Let’s talk about tortilla chips. I can and will eat them all. When the dude comes around at the Mexican restaurant with the fresh bowl of them, I have been known to lunge wildly toward him.
All these chips are belong to me.
So toasty. So crispy. So good for shoveling tasty dips into my mouth. Want to make them yourself? Oh, you can. You can and you should.
Hometown hero.
For the humans watching at home, the Derby is a marathon, not a sprint (not for the horses. For the horses, it’s over almost as soon as it starts). You need to have sustenance throughout the long day of standing around wearing a big hat and frittering away money on games of chance, so don’t be foolish: plan ahead and make some tasty treats for yourself. One of the snacks I’m sharing with you today is a Southern delicacy, and the other is a Louisville original. Pimento cheese and Benedictine are both great snack spreads that are good on crackers/white bread and are just two or three bites max. You’re going to be very, very busy, as I said, daydrinking and gambling, so you don’t want your hands to be occupied with something as silly as foodstuffs. Hands are for juleps. Continue reading
Posted in Food and Drink, Parties
Tagged DIY, hometown, kentucky derby, party, recipes, snacks
Confession: I’m not nuts about sweet tea. This sounds obvious, but it’s just so sweet. I can manage about two or three glasses of it per annum- any more and I feel like I’m just inviting Type II diabetes into my life.
With that caveat now given (and the weekly tea party announcement that I’m not a doctor), I love love love this tea recipe and this usually makes up about 80% of the sweet tea I consume. I adapted this recipe very liberally from Southern Sideboards, the excellent and tragically out-of-print Junior League of Jackson cookbook.
Delta Mint Sweet Tea
7 tea bags (the cheap stuff is just fine)
Rind of 3 lemons
20 springs of mint
8 cups boiling water
Juice of 8 lemons
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
8 cups cold water
Put the tea bags, lemon rinds, and mint in a vessel that will hold at least a gallon of stuff. Pour the hot water on top and let steep for 10-15 minutes. Use your time wisely and juice the lemons now.
If you’re concerned about wasting the rinds of those extra 5 lemons, just save the peel and make candied lemon peels with them.
Pick out all those things and dump in the sugar and lemon juice in. Stir until the sugar dissolves totally, then add the cold water. This makes about a gallon.
Okay, unlike most weeks, this is not the part where I tell you what a good thing you’re doing for your body, drinking this tea. Consider this dessert, and believe me when I tell you I cut a huge amount of sugar out of the original recipe. That said, you’re going to drink the whole gallon yourself, so good it is, that it’s safest just to double this recipe from the outset.
This is a great, festive non-alcoholic addition to your Derby party, but it’s also excellent if you Irish it up with a little bit of bourbon.
Posted in Food and Drink
Tagged junior league, party, recipes, sweet tea, tea, tea party
My friends Erin and Michael posted photos on Instagram of this bizarre avocado and broiled egg thingamabob the other day, and I decided I would try and make it for myself.
All things I like. No things I don’t like.
I must admit, I’m pretty impressed with myself. This was easy and comprised mainly of things you probably already have. Recipe after the jump!
Today is the day! I’m going on vacation! I whipped up these this morning as a plane snack, but I don’t think they’re coming. Roasted, crispy chickpeas: under a dollar, way healthier than chips, and utterly satisfying. Bingo. You could easily, easily make these Tex-Mex or curry spiced or anything your little heart desired; these proportions should give you a guide as to how much to add.
Crunchy Chickpeas
1 can of chickpeas, drained, rinsed, and patted dry
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
Drizzle the beans with oil, add on your toppings and toss well. Spread out onto a lined jelly-roll pan in a single layer and bake for 1 hour at 425. Reach into the oven about every 15-20 minutes to stir things around and make sure it’s all getting mixed up. Serve at room temperature.
There is not one word you can say to me that will convince me that you don’t want to eat that.
Because I’m a Southerner and also afraid of food in packages, I make my own pie crust. This has two benefits:
1. It is tasty.
2. It makes me superior to you, a person using the frozen kind from the grocery, in every way.
But don’t worry! I’m here to help you, and this is a three minute fix that requires virtually no skill. After the jump, I will explain to you how to fix this bad thing about yourself.
Sundays are a sort of non-day. If you come to my house on a Sunday, the odds that I am, you know, dressed-dressed are low, and the odds that I’m going to make you anything fancy at all are approaching zero. I will, however, have the most amazing snack spread out. This week, I bring you kale chips. Despite what Julieanne says about kale, your husband will not leave you and you will not shrivel up into a pile of dried leaves if you try out these chips (I’m serious. Girl HATES kale.).
Kids, this could not be easier, and they are way tastier and cheaper than the bag kind, and you won’t have to feel embarrassed about getting deliveries from Nuts.com. They also have a lot of sodium to keep them shelf stable, but maybe you don’t care about that and just want to eat a lot of kale chips without anyone finding out.
