Even though my mama carted in wheelbarrow loads of glorious multi-colored produce from our backyard garden and made sure my brother, dad and I had a home-cooked meal almost every night, I would be remiss if I didn’t list chicken wings as one of my favorite childhood meals.  

Not just any chicken wings —- the frozen honey-BBQ wings that came in frosty orange Tyson bags, which were then served with fruit salad and dipping sauce made of equal parts mayonnaise and sour cream with blue cheese crumbles.

Typically while reaching into a jar of mayonaise with a serving spoon to make the sauce, my mama will sometimes recalls the story of my father regaling her with a new food craze he had experienced during a business trip to Minneapolis: chicken wings with blue cheese sauce. At the time my mother was pregnant with me, and although she had no frame of reference for this taste memory, it “haunted” her in the way only hormone-fueled cravings can until I was born many months later. This new poultry sensation would not reach the culinary hinterlands of 1990s Wichita, Kansas for even longer. 

I still often get hankerins for them myself, but due to the demand for boneless somethinorother and teriyaki-flavored whathaveya, finding a bag often becomes an arctic quest through the bowels of the frozen food section I’d rather not make. So after looking through many a recipe, I was able to cobble together what tastes remarkably like what I recall from, as Dolly Parton woud say, the seasons of my youth based on this Sassy Radish concoction. 

Procure:

• 1 lb. of chicken wings (I could easily take this down by myself, so I would recommend buying much more than this if you have multiple roommates, children, tribal husbands if living in a matriarchal commune or eating companions). 
• 1 gallon-sized plastic bags
• 1/3 cup of chili sauce like Sriracha (If you’d rather take it down a notch in terms of heat, I would use 1/4 cup).
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2/3 cup of BBQ Sauce (If you want to use your artisanal sauce from the farmers market, get it girl. However, I just use Sweet Baby Ray’s Original. Don’t feel bad. This is supposed to be easy, friends).
• 4 cloves of finely chopped garlic
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped ginger
• A handfull of chopped Vidalia onion or a few springs of minced rosemary if you’re feeling like mildly inconsequential risk taking

In a large bowl, mix all of your sauce ingredients together. If you are making more than 1lb of chicken wings, I would suggest putting two pounds of wings in each bag and 1 batch of sauce in each. Let the wings marinade in the sauce for at least an hour, and bake them on a cookie sheet or in a glass baking dish for 40-45 minutes at 375 American degrees. 

The sauce is wonderfully easy. Depending on how many wings you’ve made, mix together equal parts mayonaise and sour cream/plain Greek yogurt. Mix in some blue cheese crumbles, and as Liz Lemon would say, BLAMMO. 

As I mentioned earlier, fruit salad is sort of a must for me when eating chicken wings. My last mix was plums, peaches and black cherries. As a second side dish, I made this Mexican corn salad from Everyday Food. 

If you anticipate having a stressful week, do yourself a favor and fix a bag of these to wait for you in the fridge. So when you inevitably come home late from a difficult day and just need a dinner you can throw in the oven before you trust fall onto the couch and turn on The Voice or another program that is equivalently like salad plate of Oreos for your brain, this dinner can give you the wings to soar again. 

Lutefisk does not warm the cockles of my heart. Nor does Nordic skiing. 

Five years ago, I spent a semester at a particularly Norwegian-influenced university in Northfield, Minnesota, after my parents moved to Minneapolis from Kansas, where I knew nothing of egg coffee or lingonberries. Let me tell you, St. Olaf College ain’t no kind of place for a Scots-Irish girl who still stares bewildered with mouth agape at people who can harmonize. 

After meeting 38 guys named Thor Swenson — all wearing ridiculous sweaters — and walking through many a cornea-freezing wind gust while the other Olsens and Nelsons shuffled past me through the snow to practice with their world-renown choir groups, I was happy to hightail it back to Mizzou.

So when a Scandinavian restaurant by the adorable name of The Bachelor Farmer opened up in Minneapolis, I figured it may be just the place to rectify my misgivings about pickled fish and the like. 

Here now, is an Instagram recap of the dinner I had with my mama while in town visiting my family.

