When I was little, my mom occasionally made this bread-and-egg breakfast for a special I-love-you treat. The butter and eggs were rich and filling, and the bread was crisp and toasty. Simple and comforting. It was also the first cooked dish I ever made.

Problem is, now that I want to make it for my own precious Sweet Cheeks, I don’t know what to call it. I’ve heard plenty of names: Funny Eggs, Egg-in-a-Frame, Popeye Eggs. I bet your family had one.

And that’s what this contest is about: submit your best name for this dish and win a grill wok from my supply (scroll down to see a few of them in the sink).

Be creative! Good luck, and tell a friend!

A friend’s apple tree was loaded down this year, so we took home a bag of homegrown, organic apples. Thank you Carole! Sure they were a little mis-shapen and a couple had split places, but that’s no problem. We were planning on applesauce.

At the same time, we were asked to bring a healthy snack to a group lesson. So we bought apples at a large chain grocery store. In keeping with this well-known store’s approach to food, they were the worst apples you can imagine being sold in a first-world big name supermarket.

At the height of apple season, with apples practically falling into our hands from the branches, the store located a stash of last year’s brown, beat-up, soft apples and put them out for sale for about $5.70 a bag. The nerve. But I was running late and in need — they really count on that.

It’s not an isolated incident. There are many such insults, both to customer and food. Don’t get me started — but if you’ve got an anecdote, I’m collecting them.

Anyway, the “crapples” were not popular with the kids, so most of them came home. We cut out the bad parts, then cooked them in the pressure cooker for about 10 minutes with the nice homegrown apples. Then we put the mush through a food mill to remove the seeds, skins and stems. I only use the food mill for apples and persimmons, so it doesn’t see a lot of use. Still, only a food mill does what it does, so I gladly grant it cabinet real estate.

I cooked the mixture with lemon juice, sugar and a cinnamon stick until it reached just the right thickness. Homemade applesauce has a slightly different texture than store-bought, but it’s a little silkier, and tastes better. I would have taken a picture of it, but it’s one of those “looks bad, tastes good” goods — you probably have one of those, too.

Tupperware Avalanche has become Kraft Garlic Cheese Roll Central against long odds. Despite lifelong Southern-ness, a love of cheese grits, and two previous posts on Kraft Garlic Cheese, I hadn’t ever purchased it. My mom used it, and millions of other Southern moms use it, but I just never had occasion.

(If you’re new to the Kraft Garlic Cheese Roll story, it was unceremoniously discontinued over the holidays by some sharp business minds at Kraft.)

A dear friend read one of the previous posts on the story, and sweetly bought a roll of it for me, which I hoarded in the fridge for four months. (Oh stop making the “ewww” face — as if processed cheese EVER goes bad. It probably would have been just fine in the cabinet for four months. Ewwww.)

When just the right occasion arrived, I made cheese grits. Mmmmm. Waaaaarm. Cheeeeezy. Griiiiitty. I had never used Kraft Garlic Cheese roll to make them before, and I admits, it’s seductively easy. Too late I discover this.

Just as a note, “Kraft Garlic Cheese” is the most logged search term on this blog. So it’s possible you reached this page looking for a substitute for the discontinued Kraft Garlic Cheese rolls. Try this: For each 6 ounce roll, substitute either 6 ounces of Velveeta or Cheez Wiz from a jar, plus 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder.

To reach the Kraft kitchens and request they revive Kraft Garlic Cheese roll, call 1-800-847-1997 and follow the prompts.

Behold the meat thermometer’s last day on earth. I won it in a blogging contest — it replaced a cracked thermometer purchased at a grocery store about 14 years ago. The new thermometer seemed a little off from the beginning: you’d roast the turkey breast/pork roast for the recommended time, and the thermometer would tell you that it was still 15 degrees below the safe point. Or it would register very low, then 15 minutes later, the meat was suddenly 10 degrees overcooked. So I calibrated the thermometer. The photo shows the fourth test in which the thermometer was put into boiling water or set into a cup and boiling water poured over it. Even given that the water loses a couple of degrees on its way into the cup, this thermometer is still nearly 20 degrees off.

It’s not too early to start my Christmas list, is it?

Little Monty Python joke there.

I really like rabbit, which tastes a lot like chicken. And you might ask “Why cook rabbit, then?” And you’d have a point.

True, it comes cut up like chicken, into a white saddle and dark thigh quarters, very chicken-like. Also true that, chicken-like, there’s a mixture of white and dark meat. However the white meat is more like dark meat because it isn’t dry and chewy like chicken breast. It’s also more flavorful than a 6-week-old chicken. And there’s something slightly less factory-like about farmed rabbit than farmed chicken.

