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We eat a lot vegetables in our house. In fact, I like to think that I cook a way above average amount of vegetables. Black beans, blackeyed peas, green beans, asparagus, butterbeans, corn, squash, carrots, tomatoes, okra, sweet potatoes, eggplant – all of these things are regular parts of our diet.
But.
I was born and raised in Mississippi. I spent the first three years of my married life in south Louisiana. And I now live in Alabama. And while we do eat healthily for the most part, I occasionally call upon my Southern cooking heritage when it comes to adding bacon and butter to our vegetables. So while I feel confident telling you that you could stop by our house on almost any night of the week and find several vegetables from which to choose, you should probably know in advance that you might not be eating them steamed and flavored with the teeniest bit of olive oil when you visit.
However, I think you’ll find that you’ll appreciate the temporary vacation from worries about your cholesterol when you experience that first taste of bacon fat in your peas.
Yes ma’am. Pass the cornbread. Please and thank you.
So just in case you’ve never experienced the joy of preparing and eating vegetables in the Deep South – I thought I’d offer a brief tutorial here today. You probably wouldn’t want to follow these rules all the time, but every once in awhile it’s good to kick up your soul food heels. And while it is not necessary for you to visit your cardiologist before implementing these methods in your own cooking, it is certainly recommended. As I always like to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of really good butter.
Amen.
1) If there’s no form of pork product in your vegetable, you’re doing something wrong.
I grew up knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that pigs and vegetables are BFFs. They go together like peas and, well, ham hocks. And even when I cook vegetables that aren’t traditional Southern staple – like black beans – I like to fry a little bacon, remove it from the pan, and then use those bacon drippings to season my beans. Which leads us straight to tip #2…
2) A little bit of bacon makes every vegetable better.
Sprinkle some crumbled bacon on a cooked sweet potato. Or mix it up in some green beans with sugar and vinegar. Or stir it up with some eggplant, onion, garlic and butter. Or add it to your bread crumbs when you’re dredging green tomatoes. YOU CAN’T GO WRONG. And more importantly? Your life will never be the same.
3) Go big with real butter or go home.
Now contrary to what you might think, I’m not advocating that you use large quantities of butter when you cook vegetables. But I am advocating that you use real butter. Nothing from a tub. Nothing that “tastes like” butter. I’m talking about the real deal butter – the best thing that ever happened to baked sweet potatoes or fresh squash. I’d rather use a teaspoon of the real stuff than a tablespoon of the fake stuff. Let’s embrace the real-live butter. It’s the right thing to do.
So. There you have it. The three primary ways I like to take perfectly healthy foods and occasionally make them significantly less healthy. And I’m so grateful that you’ve joined me on this somewhat fat-laden portion of my culinary journey.
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I add a beef bouillon cube to my green beans, bacon grease to my peas and butterbeans, REAL butter to my potatoes and oh yeah, cheese makes everything good.
I’m sure that okra fresh out of the garden carries a lot of nutritional value…but not by the time I get through with it. A dusting of cornmeal and flour, hot oil, and salt–a greasy little piece of heaven!
Cheese or butter — or — cheese AND butter.
CHEESE. On EVERYTHING. ‘Nuff said.
(Love your site!)
I must say I enjoy some fried okra dipped in ranch dressing from time to time. But my all time favs are fried squash with fresh sliced home grown tomatoes and hash brown casserole!
Cheese added to anything makes it better.
I love sweet potatoes, but mostly with tons of butter and brown sugar. :) (I do skip the marshmallows, so it evens out, right?)
I think that cheese and bacon make everything better – especially veggies!!!
I got to admit, I love me some butter (lots-o) and sour cream on a nice, healthy baked potato. My husband says that my grandma, my mom and I know how to kill the healthy right out of veggies by adding butter. And my poor 6 yr old daughter…well, she comes by her butter obsession honestly.
When I make green beans, I cook them with bacon grease, kosher salt, and bacon bits! When they’ve been cooked to death, I add sliced almonds that have been sauteed in butter! So yummy!
BUTTER!!!!
my cooking usually involves cheese along with the vegetables. a lot of chefs say a combo of olive oil and butter is the best of all sauteeing worlds!
Butter and bacon for this Southern girl, too!
Mmmmm, I can think of loads of things to “dress up” veggies but I love me some broccoli and cheese sauce! :)
Butter and cheese!
Wow, my guilty pleasure is making spaghetti, taking a jar of ragu traditional sauce and kraft parmesan cheese and eating a whole bowl of it. I ti salso my comfort food.
