Bless My Heart I Married A Yankee

As I was just posting my Oven Beer Butt Chicken recipe, I noticed I have 3 ways of cooking whole chickens on my blog.   Do you ask why I have 3 ways?  Are you curious which is my favorite way?  Read on to find out.   1.  The first whole chicken I featured was Instant Pot Chicken .  I so love my   instant pot and this did turn out a nice chicken.  Great points are that it is quick and so easy.  Nice flavor and to crisp the skin just take it out and place on a casserole dish and brown under the broiler.   2.  In June I posted my  Easy Oven Roasted Chicken in the Clay Baker .  This is a wonderful recipe.  Almost everyone that tries it will agree with me.  Again, like the Instant Pot Chicken, you will not have crispy skin but all you have to do is take the lid off and allow to cook on broil for a short while.   3.  Today I posted  Oven Beer Butt Chicken .  Another super easy way of cooking a whole chicken.  Love the fact the skin gets crispy and you can add veggies to the b

Lidl has whole chickens on sale for .65lb.  Needless to say, I bought a few and decided to cook one yesterday for dinner.  I normally cook my chicken in a clay roaster.  Check out the  recipe  here.  However, yesterday I decided I wanted to make it different so I would have some nice crispy skin because Scott likes it crisp.   The idea of this recipe is to duplicate beer butt chicken you make on the grill.  I was out of propane for my gas grill and Scott would not have had the time to throw the chicken on the Big Green Egg.   If you have ever made a beer butt chicken on the grill you know the concept, if you have not let me tell ya how to do it.  You basically stick your chicken on a can of beer.  Well, not the entire can but most of it.  Then you bake it.  Easy peasy, right?   The idea of using beer is not only for enhancing the flavor but it is to help keep the chicken moist.  I normally throw a spring of rosemary down in my can of beer.  I also like to put pats of butt

Do you like to add flavor to your food but maybe do not know how?  There are many ways to pack a punch in your food.  One is using herbs.  Two, believe it or not, salt.  Three, garlic and four being another way, would be using compound butter.   I know nowadays people are trying to watch what they eat and put into their bodies but did you know butter is better for you than margarine?  When used correctly, butter is good for you.  Now, this does not mean you need to use stick after stick in your cooking.   I started playing around and making compound butter several years ago.  It is so easy to make and the mixtures you can come up with is only limited by your imagination. You can make herb butter, savory style butter, fruit butter or spice style butter.   I can not say how easy this is to make.  People pay a lot of money to buy compound butter.  OK, if you have no clue what I am talking about, have you ever ordered a steak that came topped with herbed butter?  W

Last fall I really had all intentions to make a Jamaican Jerk seasoning.   I wanted to expand on my Caribbean recipes.  I already can a really good jamming jerk sauce .   For months I have researched and looked at numerous recipes.  As usual, I still wound up making my own thing.  I just can not help myself.  It is not that I think I can come up with something better, goodness I am not that vain at all.  I just like to make stuff to my taste buds.  That is why I try to mention that every recipe is to your taste.  Feel free to have fun and make changes when cooking.  After all, cooking should be fun, so make it that way.  I promise you that if you apply this theory to your kitchen you will enjoy cooking a bit more.  I love to make my own spice and seasoning blends and an added bonus is the fact that I grow my own herbs.  I have found the more I play around with making my own seasoning blends the better I love the fact that I do not have to buy something in the stores that are

In the area of NC we live it, fall means a lot of things.  It could mean deer or squirrel season, as in hunting.  It could mean time for chicken stews or Brunswick stews. It definitely means jeans and sweaters.  It is the perfect time for coffee on the front porch on a cool fall morning.  Bonfire parties.  Jumping in the hot tub because it is finally cool enough to truly enjoy. Where I live now, it means the BBQ festival will be in a couple of weeks.  Good ole Lexington bbq. Check out my recipe for  Lexington Style Red Slaw  or  Lexington Style BBQ Dip .  Truly to me fall means apples.  I grew up in a small town... (hehe) near the mountains.  Every year we had an Apple Festival.  Oh, the times I had in youth group when we would have a booth and sold apples.  So, yeah, fall means apples.  With all that said, my beautiful friend, Pam sent me a recipe for Caramel Apple Sangria.  Now, you are talking my language.  I mean seriously, I was just telling some friends how I missed the Dixie

This is such a winning recipe but first let me start off by saying, Aji Amarillo is a Peruvian pepper that we started growing several years ago.  Scott ordered some seeds online and this was one of the ones he ordered.  It along with MOA Scotch Bonnets are probably our favorite peppers.  Aji Amarillo peppers are members of the capsicum buccatum family.  I think one of the reasons we like this pepper so much is the fact it has hints of fruitiness just like the Scotch Bonnet pepper does.  Aji means chili pepper and Amarillo means yellow.  This delightful pepper starts off green and then turns yellow and at maturity, it is a gorgeous orange. They normally grow to be 4 or 5 inches long but sometimes they can be smaller.  This year we had some that were 1 1/2 to 2 inches but most were the norm size of 4 to 5 inches.  These peppers are called chili peppers because they do pack some heat. On the Scoville scale, they register in at 30,000 to 50,000.   Another interesting fact a

I always feel like I have a story when I am posting a new recipe or blog post.  With that thought process, this is no different. During Scott's birthday party back in mid-August someone asked if I had juice.  Being a grammy my answer was, of course, I have juice.  What I did not realize was that he wanted tomato juice.  I am not a huge fan of tomato juice unless I am going to make a Bloody Mary, so I had to say no I did not have any tomato juice.  My friends know I can a lot of stuff but tomato juice was not on my list to can nor did I have any on my canning shelves.  Goodness, I had to make some changes.  I can not allow having someone come to my house and ask for something I do not have.   With about any tomato processing, you start with the same procedures.  Slice your tomatoes into chunks.  I always cook mine down for a while in order to be able to mash them up before running them through the food mill. Once you have your tomatoes cooked down you ca