I think I was 19 the first time I tried this dish. I think I had it at don Taylor’s Omelette Express in Santa Rosa California, but if so, it’s no longer on their menu. No matter where it was that I tried this dish the first time, I was an instant convert.

Omelets are one of my culinary weaknesses.  For me they are on the same order of obsessive magnitude that some people hold chocolate.  The very nature and versatility of the omelet is mind boggling. Whether it be the classic folded French version or the currently more popular Italian frittata, there seems to be no limit on the flavor combinations possible and I think I may have tried them all.

Even after years of experimenting, I always come back to this simple dish. It satisfies a craving for me. Even though it’s been years since I last made this it instantly took me back to a time in my life where the world was exciting, my culinary horizons were expanding and the road forward didn’t seem like it was going to be paved with as much blood, sweat and tears as it has been. Food can do that.

This one is comfort food folks.  Make it with love and share it with someone you care about.  It will make memories.

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of HealthyTuna.com. All opinions are 100% mine.

A lot of people contact me to write posts for them.  Most are horribly unsuited for this venue, but every once in a great while one comes along that gets my attention, not just because the people behind the product are willing to compensate me for my time, but because what they have to say is relevant, important and has an impact for the most important people in this blog’s world; You, the faithful readers of CBSOP. This is one of those instances.

Several of my female food-blogging partners in crime either are, or have very recently been pregnant.  This post is dedicated to making sure that their health and the health of their children is in the forefront at all times.  It seems that a lot of women avoid seafood during pregnancy due to concerns about mercury.

While it is certainly a good idea to avoid high-risk seafood such as shark, mackerel, swordfish and tilefish, studies have proven that the high levels of Omega3 fatty acids present in seafoods such as salmon and tuna help to prevent depression as well as helping the development of your baby, both in the womb and while breastfeeding.

Since I am not a doctor (I just play a chef on the Internet), I will refer you to the studies provided by healthy tuna. I’ve looked them over and they seem to be reputable, I give them credit and will vouch for them insofar as being worth a good-hard read, at which point I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

The lovely Veronique at healthy tuna also sent along a few recipes with a request that I give one a try and share it with all of you.  From the group sent, I chose the Southwest Tuna Salad for the sake of simplicity.  The original instructions were for a salad that would very likely have been tasty, but on film would have been far from appealing.

After a few days of conversations, I was allowed to play with the recipe a bit, as I am wont to do with every recipe I touch on occasion.  I decided that the salad would be far more presentable if presented as a composed salad, sort of in the bent of a Cobb salad (remember those from the 80’s?) and I was off.

The original recipe is presented as given to me, my changes are detailed below.

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Christmas is for cookies and brownies and other luscious sweets. In my house this has traditionally meant all different kinds of cookies, but none were ever really a true Christmas tradition. None were seasonal, none were specific to the holidays and I suppose most of all, none were mine.

This year I set out to remedy that and to do something that I absolutely never do. I stepped out of my comfort zone completely and modified a cookie recipe to reflect what my kids love to eat and to enhance the flavors that I like.

I was terrified.  I was uneasy.  I was sure it wouldn’t work, because I’m a cook, not a baker and i was sure to screw this up.

I didn’t. It was wonderful! The cookies were perfect, tasty, sweet, tangy and speckled with tiny glimpses of cranberry and white chocolate.

This is a modified version of my wife’s famous Cowboy Cookie recipe, but with a few twists however, a cowboy cookie has a traditional set of ingredients.  This recipe is no longer a cowboy cookie by definition, so I decided in the spirit of the season to dub these “Reindeer Wranglers”, both because the tiny speckles of cranberry reminded me of Rudolph’s nose and because I figured that Santa’s reindeer crew would probably enjoy these a great deal.

Now our family has its very own Christmas cookie tradition, invented in our own kitchen and made with love. It makes me happier than it should, I think.

What are your Christmas cookie traditions?  Is there anything that jut HAS to be baked every year? We’d love to hear about it.

