it to just be warm.

For the eggs:
1 egg per person
Olive oil
You can poach the eggs if you prefer; I fried them for my husband, who loves them that way. Heat about a half-inch of olive oil in a skillet. Break the egg into the skillet (you can use a cookie cutter if you want it to be a particular shape, as I did; just make sure you grease the sides of the cookie cutter!). Spoon the hot oil on top of the egg as it fries; cook until the white begins to congeal, or until it reaches your desired doneness. To assemble: Spoon some cream sauce onto each plate, reserving the crab meat. Place two slices of fried green tomato in the center and top with an egg. Spoon the rest of the cream sauce over the egg and the tomatoes and scatter the crab meat over the plate. Garnish with paprika if you prefer. Eat immediately.

This recipe was inspired by Jennifer Diaz, former owner of Green Oaks bed and breakfast.

WARNING: VERY CHEESY HUMOR TO FOLLOW.

Blame it on the Mardi Gras vacation we’ve enjoyed this week, or the silly star-struck-ness that I feel towards the Academy Awards (or perhaps on the drink you see above…), but David and I decided on a whim yesterday to throw ourselves an Oscar party. This is sort of a tradition for us–last year, I even dressed up in an old bridesmaid’s dress (because my close friends sometimes read this blog, I won’t disclose which one!) and a plastic tiara to cook our party food and enjoy our evening with the stars.

I’m a total sucker for the Hollywood glam, and David and I are both movie fanatics, so I guess it’s no surprise that we watch the Oscars every year. This year, though, we’re taking our celebrating to a whole new corny level. And for some reason, I felt inclined to share our corniness with you. So, without further ado, I present the evening’s menu, and the recipe for the dessert cocktail pictured above.

To kick off the evening, we shall be having Constant Garden Salad, for which no illegally obtained pharmaceuticals will be used. We promise. For the main course, Brokeback Ribs glazed with a Chipotle-Marmalade sauce will be accompanied by Pimp’d Out Sweet Potatoes (the kind that someone like Terrence Howard might sing about). For our dessert cocktail, a Chocolate Mint Crash Martini demonstrates that liquor of all shades can reside in harmony.

And, the recipe for the martini represents my first-ever contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging over at Kalyn’s Kitchen. Please give a big round of applause for…

Chocolate Mint!

To make the Crash Martini, you will need:

1 ounce of heavy cream
1 ounce of caramel or chocolate flavored cream liqueur, like Cask and Cream or Godiva
1 ounce of vanilla vodka
2 or 3 sprigs of chocolate mint

Smash the mint leaves and vodka together with the handle of a wooden spoon or other blunt instrument (I’m sure there’s a proper bar tool for this). This process, of infusing the mint into the vodka, is called muddling, I’m told. Let the minty vodka sit while you prepare the rest. In a martini glass, pour in the cream first and then the cream liqueur, carefully so that the colors mingle but don’t mix entirely (this requires a bit of a steady hand). Remove the mint leaves from the vodka and top off the martini with the vodka. Enjoy and try to concentrate on how well those flavors get along. Hopeful, isn’t it?

This is really more like dessert than a cocktail, but I bet it would make a fabulous addition to ice cream or coffee too.

The rest of tonight’s recipes are to follow next week…stay tuned!

I am not a lover of controversy. In fact, I hate confrontation of all kinds. Probably one of the main reasons I did not make a very good middle school teacher, in fact, was my reluctance to incite any ill feelings in my (12-year-old) students by confronting them. (They, of course, did not practice the same kind of restraint). This personality is much better suited for college teaching; I have had to have the occasional confrontation with a student, but very seldom.

Due to my non-confrontational-ness, I have been hesitant to post about or respond to any of this week’s food blogging controversy (involving this article about food blogging in Food and Wine magazine).

The sandwich pictured above has cheese on it, though, and it is, in fact, what I had for dinner last night, which is usually what I write about. Those of you who read regularly know why I write this blog, and it certainly isn’t to impress any professional journalist. I did my stint with a glossy magazine, and frankly, I’ll take writing about real food that real people might eat and cook any day. And, when I’m looking for writing about food to read, or recipes to use, I follow the same principles.

Take this Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, for instance. Earlier in the week, I made pizza dough, and baked a round of focaccia bread with what I had leftover. So, exhausted when I got home from class at 8 pm last night, I made a quick supper by slicing up some sweet potato fries to go in the oven, and then sauteeing some red onions, adding some thinly sliced steak, and stirring in some cubed cheddar cheese to melt. Is dumping this mixture on the focaccia and serving it with the fries (on a paper plate, to boot) worthy of professional food magazine snobbery?

