My wife and I eloped in Las Vegas and the morning after our wedding we went to Paris Casino and had crepes. They have always been one of her favorite things. Unfortunately, in the area around where we live it’s tough to find. The guy at the farmers market has terrible crepes. So I got the idea of trying to make them at home. What I found out is that it’s super easy and when I make them it puts a smile on her face.

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I like my cornbread sweet, and after tinkering with this recipe for a while, I feel like I have finally mastered it. I didn’t grow up in the south, but I always liked sweet cornbread. The sour cream gives this a nice texture, and the corn gives it the perfect texture. Another note. This is best served cold, and I find it’s best to make it the night before and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.

Best Sweet Cornbread Casserole

There are a lot of reasons I believe this is the best. It tastes great. I have tried a lot of cornbread, and it doesn’t get any better than this. Sweet with a great texture from the corn kernels.

Note I usually use the generic brand sour cream, and I like Green Giant creamed corn. You need one of each regular can of corn and one creamed corn can. And yes, I use the Jiffy corn muffin mix. I know I always say I like my kitchen to be scratch, but why mess with a good thing?

I used a 9 x 7 glass pan to bake the cornbread. I prefer a larger pan, so the bread is not as thick. If you like your cornbread slightly mushy, go with the 9 x 7. I have not tried making this as a muffin, but if you do, let me know how long you cooked this for. I bake at 350 for 1 Hour.

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This is a fun single skillet recipe that is basically a Taco bowl on steroids. I love the texture of the corn and scallions, and of course, I think it should be made with loads of avocado. I recommend a nice salsa on the side. We used real corn, but a can of corn would probably work just as well, if not better.

We ended up not adding lettuce instead we went with extra corn. You might want to add sour cream and salsa which is not pictured.

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There are a lot of Apple Cake recipes out there that I believe get this wrong. I got this recipe from my Grandma, who passed away in the 90s. When I was a kid, I would make this because it was one of my favorites. I would argue it’s easy to make based on the fact that I was making it when I was a kid.

In my opinion, it’s best to mix the apples into the batter last. I saw a popular recipe that instructed people to layer the apples, and I tried that once, and it was bad. You want the apples to be evenly dispersed in every bite. Also, do not put oranges or citrus in this cake, it ruins the flavor. Lastly, I would recommend not using oil and going with butter. I have tried it with oil, and it’s not bad, but it’s just not the same. Two things I would expect in this recipe are vanilla and a little rum, but that isn’t how my grandma did it, and I think less is more. This cake has so much flavor I think your best not to complicate it with raisins and anything else.

I hope you will give this recipe a try, especially because all the other ones are different, and this cake is amazing.

I wanted to include this image so you can see how I chop the apples. It takes a little time, but you use fewer apples in a cake than you do a pie, so it’s not as much work as making an apple pie.

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I can’t think of any appetizer that I like better. Not pizza rolls or crab things. We make these every New Year when my wife throws our annual New Year’s Eve party. It’s her recipe, and once again, I notice that all the grape jelly meatball recipes online are different than hers. Again I’ll say don’t overcomplicate things. This is the only recipe I can think of that I don’t even add salt or pepper. This is a great recipe for Superbowl Sunday. It’s also great for any time you go to a dish event.

You can make meatballs from scratch using my meatball recipe, just don’t add tomato sauce, instead, pop them in the crock pot and follow this recipe.

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Here is another recipe that I think everyone gets wrong. I’m a firm believer in simple being better. What makes sloppy joe so good is the sweetness of the meat. I love spicy foods, but this is one that I think shouldn’t have a lot of spicy. No chili powder. This works perfectly with my simple 4 ingredient sauce but any tomato sauce will work if you just add garlic and brown sugar.

When I was a kid, the one thing I always enjoyed in the school lunch was a sloppy joe. I doubt they put a ton of spices into the mix. No Worchester sauce and no chili powder, in my opinion. Give it a try this way and see what you think.

How did Sloppy Joe Get Its Name?