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If there is one Christmas dinner that springs to mind before any other in the collective consciousness of the people of several continents, it has to be the dinner shared on Christmas Day by the Cratchit Family in the classic novel “A Christmas Carol” by none other than the great Charles Dickens. This meal embodies the spirit of Christmas more than any other in literary history, as does the tale itself.  This year thanks to the kind folks at foodbuzz, I had the honor and privilege of recreating this meal and sharing it with all of you.

This post really should be entitled “The Cratchits’ Christmas Dinner”, as it is as faithful a reproduction of the meal shared by the Cratchit family as is possible given my local resources and interpretation of the original manuscript.  Unfortunately, Mr. Dickens himself used that title when portions of “A Christmas Carol” was republished as short stories and so I chose not to steal his words for my own use. It could also have been titled “A comedy of errors and disappointments that really didn’t turn out disappointingly at all”, but that would have been rather long and drawn out, don’t you think?

Having said all that and given proper thanks to the folks that gifted me with the opportunity to try my hand at the single most iconic meal in the annals of Christmas itself, I’ll get into the meat of the thing, so to speak.  Please follow along with me as I follow in the tradition of Mr. Dickens and the Cratchits themselves. The story is full of twists and turns, a bit of drama and sorrow, but in the end, It turns out that I really do find the Christmas spirit in my heart (and a bottle or two), so the story does in fact have a happy ending.

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Although there were a ton of great dishes to be sampled at the foodbuzz Food Festival in San Francisco this November, only a few dishes really stood out as exceptional.  The other dishes that stand out most in my memory aren’t the ones that were done perfectly the first time.  The dishes that always stick with me are the ones that were almost perfect. Those dishes that I find myself wondering just what tiny little detail made them less than everything they could have been.

One of those dishes was Mezzetta’s Beer Braised Flank Steak.  Sure it was good, but it wasn’t great. It had all the right flavors just not enough of them somehow to compete with the other dishes at the same event. (Don’t blame the chef… competition in that room was fierce!)

The memory of that dish has stuck with me since the festival and when I came across the recipe card in my swag-bag I decided to see if I could take the dish up by that one much needed notch.

Now I have nothing against polenta, which is what the chef originally paired this dish with, but as a good southern boy, I don’t necessarily have polenta on hand, but I always have grits, so my first change was obvious.  The second thing I didn’t want to do was to use a bunch of pre-made store bought products to make the dish, regardless of the quality, both because they’re too hard to change to my liking and because I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the first attempt.

Don’t let the seemingly large list of ingredients frighten or deter you.  Basically I just built a pasta sauce in a braising liquid and let it thicken as it went.  You’ll be amazed how quickly it all goes together and how absolutely powerful the flavors are.  It’s simply an awe-inspiring dish and one I recommend that you give a bit of time to while the weather is chill.

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‘Tis the season once again.  with that comes the call for cookies, candies and other sweets to thrill and delight both young and old. (And not-so-old, as well.)  This year I’m trying to focus on the flavors of the season with a highlight on seasonal fruits, berries nuts and whatever else I can find that fits well with winter fare.  These cookies fit the bill for all of these things.

Cranberries are everywhere at this time of year, both in their plump and tart ripe state and in their dried form.  It was the latter that inspired me to make this recipe, which is adapted from one I found at Baking Bites and yet another I found somewhere else, but can’t remember at the moment.

These may not be traditional Christmas cookies for most people, but I think for my family they have just found a permanent place on my “must bake for the Holidays” list, along with my Aunt Thelma’s Tea cookies and my mothers peanut butter cookies.  they are crisp, light, pack a ton of flavor into every bite and were adored by my kids (and the neighbor’s kids).  Anything that gets the whole family rummaging at the cookie jar is a surefire winner for me, especially when the batch makes 48, so there is no need to double the recipe.

C’mon, put a little seasonal love in your holiday baking.  make these cookies.  Do it now!  I’ll continue when you get back…

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The holidays always bring about the need for great main courses, lavish tables and … Snacks.  Lots of snacks.  While there are hundreds that can be made to please the kiddies and the less adventurous in the house, there will always be a few people hoping to find something just a bit different to nosh on while the family meal is being prepared, or afterward while friends and family reminisce about the year past and tales of childhood.

