Sugar Cured Creole Ham Recipe

Sugar spiked, sugar glazed, sugar crusted ... this is one sweet ham.

Sweet as in better than good is the meaning here even though sugar is incorporated in three different stages of preparing this amazing ham. The ham is actually not really that sweet, but moist with a delectable, very southern and distinguish flavor.

This is one fine way to cook a ham and it is one suitable for many occasions, holidays and special meals. Heck, this is one to cook for no reason at all other than it's that good.  Enjoy!

Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole

Southern Style

Around the south, as mentioned in an earlier recipe, rice grows nicely in many areas and is a very important crop for many states.  Even so, wild rice, the grayish-brown grain, the real deal, remains fairly expensive compared to the white rice varieties which many grow.  In the grocers of many, around these parts and I suspect nationwide as well, is a very affordable New Orleans style mixture of rice, Zatarain's Long Grain & Wild Mix, and it is already seasoned too.  It is a quick fix side-dish for many meals and a useful ingredient in recipes as the one I am featuring.

Bodacious Turkey Bone Soup

What to do with your leftover turkey?

Some folks make turkey hash with the slices of turkey, gravy and dressing (or stuffing), others might make a casserole using up leftover side-dishes and turkey meat or even a turkey pot pie. Or some might make something that is a favorite around these parts, Turkey Bone Gumbo. But I suspect many make soup wisely using the carcass and any leftover turkey meat.

Sausage and Pecan Dressing Recipe

Stuffing or Dressing?

Yup, it's that time of year again, a time when many ponder what to call it or where the name comes from. Romans are credited with the first mentioning of stuffing foods, mainly meats with vegetables, herbs, nuts and a type of cereal known as spelt. The term dressing came about in Victorian England.

Now, in our family, this time of year we make dressing. It is a side dish. We do not stuff the bird. Period. If we do, maybe Cornish hens, then we call it stuffing, but never do we put out a casserole and call it stuffing. Why, it just ain't done. And to be honnest here, I suspect where you live or rather, where your mother was born, determines if you call it stuffing or dressing. You see, I think

Roasted Citrus Turkey Breast

Satsuma time on the Gulf Coast

The Gulf Coast, specifically the area encompassing Mobile's delta, is an ideal climate zone for growing many citrus fruits. We enjoy a wide range of tropical fruit as well; figs, pears, blueberries, plums, scuppernongs, bananas, jelly palm even the not-so-often mentioned pawpaw as well as the citrus tastes of grapefruit (many early, mid and late varieties), blood oranges, limes (Key and Persian) and hybrids too, Meyer lemons, Asian persimmons, ‘Ponkan’ mandarins, tangerine (Clementime, Darcy, Tangelos and a host of others), sweet orange, kumquat, Calamondins and our beloved satsuma. These are just a few of the 'fruits' of our backyard labor we coastal folks enjoy seasonally and to go out in the yard, pick a fresh satsuma or two and use it in a recipe is a rewarding treat, a feeling of pride that turns any ol' recipe into extraordinaire.

Wragg Soup

The legend and making of Wragg Soup

From the swamp lands of old Mobile come many things and in today's time, the area once known as Wragg Swamp contains a couple of indoor malls, corridors of commercial buildings, parking lots and strip malls, the new Red Cross building and a softball complex scattered among many neighborhoods.   Being flat, the land once was a fertile place to grow vegetables and crops year round, long before 'civilization' arrived into the area. And before it was first plowed, before the swamp and bog-like area filled in with vegetation and soil, it was a haven for outlaws, bandits and misguided folks. The land dubbed it's name for George Wragg, a native of Manchester, England who established himself in Mobile by 1840. He built a series of water driven mills in the marshy lands west of Mobile, hence, Wragg Swamp. It is also recorded in the 1869 Mobile City Directory that he was in the wholesale grocery business at 61 N. Water Street.