Some say a cook named Joe in Sioux City, Iowa was the first to start selling this. I like the version of it being invented in Cuba years earlier by a guy named Jose, who worked in a restaurant frequented by Ernest Hemmingway, so they gave it an American name. If you ever go to Key West, you can tour Ernest Hemmingway’s home and party at a joint called Sloppy Joes. It’s a great time I recommend that trip more than this recipe.

I made the sloppy joe in a 12″ Hexclad pan cooked over medium heat.

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When we went to Hawaii, we had a private tour guide who took us on a foodie tour. I can’t put into words how much fun we had. I dream about having a redo. He told me one of the things they do on a longer tour is get ribeyes and grill them on the beach, so I asked him how do you make Hawaiian Ribeyes. Is there a way to marinade it? He said most of the time, they just put it on the grill with spices, salt, pepper, and garlic. There wasn’t an authentic marinade. Then he thought about it a little and, thinking about it a while, came back with, “Soy Sauce, if anything.” A few days later, we went to Tommy Bahamas for our anniversary dinner, and they had Hawaiin Ribeye on the menu, so of course, I ordered it. Again I have to say I wasn’t impressed. There used to be a steak house in the neighboring town I would take my wife to, and she always got a Hawaiian Ribeye, which was unbelievable. Unfortunately, they are long gone, so I can’t even dig into trying to replicate it.

I have to be honest. I don’t find this recipe particularly very interesting. If you find a better recipe, please send it my way. I would love to try it. And if there is a restaurant that has a great Hawaiian Steak, let me know drop a comment or send an email. This recipe is what I call a work in progress which I will continue to tinker with until it’s something I can brag about. We made this with a New York Stripe, which I wasn’t happy with. I recommend this with a Ribeye or a T-Bone.

How Long Should You Marinate A Steak?

I let this marinate for 30 minutes. I think if you can do it overnight, that would be better. I know a lot of recipes instruct you not to marinate meat for too long. I find that citrus overnight helps make the meat more tender. If you use a Ribeye, it’s going to be tender regardless.

I wanted you to see what the garlic looks like. I always start with the garlic before adding the other stuff. The same way I do my habanero hot sauce.

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My wife loves Caprese Salad, and I got the idea of making this as a meal by adding tortellini. I used cherry tomatoes because they are sweet. This is a simple great recipe. My wife thought it would be better with some salami, and I thought it needed some artichoke hearts or maybe even some nice black olives.

What is Ciliegine Fresh Mozzarella?

If you never had this before this is soft mozzarella balls about the size of a cherry tomato. It’s the same kind of cheese you normally find in a Caprese Salad just a better shape to use in a salad with cherry tomatoes.

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A few years ago, I helped my mom clean out my childhood home, and I found an old recipe for Blonde Brownies. I suspect that I last made this when I was a teenager. I remember loving them. So when I found the recipe, I was excited at first. Then when I looked at the actual paper, it had been waterlogged and was unreadable. A few months ago, I bought a magnifying glass, and yesterday, I was looking at my old recipes for something to post on here and, for some reason, pulled out this magnifier, and low and behold, I was able to make out the recipe.

You will notice I purchased store-brand light brown sugar. This was less expensive and double the size. I hate not using premium ingredients, but with inflation, I feel like I must fight back and not purchase overpriced items. With the chocolate chips, it would be tough for me not to buy the toll house or King Authur flower because those are the brands my family has always used.

That is a 9×13 glass baking pan. I feel like the edges might have been slightly overcooked, but I do believe this is how we made them when I was a kid. If you use a metal pan, it might get even browner, so watch out for that. The oven we used growing up might not have cooked hot enough as it was old and half broken. I recommend getting an oven thermometer for your oven to double-check check your appliance is cooking at the right temperature. It could be caused by the fact that I left out the nuts because my wife is allergic. I highly recommend adding walnuts.