You cant go wrong with eating any vegetable fried and then dipped in cheese sauce or ranch dressing. Yum. Amen.
I should have known my future as a cook was written in the stars when I managed to burn a Dominos pizza in the box which I stuck in the oven (which was on a low setting, mind you) to “keep warm”. I then threw a glass of water on the box (inside an electric oven!!!) to put out the fire.
Did I mention I hate cooking?
When I was about 10 or 11 my younger sister and I decided to make cookies. My Mom told us we could go ahead and do it ourselves. This was our first time making cookies by ourselves, so we double and triple checked the recipe to make sure we were doing everything correctly. Well when the cookies finally came out of the oven they were the saltiest cookies we had ever tasted! After going back over the recipe with my Mom we realized that I had put an entire Tablespoon of salt in the cookies instead of a teaspoon. Unfortunately we ended up throwing the entire batch of cookies out! But I have never made that mistake again!
I have a tendency to burn anything I’m making and constantly set off the smoke detector when I’m cooking. My husband, children and I went to a restaurant for dinner and as we sat there, someone’s pager went off across the restaurant and it sounded just like our smoke detector. My son turned to my husband and said “That sound means dinner’s ready at home!”
I made some homemade frosting and didn’t realize how much food coloring was needed to actually turn it RED. My son’s fire engine cake was more pink than red. :) He was two so he didn’t care!
That substitution I accidentally did that one day, using crushed red pepper instead of dried red pepper flakes?! Yeah, that was HILARIOUS!!! And hot. Hoo mama, was that hot!
I used to be like all the other commenters, yummy cheese on all my veggies. I discovered cheese to be a migraine trigger for me and now I can only have a few kinds. (I so miss cheddar!) But since American cheese doesn’t come all shredded up in a pack like cheddar or others, I just stand there over my salad (or broccoli or potato or corn) tearing up my cheese slices. But honestly, sometimes it gets so tedious I just quit. I might actually learn to like veggies after all.
I recently tried to make chicken enchiladas from memory. It did not go well! I had to go to the store 4 times in one afternoon and remake the sauce twice! The worst part about it…a plumber was at my house installing toilets and he watched the whole thing unfold! He was not impressed with my abilities.
Oh how I love to bake. And oh, the baking disasters I’ve had!
My favorite story is from when our family got our first microwave when I was about 8 years old. I was in charge of making one of those Jiffy Microwave cakes. I carefully mixed the water and the eggs with a splash of vanilla. I poured it into the little cardboard box that came in the mix, and stuck it in the microwave. It seemed like a strange cake. And what was this little envelope of powder inside the box? Turns out, since the instructions didn’t IMPLICITLY tell me to add the eggs and water to the mix, I didn’t. So instead of cake, we had some kind of disgusting, sad little square of scrambled eggs.
My first attempt at making tea as a new bride led to a little kitchen fire… I left the tags on the tea bags and they were hanging outside the pot and caught on fire… I put it out and nothing was hurt but my pride. Then I cried and wanted to go home, but remembered I was a married woman and all that. So I dried my tears and started over!
Amen.
Love ya Sophie!
The first time I cooked for my husband once we were man and wife was on our honeymoon. We were staying in a beach house and I decided I would impress my husband with my grilled cheese making skills. I ended up burning both sandwiches, and bless him, he ate them and told me they weren’t that bad LOL. Ahhh, young love!
When I was 5 months or more pregnant with my son, I noticed gnats in my kitchen. a few days later I discovered the source of the gnats, a bag of rotten potatoes. Let’s just say I spent the next 15 min. in the bathroom bowing to the porcelian gods while my darling husband cleaned up the horrid liquified nasty smelling mess. Good memories. :)
I love cheese on anything esp veggies and in casseroles!I should just rub the cheese on my body!! ha
I was born a Yankee (please don’t tell). So when I married my southern husband, I had to make biscuits. I’d never had one, but didn’t think it could be hard. All went well until I misread the recipe and baked them at 450 for an hour. We had hockey pucks for dinner.
Ranch with any food is simply heaven! Yes,I am a ranchaholic! ;)
My father is from West Virginia and raised us eating french toast fried in a pan with bacon drippings. My husband was horrified when I married this fella from California who only makes french toast in BUTTER. He was equally upset to find out we put bacon drippings in our green beans too!!!