No, and that’s exactly why I’m posting it. Because I simply don’t buy into the dichotomy: the choices cannot be reduced to either frozen already-prepared dinners or fancy-schmancy food that takes hours and hours. There is a happy medium: good, simple, not-processed food that anyone can make at home.

That space is the one this blog seeks to fill, and if, by entering into that space, someone finds something worth making for dinner, then I consider it well worth my time. I hope it’s been worth yours too.
Tagged: Pete Wells Loves Cheese Sandwiches

Since I began blogging about food, several people have asked me how I find time to do it, why I do it, where I find the energy to cook a different meal every night and then write about it, etc. There’s a meme going around, where different food bloggers list seven things about themselves in various categories. Rorie over at Milk & Honey tagged me to do it a few days ago, and while the seven things I say most often might or might not be interesting to you, I thought it would be useful for me to articulate exactly what it is I enjoy about this blogging business. And since I’m somewhat of a nonconformist, I’d like to offer it in narrative, rather than list, form (if that’s okay with you. Please don’t call the meme police .

(more…)

When I started this venture, this food blog, I planned on using the web space to finally write down my methods for dinner preparation and to share recipes with friends and family. As with most things, I had the idea one week, at possibly one of the busiest junctures in my life, and jumped right in head first the next week, designing headers and buying a domain name. Conventional wisdom indicates that you should do your research first, learning what you need to know before you begin a project. For some reason, I never quite learned that lesson.

And so, for the last several months, I have been composing a food blog the hard way, doing almost everything manually, from typing in the links to my Archives each week, to creating a not-so-efficient comments page. And, technologically speaking, not doing a very good job of it, (as I’m sure you’ve noticed if you use Firefox; sorry for all those crazy lines!) As the holidays neared, I decided it was time for a change. So, dear reader, I am happy to report that my blog comes to you now in its new, fully automated clothing.

One of the things I teach my writing students is that one of the most important pieces of information they need to gather is who, exactly, their audience (or audiences) is. One of the things I’ve realized, as I’ve engaged in this writing process, is that my audience is very diverse. Other fellow food bloggers, intimately familiar with the cooking and technological processes I utilize, sometimes visit. On the other end of the spectrum are friends and family, intimately familiar with me, but sometimes not with blog technology or even with the food. And then there’s a third even more ambiguous and hodgepodge group: acquaintances of people who know me, readers of other food blogs, people who just happen to be looking for a recipe for sweet potato grits. Whoever you may be, I’m happy you’ve stopped by, and I hope you’ll come again.

For those of you familiar with food blogs, you don’t need a tour of the new features on my site. I know this. But for those of you who come just because you love me or because you love food, I thought I might take a minute to tell you what you’ll find here. Just in case you care.

First, on the right side of the screen is information to help you sort through the information on the site. I’m in the process of updating all of the material I wrote last year so that it will be searchable and will appear in the Categories, but in the meantime, you can find a list of recipes and links to those posts in the page “2005 Archives.” The other pages are self-explanatory, random information about me and about the way the site began. You’ll also find a list of food blogs I like to read, one I’m hoping to continue updating. If you like to read about food or search for recipes, I recommend any of these folks’ sites.

At the bottom of each post is a place for you to leave comments, to say, “Hey you forgot the baking temperature for the cake,” or “I made that grilled chicken and it was delicious,” or just hello. You can see what other people are saying too, like a little virtual discussion. In the Categories list (also on the right), you can click one (there aren’t many up yet since I only have two posts in this new software) and see all of the posts I’ve tagged as main dish or snack food or family. Or, if you’re looking for something particular, you can use the search box at the top.

Or, you can ignore all of that over there and just come occasionally to read what I write here in the middle. However you choose to peruse the site, I do hope you enjoy yourself and find something delicious to cook. Both worthy goals in my estimation.

I’ve been tagged by Kalyn to tell you all about my ten favorite foods. Although ten is not many, I will do my best. In no particular order, here they are:

#1 Pizza! I love pizza of all kinds, especially homemade.

Here’s one with ham, artichokes, capers, and feta cheese that I made a couple of months ago. Perhaps my love of pizza has to do with the fact that it’s so versatile, or maybe I’m just a sucker for bread products of any kind. At any rate, I do love it so.

#2 Sweet Potatoes Evidenced by my self-proclaimed sweet potato week during Thanksgiving, my love for this tuber is no secret. For one thing, they are my favorite color. For another, they can take so many different forms: sweet, salty, baked, roasted, fried. My mom brought me a big bag of them for Thanksgiving, so there may be more sweet potato recipes on the way…beware!

