Buffalo Mac and Cheese

Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese

I promised myself when I started this I wouldn't just use other people's recipes and share them all the time - so far, so good. But then, Jennifer found this recipe for Buffalo Mac and Cheese over at Table for Two, which you should go check out. I hadn't seen it until she showed me this recipe - good stuff. Anyway, she wanted to cook it for me - and it ain't bad! She knows that I constantly joke to people that I'm a connoisseur of both Shrimp n Grits and Mac n Cheese. She also knows that I'm probably really not joking so much. But this is great stuff - a combination of a southern classic and something good and spicy? Hard to beat. And seriously, check out Table for Two.

Poblano Chicken Chowder

Poblano Chicken Chowder

I love southern food, and the various cultural influences on it. There is definitely an undeniable Hispanic influence on our food here - rich, earthy, robust, flavorful foods are a staple of that cuisine, and it fits well with our food here.  I've posted about liking spicy foods before - so when I developed my first recipe from a blank piece of paper, I decided to do something full of flavor with a little kick. Someone I was talking to mentioned wanting to make a chowder with poblano and corn. I've made plenty of soups before, but not chowders. Chowders can be incredibly flavorful and actually aren't too difficult. To start developing the recipe, all I needed to know was how to make a base for chowder. I read about that for a bit and began.

Roasted Peppers

Charred Poblanos

After FoodBlog South a couple of weekends ago, I decided I really wanted to start developing my own recipes to share. There was a great session with Virginia Willis discussing a general how-to of recipe development (she should know - her books have some of my favorite recipes). It was a lot more complex than I originally thought it would be. It actually made me want to develop my own even more. I enjoy using other people's recipes, and will continue to do so and occasionally post about them. But I assumed that creating my own recipe from nothing other than the basic knowledge of a food type would be more gratifying than using a recipe in existence and changing it some. I was right.

The Hot Chick

What could you love more than a really hot chick? I took a shot with one this past weekend - so hot that my eyes even watered a bit. This happened at Dave's Pizza in SoHo (that's South Homewood for those of you not from Birmingham - and yes, we realize SoHo is a stolen name)...

Some Like It Hot

So I really love eating spicy foods. A lot of people can't fathom why someone would want to cause themselves pain by eating something hot. I've heard so many times, "I don't understand eating something so hot. All you get is burn and pain and you can't taste anything."

I think if you have thought or said this, you have either been eating the wrong kind of spicy food (no flavor, just heat), or you're just drinking bottle after bottle of lame sauce. My guess is that it's been both. So I'm going to chat a bit about spicy foods, how they work, and why we like them (and why some don't).