All Posts By Jennifer

You ever make something for dinner that surprises you? Like, you throw it together because you’ve got a pound of beef sitting in the fridge, maybe a bell pepper that’s looking a little too soft, and you think, Eh, I’ll just make rice and mix it all together. And then suddenly you’re sitting at the table, eyes wide, wondering why you haven’t been making this your whole life. That was me the first time I made dirty rice. I’d heard of it — Louisiana thing, right? — but never really paid attention. Then one night, I tried it. Thirty minutes …

I don’t know about you, but onion rings have always felt like a bit of an event to me. They weren’t something we had at home when I was a kid — unless you count the frozen ones Mama would throw in the oven when company came over. No, the real onion rings, the kind that crackle when you bite them and let out that little puff of steam, those were diner food. There’s a little drive-in two towns over that still serves them in a paper-lined basket. I’ll order a burger just to make it look like I’m there …

I don’t make this soup every day. It’s not a Tuesday-night-chicken-and-rice situation. This is the soup I make when I want to feel a little spoiled — like maybe I’ve earned a treat. It’s creamy, it’s rich, and if you bring it to the table with a basket of warm bread, people will think you worked a whole lot harder than you actually did. Bisque sounds fancy — French restaurants love to make it seem mysterious — but really, it’s just slow-cooked veggies, good broth, cream, and in this case, sweet crab and tender shrimp. The magic is in how …

Seafood wasn’t a regular guest at our table growing up in the Midwest. We were more of a meatloaf and mashed potatoes family. But every once in a while, Mama would surprise us — a little shrimp cocktail at Christmas, maybe a can of crab meat mixed into something “fancy” for Sunday lunch. And just like that, our dining room felt like it had drifted a few hundred miles closer to the ocean. This salad? It scratches that same itch for me now, only without the wait for a holiday. It’s creamy, a little briny, and has that Old Bay …

There are certain smells that never leave you — for me, one of them is hot oil, grated potatoes, and just a whisper of onion. That’s the smell of my grandma’s kitchen when she was making Polish Potato Pancakes. She’d always start in the late afternoon, standing at the counter with a big mixing bowl, the old box grater clamped between her hands. You could hear the scrape-scrape of potatoes and onion while she hummed under her breath. Every so often, she’d look over her shoulder and tell me to stop hovering — but somehow, I always ended up with …

Some recipes just feel like a happy accident. This is one of them. The first time I had the idea for Crab Cake Egg Rolls, I was standing in my kitchen with leftover crab cake mix in the fridge and a half-empty package of egg roll wrappers staring back at me. It was one of those “why not?” moments — and let me tell you, I’ve been making them on purpose ever since. If you love the sweet, briny flavor of a classic Maryland crab cake but crave the crunch of a golden-fried egg roll, this is your match. It’s …

Some food just makes you grin before you even take a bite. These are one of those. I first had the idea for Nashville Hot Bacon Wrapped Mozzarella Sticks during a weekend in Nashville — the kind of trip where you “just want to look around” and end up eating half the city. Between the live music, neon signs, and the smell of fried chicken drifting through the air, I kept thinking, how do I take this heat home with me? The answer, apparently, was to wrap mozzarella sticks in bacon and paint them in Nashville hot sauce. And yes …

Some recipes are just… home. These sausage rolls are one of those for me. I can’t smell sage and sausage browning without thinking of my grandma’s kitchen — the windows fogged from the oven, the snow blowing sideways outside, and the whole house smelling so good you could almost taste it before you even sat down. She’d make a double batch for family gatherings, and somehow there were never leftovers. My cousins and I used to hover near the counter, pretending we were “helping” just so we could snatch the first hot roll off the tray. Burned fingertips? Totally worth …

You ever have one of those nights where you’re just done? The kind where your shoes are still on, you’ve barely dropped your bag by the door, and you’re already thinking, What’s the quickest path to comfort food without wrecking the kitchen? This is that path. Growing up in the Midwest, garlic butter was practically a love language. My mom would melt it for corn on the cob in summer, slather it on bread in winter, and toss it into noodles on the days when grocery shopping wasn’t happening. I swear, that smell — garlic sizzling gently in butter — …

Some nights just call for a big bowl of something cozy — and if you grew up like I did, that “something” was often my mom’s chicken pot pie. But let me tell you, on those extra-busy winter evenings when the snow was coming down sideways in the Midwest, she’d skip the crust and turn it into soup. I still remember her shooing us out of the kitchen — not because she didn’t want help, but because we’d “just get underfoot.” You could smell the onions and butter from the hallway, and you knew that in about half an hour, …