The Thanksgiving after my 1st son was born we had my in-laws (parental and sister-in-law’s family) over for dinner. I felt pretty proud that I was juggling making a nice turkey dinner for the family with a small baby around (not that I had to do much with the baby with all the family visiting). Anyway, I decided to make some sweet potatoes with marshmallows as one of our dishes. I cooked the potatoes and with a few minutes of cooking time left I added the marshmallows on top and turned the broiler on. Well that was a mistake. I went to check a few minutes later and the marshmallows had started on fire. I freaked out and started jumping around the kitchen. Thankfully my husband is more level headed and he grabbed the sweet potatoes out of the oven and blew out the fire. We scraped off the burnt part and everyone told me how great they tasted. They may have been just being nice, I’m not sure :)
My sister and I once made a sauce for a chicken dish. Or so we thought. My sister performed a post-dinner show by juggling the congealed sauce in the air. It’s probably important to note that my mom was out of town that weekend. Very important to note.
Funny cooking story. Well. It didn’t seem funny at the time. My mom didn’t really cook. She occasionally prepared food, but it was not uncommon for us to have something like popcorn for dinner. Or watermelon. Or sweet corn. As a stand-alone meal. So when I moved into my first apartment with roomies, I had to figure out how to prepare some food myself. I got out my new cookbook. And got ready to cook my boyfriend (now husband) an amazing meal of bbq’d chicken. It said to broil it for 20 minutes in the oven. So I did. Without checking it. When I took it out, the bbq sauce had actually turned to charcoal around it. I burned myself. But I served it anyway. And in trying to cut through the rock-hard chicken, a piece flew up and stained my shirt. I cried. And then we went to Green Mill for inside out sundaes.
Ok, so last week I made a bacon cheeseburger roll up… but FORGOT to add the BACON! (Forgive me for I’ve sinned!) I didn’t realize it until I took it out of the oven and cut in to it and saw there was NO BACON! Bacon & Cheese makes everything taste better!!!!
Anything to deplete the nutritional value, butter, cheese, ranch, frying. that’s what i’m talking about!
When my husband and I were dating I had the cutest little Sussex spaniel named Otis. Since Jack was a known dog lover I knew that Otis could only enhance my eligibility in Jack’s eyes except for one thing: biscuits. You see, I was working very hard to impress my husband-to-be with my cooking skills and Otis was the keeper of my secret weakness. I can’t make a good biscuit to save my life and Otis abetted me by burying all my failed attempts. Of course, in a attempt to enhance his own eligibility, the traitor had the unfortunate habit of digging up said biscuits and presenting them to newcomers as gifts. What a dilemma! Thank goodness for ready-to-bake frozen biscuits.
One of my most recent funny cooking experiences happened last year when I was baking a birthday cake for my parents (their birthdays are four days apart). I had the batter all mixed up and ready to pour into the pan. I greased the pan and then floured it. I noticed the flour seemed kind of odd, but couldn’t figure out why. I poured the cake into the pan and then realized why that flour seemed odd – it was corn meal. I dumped out the cake and had to start all over.
I love that my kids now recognize the sound of the mixer, come running, stop to grab a chair, pull it up to the counter, and ask for a beater to lick. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but it always makes me smile!
When I was a kid I tried to make a cake for Mother’s Day that used salt instead of sugar by mistake. It turned out terrible. It was funny when everyone tried to take a bite out of it, though!
This is one of my all-time fav stories.
My friend Wendy was making breakfast one morning and her sweet girl said, “Mommy? What’s for breakfast?”
“Boysenberry pancakes,” said Wendy. And looked over a few minutes later to see her daughter in tears.
“Mommy,” she sobbed, “PLEASE don’t make me eat poison berries!”
One time I said to my kid, Shane! What did I say I’d do if I found you with your fingers in the butter again? He said, That’s funny, Mom. I can’t remember either. Only Kids!
gmissycat@yahoo.com
Yesterday Shep told me my soup smelled like farts.
Was that funny?
When my granddaughter was 2, she was helping me make a pumpkin pie. When I added the ground cloves she looked at me and asked “you put dirt in dat”? Needless to say, she refused to even try the pie “cause gramma put dirt in dere”.