So this is a rabbit, here, cooked to an exquisite perfection in szguazet, a herbed reduction of tomatoes and wine, along the lines of cacciatore. Perfumey, wine-y, falling-off-the-bone tender. Served over pasta, with lots of the pan juices.

That’s a copy of Cucina di Lidia in the background, a wonderful cookbook of dishes from Lidia’s native Istria, which is Slovenia now, not Italy. Great place, Slovenia. Nice people, great food, awesome real estate. The spirit of Italy at half the price.

What makes the book distinctive is the simple, homey food. The ingredient lists are short, and there’s nothing exotic there, so everything should be perfectly fresh. The seafood chapter features the freshest catch, simply prepared. There’s a chapter on game, another on risotto and gnocchi and a butter/egg/milk pasta I’ve never heard of (bigoli) and rougher fare like white bean cake and plum gnocchi that seem really connected to the land and seasons. For sure I’m making one of the sausages from the book, either Mantuan sausage or cotechino (but I may have difficulty finding the “two pounds of face and butt fat” that it calls for).

Someone in our house would never, ever eat a fluffy bunny. So this coniglio magically transformed into the lowly chicken, no one was the wiser and everyone left the table well fed.

Coniglio (or Pollo) in Szguazet
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 slices bacon, diced
3 bay leaves
4 sage leaves
1 teaspoon fresh or dried rosemary
4 whole cloves
1 (2 1/2- to 3-pound) rabbit, cut up
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken broth
Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven or coated casserole dish. Saute the onion, bacon, bay leaves, sage, rosemary and cloves until the onion is tender. Season the rabbit and add it to the pan. Brown it for 3 minutes on each side. Add the tomato paste and mix to coat the meat. Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to loose the brown bits. Add the stock and simmer, half-covered, until he sauce is reduced and the rabbit is cooked through, about 30 minutes.
(Or use a pressure cooker and cook the rabbit 12 minutes. Release the pressure by running the cooker under water, remove the lid, and boil to reduce the sauce somewhat.)
Strain the sauce (or at least remove the cloves and bay leaves). Serve the rabbit and sauce over pappardelle or gnocchi. Makes 4 servings.

Despite lifelong Tennessee residence, I’d never visited the Great Smoky Mountains, unless you count an overnight in Gatlinburg with a youth group. It’s the most-visited national park, but I never had the opportunity to go.

That changed last year, when I was included in an annual hike with a great group up Mount Leconte to spend a night at the lodge. The company, the scenery, the whole experience all left a deep impression. This year, I remembered to bring a camera.The wooden cabins and lodges and the alpine climate are like nothing else in Tennessee, and it feels like a Swiss mountain town. It’s quiet and peaceful and the air is sweet.

There’s very little plumbing — you fill a wash basin from a pump — and no electricity. Cabins are lit by oil lamp, heated with propane and the staff cooks with propane, working by lamps and headlamps. There’s aggressive bear activity in the area, according to the park service. (And since I slept on the floor by the door, bear thoughts were never far from my mind.)

In March, when the season begins, a helicopter brings a massive load of canned and other packaged food to the site. (If you’re willing to spend a week unloading, the lodge offers a week of free room and board.) During the season, llamas trek up the mountain to resupply the lodge, bringing fresh eggs and (just a guess) more wine.

Bears, propane, canned food: Seems like a challenge to cook in those conditions for 40 people twice a day. So it’s a pleasant surprise that the food is good, and it’s even better this year than it was last year.

The meal starts with soup, which was a really good creamy chicken and wild rice this year (vegetable last year).

You can see the glass of wine, refilled frequently by the extraordinarily efficient, patient and physically fit staff, and the thermos of butter lugged up the mountain by one intrepid hiker, who declared that the sensation of cold margarine squishing through her teeth at last year’s meals was something she simply couldn’t repeat.

Main course: beef with gravy, green beans straight outta the can, skillet apples.

For the meatless, black beans. There was chocolate birthday cake this year and last year, freshly baked by the staff.

I didn’t know what to expect from the food. Probably basic hiking food, maybe glorified Rice-A-Roni and oatmeal, rather than flowing wine and chocolate cake. And if there’s just nothing else you can eat on the table, there’s a basket of cookies.

But honestly, here’s the real dessert.

About 12 years ago I wrote a story for the Nashville Banner on Nancy Johnson of White House Tennessee, who seemed at the time to be the winningest-ever state fair entrant.

In 1991 she entered 23 categories of pickles, preserves and baked goods, winning 13 of them. In 1992 she entered 34 categories and won 25 prizes, which she called “a good year.” In about 1997, she won $300 in prize money: $125 from Pillsbury’s pie contest and the rest from competitions that paid from $3 to $15. Do the math: that’s a lot of winning. Her biggest year was ‘75, when bumper crops in the garden let her enter 30 canned goods, along with nine baked goods. She won almost every category.

