Spaghetti with Tomato-Artichoke Sauce

The nice folks at Red Gold Tomatoes sent me a delicious sample kit that included several cans of tomatoes, a cookbook, Heartwarming Recipes for the Busy Cook, a tote bag, a fridge magnet, and a Red Gold tomato truck model.

Looking over their website I found so many delicious recipes and decided to make Spaghetti with Tomato-Artichoke Sauce. (BTW, the food pic is theirs, not mine.)


Check out their website... there are lots of delicious recipes and
they have an interactive recipe finder.

New Foodie Blog

Just created a new foodie blog, Chili... A Bowl of Red for the cookbook I'm writing. Pub Date: May 2011.

Come on over and visit. There will be lots of chili recipes and
a monthly chili cook-off.

Backyard Barbecues

I know this post is way late; it was supposed to be up after Labor Day, but better late than never... and it's always time for a BBQ no matter what time of year it is.

First things first... the winner of my now-out-of-print-BBQ-cookbook-that-I'm-bringing-back-into-print is Culinography for her Avocado Burgers. Burgers are my absolute favorite BBQ food. These look sooo good, I wish it was summertime right now and I could fire up my grill.

Summer will be here before you know it and your best friend at a backyard barbecue is my newly-revised-almost-published Best of the Barbecues.

It offers everything you need from drinks to desserts and everything in between, all designed to make your BBQ the best! Pub date is April 2010... just in time for backyard barbecue season.

Keep Those Grills Going

In my previous post, I invited all foodies to a BBQ, thinking that lots of you would be grilling over the Fourth of July, and I was planning to do a round-up on Friday.

I thought it would be more fun to have the BBQ all summer long since people cook out during the warm weather. So I'm extending my online BBQ to last all summer and will post a round-up of all the recipes, along with delicious pictures, after Labor Day Weekend.

Whenever you barbecue, just come on over and leave a link to your post in the comments so I'll be sure to collect your post. Include the badge in your post and invite all your foodie friends to come to the BBQ. Keep on grilling!!

You're All Invited to a BBQ

Since summer is here, I thought it would be really fun to invite everyone to a BBQ, especially since the Fourth of July is right around the corner and lots of people will be grilling. I love to cook and eat outdoors. There's something about the smell of food cooking on the grill that's so inviting and enticing.

I wrote a BBQ cookbook, Best of the Barbecues, a way long time ago filled with 369 recipes for everything from drinks to desserts and everything in between that you could possibly ever
want to eat, drink, and enjoy at your outdoor barbecue.

The recipes include all kinds of dips
and finger foods, a bit of the bubbly, milkshakes, bean salads, potato salads, macaroni salads, lots of veggies, both grilled and on the side, burgers... of course!, chicken, beef, fish, and steak, breads and buns because you need something to put your burger or hot dog in, delicious desserts like key lime pie, dirt cake, hot fudge sundaes, fruity things, and sauces, rubs, and marinades.

The book has been out of print for a while; I'm planning to bring it back into print. I have a few copies left and I'd like to give one to you. All you have to do is come to my BBQ and bring food to share. You can bring whatever you want--drinks, salads, veggies, meat, desserts--as long as it ties in with a BBQ and you can bring more
than one dish. BTW, I'm also planning to update the book before
I republish it, so your recipe(s) will be included.

Since a lot of people will be grilling over the holiday weekend, and won't have pics or a post on their blog yet, here's how you can win: Blog about the BBQ and invite all your readers to come to the BBQ. Include the badge and a link to this post. Leave a comment with a link to your post. After you grill, post your BBQ pics and recipes on your blog, then leave another comment with the link to your BBQ post. I can collect the pics and recipes from your blog. Or if you
have a BBQ recipe in your archives, just do a quick, short current post with your pic, the badge, and a link to this post. I'll post the round-up on July 10th and pick the winner at random.

You're all invited to my BBQ. Let's get grilling.

Less is More

Less is more... more Foods and Flavors
of San Antonio. I've been thinking about quitting Cookbook Cuisine for a while because I've been posting less here and more at Foods and Flavors of San Antonio since my new cookbook was published. I wanted to let you know so you wouldn't think I disappeared. It's been fun blogging here and I've made lots of wonderful foodie friends. I hope you'll come over and visit me at Foods and Flavors of San Antonio.

