This past week our stateside cooking adventure took us to Mississippi. While we were researching recipes it became very clear that two dishes are synonymous with the Magnolia State – catfish and Mississippi Mud Pie. It also happens that I need a dessert to take downstate to a family get together this weekend.
My family has a traveling 9″x13″ pan that always carries my favorite dessert when it makes its way up to this part of the state – my Grandma’s Blackberry Cobbler. Then when we head south, my mom whips up a chocolate dessert to take back in the pan. It just so happened that this time, the pan was at my house, giving us the perfect opportunity to try the Mississippi Mud Cake (similar to the pie, but suitable to this size baking dish).
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m not big on baking cakes and especially cakes that involve icing; but there are two things I love about this recipe: 1) It’s easy. 2) It’s supposed to look like mud. I figured that the kids and I could tackle this one. We chose Paula Deen’s recipe because she too is synonymous with the south. Continue reading


What do you get when you combine a missing ingredient, a last-minute recipe change-up, a child trying to jump out of a grocery cart, noise from four different sources (not counting the children) in our little kitchen, a frazzled mom, a child standing on top of the kitchen table, a burned thumb and biscuits spilled on the bottom of the oven?
were awfully good winter fare.
diced things all the time. Quite a lot of progress in a week, I was proud of him. Nervous though, and nervous his little sister’s gonna want to start chopping things too. While Mom finished dicing, Mr. N juiced the lemon, then drank the excess straight! Miss A wasn’t so keen on that. A little bit of spice, a little bit of microwaving, and a little bit of mashing and we had Appelmoes.
These next few weeks we’re heading to Holland – land of tulips, wooden shoes, windmills, and Amsterdam. Admittedly we don’t know much about Holland but we do have a bit in our ancestry somewhere along the line. So tonight we’re going to dive in and get in touch with some of our roots. On the menu some traditional Dutch fare: Jachtschotel(Hunter’s Dish) served with Poached Pears.