Barbecue Pulled Pork Tacos {recipe}

Ladies and gentlemen.  I gots the fever.

BBQ Pork Tacos

Barbecue pulled pork.

Can’t stop.

Won’t stop.

I blame it on Midwood Smokehouse, my favorite barbecue spot in town, which I frequent at LEAST once a week.  I bounce back and forth between the pork cuban (authentic Cuban bread, hickory smoked pork, thinly sliced ham, Swiss cheese, and dill pickles… I die!) and the pork and brisket tacos.  And when I’m lucky enough to have some meat leftover, I make barbecue pulled pork omelets the next morning.

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Crazy Easy Crustless Quiche with Arugula Salad {as seen on WBTV}

Now that fall is finally here, it’s time to bust out some comforting cool-weather breakfast recipes.  I’m a self-declared morning person, but when I wake up with a grumbling tummy, the less hands-on time required of a breakfast recipe, the better.  That’s why I love baking eggs in the oven.  Call it a casserole or a crustless quiche (or a frittata if you start the cooking process on the stove top).  The method is simple:  eggs are whisked with a little milk (or half-and-half or cream, whatever you have on hand) and then combined with one to two cups of the fillings of your choice—sausage, leftover veggies, cheese, whatever sounds good–and baked for 30 minutes.  Breakfast done.

Turkey Sausage Crustless Quiche 4To take the dish up a notch, top it with a simple arugula salad tossed with an olive oil and lemon dressing.  Not only does the arugula salad add extra veggies, but the tartness offers a nice contrast the richness of the eggs.  Plus, look how fancy!

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Chinese Baby Back Ribs {recipe}

When I think of ribs, I think of my dad.  My dear ole dad.  Grilling has always been HIS THING.  Even if it meant standing in the driveway with a golf umbrella during a tornado warning with occasional hail (yeah, that happened).   Even in the middle of those brutally long Ohio winters when temperatures dropped so low the inside of your nose would most literally freeze.  Even after that one time he got a little carried away with the lighter fluid and singed off half his beard, even then, dad was out there grilling.

Chinese Baby Back Ribs 2When dad makes ribs, he slathers them in barbecue sauce, tucks them tightly in foil packets, throws them on his Texas-style offset smoker, and lets them hang out for HOURS . It’s a simple, straightforward technique, but it’s pretty much impossible to replicate this sort of perfection in a tiny apartment kitchen with nary a smoker to be found.  Remember that first time I made mussels and they were an embarrassing abomination?  Well, true to form, my first attempt at making ribs was a complete and utter failure.  When I lifted the crockpot lid after ten hours of slow cooking, I found the meat had shriveled so much I could see more bone than brown.  I was irrationally optimistic as I pulled a bit of meat off with a fork and sampled the day’s wares.  It was, undoubtedly, the dryest meat I’ve ever laid tongue on.  Ten hours in the crockpot and a little liquid smoke seemed too good to be true.  This just in:  it was.

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French Silk Pie with Lemon Fennel Cracker Crust {IFBC 2014}

Last week, at the International Food Bloggers Conference in Seattle, hundreds of food bloggers from around the globe (yes, it really does have international reach) gathered in Seattle to talk blog.  There were sessions on the creative aspects of blogging (story writing, recipe development, and wine pairing) and the technical aspects (like Google+ and SEO—that’s search engine optimization, totally nerdy, totally cool), plus plenty of opportunities to network with other bloggers and with national brands.  I was one of the lucky few who sat down with Lesley Stowe, creator of Raincoast Crips, to talk about her career path and how her Raincoast Crisps, which started as a minute part of her business, grew to become her company’s main (incredibly delicious) product.

Mini French Silk Pies

At the IFBC, Lesley announced their newest product, the Lesley Stowe Raincoast Flats, which come in two varieties:  Lemon & Fennel and Kale & Walnut.  Both the Raincoast Crisps and the Raincoast Flats are no-brainers for cheese plates and dips (check out my Cheese Plate 101 post for cheespiration), but the lemon-fennel combination immediately  had me craving chocolate.  I don’t know why.  I’ve learned not to questions these sorts of things.

Mini French Silk Pies 2

Earlier in the summer, I made Food 52’s (now infamous) Atlantic Beach Pie, which uses a combination of crushed saltine crackers, sugar, and butter as a crust.  I used this same technique here with the Raincoast Lemon Fennel Flats, which resulted in a crispy, flavorful crust, the perfect base for the light and silky chocolate topping.

french silk pie 3

 {beautiful turquoise platter by jmnpottery}

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Cheese Plate 101 {IFBC 2014}

I’m proud to come from a family of foodies.  Though some attach a negative connotation to the word (shout out to Huffington Post and Eatocracy, among many others), I use the term “foodie” endearingly.  We foodies are people who, at the root of it all, love food, though it’s more than simply eating the food (or excessively consuming the food, as the case may be).  Food is the binding tie, the common ground, the one thing that unites us all, family and strangers alike.  It’s about sharing, and connecting, and traditions.  Food is love, after all.

My foodie family is big on potluck get-togethers.  Everyone brings a dish to share and the host handles the main course:  MEAT.  As far back as I can remember, there were two dishes we’d consistently have on hand for the hors d’oeuvre hour:  potato chips and French onion dip (Lawson’s or Heluva Good only, people) OR cheese and crackers.  This was my formalized introduction to the cheese plate.  The preferred cracker of choice was the round, buttery kind that disintegrated instantly on tongue contact, and the preferred cheese was Colby Jack.  If it was a really special get-together, like my Dad’s annual (epic) Christmas Eve parties, there’d also be some pepper jack and a little bit of Swiss.  For the life of me, I never understood why they wasted space on the plate with that shitty Swiss cheese.  No one liked it.  And at the end of the night, it’d be the only thing left, the last cheese standing, all hard and slightly yellowed from the night’s neglect.

But I digress.

Cheese board

The foodie family lesson to be learned here is that when you tell your guests to “come hungry” you better have something on hand for them to nibble on til mealtime.  The simpler the better, because as the host, you’ve got bigger fish to fry.  The cheese plate is my go-to, and though mine looks much fancier than the cheese plates of my youth, it comes together just as fast.  Plus, cheese tastes best at room temperature, so you can fix it and forget it before the guests arrive.

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