If only I would learn that less is more.  When I travel in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Michigan, there seems to be an invisible force that propels me to the wild rice stands that pepper the roadsides.  I’ll find myself loading up the car with bags and bags of wild rice from every corner of the countryside.  Now I’m home with beautiful bags of wild rice and only a handful of recipes. One recipe that I turn to is a classic casserole made with wild rice.  It’s simple but always warms the heart, and belly!  Some people like to mix in a bit of brown rice to make the dish a little more mild.  Here’s how simple it is:

1.  You’ll need 1 cup of raw wild rice.  Cook the rice according to the directions on the package until almost tender.  (If you’ve lost your directions, it’s pretty standard.  Rinse rice thoroughly.  The ratio is 1 to 3, rice to water, or broth if you like.  Bring rice and water to a boil, lower heat, cover and simmer for about 45 to 50 minutes, or less if you are cooking it in a casserole, like this recipe.  Uncover, fluff and continue simmering about 10 minutes or until all water is absorbed.  Drain if you have to.)
2.  Meanwhile, chop up 4 or 5 slices of bacon and fry with 1 small diced onion, and about 1/2 cup of finely diced celery, and one clove grated or minced garlic.  Fry until bacon is crisp and celery is transparent.  Remove the mixture from the pan and spoon it into your casserole dish and set aside.
3.  Now put 1 pound of ground beef in your pan and fry until brown and no pink color remains. Remove to casserole dish.
4.  Then in the same frying pan, saute 4 to 8 ounces of cut up mushrooms (more or less depending on your feelings about mushrooms) in a little vegetable oil until nicely browned and cooked all the way through. (Remember; don’t salt your mushrooms while cooking.  It makes them watery.)  Remove to casserole dish. 
5.  Now you can add your cooked wild rice to your casserole with the other ingredients you’ve prepared, add one can of cream of mushroom soup and about 1/2 the can water, salt and pepper to taste, and mix it all up thoroughly.
6.  Bake covered in your oven set at 325 for 40 to 45 minutes.   

Although the classic wild rice soup and wild rice mushroom casseroles are great, I have an abundance of seafood here and am wondering if wild rice and seafood makes a good combination.  How about oysters?  I would really like to surprise my husband with some fantastic wild rice meals so he finally believes that all those stops at the roadside stands were worth it!

Now that I live in the South, my favorite meal to make for my family is Seafood Gumbo, utilizing the plentiful seafood we are fortunate to have available to us.  My problem is this;  I like to use okra as the thickener in my Gumbo, but I never add more than a couple handfuls of frozen okra to a big pot of Gumbo. That leaves me with a lot of frozen okra left every time I make my Seafood Gumbo.  At that rate, I never use up the frozen okra fast enough and I usually end up throwing most of the leftover bag away after it gets lost in my freezer for several months.

If I had something to make with frozen okra that would be delicious, and a little different than just adding it to Gumbo, I could use up my okra and quit wasting it!  I’ve eaten fried okra and have enjoyed that, but I don’t know how to go from frozen to fried without getting mushy results.  Also, kid-friendly recipes with okra would be especially nice.  I know that’s a tall order, but Southerners have learned how to cook with some pretty unique food items, so there must be interesting okra recipes that you’re keeping secret.  Let’s see what you’ve got!

I have cans of black beans in my cupboard at all times for two reasons.  One reason is because I like to add black beans to a lot of my cooking as they are a delicious and inexpensive source of protein.  The second reason is hurricane season.  Cans of black beans make a great hurricane preparedness staple in my house because we like them cold, so when we lose power and can’t cook, we can just drain and rinse a can of black beans and eat a bowlful with a little hot sauce on top.  Actually, I’ve got kids that will eat black beans with hot sauce hurricane or no hurricane!   And if you’re not in hurricane country, consider black beans a quick, nutritious summertime snack when you don’t want to heat up the kitchen with the stove and you certainly don’t want to come inside to fix lunch.  For convenience sake, the trick is to open, drain and rinse the beans, put them in a plastic food storage container and keep them in the refrigerator.  Kids will always choose the easiest snack first!  Well, grownups will too!

But, now that hurricane season is coming to a close soon (please!), and we’ve stocked our cupboard with more black beans than we’ll ever be able to eat cold,  I have to figure out the best way to use large amounts of black beans in delicious family-pleasing meals.  And now that power is restored, and the cooler months are upon us, a few nice soup or casserole dishes would be a welcome change.

I’m not skittish about trying to hide the flavor or texture of black beans because everyone in my house likes them.  I don’t want my family to get bored with black beans, so don’t be afraid to share your most adventurous recipes!

There are very few vegetables that have price fluctuations like green bell peppers.  I have seen the price go from “feed a family of six” cheap to “not on your life” expensive.  When green peppers are cheap, or at least reasonable, I like to make a full meal out of them, usually by making stuffed green peppers. 

The incredibly simple and delicious stuffed green pepper I make is (and I tweak this quite a bit depending what I have in the pantry):
1.  Cut the top off of four large or six small green peppers, scoop out the insides, throw insides away, and rinse pepper well.  Cut a little tiny bit off the bottom of each green pepper just so it will stand up in a casserole dish.  Dice up the cut off top and bottom pieces of the green peppers. 
2.  In a large skillet, fry up 1/2 pound ground pork and 1/2 pound ground beef with some diced onion, a little garlic and the diced green pepper. (Or use whatever meat is convenient.) Salt and pepper to taste. 
3.  Once the meat is fully cooked and the onions and green pepper pieces are tender, add a small can of diced tomatoes and stir well.  Here’s where you can add a little leftover rice or some bread crumbs or even some stuffing mix.  Don’t go overboard… you want your mixture to be moist. 
4.  Now you’ll want to add a little Worcestershire sauce or maybe a little Tabasco sauce or taco seasoning if you like your food spicy. 
5.  Then add a handful or two of grated cheddar cheese, mix well and begin stuffing your green peppers.
6.  When they are all stuffed, pour just about 1/4 cup chicken broth or water in the bottom of the casserole dish with the peppers and top each pepper with some more grated cheddar cheese, or Parmesan cheese if you like and put the cover on the casserole, or cover it with tin foil. 
7.  Bake in your oven on 350 for about 40 to 45 minutes or until the peppers are nice and soft. 