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This is one of my favorites because I love spicy foods, and this has great flavor. It’s frequently been requested when there is a party. I’m happy to make it because it’s always a discussion starter. I do want to warn you to be careful not to get this on your hands and rub your eyes or go to the bathroom. You might want to use gloves when making this to avoid any accidents.

My other recommendation is to use only half a habanero. They come in different sizes I would go with a smaller one, but the most important thing is to find a fresh pepper. Stores seem to have them as an afterthought, and they maybe sit for a while. I used to like to play a game because if you buy a small one when they go to weigh them at check out, it comes up as zero. Now I notice more stores charging 5 for $1 or selling a package of them for $3.99.

As crazy as it might sound, the combination of habanero and jalapeno, together with garlic, gives great flavor. This is one of my favorite spicy sauces, and it took me a while to figure out how to get it right. I tinkered with this for a long time before I felt that I got it right. But I found that basic works best. Give this a try if you love spicy. I promise you will love it.

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My wife doesn’t like this, so this recipe is one I make just for myself, so this is a single-serving recipe. The recipe card allows you to adjust the portion size. I prefer angel hair pasta with seafood. I think I first had angel hair with shrimp at Cheese Cake Factory, and it’s a combo I highly recommend, just be careful not to overcook angel hair pasta because it only needs a few minutes.

When I eat out many times, seafood is served with a cream sauce which I’m not a fan of. I love the flavor with garlic butter and wine, which is more of a scampi style. This is quick and easy to make I keep a bag of shrimp from Costco and frozen seafood from Trader Joe’s in my freezer for a quick pasta meal.

As you can see, this recipe uses only 7 ingredients plus some spices. I like to use powdered chicken stock because I only use a little chicken broth in this recipe.

This gives you a good idea of what it looks like. Not a ton of sauce, but I prefer it that way. If you want more sauce, then add additional butter, wine, and chicken stock. If I were to critique this photo, I would want the shrimp a little darker, but it did taste perfect.

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Do you love cucumbers, avocados, goat cheese, and salad? These are some of my favorite things to include in a salad. I’m not a fan of lettuce, and I got the idea for this because a local chain has a Chicken Pasta Salad that I love. I figured, why not have a pasta salad with all my favorite ingredients? I used my Greek Dressing Recipe, which I think goes great with the goat cheese. I prefer goat cheese over feta, and I think it works great here because it gives the pasta a creamy texture.

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I know this recipe will probably never get any love because everyone has their own baked potato recipe, but it’s so amazing I had to post it. We enjoy it as a meal almost weekly. When I was a kid, our high school took a trip to Epcot, and my best friend and I started to get low on funds toward the end of the trip, so we decided to split a huge potato from a potato stand in the Epcot England village. I had never had something so delicious, and I never forgot it. Fast forward maybe 10 years later, and I was working as a server in a soup and salad joint. I love that job, and as a poor college student, I used to eat there a few times a week because of the employee discount. It bothered me when I would see a customer eating an old potato that was sitting in the steamer for too long. It no longer had that flaky yummy texture. I remember challenging the manager one day, and he said it was crazy they cost the restaurant 18 cents each. It happens because the kitchen guys are lazy, and they cook a big batch instead of putting fresh potatoes in every 30 minutes like they are supposed to. Food cost was an issue, and it was always a battle. For me, the battle was to ensure customers had a good experience and continued returning because if it wasn’t busy, I wouldn’t make any money.

The point of my long story is that I think most American restaurants screw up potatoes. If you are reading this, I want you to try the recipe and promise me that you will send back the potatoes when they aren’t perfect. There is no excuse besides laziness. Cooking great food should be a labor of love even for restaurant employees.

Above, you can see an assortment of the stuff we put on our potato. I love a lot of butter and a good freshly shredded milf cheddar cheese. But I have been known to top it with ranch dressing, scallions, and bacon bits. I use the fake bacon bits, just my preference. I know a lot of gourmets prefer real bacon. When I make chili, I love to save some for a baked potato. Don’t forget to salt and pepper the potato before loading it with toppings.