First off, let us note the blue gingham awnings. If warm wolf urine in a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow spells trouble (if I know anything from History Channel’s Mountain Men), blue gingham is a sure sign of a good things to come. 

After one bite of this crispy lefse that was served before dinner, I immediately appealed to the Norse god Odin for forgiveness for ever insulting his people’s eating preferences, and proceeded to gleefully spread salty butter on the beautiful radishes that were grown in the restaurant’s rooftop garden. 

In a shining example of Minnesota efficiency, here is the restaurant’s chalkboard that allows customers to purchase glasses of wine from half bottles purchased from other customers. 

This salad is made of bibb lettuce, aged goat cheese, cider vinegar and teeny toasted croutons. It’s so painfully simple that it almost as painful to pay for it, but deep down you know it would never taste this good if you made it yourself. 

Like Swedish bruschetta, the toasts at TBF are sort of a big deal. The house-baked and toasted slices come out in a silver rack and, in this particular case, a trout spread with arugula, duck livers and watermelon rind pickles that taste as good as any I’ve had here in Georgia. 

We liked the toasts so much that we ordered another — this time with duck liver pate, pickled carrots and whole grain mustard. 

For our main course we split a piece of bluefish with a corn and summer vegetable salad in a tomato-y vinaigrette. At this point I was in such a state of Scandilirium that I forgot to take close notes on what I was eating. Forgive me. We also had a warm pop-over roll with honey-butter at the behest of our waiter.

In the end, all of the mental preparation I had done to break through my aversion to dill and embrace various meats floating in puddles of lye-like brine, was all for not. It turns out that the IKEA cafeteria menu is not a good barometer of the culinary contributions that Sweden, Norway and Finland have made to the greater world of food. 

So instead of meatballs and gravy in serving dishes next to ergonomic shelving units or translucent blobs of salted white fish, I will remember Nordic cuisine as this. 

I leave you now with a picture I took at the Minnesota State Fair’s Salem Lutheran Church Swedish Egg Coffee booth. 

After eating exclusively fried chicken, mac ‘n’ cheese and all things smothered while doing research for my soul food article, I’ve been trying to clean up my act before I inevitably go hog wild in the Minneapolis’ food scene at the end of the month. 

So far, that’s mainly entailed having Cassey Ho yell at me to suck my belly button into my spine while I do double leg lifts and more trips to Russo’s Sea Food Market.  

Occasionally, we all need a meal that doesn’t take forever to make, and the dinner you see above made with salmon from Russo’s took me all of 12 minutes to make.  

All I did was brush my Lodge Cast Iron grill pan with olive oil and set it over medium-high heat; cut half the salmon filet into roughly two inch cubes, and seasoned them with salt and pepper; slice up a yellow bell pepper; cut the stems off a few mushrooms; and alternate the pieces on a skewers that had been soaked in water. Finally, I set the kabobs on the grill pan for 6 minutes. You may want to leave it on a little longer if you’re not a raging carnivore like myself and want your salmon further from sashimi-style.

I had a little help from Annie Chun for the black pearl sticky rice, which only takes a minute in the microwave, and the sauce is Thai Kitchen’s sweet chili sauce, one of my go-to condiments. 

For dessert, I took advantage of the cherries coming in from Up North. If it weren’t for those blessed pits, I’d eat the whole bag. 

As promised fair readers, here is an Instagramlicious post of my dinner at Husk in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Sean Brock’s magnum opus Husk, which has more hype surrounding it than Missy Franklin and Cloud Atlas put together, has been on my restaurant bucket list for almost a year now. It’s tagline is “a celebration of Southern ingredients,” but it’s more like the equivalent of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee for all things heirloom, pork and Low Country. 

My expectations the day before were about as high as this kid’s. 

… and they were oh so exceeded. 

After reading all of the freshly printed menus several times, we decided to order two drinks, 2 salads, 2 appetizers, a side and dessert. It was both the perfect amount of food and the perfect way to try a little bit of everything.

This is my whiskey cocktail fittingly called Lil’ Bit. It’s a combination of Johnny Drum, Jack Rudy, orange bitters, grapefruit bitters, lemon and lime. 