She was a great interviewee and a fascinating cook with a sure eye for a winning recipe. Everything she made, from biscuits to salsa, was first-rate. I still haveand use three of her recipes. One is a two-alarm, very limey salsa that stands up well to canning. The second is a matchless blueberry muffin with a butter-and-sugar-dipped top. And the third is the best damn apple pie you’ve ever had, I don’t care who you are. It’s won prizes from Tennessee to England to California.

This year I made Nancy Johnson’s Apple Orange Pie for the family Labor Day/August birthdays gathering. I used an apple I don’t see often, Wolf River, which I only ever find at the Howells’ stands in Green Hills. Wolf River is an early apple from South Carolina. I really love the flavor. It’s slightly flattened like York apple. This year they were a little underripe. I’ve never cooked with Wolf River apples before, only eaten them fresh. Fortunately, they cooked really well, holding their shape and texture and developing a nice flavor.

I always make the same pie pastry — 10 tablespoons of butter and shortening, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 4 tablespoons ice water — but this time I used too much shortening and the crust was very soft. You can see on the finished pie where it settled around individual pieces of apple, rather than acting as a lid. When cut, the pieces didn’t hold their shape — they were more like a cobbler. But it was still the best apple pie, I don’t care who you are.

I’ve been thinking about Nancy a lot lately, so when I go to the fair, I’ll have to stop at the baked goods and pickles to see whether she entered anything.

State Fair Winning Apple Orange Pie

4 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice (or cinnamon)

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

3 or 4 large cooking apples

1 (2-crust) pie pastry

1 egg white, beaten with 2 teaspoons water

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium low heat. Stir in the flour and the spice, Add the sugar and juice. Bring to a boil, remove from the heat and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Peel and grate or chop the apples.

Arrange the pastry in a pie plate. Spoon the apples into the pastry. Pour the butter mixture over the apples. Top with the remaining crust, sealing the edges. Brush with the egg white mixture. Cut steam vents. Bake for 45 minutes. Makes 8 servings.

Only when I’m cooking professionally do I make a list and go into a store and buy the items to make a recipe. Instead, I usually buy what I think we’ll eat. In practice, that means many dinners are built around whatever foods in the fridge/freezer need to be eaten.

Pinto beans and some Nathan’s hot dogs taking up real estate in the freezer, turkey bacon and a bell pepper reaching their sell-by date and some no-salt-added ketchup purchased by accident — a batch of beanie weenie would clear it all out at once.

About 35 years separate me and my last serving of beanie weenie, so I can’t explain why it came to mind. It seemed like an interesting path: study up on 35 years’ worth of technological and flavor-profile improvements to the somewhat lame beanie weenie of my youth. But when I looked for a beanie weenie recipe, I came up empty-handed except for three “combine a can of pork and beans with some sliced hot dogs” on Recipezaar.com. Not what I wanted. I looked in some very likely cookbooks: Fannie Farmer, the Dinah Shore cookbook, Amy Vanderbilt, the old Joy (2 editions), the Good Housekeeping cookbook, Dinner Doctor. Maybe people didn’t make beanie weenie from scratch. I never have before either, it’s true, but I figured someone out there was doing so, especially in these economically trying times.

So I developed a recipe. The trick is to cook the bacon, onion and pepper low and slow, and to make a little roux. Not a big scary roux. You’re just browning a little flour in a little oil so all those flavorful fats and oils form a suspension that binds the beans and the hot dogs so they become one in deliciousness. Pintos and Dawgs were very good, and even Sweet Cheeks only had to be asked twice to eat it. I even wrote down the recipe, so I have a copy of it. And now you do too.

And the plate partner there in the photo is panelle, a crazy good French fry substitute made from chickpea flour and nearly carbless, recipe from my pal Claudia at CookeatFRET.com

Pintos and Dawgs

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon butter

3 slices turkey bacon, chopped

1/2 chopped onion

1/2 chopped green bell pepper

2 tablespoons flour

5 hot dogs, sliced

1 scant cup chicken bouillon or broth

1/2 teaspoon ground mustard

1/4 cup barbecue sauce

2 tablespoons ketchup

2 to 3 cups cooked pinto beans

Salt to taste

In a nonstick pan, heat the oil and butter over medium-low heat and saute the bacon until the fat is rendered. Add the bell pepper and onion and saute until very tender and beginning to brown. Sprinkle with the flour and saute for about 10 minutes until browned. Add the hot dogs and saute until browned. The mixture will be sticking to the pan. Add the chicken broth and mix very well. Cook until thickened, about 3 minutes. Add the mustard, barbecue sauce and ketchup and mix well. Cook until thickened and hot. Taste it — the mixture should be tangy but not tomatoey. Add the beans and salt and cook until heated through. Makes 3 to 4 servings.

