Remember this morning when we were talking about Banana Pudding Ice Cream? I totally forgot to mention the homemade vanilla wafers. A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone who mentioned how she’d never dream of putting Nilla® Wafers in her banana pudding. She always made her own. I’d never given them much thought, but she was so passionate about it, I had to taste the difference. It’s a good thing she wasn’t talking about meth.

There’s nothing difficult about making your own vanilla wafers. You probably have the ingredients: butter, sugar, salt, eggs, vanilla and flour. Just roll the dough into logs, chill, slice and bake. When the cookies come out of the oven, they’ll still be light on top, but their edges and bottoms will be golden, which is why, in the year 2035, they’ll be known as “Goldbottoms.”

So, how do they taste? Read More…

(Pssst! If you’re a Tuesdays with Dorie member looking for my Perfect Party Cake, it’s here.)

So, I’m getting ready to post this Banana Pudding Ice Cream when I check my Google Reader, and – what the huh? – Joy the Baker has posted a one-year rewind of her Banana Pudding Ice Cream. Her recipe channels that old-school flavor, with bananas, banana instant pudding, vanilla wafers and Cool Whip. This Lee Bros. recipe is a little more like a Bananas Foster ice cream with vanilla wafers added at the last minute. There’s definitely room for both. Read More…

Grocery tomatoes are like child prodigies, forced into service while they’re still all-potential. And toothy. By comparison, homegrown tomatoes are allowed to lollygag in the sun, just growing. Getting redder and riper until they develop something akin to personality. Most grocery tomatoes aren’t fit to top a taco, but a homegrown tomato can stand on its own. You won’t find a summertime supper at my mother’s without a plate of sliced tomatoes, simply but tastefully dressed in olive oil and vinegar and seasoned with salt and pepper. Homegrown tomatoes are the prize of patience.

So, while the tomatoes are good and plentiful in home gardens, farmers’ markets and Topsy-Turvys® across the land, it makes sense to enjoy them center-stage, not just as a condiment but as part of the main event. I love a tomato sandwich on sourdough or an Italian grilled cheese (with sliced tomato, provolone and fresh basil), but my favorite way to enjoy homegrown tomatoes is sliced, seasoned and baked on a bed of bubbling mozzarella inside a basil-garlic crust. Read More…

I was going to write about trying gazpacho for the first time, specifically Ina Garten’s version, which is one of this month’s Barefoot Bloggers recipes. Yesterday, I bellied-up to a big, bracing bowl. Simple. Fresh. Fast. And it didn’t taste like salsa.

But I’m not thinking about that tonight. I’m thinking about Michael and Farrah.

In summer 1984, there wasn’t a more coveted, longed-for object than a ticket to the Jacksons’ Victory Tour. That was when the “M” in MTV seemed to stand for Michael. Kids were trying to teach themselves how to moonwalk. Everyone could sing along to every song on “Thriller.” The height of Michael Jackson Mania. I was 10. My parents did not share my obsession. The closest tour stop was Knoxville, but he might as well have been performing on the Great Wall of China. I wasn’t going. There was absolutely no hope. And then a Nashville radio station announced a ticket contest: you could send them a postcard, and if they drew your name, you had 10 minutes to phone the station to claim your tickets. I mailed one postcard. In secret. And every night I turned down my radio (so my parents wouldn’t know how late I was staying up) and listened for my name to be called.

Read More…

A few weeks ago, a friend’s son saw a preview for TLC’s “18 Kids and Counting” and announced: “That means they’ve had The Sex eighteen times.” Not the most comfortable moment for my very-pregnant friend, but you’ve got to admit, the kid has an impressive mastery of cause-and-effect.

When Jeff and I decided to try this Grilled Caribbean Pork Tenderloin, I wasn’t exactly sure what we’d get, mainly because of the marinade. The tenderloin was supposed to soak for six hours in an opaque bath of coconut milk, Vidalia onion slices, fresh ginger, garlic, Scotch bonnets, dark brown sugar, lime juice and dark rum. And when you bring such disparate forces together, things either go right or wrong. There is no middle ground. Read More…

You know it’s summer in the South when the churches start advertising that they’re “prayer conditioned.” The rest of the year, they call you to the Lord’s bosom. But summer is about escaping Satan’s armpit.

Here, keeping cool is a science, an art and a priority. When I was a kid, my parents had a wall-unit air conditioner in their bedroom. On those days when it was so hot you wanted to peel off your skin and sit around in your bones – when popsicles and bare feet weren’t cutting it – they’d let me and my sister run into that bedroom, close the door, flop on the bed and stay in there long enough to “let the sweat dry.” Pure luxury.

