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?

A classic tuna salad made with grated, boiled eggs.

Grated Egg Tuna Salad

I liked the texture of the grated egg salad I shared recently so much, that I decided to make a tuna salad like it! Grating the eggs makes for a creamier result over chopping them.

I pretty much followed the lines of my classic tuna salad, though I did change up the proportions a bit - more tuna, more egg and onion powder in place of green onion.

Flour tortillas filled with pan-seared seasoned Gulf shrimp, sauteed green onion and cheese, folded and browned in butter.

Shrimp Quesadilla

Quesadillas are good anytime, even for breakfast, and they are the perfect summer meal because they are not heavy, they're quick and easy to make, filling versatile and they just taste great!

Serve them up with salsa and a side of fruit like summer peaches and you've got a great meal.

I keep flour tortillas and shredded cheese on hand all of the time so I make them often, with various meats and cheese, or even with just plain cheese, and in this case, I decided to go with some Gulf shrimp.

My homemade take on the viral TikTok fast food salad hack, made with a kale, cabbage and lettuce base, dressed with a honey mustard vinaigrette and topped with honey and hot sauce tossed crispy chicken tenders.

Cabbage and Kale Chicken Strip Salad

If you're not a big fan of kale, stay tuned y'all. I think you'll love this, I really do! Read on.

The inspiration for this salad came from a video that passed my timeline on social media one day.

The gal shooting the video was sitting in her car in the parking lot of Chick-fil-A with a drive through order. The hack was with their Kale Crunch Salad and an add on 3-piece chicken strip meal which she tossed in the box with a packet of buffalo sauce and honey. She tore the strips with her fingers and topped her salad with them.

I thought it sounded good and since I don't have a Chick-Fil-A nearby, I got one of those well "I can make that at home" vibes y'all.

Raw shrimp, preferably Wild-caught American, peeled and deveined, passed through a milk and egg mixture, then into a seasoned cracker meal dredge and deep fried to golden brown delicious!

Cracker Meal Deep Fried Shrimp

Growing up, my Mama did not use flour on her fried seafood. She used boxed cracker meal.

If I had to guess, I'd say that once I started cooking for myself, I ventured away from using it because it can be a bit pricey and these days, even hard to find, but flour? Well, I always have that on hand.

I do prefer to use self-rising flour because it contains baking powder, which contains cornstarch, and seems to me to give a more crisp and crunchy texture than plain all-purpose flour does.

I know some folks have disagreed with me, and that's okay, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it y'all!