How To Make The Perfect Baked Potato

The first thing I want to state is that I have tried cooking all different sizes and kinds of potatoes. The best type of potato to use is a Russet. I recommend using an air fryer. That link goes to amazon and the exact model that we use in our home. If you use that model and cook the potato for One hour at 400 degrees on the air fryer setting, they come out perfect every time, no matter what size you use. Be sure to poke the potato a dozen times all around, so it doesn’t explode in the oven. That is it. It’s that simple.

What Not To Do

Do not follow other recipes that instruct you to cook it for 40 minutes. That is going to result in a half-raw vegetable. Do not wrap it in foil. Foil causes moisture to collect and results in a soggy, not flaky, inside. You do not need to rub oil or salt on the skin. No one eats the skin anyway. The skin will be crispy my pug loves the skin. Now a very important note. Potatoes like chicken carry salmonella, so be sure not to cross-contaminate surfaces. Assume that any surface that an uncooked potato touch has potentially deadly bacteria, so wash it with soap and water.

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This could be one of my favorite meals. When it’s done right I’ll pick this over pizza every day of the week. If you tried my pizza dough recipe, you know that I worked in a Stromboli joint as a kid growing up. There aren’t a lot of places that specialize in Strombolis. Most of the time it’s an afterthought.

Last week the Island of Stromboli in Italy erupted. That’s where the Stromboli got its name after a volcanic island, so it got me thinking that I hadn’t made a boli in a while. The wonderful thing about them is that there are endless ways to make them. This recipe is my favorite. I think the key is using great cheese and adding a little sliced onion and green bell pepper. When you do that, it has a nice crunch and great flavor.

The first rule of being a great chef is to use great ingredients. I’m a huge fan of Boar’s Head meats. Their Hot Capi is incredible. I’m not a fan of ham in general, but this is perfectly flavored with Italian spices and makes for an incredible Italian flavor. There is better pepperoni, but they are not sold in the local store. I find their pepperoni works perfectly for a Stromboli.

When I worked in the Stromboli restaurant, they had an industrial dough roller, so I don’t feel the need to shape the dough by hand, I always use a rolling pin. What I do that is different is that I try to roll the dough into an oval shape instead of a round flat tortilla shape.

My dough recipe makes 8 dough balls which are slightly smaller than standard the reason is that I think this to be the perfect size boli. They cook better at this size in a home oven plus, for me, as a big eater, I find the serving size perfect. Most restaurants make them larger. I just want to note the size and recommend my dough recipe. Making the dough is easy, and I think it tastes better than store bought dough.

Another thing is that while I think my tomato sauce recipe is perfect, this recipe uses so little sauce that I think you could get away with just pureed tomatoes or most jar sauces. I have used traditional Ragu sauce from a jar, which comes out great. I would worry more about the cheese. You might notice that my cheese is not grated, that is because I used cheese curds from a local farmers market because I can’t locate quality mozzarella locally.

If you preheat your over to 500 degrees and use a pizza steel, they come out perfectly browned in 8 minutes.

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I got this recipe from my sister, who made it for me while working on a film set. She cooked it because it’s an easy way to make a big warm hardy meal, and everyone loved it. It seems to work best in large quantities, but I’m posting it the way I make it for 4 people you might want to double the recipe. Also, I recommend using small red potatoes, I made this using Russert because we needed to use them up. This is guaranteed to be loved by all chicken fans.

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This might be my least favorite recipe and the one that I make the most. If that sounds strange, it’s because I have a smoothie for breakfast most mornings. I do it for health. Think about it this way if you are supposed to have five servings of fruits and vegetables, why not get that done first thing so you can enjoy better things for the rest of the day?

The reason I drink a smoothie for breakfast is that I noticed that it seemed to help all my chronic aches and pains. I’m not the healthiest person and certainly not the most athletic, but I am a gym rat, and as I got older, I always seemed to have an elbow or joint that was bothering me. Once my wife bought me a Vitamix, and I started using it, those issues all seemed to go away.

