Cap'n Crunch Cookies

Let's leave the present moment and step back to Halloween night. For my own satisfaction, and also because there were people who would be coming to the house, I whipped up a late afternoon batch of Cap'n Crunch cookies. They were well-received, I'm glad to report. The current flavor of cereal was their Cinnamon Crunch version, but in the final cookie product, there was the barest hint of that much-loved spice.

The overwhelming tradition on this holiday is that we are not a regular stop for trick-or-treaters, but I had a fine tray of candy just in case.

With hopes it could be an enticement, I swapped out the usual porch lights and put in orange bulbs, and then I placed a couple of plug-in jack-o-lanterns on either side of the porch. The trendlines are set for this stretch of North Spring Street: if I buy candy, I'll definitely not have trick-or-treaters. But let's not leave this mention of Halloween 2024 without also noting what a stunningly gorgeous day it was, with a high around 79°F, with great breezes and a lot of sunshine.

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"Cap'n Crunch Cookies," found online at The Capitol Baker, with credit going to The Sugar Plum Blog for inspiration and the source of the adapted recipe.

Election Day 2024

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Meal No. 3735: Bacon and Cheese Sandwiches

Growing up in Buies Creek, NC, it would not be an unusual breakfast for my mother to serve us toasted bacon and cheese open-faced sandwiches. With sharp cheddar sliced from a Cracker Barrel log, and bacon she had fried up, these toasts would be cooked until the cheese melted enough. That's what came to mind on Halloween, when I made sandwich versions. The bacon was cooked out on the grill to keep the house from stinking up, and then the toasting of sandwiches followed out there as well. Would I have liked another layer of bacon on mine, even though these were thick-sliced? Oh, yeah. But it was still just right with my soul.

Chai-Spiced Snickerdoodle Skillet Cookie

Last Wednesday, even though we were all pretty full from our macaroni beef casserole dinner, I still managed to produce a sweet finisher before the evening broke up: chai-spiced snickerdoodle skillet cookie. Baked in my cast iron skillet, balanced in the internal ingredients for the cookie, and well coated with that spice-enhanced sugar, I would definitely have had more than my proper triangle except I was already so full from that night's supper.

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"Chai-Spiced Snickerdoodle Skillet Cookie," from Heather Baird of SprinkleBakes.com. [Published 06 July 2020]

Meal No. 3734: Afro-Caribbean Macaroni Beef Casserole

This past Wednesday, it was three 'round the dinner table and I still had the lingering good feels from my recent journey to West Africa...and with ground beef on hand and conjured memories of an excellent Afro-Caribbean macaroni beef casserole, that's all it took to set the menu. Well, and a really nice batch of rosemary garlic focaccia, that I kept getting additional slices of.

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"Macaroni Beef Casserole," from Imma Adamu of Immaculate Bites, a blog found at AfricanBites.com.

"Easy Rosemary Garlic Focaccia," from Adam and Joanne Gallagher of InspiredTaste.net.

Meal No. 3733: National Oatmeal Day

On the final Tuesday of October, the simple supper aligned with National Oatmeal Day, so a steaming bowl of that lifelong favorite was the sustenance. It's not impressive or sexy, and there are plenty of meals that I enjoy posting about that seem more worth any reader's time...but the policy here is to document it all. The photo here brings to mind a snatch of childhood memory, of my sister Janice (14 years older than me) reaching across the breakfast bar and slapping me on the face for putting too much sugar on my oatmeal. I'm grown now. I'll sugar my oatmeal as I damn well please.

Meal No. 3732: Not So Cajun Chicken

This past Monday brought to an end my very long journey back home from Dakar, Senegal. After spending a mostly sleepless night in the terminal of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, then catching the first-of-the-day flight down to Atlanta, and a mid-day return to the nearby Piedmont Triad Airport, I got back to the joys of the Roediger House early enough in the day to set up for a much-loved dinner: Not So Cajun Chicken. It's easy, and it's delicious; I've been making it for quite a long time and have regularly offered it as the surprising crowd pleaser for guests new to the RoHo dinner table. Served over rice, with its nicely-spiced creamy sauce, and the sous vide cooking of the prepped spiced chicken breast cubes, it proved suitable and satisfying of the appetites.

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"Not So Cajun Chicken," a dish I regularly enjoyed at Crowley's Old Time Favorites restaurant and bar on Medlin Drive in Raleigh, NC. (Another version of the recipe can be found here.) A heap of thanks is due to Jimmy Randolph for tracking down the recipe for me.

Meal No. 3731: Skillet Pan Pizzas

Sunday a week ago, before I tossed all my gear into the car to head to the airport for my overnight flight to Dakar, I wanted to have one final home-cooked meal. I'd prepped the no-knead dough on Saturday so that it would be ready for dividing into two cast iron skillets mid-day, where the dough would rest and spread before getting dressed up and roasted at a good high temp. The crisped crusts and the fullness of pizza dough flavors were the perfect bed for the homemade pizza sauce and crumbles of Italian sausage, plus sharp cheddar cheese and a topping of mozzarella as they finished their cook.