I *adore* my mawmaw’s vegetables— she throws in pork fatback in her freshly canned (from her GARDEN!!) green beans… tons of butter in her frozen (from her GARDEN!!) corn…..tons of cinnamon, butter, and sugar atop her (from her GARDEN!!) sweet potatoes… I am getting hungry just typing this. I want to drive the eight hours to her house RIGHT NOW just to eat her food…
In one of my first attempts at making something from scratch, I decided to make my Mamaw’s chocolate pie. I’ve made it several times with her but never on my own. I bought all the ingredients and got to work. The last step was to put the pie in the oven on broil so it would brown on top. While it was in the oven, I worked on cleaning up my mess in the kitchen. About 2 minutes later, I checked on the pie only to find my beautiful pie on fire. Yes, there were flames. Luckily it went out quickly, but the pie was burnt to a crisp. I called my mom in tears hoping to get a little sympathy. All I got was laughter. A little while later I got a call from my dad pretending to be Southern Living magazine wanting the recipe for my “flaming chocolate pie”.
It was 2 years before I attempted this again.
Last spring I was going to school full time, working full time, and studying for the Michigan Test for Teacher Certificitation. I was exhausted and my brain was fried. I was putting in a frozen pizza for dinner and talking to my Mom on the phone. Holding the phone with my shoulder, I opened the oven. I lifted up my head to look at something (I was exhaused and forgot it was holding my phone) and the phone fell in the oven and landed on a heater coil. My phone melted and we were not able to have frozen pizza until the oven was cleaned out.
My funny cooking story involved my dh stating that he could make doughnuts and proceeded to make them and then fried them and they were so hard and had to be thrown away and he loves to call himself “the chef”
tbarrettno1 at gmail dot com
I’m not a very fucntional cook, once boiled water for tea, forgot all about it, tea kettle turned black. Also boiling spaghetti noodles, forgot to put the noodles in.
When I was around 12 I was making cookies with my cousin. We didn’t read the directions right and ended up adding two tablespoons of salt instead of two teaspoons. Needless to say, the cookies turned out awful, but we did have fun tricking people into eating them. Well, it was fun until I decided to play a joke on my mom’s boss… if looks could kill…
The first time we ever had anyone over in our married life, we set a pot of oil on fire, filled the whole apartment with smoke, and ruined one of our brand-new lovely pots. I was so heartbroken, but it makes a pretty good story looking back!
The first “argument” my husband and I had when we got married, I was cooking Taco Soup. While browning the meat, I was seasoning and arguing. I’m grabbing seasoned salt out of the spice rack, shaking vigorously while trying to make my point to my husband. I finish putting together the soup. While the soup was simmering so did we. We made up, resolved our conflict and fixed us big bowls of soup. First thought from my husband, this soup smells funny. My reaction, without even checking was “No it doesn’t.” One bite proved me wrong. Instead of seasoned salt, I had used cinnamon. And let me tell you cinnamon and beef do not mix well. After some crying, exclaiming that we didn’t have anything else defrosted or enough milk for cereal, my sweet husband did the only thing he knew to do with 5 quarts of soup and poured it down the disposal. Then the sweet man took me to dinner at my favorite dive. It’s funny now, but it was quite the drama at the time!
In my first year of marriage, I decided to cook a recipe that the mother of a girl my husband dated in high school had given to us with our wedding present. The recipe called for 1/4 cup of chopped basil. I’ll spare you the details, but clearly in my cooking ignorance I didn’t realize there was a difference between dried and fresh basil. I chose dried because I had it, and let’s just say that the basil flavor was more than prominent. For the longest time, my husband and I thought that maybe she had “sabotaged” it on purpose. A few years later I looked at the recipe and realized where I had gone wrong. Man, had I gone very wrong.
Well, I have a great yet very simple recipe for Chicken Parmesean and it’s kind of my “fall back” when I’m having people over for a festive occasion. Once, I was cooking dinner for my mom’s birthday and I made a whole batch of chicken parm….WITHOUT the parmesean! It wasn’t quite as good!
Christmas 2005 – I decided to make my mom’s homemade bread as Christmas gifts for my friends and co-workers. I’d called home multiple times for advice on yeast, the right type of flour, the temperature of the water. I’d scrutinized the recipe within an inch of it’s life. I. Was. Ready. Until the part where the recipe calls for you to add nearly a quart of warm, yeasty water to 9 cups of flour, which I did in one swift motion, pouring the water into a mountain of flour on my countertop, leaving my kitchen covered in flour and yeast water, and my mom and aunt on the phone (from the hospital with my grandmother who’d just had a heart attack (and is fine now)) in complete stitches.
I tried to be domestic and bake my boyfriend at the time chocolate chip cookies. I misread the directions and used 2 tablespoons of salt instead of 2 teaspoons. I ate three just to prove how good they were. Then I had several glasses of water.