So, when I saw that the heat index was going to stay in the hundreds, I knew it was the right time to take on this Tuesdays with Dorie pick, a Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise that requires several indoor hours of indoor work – whipping, folding, baking, melting, chilling, slicing, roasting, toasting, assembling and refrigerating. That’s a lot of quality time spent avoiding sweat. And the result is worth the effort. Crispy discs of nut meringue layered with a creamy white chocolate ganache and roasted pineapple slices that are sweet and still juicy. Surrounded with toasted coconut. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself scraping the dish and contemplating another slice, because all of those tropical flavors make this dacquoise seem surprisingly light. If you have people you need to impress this summer, or you want to look productive while you’re staying inside for a “Facts of Life” marathon, you really can’t go wrong with this dessert. Especially if your idea of heaven once included popsicles.

For the recipe, visit Andrea of Andrea in the Kitchen, or pick up a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours.”

Peaches are the Lolitas of the fruit world. They look ripe-and-ready long before they actually are. You can check an apple for bruises, tap a watermelon or pinch a grape to make sure it’s firm, but when it comes to peaches, it pays to ignore everything but the smell. I don’t mean the smell it has when you hold it to your nose and take a deep breath. I mean, keep walking until the air around them intoxicates you with the smell of sweet, summery peaches and thoughts of cobbler, pies and crips. Saucers of peaches and cream. Sticky grilled peaches topped with mascarpone and drizzles of orange blossom honey.

The scent of a truly ripe peach is so full of possibilities.

Possibilities like a heaping platter of Sweet Peach Muffins with Brown Sugar-Walnut Streusel Topping. Bright, juicy peach bits surrounded by a cake dark with cinnamon, allspice and rum. The streusel on top adds just the right amount of crunch, with the earthiness of the walnuts balancing the sweetness of the brown sugar. This is not some heavy, gummy, cloying, drive-thru muffin. It’s light and cakey, full of peaches at their peak. If it turns out we really are what we eat, I want to be a peak peach.

Read More…

When you’re a fledgling small-town vegetarian, like I once was, sometimes you don’t see all the options. You wind up eating a lot of pasta, cheese pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches and confusing waitress by ordering cheeseburgers without the burger. And then one day, you realize that it’s not just about avoiding meat – hopefully before you lose your teeth and die of constipation. And then you go forth and start trying vegetable-loaded recipes, like these Zucchini and Corn Quesadillas. I still love them, especially in the summer, when you can pick up corn and zucchini dirt cheap.

The filling is a simple sauté – onion, garlic, zucchini, corn and your herb of choice. I usually use cilantro, but if you hate-hate-hate it, go with what you love or just leave it out. When the filling is ready, spoon it onto half of your tortillas, add some grated Pepper Jack, and place your remaining tortillas on top. Then slide them into the oven.

These quesadillas are a great lunch alternative to your typical sandwich, but you could also slice them into smaller wedges to serve as cookout appetizers (when the grilling is taking a little longer than expected) or serve them alongside a summer soup, like Fresh Tomato and Sweet Chili Pepper or a really fresh gazpacho. So much better than a chili dog without the chili or the dog.

Read More…

Some dads play golf. Some fish. When my dad needs to relax, he drives. Windows down, radio on. And not just around the block or around town. Once he drove all the way to New Orleans. He’d offer to take us out to eat after church, and three hours later, we’d wind up at Lambert’s Café in Sikeston, Missouri, reaching up for those “throwed rolls” like they were manna from heaven. But one of the benefits of Daddy’s extensive travels was that right as we started threatening to kill ourselves or each other if we didn’t get out of the van, he’d find a dairy dip. Some standing room-only shack that smelled like little burgers and fries and soft-serve ice cream. Daddy bought a lot of goodwill with that 99-cent cone.

I’d been planning on making my own ice cream this summer, so I was excited that this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was Honey-Peach Ice Cream. What’s a baking group doing making ice cream? Who cares? Orange blossom honey. Georgia peaches. Whole milk, cream, sugar. I expected it to be good, but even the smallest bite blooms with the flavor of ripe peaches and cold, sweet cream. It’d be worth a three-hour drive, but it’s so much nicer to just walk to the freezer.

For the recipe, visit Tommi of Brown Interior, or pick up a copy of Dorie’s Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours.”

When I was in college, my hometown was hit by a roof-lifting, glass-shattering, building-leveling tornado that cut right across the downtown. What matters most is that everyone was safe, and if you took a drive through the area now, you’d never guess how much has been rebuilt. The only casualties were some of the businesses, including a feed store whose seeds, driven into the ground by the tornado, produced a lot full of sunflowers in the middle of all the construction, and one of Jeff’s favorite restaurants, Moose Creek Beer & Bait House, home of the Rattlesnake Burger.

Moose Creek’s Rattlesnake Burger wasn’t actual rattlesnake but a spicy combination of ground chicken and andouille sausage. One night Jeff and I were talking about the tornado, and he mentioned that burger. With a tone of wistfulness and reverence. So, we picked up a pound of ground chicken and a pound of andouille and spent the next couple of hours experimenting with spice mixtures and making quarter-sized burgers.

Read More…