I don’t think my stuffed peppers ever come out the same twice!  This is a great recipe to use up what you have on hand.  Play around with it as much as your taste buds will allow.  I’d love to see how you would embellish this recipe, or if you have another green bell pepper recipe that you make I’d love to see that, too!

Those beautiful, purple-black eggplants look so exotic sitting there in the produce case.  But the thought of cleaning, cutting and cooking an eggplant scares me a little bit.  If I brought an eggplant home from the farmer’s market today, would I know what to do with it?

There are several schools of thought regarding what is necessary in the preparation of an eggplant.  One  method suggests an eggplant needs to be cut lengthwise in thin slices and laid out on layers of paper towels in order to “sweat out” the moisture.  Not everyone agrees with that, so now I’m more confused than ever.

So, here’s the challenge.  Can anyone tell me in three easy steps, or less, how to clean, cut and prepare an eggplant?  What are your success stories?  What is the one thing you found to be a necessary step in the preparation of an eggplant?  Has anything really gone wrong when you’ve tried to just throw together an eggplant dish without following a strict recipe?    There are several recipes  for eggplant casseroles in my kitchen drawer that all sound delicious, but I have been hesitant to try any of them until I know how to begin the preparation.

With your help, I plan to overcome my fear of eggplant preparation, become an eggplant aficionado and spread the joy of eggplant cookery everywhere I go!

Our beautiful vegetable garden will be ready soon and, as usual, we planted way too many red potatoes because my whole family loves them. We enjoyed perfect gardening weather this summer so it looks like it will be a banner year for potatoes. My pitchfork is at the ready!

Red potatoes have a smooth, solid texture and nice, tender, edible skins, which makes them perfect for salads because they boil up without breaking up and you don’t need to peel them. I know most people have a preference for using specific potatoes in a given dish; like red potatoes for salads, “bakers” for baking, russet for whipped and maybe Yukon for smashing. Each potato has a unique quality that lends itself to different cooking methods.

Well, my family is becoming tired of traditional red potato salad already this summer, so that eliminates my number one use-it-up potato dish. Other than the cold potato salad that’s typically made for summer picnics, I’m curious just how many different or unusual potato salads there are for which red potatoes would be perfect. Because I will soon have an abundance of new red potatoes, are there methods and recipes that will help me use up my supply? Any recipe made with red potatoes like hot salads or casseroles or cold salads, would be welcome. It’s the end of summer and almost show time in my garden!

Okay, this is a trick question.  I really don’t have frozen corn any longer… I have bags of thawed corn. My freezer quit on me and I am left now with six bags of thawed whole kernel corn.  I cannot stomach the thought of boiling it up and just eating it as is.  That would just get monotonous and I’ll guarantee by about the second bag, I’d be throwing bags of corn out for the ducks to eat.  I have re-bagged the corn in tightly sealed zipper bags and it is in my refrigerator waiting for a brilliant solution.

There are some good fish or other seafood chowder recipes that I have used in the past, but many of them just don’t use enough corn.  I’ve also enjoyed some excellent corn casserole dishes at potlucks and have ordered Succotash at restaurants, but I don’t have the recipes.

There must be hundreds of ways to use my surplus of whole kernel corn, but when I look in the refrigerator, I panic and all reason seems to elude me!  Please help!

When we enter the months of hurricane season, we make sure our cupboards are stocked with non-perishable supplies of all sorts.  Unfortunately, my husband’s idea of a hurricane survival-kit is a case of Vienna Sausages.  As interesting as I find that concept, it isn’t something that I can really wrap my head around.  The thought of eating those little sausages for countless days while we wait for the power to come back on is a little unnerving, to say the least.  But, now that I have numerous cans of Vienna Sausages in my cupboard, I’m thinking I will need a way to cook and eat them.

I’ve seen a few recipes for appetizers using Vienna Sausages, or other types of little sausages, but I’m wondering if there isn’t some kind of recipe that is more of a main dish.  I’m having trouble picturing such a meal, but I hope you good folks will be so kind as to share any recipe you might have  for using this unique sausage product.  Thank you!

I really hadn’t given spinach a lot of thought, that is, until recently when I went on a low-carb diet.  In order to limit my carbohydrate intake,  I eliminated breads and pastas from my “okay to eat” list.  In doing so,  I eliminated a substantial amount of iron in my diet as well, because most breads and pastas are fortified with vitamins and iron.  About two weeks into my diet I started craving spinach.  Why?  Spinach is one of the best sources for iron.  And now because of my spinach cravings,  I  have a refrigerator full of bags of fresh spinach waiting to be eaten.

My spinach recipe repertoire is limited.  I make a nice fresh spinach salad with a little cucumber and diced onion topped with a light dressing.  I also make a side dish of spinach cooked in a skillet just until it wilts, with a little onion, garlic and a splash of chicken broth added.  But, aside from these generic recipes,  I don’t know how I can utilize all my spinach in new and interesting recipes.  I’d love to be able to use up a whole bag in a nice, big pot of soup or a real full-meal “comfort casserole”.

Are there some really exciting recipes out there that will use up large quantities of fresh spinach and satisfy my new craving for spinach? If the ideas are low-carb, then even better.