Life's A Tomato

It’s not uncommon for me to have deep-fried foods in my thoughts. I had just finished off a great batch of smoked deep-fried wings. I was looking for the next thing to immerse in hot oil. I’ve done all the ‘usual’. Pickles. Jalapenos. You know. But… I hadn’t tried beer-battered fried radishes. I used my go-to beer-batter. For dipping, I made a roasted garlic aioli but blue ch...

There was a block of Velveeta cheese sitting in my fridge. Most of it was gone. But not all. What was I going to do with the last 3 inches of Velveeta? Put it on crackers, maybe? That’s not a bad idea. But BBQ Velveeta smash burgers are a much, much better idea. Velveeta’s job in life is to melt and get gooey good and a smash burger is a darned good place to do that. These ar...

I have tremendous self-control around delicious Ranch dressings. Ok, no I don’t. Not even close to it. And Brother Jimmy’s buttermilk Ranch salad dressing is absolutely no help at all either. This is one crazy-good dressing. It doesn’t have a lot of ingredients but yet it comes out fantastically Ranch-y. Perfectly creamy.

A pasta salad can be like a blank canvas for your tastes. This Caesar Parmesan pasta salad is proof of that. Half of the ingredients we ended up adding were not in the original recipe. The pasta, dressing, and Parmesan were. After that, we ran with it. Mostly because of what we had on hand. And of course, because we like what we like. So why not make it with the things we lov...

Used to be, ham and bologna were about the only sandwich meats I knew of. That was long ago. Now, rotisserie-style chicken is a favorite. Where was it when I was a kid? Then, it was sandwiches. Now, it’s more salads. Salads like this Subway rotisserie-style chicken sub in a t...