Kitchen Scoop Blog

If it’s strawberry season we look for every excuse to eat them. This recipe is sort of feels like cheating – (cheating on what exactly we’re not sure) -- but it’s sinfully good.

When I have trouble getting excited about coupons, which is often, I turn it into a game. Especially when it's a savings so small you'll need a magnifying glass, such as a 20-cents-off coupon, I play the “percentage game.”

It’s a mind game, really. I just think of that coupon savings as a 20 percent “investment return” on a dollar.

People who seem perfectly planned, 24-7? Fakes, all of them. Or maybe that's what I choose to believe in order to maintain even a drop of self-esteem.

Poor planning and poor choices are my constant downfall. I’d much rather sleep late than start the slow cooker. But every once in a while it's not my fault: A child spikes a fever or the power goes out. Then Little Mary Martyr (my thin disguise) so enjoys marching through the house.

By sunset the reason dinner isn't fixed doesn't matter. It's time, and the escape routes are limited. Chances are I’ve already gone the restaurant route this week, and the thought of cereal makes me gag.

Recently I overhead two friends talking about trying new things for dinner. One of them said, “You have to be brave in the kitchen."

I couldn’t agree more. When Beverly and I started writing together 15 years ago, we were both decent cooks. I mean we weren’t poisoning our families, but we struggled to feel creative and have any energy left for bath-time. (All our kids were in pre-school at the time.)

That seems a lifetime ago and in many ways it was. What was our struggle then, is not really our struggle, now, or is it?

Calling all heirloom bakers! I’m on a mission to learn to make what I affectionately call Southern Funeral Cake. It’s a yellow layer cake from my childhood topped with a most amazing, dense caramel frosting. The only time I ever got to eat Caramel Cake was at the big meal back at the house after somebody died, and thus my nickname for it.

(My mother’s only culinary oversight, her only true kitchen failing, is that she never learned to make this particular cake. Perhaps that’s why I crave it, but I don’t think so. It’s definitely a recipe worth begging and pleading for.)

My hunch is making this confection is not easy or quick. It probably involves a candy thermometer and the dreaded “soft ball stage.” But I would give hours out of my weekend to get a really authentic recipe and to get enough advice to figure out how to make this frosting turn out right.

So. Here I am pleading. Help me if you know where I might find a recipe for authentic Southern Caramel Cake. If you’re able to offer technical consultation, that’d be great too!

The verdict for my grand Spaghetti Madness experiment: A huge success! Daughter Grey and her friend Jessica Austin made four batches of My Best-Ever Salvation Spaghetti yesterday.

In progress quotes from Jessica: “I can’t believe how quick this is.” And: “Can you freeze it?” (Yes.) And, finally, “This is soooooo good.”

Quotes from Grey: Not many. She’s not really into cooking. But that’s another blog.

Jess took her pot home to feed her family and Grey invited The Boyfriend over for dinner. (She cooked. Turns out she doesn’t know how to cook noodles. Boil water first. More evidence of my poor parental skills, but again, that’s another story!)

The anticipation is running high to see how the Austin family – sophisticated worldly folks – rated this too-easy-for-words sauce. It’s not sophisticated. It’s just good. I think. If you decide to make it, let us know what YOU think here on The Scoop!

For a long time the idea that there could be anything at all special about my spaghetti sauce made no sense to me. It was just too easy. Too fast. Too un-Italian and very, very un-gourmet. Well, before I tell you the story, be aware that Today Is The Day! Three teenagers will descend on my kitchen at noon and I am going to teach them to make The Best Spaghetti Sauce Ever. (You can follow the progress live on Twitter.)

But first, here's the backstory:

The only time I served it in public, my neighbor flew out on a family emergency. So I invited her husband/kids for dinner, giving the “anything-is-better-than-nothing” speech. Spaghetti really was all I had.

At first he was just being polite, complimenting my sauce. Surely. So I just kept chewing. But then he kept insisting he HAD to get this recipe. My cheeks burning red as the canned tomatoes on his noodles, I offered to write it down. (But my spaghetti sauce isn't even a recipe and I STILL don't have it written down. That will change today!)

I’ve got a new favorite kitchen tool. It’s an immersion blender, also known as a stick blender or hand blender. Basically it’s a blender you put into the food instead of the food into the blender. And it’s perfect for pureeing soups as well as mixing drinks, blending individual milk shakes and more.

If you’re looking for a last-minute gift for the chief cook on your list, this is it. Available at mart-type stores, kitchen stores and scads of online stores, immersion blenders are priced from under $25 to over $100 depending on the brand and attachments.

Because these handy tools are so easy to clean (most are dishwasher safe – check before buying), they’ll score high with the chief dishwasher, too.

Chicken salad shows up at the table with all manner of fancy ingredients these days – from fruit to nuts to sour cream to who-knows-what. But back in the day, as our grandmothers might have said, things were a bit simpler.

Chicken salad started with moist poached chicken, leaned heavily on mayonnaise and rarely brought along anything extra besides eggs, celery and pickle. That’s what we sometimes call Soda Fountain Chicken Salad, because in the old days in the South, every lunch counter worth its salt served exactly this. We crave it still.

So our recipe for Old-Fashioned Southern Chicken Salad might not be trendy, but again, as our grandmothers would testify: It “sure is” good.

My son will be home from college in just a few hours and I fear I’m out of practice cooking for four. After spotting my Tweets on the sad state of my refrigerator capacity, several friends on Facebook offered comments:

“Plan out your menus for the week?!? My money is on the 20-year old eating your Wednesday plans for a Tuesday snack. Good luck!”
--Stephen Colby

“You must be a cooking guru! I got an all refrigerator and all freezer when we remodeled. It makes a difference especially for all the frozen things. I still have an extra freezer in garage and could use another refrigerator. Guess we don't eat like our ancestors with all the fresh stuff. Guess that's why we are not as healthy either!! No exercise in the garden and outdoors. Maybe you can come up with another cookbook about getting back to nature. It's a lot faster to eat fresh, unprocessed stuff. But nobody likes it! Oh, well.”
--Catherine Cooke

I’m still accepting condolences, ideas and admonitions here on Kitchen Scoop if you have anything to add.