My father is famous for his cooking mishaps, mainly because he likes to experiment. One time he received a large amount of venison and decided to make venison chili from his father’s recipe. One bite in and we were all disgusted. It seems my father didn’t bring his reading glasses to the grocery store and bought Lemon Chili Powder. He also didn’t wear them when he cooked and poured it in to the stock pot he was making. The chili had a horrible lemon aftertaste and we refused to eat it. He couldn’t bring himself to throw it out (even though he admitted it was bad) and ate if lunch for weeks.
My husband is the middle of 5 boys. Way back in the day, families very seldom went out to eat, even on Sundays. And if you had 5 growing boys, well, you ate whatever Mom put on the table. Now my mother-in-law was a good cook, so I don’t know what possessed her to make that chicken liver loaf, but she did. Of course it tasted horrible, but my father-in-law said they had to eat it, until he took a bite. He put the whole plate of chicken liver loaf on the floor for the dog to eat, and even she wouldn’t touch it. So he said, “Grab your coats boys, we’re going out to eat.”
My prize-winning (or shameful?) funny cooking story is from the first dinner party I threw immediately upon return from our honeymoon. The date was my dad’s birthday, and we had all those fun! and shiny! new dishes and appliances off our wedding registry, so why not throw him an intimate little birthday celebration, I thought. I don’t think I can even begin to do it justice, but…. My husband threw a 9×13 FROZEN casserole in the oven without realizing it needed to thaw first– you’ll be shocked to know it didn’t cook, except for a 1-inch ring around the edge. I made a two-tiered birthday cake (so I could use my beautiful new cake stand!), but didn’t realize that the family-favorite chocolate icing was always served on a 9×13 FLAT cake for a reason– it didn’t spread at all. So it just puddled around the base of the cake. BUT the cake stand was pretty! We started making homemade ice cream in our shiny new Ice Cream Maker, but forgot about it in dealing with the casserole debacle, and therefore, the motor ran SO LONG, the ice cream melted and became chocolate soup. Also neglected while dealing with the casserole was the french bread broiling in the oven– which was rather crispy (read: BURNT TO A CRISP).
Thankfully, I had made a fabulous salad. Because that was all we had to eat that night. :) But it sure was a memorable birthday!!
When I was in 7th grade I took Home Economics. Part one of the class was sewing. I think it should have been a warning of things to come when I missed the fabric and sewed through my index finger instead. But alas, no those brave teachers allowed me in the kitchen after the sewing fiasco and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. I think we were making some kind of bread. Our actual making of the bread was a success. We didn’t forget any ingredients and the bread itself turned out great. The disaster portion of this cooking experience came when I took the bread out of the oven. After I set the bread on the counter I dropped the potholder in the oven and kaboom, it lit on fire. Ms. Tingle was quick to get the fire put out but needless to say I wasn’t allowed to take anything out of the oven for the rest of the semester. My family is thankful that I did master the skill of removing a dish from the oven after all these years.
In college our sorority was having a bake sale and several of us gathered off campus at one of the girls homes to make our items to sell…….as you can imagine we got really backed up on using the oven…..one girl kept saying her brownies weren’t quite done, over and over, finally I went into the kitchen with her to check them. The timer went off (yet again), she opened the door and reached in to pull the pan out….I grabbed her arm and said aren’t you going to use a potholder? She said “No, I don’t need to, the pan isn’t even hot”….she had NEVER turned the oven on. :) True story as I live and breathe and she is NOT blonde.
So, once upon a time, I was making mashed potatoes with Idaho potatoes.
Anyway, life went happily on and I peeled, cut, and boiled them bad boys. As they were boiling away, I started putting some of the peels down the disposal.
The disposing was going well until the the machine started making a funny noise and broke.
I would have never known why I broke it without my husband. Ever the fix-it man, he proceeded to fish out WITH HIS BARE HANDS everything I had put down the disposal. One handful of potato skins. Two handfuls of potato skins. Three handful of potato skins.Then, from the bowels of the disposal emerged a potato. A whole potato. A huge, whole, white potato.
Hubby looked at me. “How did this get down there?” I was just as confused as he was. “Uh. I have no idea. I mean, I dumped them into the sink before I peeled them, but, um. I didn’t see any go down the drain.” Ryan just laughed.
A bit more tinkering around, and he had fixed it. I was amazed. “How did you fix it?”
“I pushed the reset button.”
