Chocolate Fudge Pie

Who doesn't love fudge pie?!  

Stuffing with Sausages, Apples, and Pecans

This is a fun spin on a classic side dish to serve at Thanksgiving or Christmas.  

Rooter's Cabbage Casserole

When I was going to graduate school at the University of Georgia, there was a BBQ restaurant called Rooter's.  Unfortunately the restaurant no longer exists, but at least their amazing Cabbage Casserole recipe lives on!

Breakfast Sausage Casserole

We love to make this breakfast casserole for holiday brunches.  You can easily make it the night before and then bake it in the morning.  It's easy to make and super indulgent. 

Corn Pudding

Corn Pudding is one of my favorite easy holiday side dishes.  Super easy to whip up and always a hit. 

Browned Butter Pecan Pie

In my family, no single person is responsible for all the holiday cooking, regardless of who is hosting the meal.  We are a potluck family, where each family member is assigned a dish or two to bring, so we can focus on just being together.  I had three separate holiday dinners to attend this Christmas, so I was sure I would be asked at least once to bring a dessert.  I had been dying to try out a new pie recipe, since I rarely have a good reason to bake a full-fat, decadent pie. Much to my surprise, everyone instead requested my "Crackaroni & Cheese", so I have found myself making a ton of macaroni and cheese, and alas, no pie.

Frosted Sugar Cookies

As I have confessed before, I am a Cookie Monster.  I frigging love cookies.  Peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies; I love them all with my whole heart.  During Christmas break, my daughter and I did our annual tradition of baking a ton of cookies and eating about half the cookie dough before they even get in the oven.  This year we did an extra step and frosted the cookies and topped them with sprinkles.  My toddler thought this was literally the greatest thing ever.  I'm not sure what was the best part, decorating the cookies or eating them.  Who am I kidding....the best part will always be eating them. 

Homemade Hot Cocoa

My little hometown has been hit by unseasonably cold and rainy weather lately.  On one particular dreary day, my family was feeling especially bogged down with cabin fever.  To remedy the situation, I suggested a day full of movies, a roaring fire, popcorn, and hot chocolate.  Needless to say, my 3 year old was especially on board with the idea of hot chocolate.  One problem?  I had ran out of hot chocolate instant packets, and I had no motivation to brave the rain for a grocery run.  So I decided to make some hot cocoa from scratch.  Most recipes call for cow's milk, but I'm currently breastfeeding a baby who may have a dairy sensitivity.  Therefore, I decided to use a carton of unsweetened coconut milk and keep the recipe vegan.  I was so surprised by how easy - and how incredibly rich and delicious -  homemade hot cocoa was!  It was so simple and so tasty that I don't think I'll ever use the packets again.  One batch make about 4 to 6 servings, and if you don't drink it all, it keeps quite well in fridge and is easily reheated.  

Mattie's Pumpkin Pie

This recipe is, in my completely biased opinion, the BEST pumpkin pie recipe on earth.  It's an old recipe, created by a family friend named Mattie.  It's her recipe from the 1950s, except it actually involved using real pumpkin, not canned.  I cheated and used canned, but added an extra step to make the canned pumpkin taste more like fresh pumpkin.  Sadly, Mattie passed away many years ago, but her amazing recipes live on in our house.  I wish I could have gotten a better picture to really illustrate how wonderful this pie is, but I had a pie crust mishap (as I often do...crusts aren't my thing).  Regardless of how it looks in photos, I promise you this is the creamiest pumpkin pie you will ever, ever eat.  

Tasty Traditional Collard Greens

Today's post is a special one!  For the first time ever on my blog, I have a guest poster!  My handsome and clever husband has agreed to write up and share his famous recipe for collard greens.  First off, let me say that I am generally not a big fan of greens.  In fact, I was not a big fan of even my husband's greens for a long time (despite most people loving them).  However, being the amazing husband he is, he worked on the recipe over several years, and eventually created a collard green recipe that even I could love!  This recipe involves a lot of time and effort, but is well worth it.  It makes a fantastic side dish for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and is the perfect dish to make to bring you luck on New Years Day.