It’s possible to successfully store milk in the freezer. You can freeze milk. In 20 years of working with food, cooking and cookbooks, I had never heard or read it. Skeptical barely covers my first reaction, but my British friend said her mom (who lives in a village outside Cambridge) does it all the time. (With dorm-room-scale refrigerators and a market every few blocks, why a Brit would freeze milk is unfathomable, but okay.)

It works, but there are two things to know. First, it takes days and days to thaw, meaning you have to remember that you need it up to 5 days before you need it. Or you can thaw it in the microwave. Second, something happens to the butterfat, like maybe the cell walls burst, and the consistency is a little different. Doesn’t make a difference on cereal or in coffee. We’re not milk drinkers, so I can’t report on the effect of it on fresh milk. Go on and do it and report back.

Not in a long time have I done so much cooking and had so little to show for it as last night. You know the feeling?

It was just a tuna loin and my neighbor’s Watermelon Curry Sauce. On the table in 20 minutes, right? I’ll start it around 6, we’ll eat around 6:30, right? What can possibly go wrong?

By 8, I’d cooked almost everything in the kitchen except for the entree. Instant pudding for dessert. Torta Freddo Gianduia for a more elaborate dessert because, dear friends, you understand, I was desperate for chocolate. Edamame. Cumin-lime slaw. Watermelon Curry Sauce. A hot dog. A baked potato. Carrot sticks.

But not the tuna loin. Because, you see, it was an eye of round that looked like a tuna loin masquerading as an eye of round. It started life as an eye of round from K&S Market. It had been in the freezer for two months and I had forgotten what it was. It had a seafood label. It looked like a big tuna loin. At $7, it seemed a little cheap for tuna loin, but then, K&S has 1 pound of picked lump crabmeat for $10, so why not a $7 tuna loin?

It thawed slowly in the meat drawer, becoming nicely translucent with a promising rich red texture. My neighbor shared a watermelon curry sauce she stumbled across in Belize this year.

I was about 1 hour into cooking at this point, and had made just about everything else. I had a sit-down for a while. Then I fed Sweet Cheeks (it was pretty late by this time) and my other neighbor dropped by during her evening walk. The tuna was at room temperature, so I unwrapped it and prepared to cut it into steaks.

I haven’t seen a tuna with this much blood, I thought. And then the last wrapping came off and the impostor was unmasked: a beef eye of round. Big Fella offered to go purchase an entree. As you can imagine, he was ready to eat, and despite all the cooking, there was still not one damn thing for grown-ups to eat except a few stray edamame.

Fortunately a pound of thawed squid tubes was in the meat drawer. Squid tubes in the fridge doesn’t really register on the strange-meter in my kitchen, but my neighbor almost fell off the stool. (Note to self when among earthlings: Squid = not normal).

We made lime-garlic broiled squid. It was fine but not a good pairing for the Watermelon Curry Sauce, which made me sad. But there’s always a next time, another tilapia or tuna. And fortunately there was Torta Freddo Gianduia to redeem what was left of the day.

Watemelon Curry Sauce
My neighbor never makes it the same way twice and never uses a recipe, so I’m giving the amounts that worked for me.
3 to 5 cups chopped watermelon
1 teaspoon yellow curry powder
2 tablespoons butter
Puree the watermelon and pour it into a saucepan. Simmer until it is somewhat reduced, about 15 minues. Strain it into a bowl. It will be clear and smell like cooked cucumbers at this point, but have faith. Discard the solids. Clean the pan. Return the watermelon juice to the pan. Simmer until reduced and thickened somewhat. Add the curry powder and mix well. Add the butter and simmer until thick. Makes enough for two tuna steaks.

Torta Freddo Gianduia
This recipe has been in my “to try” notebook for years and years until now. It came from the Simple Cooking newsletter in the mid-1990s. It’s really just nuts and cookies folded into fudge and I imagine a PMS-y Italian cook made it up.

2 1/2 ounces (squares) unsweetened chocolate
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
5 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup toasted skinned hazelnuts
4 ounces crushed Danish butter cookies
Grate or chop the chocolate. Combine the egg, yolk, sugar and salt in a mixer or food processor. Beat for about 5 minutes. Stir in the chocolate.
Melt the butter in the top of a double boiler set over simmering water. When it’s all melted, Remove the top of the double boiler. Beat in the chocolate mixture. Return the top of the boiler. Cook the mixture over simmering water, stirring occasionally, until it is thick enough that a spoon dragged through it leaves a trail that lasts for several seconds. Remove the whole thing from the heat. Fold the nuts and cookies into the chocolate. Pour into a springform pan or tart pan with a removable bottom. Refrigerate for 1 hour to firm up. Cut into thin wedges. Makes 6 to 8 servings.