#3 Mangoes Aaahhh, the mango. The fruit love of my life. I love these all by themselves when they are just ripe, super sweet and spicy, but not mushy. One of my favorite ways to dress them up is by pouring a little coconut milk in the bowl with the slices and letting the flesh soak it up. Yum…summer, hurry up! Why don’t I live in a tropical climate again?

#4 Pad Thai This spicy noodle dish has been one of my favorites ever since I was a waitress at the (sadly now closed) Brick-Oven Cafe in Jackson, Mississippi, a long time ago. As a matter of fact, when my husband proposed to me, Pad Thai from the Brick-Oven is the food he used to get me to say yes. It worked! This one here is my attempt to copy that version I originally learned to love.

#5 Boiled Shrimp One of the traditions in my family is that for your birthday dinner, you get to pick what we eat. I always choose boiled shrimp because my birthday is in June, and boiled shrimp are, to me, the perfect summer food. I love them with cocktail sauce, a simple salad, French bread, and really cold white wine. Have I mentioned already that I’m a summertime girl?

#6 Citrus One of the things I’m learning about my tastes, even as I write this up, is that I love contrast. I love oranges that are sweet and sour at the same time, and I like any dessert with (real) lemon that plays the sour effectively against something sweet (especially using butter, like in really good lemon squares. I need to post a recipe for those soon.) With the exception of garlic, lemons are probably the food item you’re most likely to find in my kitchen if you pop in for a random visit. I rarely am without at least a half of one in my produce drawer.

#7 Oysters I have always loved raw oysters, even as a child, and my dad would often buy them for us to swallow down with Saltine crackers, a squeeze of lemon and salt. Enjoying food in its simplicity doesn’t get any better than that for me.

#8 Cheese Another food I like to eat in its unadulterated simplicity, I can’t think of a cheese I don’t like. When we get the chance and the weather is nice, David and I love to have a picnic with good cheese, bread, and wine. We really are easy people to please.

#9 Peaches My second favorite fruit, one that also appears on my annual birthday dinner at Mom and Dad’s. My mom makes this fabulous dessert with a cream cheese layer, peaches in gelatin, and a pecan crust. When they come in season, I promise to make it and share the recipe. Other than in that dish, though, I love peaches with the tiniest sprinkle of sugar and a spoonful of cream. Simplicity and summer, these seem to be the things I love.

#10 Anything Sweet and Salty Again, contrasts are really what drive my passion for food, but this one is the one that kills me. I don’t snack too often because when I do, I’m not prone to stop until all of the snack food is gone. Here’s why: snacking for me means eating something sweet and then something salty, and the cycle never ends. This is the reason I love this Christmas Cracker candy–it is both all in one. Plus it is super easy to make (10 minutes, start to finish), fun to take to parties (people can never figure out exactly what it is), and makes a lovely gift. If you don’t believe me, you can just ask Chef Kristy. I sent her some for Blogging By Mail

Alright, so now you know what 10 foods I like the most! The 5 people I tag to tell us about their top 10 foods are, in a spirit of community, the last 5 people (not related to me) who left comments on my blog:

1. Chef Kristy, who wrote a lovely post about the package I sent her.

2. Rorie at Milk & Honey, whose blog I recently discovered through the delicious-sounding muffin-ish cookies she made for the Cookie Swap.

3. S’kat at Skat and the Food, who, from the looks of things started her blog around the same time I did, but I’m just now discovering it.

4. Chanit at Mom’s Recipes and More, who writes about very interesting food from Israel. Her blog is also new to me through the Cookie Swap.

5. Heather at Eating for One, who recently sent me a package full of delightful goodies.

Happy Meme-ing, everyone!

And here’s the recipe for the candy pictured at the top, as promised. Just don’t make it when it’s humid or raining; the caramel will be chewy instead of hard.

Christmas Cracker Candy

1 cup brown sugar

2 sticks butter (preferably salted)

Saltine or other soda crackers

1 12-ounce package chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil and coat with cooking spray. Lay the crackers side by side in a single layer on the foil. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the brown sugar and stir until it’s dissolved. Boil for 3 minutes without stirring. Pour carefully over the crackers, making sure to coat them evenly. Bake at 400 degrees for 5 minutes. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top, and spread to coat as they melt (carefully, so as not to mix with the caramel). Cool to room temperature, and then wrap in wax paper and foil and freeze. I love to eat it really cold, straight out of the freezer, but you can also let it return to room temperature. I make batches of this to freeze, a few at a time, and then give it away for Christmas. Of course, I always make enough to cure my sweet-salty cravings too!

P.S. It’s time to vote for your favorite cookies from the Cookie Swap. Jennifer and Alberto have posted the round-up, and you can vote for your top 3 picks by emailing them at cookieswap@gmail.com. Remember those spicy sweet potato ones with the sticky maple orange glaze…?