This year I also had to consider snacks that would ship well so that I could send them off to my lovely wife in Turkey.  One obvious option was Tea Cookies, and we did make a batch or two of those to send her way, but one of my fondest food memories with her was her reaction to the Spicy Salt-Roasted Peanuts we made around Valentine’s day last year.  she could not stop eating these delectable little morsels, though she complained mightily about it.  They were the perfect choice.

The thing is, I hate predictability.  I wanted to add a twist to the nuts she already knew and loved to go along with the ones she remembered.  Since Curry is a very large part of the rub I use on our Thanksgiving and Christmas birds, I thought that it would be an appropriate choice…  I was right.  These are amazing.

Thanks again to David Lebovitz, from which the inspiration for this recipe belongs.

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Are you getting tired of turkey yet?  Do you need a new way to spice up that grand bird that graced your holiday table? Are you just sick-to-death of trying to find ways to get the last little bit out of your meal?

Whether you’re trying to reinvent a little more of your leftover bird or are just looking for a new way to incorporate turkey into your diet, this dish is for you.  In fact, you’d be hard pressed to tell it was turkey on the first bite. It has everything you’ve ever wanted in a last-time for this old bid recipe, along with a wealth of ideas for chicken or turkey dishes for anytime of the year.

In a word, it’s fabulous.  I highly recommend it.  You need to try this.  I’ll provide methods for both leftover poultry and for preparing the dish from scratch, just in case you love the idea but, like many homes, have already gone through any leftovers from your Holiday meals until December. (But hey, this would be great on a New Years table, too!)

The household taste-testers (being my son’s Lil’ E and Lil’ D) devoured a full half batch in minutes, with a startling number of “oooh’s and Ahhhh’s considering the amount of food they had packed in their mouths, so I deem this dish “kid tested and approved”. If those two will eat it, any kid will!  For me…  Well, I ate the other half batch while shooting the pics for the post, and I may have made about 6 or 8 one or two deformed tacos on purpose in the process.

You have to try this!

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I know I made a big stink in my cottage pie post about the fact that a pie like this cannot be called a shepherd’s pie unless it is made from minced lamb. Honestly though, I figure if a bunch of shepherd’s could get their hands on a wild turkey or other foul while out in the pasture, they probably would, so I’ll just rationalize it that way. OK?  If I’m horribly wrong on this point, be sure to let me know.

Regardless of whether you call this a shepherd’s pie or a cottage pie or a turkey pie, it’s still phenomenally good!  If you can imagine all the flavors of a holiday table concentrated by 100 times, you would be getting close to the immense flavor of this dish.  It’s so good in-fact, that I may just look forward to making this next year a little more than I look forward to the turkey itself.

If you still have any turkey and gravy left over, you’ve got to dive in and give this a try!

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If you’re like most of us the holiday dinner has passed and now you’re looking for a few creative ways to use up all that leftover turkey.  While there is absolutely noting wrong with turkey sandwiches, I know that there are a lot of people who tire of them quickly or just want to find something a little more creative to do with what’s left of a once regal bird. If you’re one of those people, this might just fit the bill.

Before any true curry fanatics out there step up to inform me that this isn’t a traditional curry.  Don’t bother.  I already know.  This dish was cobbled together with what I had on hand at the moment and geared towards introducing my kids to flavors they have never experienced before.  I used potatoes instead of rice because my middle son runs screaming at the mention of long grained anything, let alone basmati or jasmine rice.  This is just a big heapin’ pot o’ love, and may actually have made it ot my comfort foods list.

In the end I suppose this could be treated like a soup or a stew.  The liquid is fairly mild the first day (but gets pretty ambitious by day 2), and can easily be eaten with a spoon if you desire, or skip the potatoes and serve the curry with rice to soak all the wonderful flavors up while you’re eating it.  In any event it came out wonderfully and was enjoyed by all but my youngest, who was not only ill that evening, but is finicky to the point of sending this foodie father into fits on some occasions.

He had chicken nuggets.  The rest of us polished off half of this dish in minutes.  I’d call that a raging success!

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