A Girl's Gotta Eat!

About a month before I started my blog, Mike and I made Shrimp and Grits for the first time. Since this was recipe that helped lead me to the idea of having a food blog, I decided to invite our parents over and blog about the recipe at long last. I have never tried shrimp and grits anywhere else, but the following recipe would be hard to beat in my opinion. You have creamy, cheesy, slightly spicy grits topped with a sauce mixture of crispy bacon and tender shrimp—how could you possible improve perfection? Mike even commented after this time around that this is one of his favorite meals I make now. We adjust 2 things: we double the amount of grits . The amount made here just doesn’t seem like enough for the amount of shrimp made. When doubling the grits, we used an 8-ounce block of cheese, which seemed about perfect to us. Variation Two: we only use 2 jalapeños instead of 5. That leaves it plenty spicy for Mike and not so spicy it burns my mouth. When we doubled the shrimp recipe fo...

As I may have mentioned in a previous post, I’ve become hooked on farm-fresh eggs and milk from Nashville Famers’ Market (for those of you in the area, my faves are JD Country Milk and Schrock Farms). A few nights ago I was on the hunt for an easy dinner that at least resembled something healthful, so decided to go for a frittata. I had just received an oven-safe skillet for Christmas and figured this would be a good way to break it in. Many of the recipes I found made a bigger frittata that what I felt like was necessary for just Mike and me, and none of them used the exact ingredients I was hungry for, so I decided to wing it. I must say, the result was quite tasty and heated up well the next day for lunch at work. The following is my “recipe” for our Mediterranean Frittata . Cook about 4 slices bacon in a large oven-safe skillet until crisp. Remove to a paper towel lined plate to drain, reserving the 2 to 3 tablespoons of the drippings in the skillet. Crumble the bacon once it co...

A Facebook friend recently asked the FB world for help finding tasty vegetarian recipes to help her keep her New Year’s resolution to become a vegetarian. I remembered that the Junior League of San Fran’s latest cookbook had a vegetarian chapter, so decided to try out a new recipe… just to be helpful, of course J I decided to give Penne with Kalamata Olives and Cheese a try. It was really easy to mix together and VERY tasty. I bought my Havarti cheese from the deli counter (just ask them to cut it as thick as possible.) It was difficult to shred, so I just sort of crumbled it up into the sauce. I forgot to grab asiago cheese at the store, so we used Parmesan cheese instead. We also used chicken broth instead of vegetable brot; it’s what we keep on hand, and neither of us is a vegetarian. Last thing… recipe doesn’t specify to cut up the olives, but I did cut those I mixed in with the pasta into halves so they’d be more spread out. I think you would be fine either way. Hope you enjo...

In our latest issue of Food Network Magazine, Mike and I found (among many other recipes) a recipe for Grapefruit and Mint Salad that we had to try. It looked really easy, and we had just seen beautiful, ripe, Ruby Red grapefruit at Kroger. Realizing that a grapefruit salad would not be nearly enough for a full meal, we decided to keep it healthy and make some sort of fish/seafood. I had originally planned to try a new grouper recipe, but once I was back shopping at Kroger, I came across two dilemmas. 1) It is difficult to find grouper in landlocked Tennessee (only frozen was available); and 2) There was Coho salmon on sale that looked divine. I made a game-time decision and went for the salmon, buying one fillet for dinner tonight and one for salmon bisque in a couple days. I wanted to try a “new” kind of salmon, so went for Asian-Spiced Salmon, which I found in Fiesta Seafood Kitchen: A Taste of Pensacola , a book filled with nothing but seafood recipes. It seemed easy, but full ...