English Muffin Chicken Melts - Dolly's Chicken Feed

Chicken breast, folded into a creamy blend of mayonnaise, butter, cheese and savory seasonings, spooned open-faced onto lightly toasted English muffins and passed under the broiler until golden and bubbly.

English Muffin Chicken Melts

Last year, Dolly Parton, together with her sister Rachel, published a cookbook called Good Lookin' Cookin' (#ad) and y'all know, with a name like that, I had to grab me one!

On page 23, there was a recipe for an open-faced sandwich that they called "Chicken Feed," a recipe they had received from a friend years ago and one that had become a family favorite ever since.

Fresh chicken wings, tossed with lemon, seasonings and herbs and air fried.

Air Fryer Lemon Herb Chicken Wings

I love the combination of lemon and herbs with chicken, certainly one of my top favorites for a roasted chicken, so I thought, why not wings?

Afterall, as I write this it's football season and wings are just another football staple now, aren't they?

And let me tell you that if you haven't tried wings in your air fryer you are missing out!

Whole kernel frozen corn and creamed corn, paired up with a thickener and shredded cheese for a quick and easy, cheesy creamed corn your family will love.

Cheesy Creamed Corn

I realize we're on the waning side of in-season summer corn, so while you might just find the last of some fresh corn at the market, as I write this it's September and we're heading into fall.

Think about it. September.

Meaning Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner and this is a great side dish for either of those holidays. Others too and, it works well with a slow cooker! I'd say worth a bookmark.

Rotini pasta, tossed with pickle juice, cubed baked ham, cheese and pickles and dressed in a mayonnaise, pickle juice and sour cream-based dressing.

Dill Pickle Pasta Salad

I'm a pickle fanatic.

It would be a rare day that I didn't eat one with a sandwich or even just as a snack. Although I love bread and butter pickles, sweet gherkins and kosher dills the most, anything pickled is fair game - pickled okra, jalapenos, squash and beets - yep, love them all!

So, when I saw a dill pickle pasta salad going around social media I thought heck yeah, I gotta try that!

A creamy cracker spread made with cream cheese, butter and jumbo shrimp seasoned and sauteed in a skillet with butter and extra virgin olive oil.

Biloxi Butter - Shrimp Cracker Spread

Once upon a time it was pretty common here for home gatherings that usually involved some kind of card games, and maybe sometimes a little wager might have occurred.

Unfortunately, as society has changed and legal casinos arrived here in Biloxi, those home gatherings have pretty much dropped off - but the snacks served live on!

Biloxi Butter, a creamy cracker spread made with seasoned cream cheese, butter and local shrimp sauteed in a skillet with butter and extra virgin olive oil, is one of those snacks.

An old-school, cafeteria open-faced sandwich, made with seasoned ground beef, trinity vegetables and pizza sauce, finished with cheese.

Jack and Jills - My Way

I've actually never heard of these sandwiches before and I don't have any memory of them being served in my school cafeteria, although some of you may. 

I also have no idea how the name came about either, but it's another one of those vintage recipes that passed by on my browser start page and sounded good enough to try!

They are delicious! And bonus? They're also super easy to make.

A sheet pan meal of fish, shrimp and smoked sausage with broccoli and potatoes.

Sheet Pan Seafood Dinner

A few years back, sheet pan dinners were all the rage.

I never quite got into them to be honest, mainly because with a mix of proteins and different varieties of vegetables, cooking stages are often involved in order to cook everything evenly and not overcook others.

New York Pushcart Style Hot Dog Onion Sauce

Highly seasoned sweet onions, simmered in a tomato-based vinegar and brown sugar sauce and spooned over baked hot dogs, dressed with a spicy brown mustard.

Hot Dog Onion Sauce

Y'all. I feel so left out about onion sauce, or more specifically, pushcart onions. I had never even heard of them before now!

Food trucks aren't a big thing where I live, though we do have a few around here and there. We don't exactly have pushcarts here in the Biloxi area either, although Lucky Dog pushcarts do exist in New Orleans and apparently now in Bay St. Louis, over on the Louisiana/Mississippi state line. I've had a few of their dogs over the years.

You'll certainly find hot dog vendor booths at our festivals, though I'm more likely to buy a corn dog there than a plain hot dog!

A chicken salad mixed with shredded lettuce, sliced green onion, chopped tomato, shredded cheese, chopped pecan and dressed with mayonnaise, pictured stuffed in a toasted pita.

Patsy's Cheesy Chicken Salad

I love a good chicken salad recipe and occasionally I enjoy adding lettuce and tomato to my chicken salad sandwiches, but it had never occurred to me to include them in my chicken salad!

Enter me browsing through some of my old cookbooks and seeing this recipe in the cookbook Bless Your Heart: Saving the World One Covered Dish at a Time (#ad), and y'all, it also adds in the unusual ingredient of shredded cheese, so I knew I needed to give it a try!

A pasta salad made with farfalle bowtie pasta and cooked chicken, tossed with ranch dressing, bacon, grape tomatoes and baby spinach.

BLT Bowtie Chicken Pasta Salad

Good gracious the heat!

As I publish this here in July we've been under an extreme heat warning, not just the average heat warning, for days. I'm intensely thankful for air conditioning these days, and frankly the ability to pay for it cuz y'all... it ain't cheap for sure!

How's that heat going for the meal planning here lately?