“It has a reset button?!” I didn’t even know it had buttons.
“Yeah, I pushed the reset button. Next time, don’t put entire vegetables down it, okay?” And off he went.
He’s the best, I tell you. The best in the world.
My funniest cooking story involves salmon croquettes. VERY early in my cooking “career” I decided to attempt salmon croquettes because I loved my mama’s. However, I had NEVER fried anything before (or formed any sort of patty). So– I created tiny, burned, hard, crunchy, salmon balls. Yum yum! :-)
This may be my cooking story but it is a family story that gets laughs every Thanksgiving. My grandmother was making her usual fantastic Thanksgiving meal with all the fixings. The dog was let outside and returned awhile later with a whole roasted turkey in his mouth. Someone must have put it out to cool!
About 15 years ago, I thought I would try to fry some sliced sweet potatoes. At the same time I was attempting to do this, I was also in the process of making jello for my (then) 4 yr. old son. Well, as fate would have it, the stove caught on fire from the grease from the sweet potatoes. My son – who is now 19 – still says I nearly burned down the kitchen making JELLO!!
love real butter. yum. anyway, my whole cooking experience as an adult is humorous. i’m slowly getting better. really, i am.
The first Christmas after our daughter was born, I was exercising every ounce of my ‘homemaking’ ability.
I made all our Christmas gifts. For some of the women in our family, I made potpourri jelly in crystal jars, hand-stamped recipe cards, and bath fizzies. You know, those round-ish balls made with baking soda and I-don’t-remember-what that fizz when they are plopped into the bath tub.
My sister-in-law is German, and she and my husband’s brother have lived in many remote countries as missionaries. She loves hiking, wading in creeks, and is NOT a girly-girl (but she tolerates me well).
She graciously thanked me for the potpourri gel, recipe cards, and bath fizzies and took them to their little rental house.
The day after Christmas, we all ended up at their little house playing games and visiting. Being the sweet gal she is, she offered to make a pot of coffee. She brings out the coffee, and a tray of cookies.
And there were the bath fizzies, mounded up and ready to be eaten.
I didn’t really come to cooking until I was out of college. Pre-college days my cooking consisted of boiling water to make tea. One night I couldn’t even do that correctly. I had put the kettle on to boil. It was one of my mom’s – ceramic with a wood handle. Everyone else was out and I had just turned the stove on and was sitting down with a book when the phone rang. It was my best friend (she lived next door) and she wanted to know if I wanted to come over for a bit. I completely forgot about the kettle. When I returned 2 hours later there was a weird odor in the kitchen. That’s when I looked at the stove and remembered the kettle. Not only had it boiled dry, but the ceramic had gotten so hot, the wood handle DISINTEGRATED where it joined the ceramic. So not only did I fail to boil water correctly, I destroyed the teapot in the process.
While eating dinner last night with our neighbors, I suddenly heard my 5-year old cry out, “FIRE, FIRE, FIRE” from the kitchen. Sure enough, fire was ripping through several hot pads and the microwave cover was slowly melting onto the top of the range. I had left a burner on and apparently loaded everything in my kitchen onto it before heading to the dining room to eat. As you can imagine, that pretty much set the tone (or at least the smell) of the entire meal.
This is as funny as I get (I’m pretty serious)! My son always hated sweet potatoes when he was little–this was to the point where if we asked him to try one he would gag. One day, we had lunch at my sister’s. We had burritos. My son said they were the best burritos he had ever had. Guess what? There were sweet potatoes in them! We tease him to this day!
They say cooking your vegetables removes a lot of the vitamins and nutrients. I say, take a pill and cook the vegetables. Butter, bacon, cheese, bread crumbs- they all work for me.
My children love salt…I’m able to get them to ingest broccoli, zuchini, asparagus, all sorts of things by letting them put salt on it. One night, when the medicine must have been awful, my daughter said, “ooooh Mommy, that needed more salt!”
I am a decent cook and have had marriage proposals from some of my cooking. (I am very happily married for almost 16 yrs) Anyway, a couple of years ago we picked a ton of apples from our local orchard. A favorite family activity. I proceeded to make some nummy homemade applesauce a few days later. Added a bit of sugar & cinnamon to sweeten up the taste a bit. Come to find out, it wasn’t sugar but salt! Had to throw out the whole stockpot!
Thankfully I still had enough apples to make another batch!
I once accidentally used salt instead of sugar in a cookie recipe and didn’t realize it until after I had served my guests. They were so sweet trying to hide it!
