Coconut Oven Fried Chicken (Jamie)

Love fried chicken? Would rather not get heart disease from your dinner? This is a great "Fried Chicken" for healthy people. This received rave reviews from all members of my family.

1/4 C. Butter
2 lbs Chicken Breasts
1/2 C. Flaked Unsweetened Coconut
1/4 C. Fine Bread Crumbs

Mix together the Coconut and Bread Crumbs, set aside. Melt butter. Brush chicken with butter. Roll chicken in coconut mixture. Place in a baking pan. Drizzle remaining butter over chicken. Bake 50-60 minutes or until no longer pink inside.

Easy peasy.

Old Cookbook Website (Jamie)

Here is a funny website that has collected recipes and ads from yesteryear.

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html

Burgers with Evaporated Milk! Mmmmm!

Classic French Bread Revisited

I have so many other more important-ish type things to do right now. All things business-like and very large preschool meeting prep flavored but instead, I am taking pictures of my bread that I made yesterday. Yes, I said pictureS. Plural. You see, we ate the pretty loaf tonight with my homemade beef stew made in a pressure cooker (my new favorite kitchen utensil), so I am stuck taking pictures of the one with "character". I think I saw the image of the Virgin Mary in the crust. Or was that Abe Lincoln...

Bacon

Favorite new side dish: black-eyed peas

I looked and looked for a New Year's Day recipe for black-eyed peas (you know, since it's a Southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for good luck in the coming year) and ending up throwing this together. We liked it enough that we gobbled up the NYD double batch and I threw 'em together again last night as a side dish for roasted chicken and sauteed broccoli rabe.

Robin-style black-eyed peas

1 Tbls olive oil
1/2 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cans black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed (dried peas can be used, too, but using canned peas makes this is a super-quick side dish)
1 can diced tomatoes (whatever you have -- with or without spices)
1 cup water
Coupla handfuls of kale or spinach or some kind of green
Fresh thyme if you have it (dried if you don't)
Lots and lots of pepper

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and onions and cook until the onions are soft. Add the peas, tomatoes, and water; pepper the heck out of it. Turn the heat up a little bit, bring to a boil (stirring frequently), turn heat down and simmer until most of the excess liquid is gone. When you're about halfway there, add the thyme, taste and add more pepper if you need it, and add the greens.

It's even better the next day.

Scalloped Potatoes & Ham (Jamie)

Josh loves comfort food. So I have been looking for years for a good scalloped potato recipe. This is the best I have had, and I normally do not like Scalloped Potatoes. The kids loved this too!

About 6 potatoes
3 T. butter
3 T. flour
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
2 1/2 c. Half & Half
1 small onion, chopped
1 T. butter
2 pounds cubed ham

Wash & peel potatoes and cut into thin slices (NOT super thin though). Heat 3 T. butter in saucepan over low heat until melted. Stir in flour, salt & pepper. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is smooth and bubbly; stir in milk. Heat mixture to boiling again, stirring constantly. After it starts to boil, cook and stir for one more additional minute; remove from heat.

Arrange potatoes in a greased casserole dish in layers, topping each layer with desired amount of onion, white sauce and cubed ham. Dot top layer with 1 T. butter. Cover and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Then uncover and bake 60 - 70 additional minutes or until potatoes are tender. Let stand 5 - 10 minutes before serving.

Best new cookie recipe of 2007

These Rugelach Pinwheels are the cookies you're pining for, Jamie ... as are my brother, my neighbor, and, well, me: Rugelach Pinwheels from Smitten Kitchen, a super rad cooking blog I'm thoroughly smitten with.

I <3 duck

I made a fancy feast (no cats) last night for dinner: Roast Duck with Prunes and Wine-Braised Cabbage. It was super tasty -- my best duck attempt so far. The only problem is the gas the brit has had for the last 24 hours. Oops!

24 prunes out of 24!