A quick one-pot, skillet meal of chicken, seasoning veggies, diced tomatoes, yellow rice and cheese.

Cheesy Chicken And Yellow Rice Skillet

I don't buy a lot of rotisserie chickens.

Not that I don't love them, because I do, and not that they aren't convenient, because they sure are. It's just now that I'm finally seeing whole chickens showing up on sale again here lately, I always pick up a couple of them.

Sometimes I bake my own rotisserie style version in the oven, or I grill one or smoke cook it on the Traeger (#ad). Other times I use the Instant Pot (#ad), and I'm loving the way that the air fryer works for a whole chicken too.

Pork chops, rubbed with Southwestern seasonings, seared in a skillet and finished in a tomato-based sauce. Serve over hot cooked noodles or steamed rice.

Southwestern Pork Chops

Pork chops are on a regular rotation around here. My husband, aka The Cajun, loves them and he'd probably be perfectly happy if I just fried them all the time, I tell ya!

Gotta admit, yeah those are really good, and I love watching my husband gnaw them down to the bone, but let's be real.

Far as I'm concerned, speaking as a Southern born and bred gal, I think fried food is perfection, and much as we'd like to, well we just can't eat it that often y'all. I'm always looking for different ways to serve my pork chops.

Pineapple Chicken Salad

Chicken salad, made with cooked chicken and classic seasonings, with the addition of pineapple.

Pineapple Chicken Salad

I love a good chicken salad!

I make one that is a basic deli-style chicken salad the most often, but I've ventured out to try some new things over the years of blogging about food and recipes.

I have about a half dozen full recipe posts for different chicken salads, though some of those have multiple variations in the notes that I've also tried over the years, and yet more in drafting stages.

May 2023 Wrap-Up: What You May Have Missed!

May 2023 Wrap-Up: Small Batch Fresh Tomato Relish, Creamy Cajun Shrimp and Sausage with Noodles, Buttermilk Banana Snack Cake, Ranch Oyster Crackers and Mulitas - Chicken Tortilla Sandwiches - did you miss anything?

May 2023 Wrap-Up

Whew y'all! May sure did fly by.

Did you catch all of the new recipes that posted up on Deep South Dish during the month?

Here's a quick round-up, in case you missed anything!

Small Batch Fresh Tomato Relish

This easy to make fresh tomato relish adds a great punch of bright flavor to so many dishes, you'll want to have some in your refrigerator all summer long!

Fresh Tomato Relish

With summer tomatoes heading in soon, I thought it would be a great time to introduce this fresh tomato relish. Of course, it's good even with hot house tomatoes throughout the year, but you just really can't beat the superior flavor that comes from backyard or otherwise locally grown fresh tomatoes.

What exactly is a fresh tomato relish?

It's a little like a pico, minus the lime and cilantro, but made with a dressing that is much like the well-loved tomato salads we consume here in the south all summer long - a little sour, a little sweet.

A quick skillet meal of shrimp and smoked sausage with wide egg noodles in a creamy sauce.

Creamy Cajun Shrimp and Sausage with Noodles

We are so blessed with fresh seafood and Gulf shrimp is available year round, very often fresh off the boat which is my preferred method of purchase. 

I'm always fooling around with different shrimp and pasta combinations to try different things and this is one of those instances. As a recipe writer and owner of a food-related website, there's a lot of experimenting and often it takes multiple tries to get a recipe just right.

At least that's my philosophy as a food blogger, because one thing I can guarantee and that is when a recipe appears on my website, it has been well-tested to meet my approval.

A light and tender snack cake made with buttermilk and bananas.

Buttermilk Banana Snack Cake

I am not a baker. Y'all pretty much know that if you've been hanging around this blog any length of time.

I'm much more of a savory home cook and baking has just never been my thing so I don't bake much and really, you kind of have to bake regularly in order to build experience in it!

So funny though, but I broke all of the known rules of cake making with this snack cake, which is probably why I'm not much of a baker!

Oyster crackers get transformed into a terrific snack or salad topper when infused with salad oil, ranch seasoning, a few common seasonings and then lightly baked.

Ranch Oyster Crackers

I think that pretty much everybody is now familiar with the seasoned snack crackers marinated in a blend of oil, dry ranch seasoning and a few flavor enhancements.

They often start with saltines these days like my Firecracker Saltines, but did you know that they actually originated with oyster crackers? Yes! Oyster crackers are not just for oyster stew or soups. They make a nice, crunchy, comforting snack too.

Folks have moved on even further to include a wider variety of crackers and forms of seasonings, bumping it up with red pepper flakes and a little cayenne, lemon pepper, Creole or Cajun seasoning, even Worcestershire. 

Known as Mulitas in Mexican culture, highly seasoned chicken is sandwiched between homemade corn tortillas with shredded cheese and finished with guacamole or avocado, sour cream, pico de gallo or salsa, or whatever your favorite toppings are.

Chicken Tortilla Sandwiches (Mulitas)

I don't remember where I first heard about mulitas, and, in fact, when I first did, I mistakenly assumed it was just another name for a quesadilla!

The reason for that is that I usually make my quesadillas the same way as these mulitas.

Although both can have very similar fillings, some of the differences I've seen between quesadillas and mulitas include:

The flavors you love in a saucy and cheesy baked ziti, made one pot easy using uncooked pasta in an Instant Pot! Round out the meal with sweet tea, a mixed garden salad and some hot garlic bread.

Instant Pot Ziti

To say that I love pasta would be an understatement.

Thankfully so does my hubby, aka The Cajun, so we eat some sort of pasta dish regularly and one of my favorite ways to make pasta is in the Instant Pot!

Now, to clarify, just in case you're happening on my website for the first time, first, welcome! Second, come join us over on our Facebook page because I feature a lot of my past recipes there every day, and third, when I speak of the "Instant Pot," it is often in the context of using it as an electronic pressure cooker, though technically speaking it is a multi-function pot, and it is only one brand of said families of multi-pots. There are many others out there, all of which work with the recipes here designated as "Instant Pot," when used with the pressure cook function.