Amen, to the Bacon or fat back in the veggies. Can Ya’ll tell I am from the South?
My funny cooking story is that I tried once to cook cornbread in an unseasoned cast iron pat right after I was married. Let just suffice to say that the Fire Department nearly had to become involved. I must say that since then I have learned to cook a mean cornbread, and to NEVER cook in a unseason cast iron pan!!!
I caught taco shells on fire. Yep on fire! I just calmly closed the oven and called for my husband to come and help. I cant fix tacos with out a good laugh now :)
Newley married I wanted to make a good ol homecooked meal for my honey. So I got out the receipe for Meatloaf. I carfully put all the ingredients in & baked it to perfection! Dinner is served & as I take my first bite I thought WOW that is spicy! As I attempted to eat my second bite my eyes were watering & my glass of tea was gone! I asked Daniel honey is this spicy to you….b/c it eats hotsauce on everything so if it was to him I new something was wrong. Yeah honey it’s spicy what did you put in there? As I read the directions I new right away what my error was. 1/4 tsp of pepper turned into a 1/4 cup of black pepper & it was so spicy that the dog turned her nose @ it. I have never lived this down, but I have sense learned to make a pretty mean meatloaf!
My first Thanksgiving as a married wife I was determined it would be “just like mom’s” and had all the fixin’s. Because of school we couldn’t go home and our families were unable to come to us so we had invited over some single guys looking for a homecooked meal. It went well until the flawless looking pumpkin pie was served. Let me just say that pumpkin pie without sugar — not so good.
As a newlywed, I was so excited to get settled in our new home and begin my domestic career of having a hot meal on the table for my darling husband. First meal to make: baked lemon chicken. It looked delicious- chicken breast, green beans, and potatoes all baked in one pan on top of lemon slices. At the last minute, I sprinkled some lemon pepper on top and let it bake. Sat down to eat and first bite was AWFUL!! It was soo sour, I couldn’t bear another bite. My poor husband sat there and cleaned his plate. Guess the added lemon pepper was a bit much!
When my husband and I were dating we reached that time when it was finally the right time to make a meal together. We both liked Chinese food and thought that the orange chicken out of one of my cookbooks was a great idea! Main ingredients? Orange juice and orange jam. We both HATE orange flavored anything. But, we were newly dating and neither of us wanted to tell the other we didn’t like it. Needless to say, we went to PF Changs that night (and many nights since)….
Here’s an amusing, cheese-related anecdote . . . I used to work at a museum with people who were transplanted to Wisconsin from all over. My co-worker from Boston loved two things about living here: how friendly everyone was, and all the REAL cheese there was — shelves and shelves of different kinds in every grocery store!
Well, a newbie from New York was complaining that he couldn’t get Velveeta on anything when he ordered at a restaurant. He went on and on, complaining, asking “Why doesn’t anyone use Velveeta here??” My Boston friend finally had enough whining and said curtly, “Because in Wisconsin, we don’t HAVE to use Velveeta!” :) God bless her!
I love to cook.. I have two sons that think that only I can cook good. Being a mom you love that…
The first Thanksgiving after we were married, my brother-in-law was living with us for several weeks and I prepared to make my first Turkey dinner. Following my mother’s go-to tip, I boiled a brand new pair of nylons in a pot, in preparation for using it to stuff the turkey….(you set the ‘leg’ portion inside the carcass and fill it with your seasoned crumbs.) After the bird is cooked, give it a tug and the stuffing ‘bag’ slides right out. Turned out, however, the ‘new’ nylons I used were grey ones (she’d always used beige). After turkey was cooked, the drippings were a sickly green colour. For my first Thanksgiving, I served green gravy with all the trimmins! I stick with cheesecloth nowadays!
Ok…. not really sure if I read your post wrong of if I missed something. Didn’t you say to enter leave a post about a funny cooking experience? Not what your favorite veggie is? If not… my favorite is asparagus.
So, when I got married I could cook hamburgers, french fries, hamburgers, and hamburgers. We had them OFTEN! One night I decided it was time to try something new. I dug deep for this one. I preheated the oven. The ingredients were all laid out and ready for the pan. I just knew Jason would be surprised. Boy was he ever. When he came home the oven was smoking. He opened it to take out my first step to culinary arts. Flames in the oven! FLAMES!
I put the frozen pot pies in the oven and headed to take a shower. I didn’t realize you couldn’t put them on broil and leave them! Yeah…. we stuck to hamburgers for a few more meals after that. AND… our first Christmas together he gave me a fire extinguisher!