Chicken Pot Pie

I've been working on creating a healthy (and delicious) chicken pot pie for a while now.  I've looked over a ton of different recipes, and played around with various ideas, and I can say with absolute certainty that I have definitely come up with a winner.  The weather was chilly last night, and my husband built a roaring fire in the fireplace, so I figured it was the perfect night for a hearty chicken pot pie.  To make my pie as healthy as possible, I made it bursting with my favorite winter vegetables.  Feel free to adapt the vegetables to your own taste; just try to keep the amount of vegetables roughly the same to make sure that there is enough filling for the gravy (for example, if you'd rather not use parsnips, increase the carrots from 2 to 3, or substitute a potato instead).  When developing the recipe, I toyed with the idea of finding a substitute for the pie crust (like phyllo), but ultimately decided that real pie crust is the best part of pot pie, so it would be almost sacrilegious to remove it.  So I only used one pie crust as opposed to the traditional two, to keep the calorie and carbs low without sacrificing the integrity of the dish.  The result?  A healthy yet hearty chicken pot pie that is under 500 calories for a nice large serving.  Most importantly...it's comfort food at its best: warm, filling, and full of rich flavor.

Cabbage Casserole

In Athens, Georgia, there use to be a great little barbecue restaurant called Jot Em Downs.  Its most famous offering was the Cabbage Casserole; and it was so in demand that it was sold out 90% of the time.  It was seriously that good!  I've been trying to replicate the dish for years, and have yet to nail it down (I'm convinced their trick was using the pork drippings to make a rich gravy/broth to add to the roux), but I think I've finally gotten as close as I can get to the recipe using regular kitchen staples.  However, if you happen to have pork shoulder drippings around, I totally recommend adding it to the recipe to replace the chicken broth!  Regardless, Cabbage Casserole is a fantastic dish to bring to holiday gatherings; I guarantee that no one else will bring the same dish.  I'll be taking it to my family's Thanksgiving this year!

Update:  I have the ACTUAL Cabbage Casserole Recipe from Jot Em Downs now.  I've made the changes below.  Enjoy!

Pumpkin Bread

When I was pregnant with my first child, I over prepared for everything:  birthing classes, breastfeeding books, baby supplies, etc.  However, there was one area where I completely dropped the ball:  I didn't make any food ahead of time.  I didn't realize how hard tasks like cooking dinner and running to the grocery store would be with a baby.  Instead we spent the first few months of my daughter's life ordering take-out and eating overly processed boxed foods.  This time, I planned ahead.  I made a month's worth of freezer dinners, snacks, desserts, and breakfasts.  One of my favorite items I made was Pumpkin Bread.  It was so easy and quick to make, and tasted so moist and delicious.  I was originally going to keep it pure with no add-ins, but my daughter convinced me to make it with chocolate chips.  I definitely think she made the right choice!  Feel free to mix in your own personal favorite add-ins.  This recipe makes two loaves, and freezes beautifully...if you can wait that long to eat it. 

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Buffalo Chicken Dip is literally (LITERALLY!) the greatest dip in the world.  Whenever it is served at a party, it is always the first and fastest to disappear.  In fact, if you need to find me at an event, look for the buffalo dip, and you will find me parked in front of it, eating it with a spoon.  My daughter's third birthday party was last weekend, and I decided to actually make it this time, instead of just being the person who eats it all.  My friend Randi makes an excellent version, so I hit her up for her recipe.  She's an amazing wedding coordinator (Carry Your Heart Events), so this girl KNOWS her party food.  I was so excited about the dip that I completely forgot to take pictures of it before serving (and, as always, it was inhaled as quickly as it was put out), but my husband managed to find a picture with the dip in the background of a party shot.  I zoomed in and cropped it, but it isn't exactly the greatest picture.  But you know what?  Who cares, right?  We all know what it looks like, and more importantly what it tastes like! YUM!

