When Jeff’s outside smoking meat, it’s a relaxing experience – for me. I’m lounging on a lawn chair, sipping lemonade, laughing and watching Henry the Wonderdog poke around in the back yard. But Jeff is One with the meat and the smoke and the fire. For him, it’s a Zen experience. I’m just there for the wings.

If you’ve always been a little hazy on the difference between grilling and smoking, grilling is done quickly over high heat; smoking is a slower process done over lower, indirect heat. Smoking the meat tenderizes it, infusing it with the flavor of the wood as well as the smoke, so that – with a little time and care – you can turn a cheap cut of meat into something people will fight over.

Like these Spicy Smoked Chicken Wings.

Continue reading: Spicy Smoked Chicken Wings

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

With the pizza, Buffalo chicken dip, and meatball sliders posted lately, you might think we were rooting for New York this weekend, but the truth is, we don’t have a dog in this hunt. Not with the Saints and the Titans out. So, we wanted to even things up a little with a New England shout-out. My sister Jennifer suggested a Hot Crab Dip, so grab a Sam Adams and dig in. 

By Jennifer Rather.

I’m always on the lookout for party foods. When you add holidays, celebrating a birthday every other month and football season together, it equals a massive need for finger food.

We have our usual standbys (hello, sausage balls), but occasionally I like to try something different, just so everyone doesn’t go into sausage overload.

In honor of the Super Bowl, and the years I spent in Boston, I decided to add Hot Crab Dip to our lineup

Continue reading: Hot Crab Dip

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Sometimes when I’m out with Jeff, I slip into “girlfriend mode” and say yes to things without thinking them through. Like eating a big, fat, drippy meatball sub in public. There’s just no way to do it and maintain your dignity. Or your shirt. You basically just have to shove it into your face and hope for the best, which is actually kinda fun, but the whole thing got me thinking about Meatball Sliders.

Little one-meatball sandwiches I could eat in a few bites AND keep my shirt clean.

Maybe.

I mean, dignity. Who needs it? But at least my clothes would have a fighting chance.

Anyway, these sliders turned out really, really well. Good enough for Jeff to break into four-letter words when he forgot there were leftovers and ate something inferior. So I wanted to share them with you, just in case you’re fishing for some party eats or you just need to get some more meatballs into your life.

Continue reading: Meatball Sliders

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

On my nephew Jack’s birthday, when he alone has the power to decide what the entire family eats, he always picks the same thing for dinner: chili. And that’s fine by us, because my sister Jennifer’s chili is the kind that makes you moan before you can stop yourself. She promised to share the recipe if I’d bring petit fours to baby Riley’s first birthday party, so done and done.

By Jennifer Rather.

Chili. A culinary problem child. Everyone has a different idea of what it should should be in it, how to use it and what it should taste like. You’ve got your all-beef people. Your beef and bean people. Chicken chili. Vegetarian chili. Cincinnati chili.

Hot dog chili is a different breed from cracker chili.

It’s more confusing than sending a man for tampons.

I wanted a chili that would work for our entire family, so a few years ago, I came up with a plan. Over the course of one football season, every Sunday, I would try a different chili recipe, and the men (my husband and two boys) would grade the attempt, ranking what they liked and disliked

Continue reading: Rather Good Chili

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

This Buffalo Chicken Dip? Pure man-bait.

Walk into a room with it, and guys will look at you like you just took your top off.

It’s just the thing to take to a Super Bowl party.

But I’ve seen ladies who wouldn’t touch a Buffalo wing attack this stuff like starving lions chasing an antelope on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

I totally understand.

Continue reading: Buffalo Chicken Dip

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

I had no idea it was National Peanut Butter Day, but it is! And that’s mighty fine timing, because my sister, Jennifer, is back with her recipe for Peanut Butter Bars. Did I eat that entire plate of them for breakfast one morning? Why, yes. Yes, I did.

By Jennifer Rather.

I am not a nagging wife. If I started nagging my husband about his To-Do list, then he would have free reign to point out the state of my kitchen, closets and laundry room.

That ain’t happening.

There are certain Saturdays, however, when the “Man Bug” bites him, and he rises at 8 a.m. to spend the next 10 hours getting EVERYTHING done. He mows, hammers, glues, trims and chops. He replaces every battery and light bulb in the house. It’s like watching myself clean during a “Hoarders” marathon on A&E.

On these Saturdays, I make his favorite Peanut Butter Bars.

Continue reading: Peanut Butter Bars

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Most decent people have their Christmas decorations put away by now.

But Jeff and I had the Bubonic Plague from Christmas to New Year’s Eve (aka Our Anniversary), so we’ve decided to keep the halls decked until Elvis’ birthday, Jan. 8.

If your holidays went a little wonky, or you just want to keep the party going, please join us in having one final holiday blowout this weekend.

We’ll bring the Elvis Paninis

Continue reading: Elvis Panini

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Tomato sandwiches have owned me this summer.

It started with my mother-in-law’s visit, just before our big Independence Day family reunion. The reunion stretches across two meals, so everyone brings enough food for lunch and dinner. There are two big picnic tables covered in aluminum containers piled high with barbecue, ribs, chicken wings, burgers, hot dogs and brats. But no matter what else people had on their plates this year, no one could resist grabbing one (or two or three) of Elaine’s tomato sandwiches. Crustless rounds of white bread slathered with Duke’s mayonnaise and filled with ruby red slices of summer-ripe tomatoes sprinkled with Jane’s Krazy Mixed-Up Salt.

Pretty much perfect.

But that didn’t stop me from tinkering with them.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

Before we got married, Jeff would drive an hour to visit me one weekend, and I’d drive an hour to see him the next.

On the weekends he visited me, he’d stop by the bakery where I worked, and I’d have that morning’s best cinnamon roll on a plate waiting for him. The next weekend, I’d drive to Nashville with his cinnamon roll boxed up next to me.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I made him a batch. I’ve been planning to get around to it.

When the weather got cooler.

Maybe for his birthday.

Then I read Jennifer Perillo’s blog about losing her husband Mikey

Continue reading: Peanut Butter Love Pie. For Mikey.

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.

I wish I’d been there to see it.

This morning, Mama drove to Starbucks at the crack of dawn to join her gang of teacher-friends in waving at the school buses as they rolled past. The kids are back at school, so today is Mama’s first real day of retirement.

When I was a teenager, she’d drive me and my sister to school with her, blaring Southern gospel music and singing at the top of her lungs. My staring-out-the-window-willing-myself-to-disappear silence didn’t phase her, either. She was happy. Mama didn’t complain on Sunday night about work on Monday. She loved her job – the place, the people, everything. So, when she told us last February that she was retiring, I was shocked. Floored. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.

It’s time for her to have a new beginning. Lord knows she’s provided for plenty of mine.

Continue reading: Key Lime Pie

© 2011 Rebecca Crump. All rights reserved.