BasilandFig

I’ll be honest: when I first became a vegetarian, I missed meat.

Hamburgers, pork chops, steaks and bacon I could do without.

What I missed the most were Salt Works hotdogs and sausage.

And most especially, this soup.

Usually most recipes can be easily adapted to be vegetarian without any major loss of, shall we say, recipe integrity.  Collard [...]

For the longest time, I didn’t know there was such a thing as baked macaroni and cheese.  Macaroni and cheese came in a box, the cheese was powdered, the end.  Homestyle mac-n-cheese was a mysterious and elusive thing, showing up occasionally at church potlucks.

[Let me go off on a tangent here and share with you [...]

Look, I know buttermilk is sort of having a ‘foodie moment’ right now, that it might be the pork belly of 2012.  There are these buttermilk shakes; the blueberry buttermilk shakes on special at Duck Fat; buttermilk banana bread; a new cookbook devoted entirely to buttermilk; and, of course, buttermilk biscuits which are no passing [...]

Technically, it’s not yet summer.

But in North Carolina and other points southward that’s just a calendar quirk, a mere technicality.

The cicadas are out, the daylilies blooming, the zucchinis inching longer by the minute.

And mid-afternoons are a sweat-swooning, heat-blistering, skin-burning event.

There is only one remedy for these types of Southern summer afternoons: iced tea.

Let me stop you right there and go ahead and answer the question you were about to ask:

Yes.

Yes, you are going to want to make these.

Yes, it is worth it, even if you have to buy your raspberries at the (gasp!) grocery store.

They are ridiculously easy to make and require only two ingredients, one of [...]

If you are from the South, then you will know that any church potluck worth its salt is going to have deviled eggs.

If you are truly a southern cook, you may even have a platter with small divots in it specifically for serving deviled eggs.  In which case you will know that deviled eggs contain [...]

Pssst!

Hey, you!  Yes, you.

Do you wanna know a secret?  One of the secrets to delicious southern cooking?

Okay, lean in close and I’ll tell you.

The secret is…

MAYONNAISE!

Alright, maybe you shouldn’t have leaned in that close.

Now please try not to gag as you imagine obese SAM’s Club patrons filling their carts with gallon vats of Hellman’s.

I am [...]

Since we’ve already established that you aren’t going to screw with your family’s sacred Thanksgiving menu (except for this brown-butter pecan pie; you should definitely make this since it’s okay to change your pie lineup) I’m not going to waste your time trying to convince you to make this.

Make it—or don’t—I don’t care.

I will tell [...]

Since we’ve already established that you won’t be making any of these recipes for Thanksgiving this year, I thought I’d share with you another way that you can spend your holiday not cooking new recipes.

And that way is: go to Golden Corral.

Please enjoy this completely random selection of photos.

Going to Golden Corral for Thanksgiving [...]

Apparently I completely forgot to take any photos of the squash casserole last year. Please enjoy these random photos instead, like this almost-double-rainbow.

I’m not sure why every year magazines go all out for Thanksgiving, printing huge photo spreads and bazillions (yes, that is an exact mathematical figure) of recipes for UPDATED CLASSICS! and [...]