Squash Casserole

As many of you know, I'm pregnant with my second child.  Like with my first pregnancy, I developed gestational diabetes around my 25th week.  As I have mentioned in the past, there are a lot of misconceptions about gestational diabetes; mainly that is caused by something that the mother has done (or not done).  This can lead to a lot of guilty thoughts when a woman is first diagnosed.  The truth is, many cases of gestational diabetes are due to genetics.  I live a very healthy lifestyle: my diet is made up of nutritious and unprocessed foods, I exercise five times a week, and I maintain a healthy weight (and healthy weight gain during pregnancy).  Yet the hormones in my body go crazy when I get pregnant, and my placenta starts having trouble regulating insulin, and unfortunately, there is nothing I can do to prevent it.  What I can do, however, is stay on a very strict diet during my pregnancy, that allows my body to handle the diabetes without medicine.  I'm not going to lie: it's really hard to be on a rigid diet when you are in your third trimester; a time when you are starving and just want to eat what you want to eat, when you want to eat.  Instead, I have to eat a certain amount of carbs (not too much, not too little) on a very strict schedule (every 2-3 hours, no earlier, no later).  

Cranberry Mimosas

Orange juice mimosas are so 2013; instead why don't you ring in 2014 with the infinitely more posh Cranberry Mimosa?  I discovered this drink in a Macon restaurant called Dovetail, and promptly proclaimed it my new favorite cocktail.  The cranberry juice is incredibly refreshing and compliments the champagne just perfectly.  Added bonus?  It looks gorgeous in a glass.  Pop in a few fresh cranberries, and you'll be the classiest chick (or dude) at the New Years Eve Ball.

Crack Macaroni and Cheese

I have spent the last few years trying to find THE best macaroni and cheese recipe.  I've come close, but hadn't quite found the one.  I scoured the interwebs, searching through culinary message boards, when I first heard it referenced... "Crack Mac and Cheese".  I blew it off the first time I saw it, but when I saw it mentioned again, my interest was piqued.  Apparently this mac and cheese was so delicious, it was more addicting than crack.  I soon discovered that "Crack Mac and Cheese" was really Martha Stewart's more classily named "Perfect Macaroni and Cheese".  (Maybe there can be some sort of happy medium for its name...like Cocaine Macaroni and Cheese?)  I decided to make it for my family's hugely attended Thanksgiving dinner, where I would get a lot of good feedback.  Of course anything referenced as "crack" and is also made by Martha Stewart was going to be delectable, and it sure as heck was.  It was ahhhh-mazing. I had found the ONE.  My mac and cheese soulmate!  Here's my one big tip: don't be lazy with the topping.  I usually just sprinkle on some panko crumbs or crushed Ritz Crackers, but decided to go all out for Martha's sake, and by golly, it was worth the extra 5 minutes of effort.  

Green Chile Egg Casserole

I recently attended a party at my friend Randi's house, where she served a Southwestern Egg Casserole as the main dish.  It was crazy delicious, so of course I had to ask for the recipe.  It was such a hit at her party, that I decided to make it for my daughter's birthday party the following month.   It really is the perfect casserole to make for a crowd; it's the kind of dish where everyone asks for the recipe.  I'm pretty sure it's the inclusion of cottage cheese that makes this casserole stand out amongst all the other egg casseroles; its texture is just incredibly pleasant. It's cheesy, silky, and zesty. Yum!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

I am the human Cookie Monster. When I see cookies, my eyes go googly and I literally will yell "COOKIES!"  My daughter seems to have inherited my cookie love, so for that reason I decided to make her a Cookie Cake for her 2nd birthday.  Since it was a Sesame Street themed party, I didn't just make any old Cookie Cake, I made a Cookie Monster Cake.  

Pimento Cheese

My favorite Southern food (other than Buttermilk Pie), has to be Pimento Cheese.  It saddens me to think that this delicious concoction is not easily available to such a huge portion of our country! Okay, I'm being just a tad dramatic, but for real, y'all, Pimento Cheese is the bees knees.  Some folks like to eat with crackers as a dip, where others prefer it between two slices of Sunbeam white bread. As for me?  I'm a big fan of making it the "cheese" part of a cheeseburger: just spread it on your bun cold, and the warm burger will make it gooey.  My newest favorite way to eat it is to make a sandwich of it--grilled or cold--with a topping of pepper jelly.  I can't take credit for this idea; I had it served to me at a local restaurant (Em's Kitchen) and have loved it ever since.