Featuring adorably tiny tomatoes, this was my salad made of Bibb lettuce, salami, roasted corn, marinated tomatoes, mozzarella and cucumber buttermilk dressing.

Justin had the heirloom tomato and arugula salad with pickled berries and beets, blue cheese and a summer fruit vinaigrette. 

For a side we ordered one of the more experimental sounding options: compressed melons tossed with black pepper and honey vinaigrette and house-made ricotta curd. The taste is nothing short of being slapped in the face and passionately kissed by summer all in the same bite. 

Here are the infamous pig ear lettuce wraps made with “Kentuckyaki” pig ears, ginger-marinated carrots, celery, red onion and cilantro. I never thought I would regularly crave pig ears, but after these I do. They’re almost like crunchy pork jerky. 

Next, we had peach BBQ-glazed, wood-fired chicken wings with Sea Island Benne and scallions. These along with the cloth bread basket filled with wonderfully squishy rolls studded with Benne are just further proof that Sean Brock is master and commander of all things Benne. 

 Finally, here is the dessert that has me saving up for a kitchen torch: a peach that is magically encased in a shell of burnt sugar with mascarpone cheese and a Benne seed tuille cookie. 

All of this for under $100? Y’all, down South we know value.

Believe the hype, read this wonderful article on Sean Brock by the equally wonderful Jeffrey Steingarten and, if you can, get yourself on down to Charleston. 

Hi Kitchen Oddity friends,

Sorry for my longer than usual absence, but while I’ve been recombobulating my brain synapses, reorganizing my kitchen to maximize my four square feet of counter space and fighting the spider mites on my pepper plants, you’ll be happy to know I’ve also been productive both in writing and eating. 

So here’s what I’ve done on my summer blogcation. I apologize that most of these photos are Instagram shots, and therefore make it appear that I’ve time traveled from 1978. 

I spent most of mid-June eating my weight in soul food everyday for an article featured in Oxford American’s new online food department.

I met some of the nicest folks the South has to offer all while eating heapin’ helpin’s of fried chicken, smothered shrimp, yams, mac ‘n’ cheese, okra and tomatoes, collards and cornbread. Above is a photo of my dinner at Brown’s Family Restaurant, a sister restaurant to Sisters of the New South. I probably gained 10 lbs. writing this, but it was worth it.

Speaking of the Oxford American’s online food department, I also spent a few evenings on the line in Green Truck’s kitchen for another article on my favorite Savannah restaurant. 

For me, it simply isn’t Friday night if I’m not sitting at the bar in Green Truck with an El Jefe burger, fries and a beer. Although I’ve had to up my Pilates workouts to compensate for this weekly habit, it’s also been worth it to get to know the people behind the bar. 

A few weeks ago I pickled noodle beans with owners Josh and Whitney and server (and friend) Cassandra in Green Truck’s kitchen. They look so pretty in the jars that I haven’t tried one yet, but Whitney says they are perfect for Bloody Marys. I’ll give y’all the recipe in my next online piece for Savannah Magazine. 

For this month, I decided to write about picking blackberries and blueberries in rural Georgia. It’s a darn shame these things have to be ripe during the summer when it’s hot enough outside to bake a coconut cake in my Jetta Sportwagen. 

I bought peaches in a strip club parking lot across the bridge in South Carolina. 

If you’ve never gone across a major suspension bridge over one of America’s busiest cargo ship ports, down a two-lane high way that was most likely repaved in 1978 with a speeding Hyudai Elantra and an 18-wheeler behind you — all while trying to figure out which strip club parking lot the plywood and spray paint signs on the side of the road are referring to — for the sake of stone fruit, you haven’t really been living. 

I’ve eaten one or two Wild Georgia Shrimp Po’ Boys at Gerald’s Pig and Shrimp on Tybee Island.

All inside a tiny, yellow trailer beneath a reclaimed wood patio, Gerald Schantz makes some of the best seafood in the Low Country. Always letting the shrimp speak for themselves, he only gussies them up with some light breading and coleslaw. Friends don’t let friends by imported shrimp as Gerald says. And after a warm day on the sand, nothing beats one of Gerald’s fresh-squeezed, beach glass-colored limeades in a Styrofoam cup. 

