If you live anywhere in the South, you are familiar with black eyed peas.  Not a pea, of course, but a legume, the black eyed pea has deep roots in Southern cooking tradition. 

Probably the most well know dish with black eyed peas is Hoppin’ John. This is a pretty simple dish to make but is so warm and comforting.  Of course, you can tweak the recipe to suit your own taste, but a basic recipe would be this general method as follows:

Rinse and soak about a cup of black eyed peas in cold water over-night .  The next day, take a nice, meaty ham bone, put it in a big soup pot and cover it with cold water.  Bring it to a boil, turn it down and let that ham bone simmer for a couple hours.  Then, pour in your black eyed peas and let them cook slowly until they are just about tender.  Meanwhile, cook about one cup of good, long grain rice.  Take the ham bone out of the pot and trim any of the good ham off the bone.  Add the meat back to the pot and mix in the rice when it’s done. 

This is an easy recipe to play around with.  I also like to add some onion.  Don’t forget to salt and pepper, too.

So, here’s my dilemma.  I’m tired of my plain ol’ Hoppin’ John.  Does anybody have some ideas to jazz it up?  Or, even better, does anyone have some suggestions what I can make with black eyed peas OTHER than Hoppin’ John?  I’m looking forward to your input!

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!

My husband is a southern boy, so there’s always a box of grits lurking in the pantry. I fix them on occasion with eggs or bacon and toast for breakfast. We had some this morning and for some reason it hit me that it might make a good component for lunch or dinner dishes too. I guess it is very similar to Polenta.

The first thing that comes to mind is of course shrimp and grits. I’ve had this savory low-country dish in restaurants before but have never tried to make it myself. Anyone have a good recipe for this?

Of course I’d love to hear any other recipes that include grits you’d like to share. Just enter them as a comment.

I’ve had a box of lasagna noodles sitting in my pantry … I bought it on impulse and haven’t done anything with it since. We’re not really big lasagna fans around here (so don’t ask me why I bought it), so I’ve been wondering if there is anything else I can make with these. Or maybe I just need a really good lasagna recipe?

I think mostly we’re just not too fond of the ricotta cheese. I’ve tried making it with cottage cheese before and we didn’t care for it either. Can you make a lasagna without any type of white sauce?

For some reason I always cook quite a bit more spaghetti than we end up eating in one meal. If I have sauce leftover too, I usually just store the two together and reheat them the next day for lunch.

But there are quite a few times when I have pasta leftover, but no sauce – usually that’s on a day when I don’t have a jar of tomato sauce in the pantry either.

Any ideas on what else to do with leftover cooked spaghetti? I’m sure there are quite a few delicious things I could be doing with this…

We have a new grocery store in town called “Compare Foods” which caters toward Hispanics (the company is owned by Hispanics) and offers a lot of ethnic food from all over the world. It’s a really neat (and inexpensive) grocery store. If you have one in your area, you should definitely go check it out.

One of the things I bought during my first trip, was a box of authentic couscous mix. I fixed it for dinner tonight (as a side dish) and didn’t realize how much these little tiny pasta pieces swell up in the steaming process. The end result was that we still have well over half of the cooked couscous left over after dinner.

So I was wondering… What can I make with cooked couscous? I steamed it in plain water, so I could go either with a savory or a sweet dish.

I read somewhere that couscous can be eaten as a hot cereal, so maybe I’ll just try heating up some milk and sweetening it with some sugar and cinnamon and a few raisins. I like doing this with cooked leftover rice for breakfast and the couscous has a nice nutty flavor, so it may work out well.

I’m of course open to any suggestions and the couscous as a side dish tonight was a big hit, so I’m sure we’ll run into the same situation of leftover couscous on an ongoing basis.

I have a rice maker that I use on a regular basis. However, I usually get a little overly ambitious and make more than I need.

I have been eating the extra with soy sauce (not exactly very creative). What else can I make with cooked rice?

Update: I found this recipe:

Baked Rice Pudding Recipe

1/2 cup cooked rice
3 eggs (beaten)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup raisins
3 1/2 cups milk
Ground nutmeg

In a large bowl, mix all ingredients except nutmeg. Pour mixture into a lightly buttered shallow baking dish and sprinkle with nutmeg. Place baking dish in a pan of hot water in oven and Place baking dish in a pan of hot water in oven and bake at 300° for about 1 1/2 hours, or until set.

Nicole

I know you creative minds will have some ideas for me.

My kids love Kraft Mac and Cheese a little too much. I’d love some ideas to refresh this old standard and make it something new and exciting. Any ideas that will add some nutrition to this meal — and still taste good to kids?