Tomatoed Corn

A very simple side dish of tomatoes and corn cooked in sauteed onion and bell pepper.

Corn and Tomatoes

I guess we're just about winding out of fresh garden tomato season, even for down here, though I did pick up a couple of large tomatoes the other day... not quite knowing what to expect from them. I used some on good ole turkey club sandwiches this past Saturday when we were finishing off the last of the vegetable beef soup I made, and was pleasantly surprised to find them so fragrant and tasty. I thought for a second there that it was still summer! So what to do with this other one?

Well, I have been the lucky recipient of some pretty old cookbooks - most from estate sales and garage sales, some very old, some related to kitchen products or brands, some, well, just downright weird to be honest. We won't go there. One of the ones that was passed on to me recently from my uncle was an old Betty Crocker Recipes for Today binder cookbook from the late-80s. I don't recall ever having seen this Betty Crocker before, being the owner of the "red one" since the 70s. It sort of reminds me of a collection of recipe cards, but compiled into a binder.

Anyway, when my laptop was acting up again the other night, I shut the thing down, and since The Cajun was watching football in the family room, headed to the bedroom to do one of my favorite things. No, not that! I flipped on the spare television, and piled up in the bed with my magazines and a collection of cookbooks to browse, including that Betty Crocker binder. I ran across a recipe for Tomatoed Corn, a basic stovetop side dish of corn and tomatoes with veggies. Of course! So simple! I tweaked it a bit and the result is this wonderful side dish that would go with just about anything.

Here's how to make it.

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Under the Weather Easy Chicken and Noodles

With commercial broth and some already cooked chicken you stored in the freezer, this comforting chicken and noodle dish comes together in no time.

Easy Chicken and Noodles

You ever go to bed feeling perfectly fine, then wake up feeling rougher than ten miles of bad road? Well, when we have a change in the weather, that's pretty much a given with me. As I've gotten a little bit older, my body and my bones certainly feel these weather changes more. I try to remember to bump up my immune system in advance with Airborne (love, love that stuff) when I know it's coming, but sometimes I just don't remember in time.

Course, sometimes it just happens with life too. A week of restless sleep, going in and out between cold and heat, hanging with grandbabies and being around large groups of other children, and expending energy just tending to cleaning and doing chores, can really put a clink in the old body anymore and make me end up feeling a bit buggy some days.

While digging through and making room in my freezer recently, I ran across a couple of large bags of chicken backs, parts and pieces that I save, and figured it was stock making time.  Just smelling that stock cooking on the stovetop put me in the mood for some healing chicken noodle soup, but as I often do, I switched gears in the midst.

As a blogger of food recipes based on what we eat in our house, I often make the same dishes over and over just like any other home cook. For those of us who frequently write our own recipes, we also like to take these opportunities of cooking to bring new ideas and recipes to our readers in the form of something new that we can publish too. What started as a thought of chicken noodle soup, quickly turned to something more like a creamy soup. Then I thought I would change the noodle up a bit from my usual egg noodle. Then I thought of one of my favorite comfort food meals - Homestyle Chicken and Noodles. Then I decided to transform this creamy base into a sort of shortcut chicken and noodles and viola, this recipe was born!

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Tomatoes stewed down with a little onion, thickened with flour, lightly sweetened and just before serving, tossed with toasted squares of bread. Great served with fried fish and mashed potatoes.

Old Fashioned Breaded Tomatoes

Ahh sadly, it's the time of year where we lament the passing of summer tomatoes, because even if you have a few still producing plants in your garden, they will all soon be gone. I'm starting to see less roadside stands and more hot-house tomatoes showing up in the store, so that's a sure sign. Winter tomatoes are just not the same, sigh, but.. I'm gonna try to squeeze in a few more recipes while I can. This recipe is not going to appeal to all of you, even for those of you who love tomatoes, because of the texture issue with combining a stewed tomato with bread. Still, I know that some of you will probably have memories of your mamas and grandmas serving up a dish of these.

The primary focus of my site from the beginning has always been to focus more on homemade, from scratch, southern cooking, rather than quick fix, 5 ingredient, convenience cooking - not that there's anything wrong with that. Those recipes all have their place in southern cooking, and often we southerners are very endeared to some of them, so of course, I have some of those here too! But mostly, when I opened the door to my website, I wanted to feature and highlight some of the old fashioned, scratch cooking recipes that have been pushed aside by convenience and hurry up lives.