I’ve also been buried in reading…

that has absolutely nothing to do with my thesis.

And getting sugar and iced tea fixes from my friends at Back in the Day Bakery, one of the happier places on earth. 

Their lavender cookies are my go-to cure for writer’s block, mild trivia night hangovers and/or summertime colds. 

This concludes my presentation. 

Next up, a recap of my dinner at Husk in Charleston, which exceeded my expectations that were about as high as a 4-year-old going to Disney Land. 

My celebratory mint julep and obscenely good summer salad featuring my mama’s poppyseed dressing. 

There’s still time, friends!

It’s summer in Savannah. The temperatures are rising.

The humidity makes drying off after a shower futile. The art students have left town and in their wake dumpsters filled with soiled area rugs, Target lamps and general college-stained detritus. The remaining tourists are sweaty — their visors tightly bound around their frizzy hair. The daily arguments that take place between my house and the grocery store parking lot turn to calls for firearms more quickly now. The smell of fried chicken from Kroger mixes with the scent of jasmine blooming on chain link fencing. 

But there is a reward for those who stay behind and prostrate themselves before their wall unit air conditioners.

That reward is Georgia peaches. 

Save for having dinner with Neil Young, Martha Stewart and Bill Clinton; inventing a time machine that directly teleports you to The White Stripes last live show in Southaven, Mississippi; or running away to Tahiti to sell tacos on the beach with Ryan Gosling, I really can’t think of anything much better than a whole flat of peaches from Davis Produce.

So for the love of Jesus jumping up and down on a pogo stick, get yourselves some peaches and make a pie. 

For the crust, I used Libbie Summer’s “Way Better Than Basic Pie Dough” recipe from her Whole Hog Cookbook, which I made for a strawberry pie not too long ago. I was in a bit of a rush to get these close-to-too-ripe peaches inside a crust so I didn’t make an orthodox version of it. Instead I used the vegetable shortening option, and since I didn’t have any vanilla sugar on hand, I scraped the seeds out of one side of half a vanilla bean.

Also, I didn’t cut the butter and shortening in by hand all the way. I used my food processor to cut it into the size of small peas and added water while the processor was running until it formed into a ball. It was still fantastic. 

My mama (who was visiting to see me graduate from SCAD with my master’s degree) has no off position on her genius switch. While I would have taken this as an opportunity to pour over my various cookbooks and troll the internet for the perfect-sounding filling recipe, in all her infinite wisdom, she picked up the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and found it in all of 90 seconds. 

Pro tip: If you don’t want a permanent pukey-colored stain on your Flaming Lips concert T-shirt,  wear an apron whilst peeling your peaches. 

Rustle up:

• 6 cups of peeled, pitted and sliced peaches
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of quick-cooking tapioca
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I’m not the biggest fan of adding cinnamon in fruit pies, but do so if you like it.)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a big bowl, stir together sugar, tapioca, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add peaches and toss to coat. Let mixture stand for 20 minutes. 

While mixture is standing, roll out one chilled disc and fit into 9-inch pie pan. Place filling inside. If you feel fancy, you can roll out the other disc and cut into strips for a lattice top. This slide show form Bon Appetit is always helpful if you need some guidance. Crimp edges together and place pan on a baking sheet. Don’t skip this step. In the words of Jay-Z: “Hov did that so hopefully you wouldn’t have to go through that.” 

Bake for 25 minutes. Check up on it, and then bake 15-20 minutes more. It may be necessary to create an annoying foil halo around your crust’s edges as it bakes for the first 25 to prevent overbrowning. If you aren’t a fan of burnt ends outside of the realm of BBQ, I suggest getting out the Reynold’s wrap. 

I’m a real person. Photo by Justin Carapella. 

Immediately transport to a backyard get-together, a quinceañera happening nearby, neighborhood block party or any picnic table/porch within 100 feet.  

After years of peeling ginger and chopping cilantro in vain, the recipe for the cilantro-lime sauce at Brasa in Minneapolis has finally been published. 

If you only knew how this sauce has haunted me since I first ate there four years ago, you would understand how momentous this is for me.

