Look what came in the mail!!

 

I love Garden and Gun magazine!  And I was so excited when this month's edition came in the mail, especially since it's about Southern food.  It includes foods from different restaurants around the South.  Dishes in Alabama include the baked grits from Highlands Bar & Grill and tomato salad from Hot and Hot Fish Club. Most of the other articles in the magazine feature specific foods and restaurants - I can't wait until I have time to really read it!  One of my favorite sections is the "short list".  A chef from each southern state gave a list of his or her 8 favorite restaurants within the state.  I haven't heard of many of these and look forward to trying out some new places around the South!

Monday Mentions

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I visited my aunt, Lynne, for the weekend. We had a great "girls weekend" as she taught me how to sew and cook. Unfortunately, the sewing didn't stick. But, her cooking lessons were very influential for me. She taught me how to cook my first leg of lamb! One of the most important things she taught me was the importance of growing your own herbs. They will always be fresh and are much less expensive than buying herbs from the grocery store every time you need them. It is so great to walk out back and pick the herbs I'll need for dinner. I started my first herb garden the summer that I had my cooking lessons with Lynne and have had one nearly every summer since. Herbs grow well in pots - so even if you live in an apartment or don't have a big yard, you can still make room for a few pots. You can even grow them successfully on the balcony if you live in an apartment.

To decide which herbs to grow, think about which foods you cook most often. I love French and Italian foods - so I always have rosemary, parsley, and basil. This summer I'm trying thyme and mint for the first time. I've also grown cilantro and chives before. There are so many options! And they are honestly very easy to grow. They need a lot of sun and a lot of water. Just be careful later in the summer, some herbs will start to burn if the sunlight is too direct. This is a picture of my herb garden on the back porch from last week. I have since taken out the rosemary (because it died!). Rosemary does not need as much water as the other herbs in this pot. So I bought more rosemary to plant separately. I'm replacing it with mint in the large pot and hoping that does better!

Last summer I also started growing tomatoes. Amazingly, they did really well on our balcony at the apartment. I grew "Little 100s" and a larger type of tomato plant. I would suggest growing smaller tomatoes - this summer I have 6 grape tomato plants. If you grow a larger tomato, you'll need a lot of plants to yield enough tomatoes to make it worth it. I think we got 4 tomatoes out of our big tomato plant last year. There are also a lot of hanging varieties that do well on porches and balconies. Our tomatoes grew most of the summer last year. We loved going out and picking fresh tomatoes for salads when we had guests. Yesterday I noticed that our plants now have little green tomatoes on them - I can't wait until they are ready! This is a picture of one of my pots this year.

On a separate note, Katie G., who has sent in some wonderful recipes that I've published on the blog, wrote this wonderful article for We Heart This. We Heart This is a fun on-line magazine and forum website that covers a plethora of interesting topics. Katie's article was published for Mother's Day.

Monday Mentions

This Monday I want to mention my Pampered Chef baking stone. We cooked pizza on it for the first time last night - and I'm loving the stone (I wish we had used it sooner!) The stones are also great for cooking rolls and biscuits. Click here if you want more info on the Pampered Chef stone. Our pizza turned out great because the stone heats the pizza evenly and keeps the crust from being either too soggy or too tough. And it worked wonderfully to heat the leftovers tonight. We will definitely be using it more often!

I also wanted to mention the wonderful pizza dough that we used. We thought about making it from scratch, but didn't want to wait for the dough to rise! And several girls from church mentioned using the dough from Publix. They sell balls of pizza dough in their bakery section. So I got the dough at the store and came home and rolled it out on the stone. I really cannot imagine that it would have been any better if we had made it ourselves. It was such a great time saver! And you can keep the dough for several days if you can't use it right away.

This is the pizza recipe we used last night. The thing that I love about this recipe is that there are a lot of different options for the recipe. It is perfect if you are running out to the store last minute and want to pick up some inexpensive ingredients. But you can also make the recipe with pepperoni from the deli, fresh mozzarella cheese, and other quality ingredients - it would perfect for a night in with friends!

Pepperoni and Onion Pizza
(Adapted from: Delicious Pizza)
Ingredients:
Olive oil, for brushing and drizzling
Pizza dough (either premade or homemade)
All-purpose flour, for dusting
5 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste (in the produce section near the fresh tomatoes)
3-4 tomatoes, skinned and thinly sliced
Part of 1 red onion, chopped finely
4 slices prosciutto or other cooked ham, coarsely chopped (optional)
12 slices pepperoni sausage
12 black olives, pitted (optional)
3/4 tsp dried oregano
3 oz mozzarella cheese, grated
Salt

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Brush a cookie sheet with oil (or use a pizza stone!).

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured counter to a 10-inch round circle. Place on the cookie sheet and push up the edge a little. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 10 minutes. Spread the sun-dried tomato paste evenly over the base. Arrange the tomato slices on the base and season with salt. Sprinkle over the chopped onion and prosciutto and arrange the pepperoni on top. Add the olives and sprinkle with oregano. Then add the grated cheese and drizzle with olive oil.

Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes - until golden and sizzling. Serve immediately.

Monday Mentions

My friend, Sally, told me about this wonderful website, and I wanted to share it with everyone! This website (http://www.tastebook.com/) allows you to create your own recipe book. I have been working on a family cookbook for a while using this website. It is really easy to use because they have wonderful templates. It allows you to add family pictures, fun notes, and a dedication page. I ordered my cookbook just before Thanksgiving so that I could show it to my family. I was very impressed with the quality of the cookbook and am excited to finish it! Because it functions like a binder, you can order the book and your pages whenever you want and then add new pages later.

Also, if you have a lot of recipes saved on your computer from places like Food Network or Southern Living Magazine, you can actually upload them directly to your own personalized cookbook. You can also use pictures and recipes from tons of other on-line sources. Or, you can even order pre-made cookbooks produced by the company that revolve around a theme, like healthy eating or Greek food. This is such a good way to keep all of your favorite recipes organized in one place!

Monday Mentions

With the start of the New Year I decided to start a new blog series - "Monday Mentions"! On Mondays I will give recommendations for restaurants, food products, cookbooks, etc. I will continue to post Wine Wednesdays about every other week - especially since my blog always receives more visits on Wednesday than any other day!!




For the first Monday Mention I wanted to recommend the movie Julie & Julia. Several people asked me when I started my blog if I got the idea for a recipe blog from last summer's movie about Julia Child. I actually hadn't seen it yet. But, I got to watch it over the holidays. And it was so cute! It made me want to start trying some exciting new recipes! If you enjoy cooking, you will definitely enjoy watching this movie!