My main mission statement from the beginning has also been to recover some of those old recipes that are fast becoming lost recipes - things like Old Fashioned Boiled Salad Dressing, Lazy Daisy Cake, 5 Cup Salad, Copper Pennies, and Pineapple Casserole. This dish of Breaded Tomatoes is definitely one of those and you just don't hear much about it these days. Often served over mashed potatoes or rice, or even grits, it's an old fashioned side dish that dates back many years, to a time where it was important to cheaply, but nutritionally, feed a family, but still fill them up.

Basically a homestyle tomato gravy, but with a much smaller roux and bread added into it, it was sometimes called simply stewed tomatoes since that essentially is exactly how it starts off. I am certain the recipe, as many of the older ones do by design, had to have come from a need to use up food. Nothing went to waste in those days, and this recipe was a great way to feed a family, using an over-abundance of often over-ripened tomatoes, and some day old bread. It would be great with some of those tomatoes you canned over the summer, or even with good ole canned grocery store tomatoes.

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A breaded and browned whole cut up chicken is slow cooked
in a spicy sauce piquante.

Crockpot Chicken Sauce Piquante

I recently had the opportunity to review Emeril Lagasse's newest cookbook, Sizzling Skillets and this slow cooker recipe immediately caught my eye. Inexpensive chicken, spicy piquant sauce, and crockpot - good combination if you ask me. Hands down a winner and I think you will love it too!

I own a couple of Emeril's earlier cookbooks, and while I have enjoyed those, this one has already become my favorite by him. It's loaded with more than 130 recipes, representing a pretty wide variety of easy, one pot dishes that are both practical and delicious sounding, and I love the way that it's organized by cookery type - including, of course, recipes for a slow cooker! With recipes suited for big pots, casseroles and Dutch ovens, it's a perfect cookbook for the season too. And for those of you who are visual, there are plenty of full color photographs. Here's a little peek at just a few of the recipes I have bookmarked.

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Bottom round steak, slow braised with The Trinity and an easy homemade barbecue sauce.

Barbecue Round Steak

One of my favorite inexpensive cuts of beef has always been braising steaks, and of those I love cooking a good bottom round steak. It's a tough cut of meat, but give it a braise in some liquid, low and slow, and it transforms into a wonderfully tender piece of delicious beef. Here I've slow braised it with onion, bell pepper and celery, and an easy homemade barbecue sauce - just another tasty way to prepare round steak and one that The Cajun loves.

Be careful when purchasing your round steak though. Look for the larger single piece steaks that have to be cut up, one that is nicely marbled, or for a marking on the package that indicates it is bottom round and not just round or top round. They are two different cuts requiring entirely different preparation methods, but I have seen top round being sold in the store marked as simply round steak. Use a braising recipe for top round and you will very disappointed with a tough overcooked steak. Use a bottom round and you will be blessed with meat so tender you won't even need a knife.

Here's how to make it.

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Peanut butter paired with chocolate and bananas makes a great pie for any day. Don't forget the milk!

Elvis Pie

I suppose just about anybody would recognize the name Planters when associated with snack nuts. In fact, you'll pretty much always find Planters dry roasted or cocktail peanuts in our pantry. But did you know that earlier this year, Planters launched a brand new line of peanut butter, bringing it back into the peanut butter market after decades of absence? Thanks to the National Peanut Board and the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program, I recently had the opportunity to give Planter's new creamy peanut butter a try.

What better company to bring us a good, quality peanut butter than Planters, so I say its about time that Planters peanut butter made a comeback myself! I found their peanut butter to be very smooth and creamy, with a nice spreading consistency, and a rich, concentrated and grown-up peanut flavor.

Yum!

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Sliced potatoes are tossed with onion in seasoned flour, then fried in a bit of hot oil, covered and smothered with milk for a slow simmer. Simple, delicious comfort food.

Smothered Stewed Potatoes

This is one of my favorite potato side dishes, though I've also been known to make a pot just because I wanted some too!

It's very simple, classic country cooking - nothing particularly extraordinary about it or anything, but potatoes prepared this way are just so delicious and comforting. Simply sliced thin, then tossed with a tiny mixture of flour, salt and pepper, first cooked in a bit of hot oil and then covered in milk to low simmer until smothered down and tender. They are as at home as a side dish with that nice Sunday pot roast, as they are with your everyday chicken, or if you're like me, as a meal all on their own.

Here's how to make them. Seriously easy y'all.

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