This recipe is with apple juice which might not be the most healthy thing. I buy it at Costco, so it’s pure juice and doesn’t have sugar added. It helps the flavor a lot. If you want to be healthier, I would go with coconut milk, which is the modification I make frequently.  I also switch up things by adding blueberries, pineapple, or mango to the recipe.

I think the biggest thing about this recipe that makes it perfect is the spinach. Adding spinach to the recipe gets you a nice daily serving of a very healthy vegetable.  I don’t love carrots, but they are great for smoothies because it adds some sweetness. but it also gets you that extra serving of vegetables.

I know I’m making many health claims in this post, but I do these things to err on the side of caution. I think as we get older, having protein first thing in the morning becomes increasingly important. As someone who is gym rate, I think it’s important that I get whey protein at least once a day. I use nonflavored high-quality Ascent Native Fuel Whey Protein Powder that I order from Amazon. If I run out, I can usually find some at Target, but I’m not sure about using mainstream protein from big chain stores.

Another thing about smoothies and which kind of blender is the best. I find that nothing compares to using a vitamix because the texture is so much better than regular blenders. I know they are expensive, but it’s worth the investment if you can afford it because they are built to be generational, meaning you will probably leave them to your offspring.

 

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Making pizza dough is very simple, and it’s one of my favorite things to make. I find that making pizza is fun. I also consider pizza one of the main three food groups after tacos and cheeseburgers. The problem I find is that most places make terrible pizza, and I have a tough time figuring out why because it’s so easy to do. I grew up in New Jersey and worked in a Stromboli joint growing up, so I know a few things about pizza.

I got this recipe ironically from my wife’s cousin, who was a chef for the show “Biggest Loser.” I made some modifications, but it was very similar to how we made it back in Jersey.

I always dreamed of living by the beach, and as an adult, I moved to Los Angeles after college to become a filmmaker. I couldn’t find good pizza in Los Angeles, and I found it perplexing. I did find a great authentic old school Italian Restaurant that I would frequent, and I became friendly with the chef. This was the kind of joint that local mafia guys would eat at, and I saw more than one Sopranos actors in there.

The chef told me that he used to be George Steinberners personal chef. You might know George as the owner of the New York Yankees. As a Yankee fan, I didn’t quiz him about the Yankees I wanted to know why Pizza sucked in California. What he told me were three things.

Why is Pizza better in NYC?

First I asked him if it was the water. That was the rumor, and he assured me that wasn’t the reason.

1. The cheese. The best mozzarella cheese is regional and not available most of the time outside of the east coast. Some of the best cheese is only available in the NY area. I remember my dad taking me to an Italian deli as a child, where he would get fresh cheese to make Lasanga. Ok, so I believe that. Task #1 to make great pizza is to find a local dairy to buy cheese from.
2. Real pizza sauce includes a tiny amount of minced anchovies. I found that hard to believe, but he assured me that is where the tangy flavor came from. I tend to like a sweeter sauce, so I have never tried this.
3. Fresh-made daily pizza dough was the key. In California, labor is higher, and many restaurants find it cost-effective to use frozen dough. That should be criminal because it’s so easy to do and I find it hard to believe that the labor costs more than the product because making dough is very inexpensive. Even if you import high-quality flour and use premium olive oil.

What are the key elements of making great pizza dough?

The key is to use ingredients. I use pizza flour high protein flour that is imported from Italy. I use King Arthur flour for everything else, and I have used that also for pizza, and it’s fine, but I think using premium Italian pizza flour takes it up a notch. I get Caputo Double Zero 00 Flour from amazon in the 2.2 pound size because it saves me from weighing ingredients. I also use bottled alkaline water, not sure if that is needed, but I think my dough is better than any pizza place around. If you can find Polly-O cheese by Kraft foods, that is the perfect cheese. Unfortunately for me, they stopped selling that locally when the pandemic started, so I found a local dairy at a farmers market to source the perfect cheese. That’s important, according to New York chefs in the know. I can tell you that when I worked in that Stromboli joint, we grated the cheese fresh every morning, and it tasted so good shredded I could eat just that. So source good cheese, use alkaline water and buy premium high-protein flour, and you can master pizza making at home.