Butter and cheese on almost anything :)!!!
I love wilted lettuce with hot bacon (pieces and fat) and vinegar dressing. My Mom made the best!
Not a “real†cooking story, but so very funny. My husband had to dig up a pipe in the backyard to fix it. When he was done, he was going to seed it over, but the boys loved to dig in the dirt, so we decided to leave it for them to play in. A few weeks ago – the day after a rain – they went outside to play and I was getting dinner ready, doing chores, etc. I could hear them, but was so surprised after almost an hour that there was no fighting, yelling, crying, etc. I was thinking to myself, boy, they are getting along so nicely, I have such good boys maybe we can go out for ice cream after dinner as a treat. I stepped outside to compliment them on their behavior, and this is what I was greeted with
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049417&id=1330555949&l=d4efff91b6
I must have said something like “What possessed you?†and my youngest (the one covered from head to toe) said “I was making mud pies for dinner, but the recipe went all wrong!†I could not do anything but laugh, but needless to say, the area was seeded by the weekend!
My love for cooking all started in 9th grade home economics. I was making a caramel pie and had boiled the condensed milk for several hours. No one told Miss Freshman Genius you had to let the caramel cool before you opened the can. I was covered in it (but no major burns!). It was a rough first date but I’ve loved cooking ever since.
I love green beans from the garden, cooked up with onions and bacon and cooked till they look all wrinkly.. sometimes i’ll put new potatoes in the pot and cook that up for most of the day.
Another thing I was raised on, we call it poor folk food, is ham hock and beans. Mom would let that simmer all day .. onions, carrots, a bit of celery with that ham bone.. and some pinto beans, or whatever bean was around the house.. then she would bake up some cornbread.. We would eat it like this.
cut a square of cornbread and put it on the bottom of the bowl, ladle up some ham and beans and pour it over the top.. grab the container of maple syrup and squeeze that over the top and dice up some raw onion and sprinkle a small handful of that on top as well. Sounds weird to some, but oooh so delicous.
I wanted to fry some fish recently and was out of breading for it. I looked in my freezer and found what I thought was some flour breading from the last time I had fried fish. Not exactly – it was powdered sugar left over from Christmas cookie baking. Luckily I figured this out before I started frying them.
One time, I made a pot of spaghetti with my grandma. She had a can of dog food on the flat top stove and it overheated and exploded…we can assume, there were “bits” (or kibbles maybe) in the sauce. When I suggested throwing it out, my grandma just smiled and fed it to the (unaware) family anyway.
I didn’t eat that night ;)
Was blessed with an old-world grandmother. Although she didn’t teach me how to cook, I had an expectation of a high level of home cooking.
When I went to college some young women tried to impress me with a “home cooked meal.†Well, they (the dinners) were disasters.
I learned to feed myself, simple meals, likely solely by osmosis.
The young women would throw up their hands, as if in surrender, and I had to do the cooking.
Oh Gosh!
The very Best is frying some thick bacon, then removing the bacon and most of the drippings. Add two cups of thin sliced green granny smith apples and fry till tender.
Serve the apples on the side with
fried pork cops and twice baked potatoes stuffed with cheese, bacon, and real butter.
Oven baked acorn squash, sliced into halves, pitted and filled with real butter and brown sugar finishes an exceptional meal.
As a NC girl, born and raised…I have a theory….Tea should be iced and sweet. Green beans should be cooked with a ham hock…and squash and onions tastes better when cooked in a cast iron skillet!
Thanks
Shelly
I was making cookies just the other day. My kids were helping me. I cracked the eggs into the mixer bowl. I must have been tired as the WHOLE shell fell in with the eggs. Before I could stop them, my kids turned the mixer on! Laughing the whole time! We had egg shell cookies instead of chocolate chip cookies!
When we were first married, I came home from work just exhausted. I threw a frozen pizza into the oven and went to change my clothes. Apparently the bed was just too inviting, because I fell asleep. When my husband got home about 25 minutes later, he said, “What’s that smell?” I ran to the oven to find a blackened, curled up pizza smoking away on the shelf.
My funniest cooking incident was when I tried to use the made-for-tv Perfect Pancake. Lets just say that there was more batter on the floor than in the pancakes!
Cream cheese mixed with white corn and a little bit of milk and sugar…delicious!
How about creamy butter and then peanut butter on fluffy pancakes and then dripping hot maple syrup on them. YUM