Is it crema? Sour cream? Coud it actually be an aioli? Am I imaging the garlic part? They couldn’t possibly be using pickled ginger, could they? How much cilantro can there possibly be in this? Why is this so hard!? Where’s the Tylenol!? These were the questions that would keep me up at night when I needed a fix and was too far from Minneapolis to feed my craving for Creole comfort food — slow roasted pork with yellow rice and black beans, fried sweet plantains, cornbread and the sauce.  

Much like the moment when my brother realized at the age of 18 that Robert Palmer wasn’t saying “Hyenas wear faces, you’re addicted to love,” reading the actual ingredients was a revelation, but the kind of discovery you wish you had been able to come to on your own. It doesn’t take a secret ingredient you must hunt for at five different mercados or a time-consuming process. Just simplicity in a blender. 

You will need to rustle up:

• 2 large jalapeños seeded and coarsely chopped. 
• 2 large smashed garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons minced white onion (I used Vidalia, as I do for everything, and it was still crazy good.)
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 cup mayonaise
• 1/4 cup water (Believe it or not, this is what I was missing. In the words of my father, “Of all the damn things.”) 
• 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
• Salt

Put the jalapeños, garlic, ginger, onion, lime juice and water in a blender and puree until smooth. Add the mayonnaise and cilantro and pulse until smooth. Season with salt to taste. 

I would put this sauce on anything short of cardboard, but for its maiden voyage in my kitchen I drizzled it over wild Georgia shrimp, avocado and purple cabbage tacos.

I really can’t think of anything better for Cinco de Mayo except maybe the addition of a strawberry margarita. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a whole mess of tortilla chips and mango salsa I need to regret eating tomorrow. 

There’s lots of talk going ‘round about mint juleps mostly due to an upcoming horse race. But when I think of mint juleps, I think of a silver cup I saw inside a glass box at an old house in the woods of Oxford, Mississippi. 

This year, it will have been fifty years since William Faulkner died, and even longer since my redheaded grandmother Loree watched him watch others in Oxford’s square when she would go galavanting with her cousin Eppie, a student at Ole Miss. “Count Do Nothing” was his nickname around town. 

My grandmother and mama were able to go inside Rowan Oak, his old house in the woods, ten years after he died, but before it had been turned into a museum, because Eppie knew somebody. My mama said it was then when she saw the words scrawled across his bedroom walls that she knew writers were different and that was okay. 

Last summer, northward on our way from Savannah, my mama took me to the now curated house owned by Ole Miss. The red and black outline on white-washed walls was arresting, but I found another familiar piece of Rowan Oak.

Behind a locked pane glass door was Faulkner’s favorite room: the kitchen. It was apparently where his wife Estelle would begin her search for him whenever he was out of sight. Obscured by the reflection of rustling oak leaves and dappled patches of June afternoon sunlight, there were curtains made from blue gingham (my favorite), a double freezer, a combination gas-wood stove and an electric range. It’s hard for me to see this photo and not wildly fantasize about remedially line dancing across the floor in my boots and cherry-print apron to some Waylon and Willie between stirring some grits or peach jam on the stove with an electric fan whirring in the background.

Apparently, Faulkner just played Old Maid in here because it was warm. 

But back to the mint juleps…

For a drink having remarkably few ingredients, everyone still has their own way of putting together the sugar, ice, mint and bourbon. Below is William Faulkner’s recipe, a simple set of additions to a distillation he had such a complicated relationship with. Lord knows what he could have done with less of it. But the two are inextricably linked, and even in death Faulkner’s whiskey is within reach — a bottle of Jameson sits faithfully at his tombstone.

Mint julep technology really hasn’t advanced in the past fifty years. They’re still served in metal or silver cups on ice with a sprig for garnish. Although today’s mixologists (and, no, I won’t watch my tone) will have you believe you need to throw in ginger bitters, cognac, a pickled lemon and a free range chicken leg while you’re at it, when it comes to juelps, it’s better in my opinion to err on the side of classic. 