 

I know this is a none normal cooking method, but this is how I do it to get the water at the right temperature. You can’t boil the water, and you can’t use room-temperature water. So heat your pan until it sizzles with a drip of water. Then turn it off. I take the saucepan over to the mixer and add the water to the pan for a few seconds, which heats the water and helps the yeast activate.

Then I add the yeast and give it a mix with a form. You can whisk it up, I never use a whisk we did use a very large whisk at the pizza joint just to help the yeast activate.

In this picture, the dough is not smooth. I would let it go another minute, so it’s smooth and blended together perfectly.

One of the best things about this recipe is that it makes slightly smaller dough balls, so if you make your pizza thin enough, it will still fit on the pizza stone. My pizza stone is 14 x 14 I like to have a little space on the sizes. You’ll see in the actual pizza recipe that I like to get the pizza as thin as possible. What I do is divide the dough a few times. Split the dough in half, then in quarters, and then split the quarters. I’m avoiding using a scale. It feels like every time I pull out the scale, the battery is dead so I devised this method to avoid wasting time with a scale.

I find that for the homemade dough, the best thing to do is use sandwich zip-lock bags. This keeps it fresh and does require olive oil, so it doesn’t stick.

 

Never lead the dough out on the counter. I know many recipes call for the dough to rise on the counter for four hours, but this would not be New York-style dough if you didn’t do a slow rise in the refrigerator.

 

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The trick to great banana bread is sour cream. If you follow the other recipes, I generally like to keep things simple, but I also am always looking for that secret ingredient that makes a recipe stand out as special. There are few things I like more than the flavor of bananas and nuts in general.

My wife would tell you that it is because I am a nut. She also gets annoyed with me because every time we eat out and they ask what I want to drink, I ask them if they have fresh bananas. The reason is that I’m still searching for a great banana milkshake. I always buy one banana every time I go to the store because I hate eating them raw, and I don’t want them to go bad. I use bananas for my smoothie most mornings, and I try to catch them before they go bad and freeze them for a smoothie.

My wife doesn’t subscribe to the one banana rule, so when she shops, we end up with a bunch of over-ripe bananas. That’s also good news to be because it gives me a reason to make banana bread. It’s so easy to make, and I’m not sure how many foods are better than freshly baked banana bread.

Two things that I think make this stand out in addition to needing sour cream and orange juice instead of lemon and sprinkling EXTRA nuts on top. The only downside is that it takes an hour to bake at 350 degrees.

Always mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately.

Here is what the batter looks like

 

One problem with owning a pug is that they hate the sound of aerosol, so I can’t use spray, and I have to grease the loaf pan the old-fashioned way by rubbing the pan with butter which could be one of the reasons this always comes out great.

 

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If you are looking for a great healthy cold weather dish, I highly recommend trying this tasty recipe. My mom is a vegetarian, and I worked to perfect this recipe because I love lentils, and I wanted something she could also enjoy. The flavor comes from all the vegetables, and I have found that using chicken stock is not necessary. I load it up with other healthy things, such as spinach and carrots. This is one of my go-to lunches that I try to eat once a week all year round.

 

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A few things about this, in my opinion. First, I don’t love cream sauce with seafood. Of course, there is the traditional fettuccine alfredo with shrimp, but other than that, I don’t love the combination. I also love parmesan, but not pared with seafood. I love this recipe because it’s simple, and sometimes simple is surprisingly good.

The key to great shrimp pasta, in my opinion, is using freshly squeezed lemon and don’t overdo the lemon. Be careful with the wine and lemon to limit how much is added. I also like to add some fresh chopped parsley which I didn’t have, but it adds a nice fresh flavor to the dish.

 

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