Potato Salad and a Picnic

What's more perfect for a picnic than potato salad? Louise, at Months of Edible Celebrations, is having an online alphabet picnic and is inviting everyone to bring a dish corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. The letter of the dish you bring depends on when you go over to her blog and sign up for the picnic.

I happened to get the letter D so I searched my blog for a D recipe that would be appropriate to bring to a picnic and I also wracked my brains to think of a recipe that would begin with D. The only post I could find with a D were my dogs, where I introduced you to my furry friends, so I've renamed my Perfect Potato Salad to Dill Potato Salad since there's dill in it. I suppose I could bring my dogs to the picnic, but you're supposed to bring food.

I "borrowed" this picture from Taste, because I didn't have a camera when I first blogged about my potato salad, and I wanted to get this post up to let everyone know about the Picnic, but the recipe is all mine and I've been making this Dill Potato Salad for a very long time.

• 2 pounds red potatoes, skin on
• 4 - 6, maybe 7 or 8 slices turkey bacon, crisp-cooked and crumbled
• 1/4 - 1/3 cup very finely-diced yellow onion
• 1 small green bell pepper, finely chopped
• 1/4 tsp. or more dry mustard (my secret ingredient)
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup light mayonnaise, more or less depending on how much is needed to make a moist potato salad
• Couple shakes of dill weed
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the whole potatoes, bring to a boil again, then reduce the heat and let simmer for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Drain in a colander and rinse under cold water. Set aside--usually putting the colander in the sink is the best place--and let cool at room temperature. They'll still be a little warm when you cut them.

While the potatoes are cooling, cook the bacon, dice the onion, and chop the green bell pepper. It's understood that you'll drain the bacon on paper towels, but just thought I'd mention it here.

When the potatoes are cool, slice them, one at a time, on a cutting board with a wet knife; makes it easier and you'll probably have to keep wetting the knife with water because those silly little potatoes can get so sticky about it.

After slicing, cut the slices into cute little (or large) cubes and put them in a large plastic bowl, preferably Tupperware which has a tight-fitting lid so you can carry your potato salad to the barbecue or picnic or wherever it is you're taking it. But don't put the lid on it yet. And here's a secret for cubing already-cooked potatoes. Put the one-potato-at-a-time slices on top of one another and cut through the long way and then the short way.

Put the onions and green bell peppers that you've diced and chopped so nicely into the bowl and admire how pretty and colorful your potato salad looks. Think nice thoughts about everyone enjoying it at the barbecue. Mix the onions and bell pepper in just a wee little bit, so they can get friendly with the potatoes.

If you've already crumbled your crisp-cooked bacon, you'll be missing out on the fun part: Crumbling it into the bowl with your hands. You can make much better crumbles this way and if you're starting to get hungry thinking that the potato salad is going to be so good, you can lick your fingers. Most people prefer to simply wash their hands, but I used to make this potato salad with my kids when they were little and this was one of the fun parts of cooking together. They always called dibs on crumbling the bacon and I had to wait until they grew up and moved out on their own before I got to crumble the bacon again.

Now that you've buddied up the bacon with the potatoes, onions, and green bell pepper, shake in some dry mustard. (If you've never heard of dry mustard before, it's like a spice and is sold in the spice section in a cute little yellow can.) Just a tad because too much and it will tend to overpower the potatoes. It tends to get a bit sharp and tangy after it's been sitting for awhile. But you might like your mustard this way and it's all a matter of taste anyway. The taste will grow of its own accord after you refrigerate the potato salad for an hour or two, so you can always add more later if you want to.

Gently massage your not-yet-finished potato salad with a wooden spoon, just to make sure the mustard and the bacon and the green bell peppers and the onions all get to be good friends.

Then introduce the mayonnaise, but not all at once. Mayonnaise has a tendency to be shy because it has to dress the somewhat naked potato salad. Stir some in, see what happens, take a taste, then stir a little more in, take a taste, repeat, then stand back to admire how well everyone is getting along. But don't take too many tastes; you won't have anything left to bring to the barbecue. This has happened to me a few times.

You're not done yet. You still have to put the finishing touches on, to finesse your potato salad to perfection. When your potato salad is well-moistened and mixed, shake in some dill, stir it around a bit, and then add salt and black pepper to taste. Take a few more tastes, just to be sure it's absolutely perfect and because you're hungry. Put the lid on it (if it's Tupperware, you can burp it), stick it in the fridge and let it chill out for awhile.

I'm going to a picnic and I'm bringing Dill Potato Salad.