The only thing I will be persnickety about is that you use this as an excuse to run up to Johnnie Ganem’s or whatever your local liquor purveyor is to buy a bottle of Bulliet Bourbon Frontier Whiskey. Not only is it high-quality and affordable, it recently made a cameo appearance in Jack White’s latest music video for “Sixteen Saltines.”

You’ll also need this…

Simple syrup. It might not be a simple as throwing in a teaspoon of sugar, but it ain’t much harder than that. Bring 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar (or 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar, and on and on) to a boil, stir until sugar has completely dissolved into the water and pour into a mason jar. Let syrup cool and put jar in the refrigerator until cold. For an extra punch of mint in your julep, you can leave a handfull of mint sprigs (10 or so) in the jar overnight. Make sure to discard them after.

As you saw in the first picture, I use a chilled jam jar for my mint juleps. This may not be fittin’ or proper, but it works all the same. I already have too many grown-up kitchen appliances and devices people are supposed to give you in silver-wrapped boxes tied up with white ribbons at your wedding reception. A set of silver julep cups would only scare my friends more.

Once you have your chilled jam jar, silver cup, pork ‘n’ beans can or tumbler, perform the following actions.

• Pour in a tablespoon or so of simple syrup and add 3 or 4 mint leaves. Use the bottom of a wooden spoon to press the leaves against the glass, which will release their minty potential. 
• Add enough crushed ice till the cup is nearly full. 
• Pour in however much Bourbon you see fit after taking into account the day’s occurrences. 
• Place a mint sprig near the top.

Sip continually as the evening sun sets. 

If you’ve been wondering where I wandered off to lately, I’ve been wrangling high school jazz bands, bluegrass prodigies and stage equipment the past few weeks for the Savannah Music Festival. 

And let me tell you, it takes more than a couple Luna Bars to herd a hundred teenagers carrying trombones, saxophones and upright basses through the hallways, streets and cramped backstage areas of Savannah. I also discovered that two Kashi waffles, scrambled eggs, a mango smoothie and two pimento cheese sandwiches for breakfast really isn’t enough to accomplish the various other tasks I had during the festival either.

So while others were drinking sangria and making grilled fish with pineapple salsa or greek salads with cucumbers and chickpeas as the weather became warmer, I ended up eating a lot of biscuits with various pieces of meat between them and turnip soup because, well, I was hungry. 

Seasonal and satisfying, this meal can carry you through any situation including but not limited to: walking briskly/running with heavy boxes; pushing electric organs; cleaning up various beer and/or Smoothie King spills; and carrying coolers that weigh as much as a full-grown Newfoundland.

I believe that country ham biscuits are a personal matter much like who you vote for or what supernatural force you appeal to when things get heavy. Whether you want to make your grandmother’s angel biscuit recipe or purchase a bag of frozen Alexia buttermilk biscuits, there is no judgement here. Nor is there any for how many country ham biscuits you take company in or what you put on them. I like to spread orange marmalade or Sourwood honey on mine. 

However, I will take the liberty of telling you how to make this turnip soup that I read about on Garden and Gun’s web site a few months ago. If you haven’t discovered the myriad joys of turnips, you’re really not as happy as you could be. This is your chance.

You’ll need:

• 1 head of roasted garlic (Wrap 1 bulb in aluminum foil and roast for 30-45 minutes in the oven at 425 degrees, press down with the side of your knife and squeeze out soft garlicy goodness. Discard papery casings.)
• 4 cups turnips, trimmed, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes 
• 1 medium onion (I used a Vidalia of course)
• 4 cups chicken stock
• Salt n pepa 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 slices prosciutto or left over country ham cut into “really fin” 1-inch stripes
• 1/4 cup creme fraiche or heavy cream

Find a decent-sized stock pot or sauce pan and put the roasted garlic, turnips, onion wedges and stock in it. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature to a simmer and let it create turnip and onion magic for 30-45 minutes uncovered. Rev up your food processor or immersion blender and puree until smooth. Return the soup to the pot or pan and add nutmeg, prosciutto or ham, and creme fraiche or heavy cream. Bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer again. Ladle into bowls and garnish with green onions. Much like the rug in The Big Lebowski, the green onions really tie the whole thing together. 

With enough biscuits and soup, you’ll be ready to TCB Elvis-style too.