Chicken Santa Fe

Years ago when my husband and I were living in Nashville, there was a little cafe in the posher side of town called Green Hills Grille.  They made a smothered chicken dish that my husband fell in love with.  After we'd had it there a couple times, he asked me if it was something that we could replicate at home.  And so our super simple version of Chicken Santa Fe was born.

Fettuccine Alfredo

One of my husband's favorite dishes is Fettuccine Alfredo.  For years I was afraid to even attempt making Alfredo sauce, thinking it was much too complicated and I would screw it up for sure.  Fortunately for my husband, he traveled frequently and often had a pretty decent expense plan.  So he made sure to get Fettuccine Alfredo while he was on the road.

Why I Shred My Own Cheese

I'll let you in on a little secret.  I hate shredding cheese.  I have back problems and the constant up/down motion, especially for softer cheeses like cheddar, really starts making the tender spots hurt after a while.  Shredding my own cheese was, however, one of those things I picked up very early on in the cooking journey and did it for years.  After the dishwasher melted the handle on my very favorite grater (a rotary type grater with a coarse drum - proving difficult to replace), I quit shredding my own cheese in lieu of pre-shredded cheese.  But a few months ago I stumbled across a good deal on "block" cheese and decided I'd try to shred my own cheese again.

First You Make a Roux, or...

...breaking the canned cream soup habit.

The secret is to learn to make a white sauce.  Once you've mastered a while sauce you can bypass just about any recipe that calls for a can of cream of something soup.  I still have a very few favorite recipes that call for a can of soup, like my mother's meatloaf that uses the soup as the gravy, but for the most part, I've pitched all those types of recipes.

Poppy Seed Vinaigrette

I have no idea where I came across this recipe.  I've had it in my infamous "to make" file for years.  We use this over spinach strawberry salad.  The directions call for pouring all the ingredients in the blender, but if you wisk well while pouring the olive oil into the rest of the ingredients, you can make this by hand.  And really, there is something satisfying about making an emulsion properly by hand once you get the hang of it.

Since this will not be cooked, try to use a good quality olive oil.  The flavor will be greatly improved if you do.

To Market, To Market

There is a community market in the village near our neighborhood each Saturday morning.  One of our family goals this spring/summer is to buy local produce rather than purchase it at the grocery store.  We looked at getting a CSA box, but my husband and I decided it would be too difficult to meal plan without knowing what we're going to get until the day I need to go to the grocery store.  Also, while we want to try some new veggies, we don't want to get stuck with a box of something we discover we don't like. A good example of this is the Swiss chard someone gave us last summer. I thought it was very good, but my husband didn't care for it at all.

How to Improve Your Knife Skills

One of the things that made me a lazy cook is that my knife skills were pathetic. I still don't have the knife skills of a Top Chef, but I can dice an onion now.  Three years ago, I'd read a recipe and immediately gloss over ingredients like "1 small onion, diced" or "1 green pepper, chopped."  I figured I could make the recipe without those things and did.  And most of the time, they were edible, but did not have the depth of flavors that they could have had it I had included the vegetable items that needed chopped, diced, or otherwise cut.  It's not that I was afraid to use a knife.  I just didn't enjoy it.  It was too much work.