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Pizza Crust based on "Fool-Proof Pan Pizza," by J. Kenji López-Alt, culinary consultant for SeriousEats.com. [Updated 30 March 2023]

Sauce loosely based on "Homemade NY-Style Pizza Sauce," by J. Kenji López-Alt, culinary consultant for SeriousEats.com. [Updated 17 February 2023]

Red Velvet Rice Krispie Treats

On my last full day at home before departing for another work trip to Dakar, Senegal, I fancied a new fun sweets exploit: red velvet rice krispie treats. As is the case with most versions of rice krispie treats, the shenanigans are simple and the result is hard to mess up. It's loaded with cocoa krispies, an abundance of marshmallows, and the cheat step of red velvet cake mix. Throw in some butter, a splash of vanilla extract, and a hearty dollop of elbow grease for the stirring, and in the casserole dish you too could have some scrumptious squares of seduction, just like I did Saturday a week ago.

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Based on "Red Velvet Rice Krispie Treats," by Kita Roberts. From her Pass the Sushi blog. [Published 06 December 2011 / Updated 11 June 2024]

Cap'n Crunch Cereal Milk Ice Cream

While I have some pretty marvelous recipes for various ice creams, I decided to tee up a new one: Cap'n Crunch cereal milk ice cream. I mean, why not? I already have a favorite cookie recipe, also based on Cap'n Crunch. A nearly-depleted box of Cinnamon Crunch had the exact amount of cereal required, which is dunked in some whole milk and left to sit overnight in the fridge. The rest of the base is cooked up, an immersion blender helps transform the soaked cereal into the right consistency, and a bit of cream cheese gets mixed in for good measure. Another night for the whole thing in the fridge makes it ready for the churning, then the freezer for chilling, and then a bowl for chomping. That's how dessert came to appear after clean-up Saturday a week ago.

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Based on "Cap'n Crunch Chocolate Chip Ice Cream," by Kita Roberts. From her Pass the Sushi blog. [Published 06 August 2013 / Updated 09 January 2023]

Meal No. 3730: Beef & Cheddar Melts

Saturday a week ago, I pulled a sizable filet mignon from the freezer and dropped it into the sous vide immersion circulator. Meanwhile, I gave a long low-temped caramlezation to sliced sweet onions and then set about prepping Yukon gold potatoes to become roasted seasoned potato sticks of a sort. As dinnertime drew near, I buttered and toasted the buns. The steak was diced, sharp cheddar cheese thinly sliced, an extra slice of cheese from the American singles pack went on top...and it got a good toasting in the oven before the beef and cheddar melts sauce was added and the caramelized onions were piled high. It was gorgeous and messy and grandiose and glorious, and those roasted seasoned hand-cut fries were da bomb.

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"Beef & Cheddar Melts Sauce," a Roediger House creation.

Meal No. 3729: Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

Friday a week ago was a good but long day, with just under three hours one way to the southeastern part of Sampson County, so getting home around 6 pm left little time for a dinner production. Thank goodness for the dependably delicious and quick fluffy buttermilk pancakes. Super satisfying and plenty filling, that's how the weekend commenced at the Roediger House.

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"Best Tips for Making Pancakes: Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes," by Joanne Ozug on the Pioneer Woman website. [Published 10 May 2017]

Meal No. 3728: Creamy Basil Chicken

The Roediger House celebrated National Pasta Day with a callback recipe to meals of old: creamy basil chicken over fettuccine. I believe it appeared a few times in the old kitchen, over sixteen years ago. But only twice in the new one: once in 2009, with a different recipe; and then in 2018, with the one I used Thursday a week ago. It proved plenty pleasing for that repast on a chilly late week afternoon.

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"Basil Cream Chicken," from MizzNezz on GeniusKitchen.com (now Food.com).

True Autumn Hits Home

Brown Butter White Chocolate Walnut Blondies

Tuesday a week ago felt right for bringing a suitable dessert to the table, and it was particularly remarkable. Brown butter blondies were produced before bedtime, packed with white chocolate but not quite enough walnuts, with crazy-good caramelized crusting around the edges. I'd made a batch of sweet milk vanilla ice cream, and I still had enough butterscotch sauce stored away in the back of the fridge. All that indulgence might have stepped in as a balm for the pronounced end of the nice fall days and the arrival of what felt almost winterlike in comparison.

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Based on "Brown Butter Blondies," from Anita Parris Soule of Wild Thistle Kitchen.

"The Best Butterscotch Sauce," from Barry C. Parsons of RockRecipes.com. [Published 29 March 2018]

"Sweet Milk Ice Cream," published in the King Arthur Flour catalogue some years ago, but no longer available on their website.

Meal No. 3727: Sous Vide Soup Night

You'll get to hear me whine about it a good bit for the blog posts coming from the exact middle of October, like this one that harkens back to Tuesday the 15th. Our weather took a cruel turn, after such a pleasant start to autumn, bringing not only very chilly (by comparison) low-to-mid-50s, an oppressive cloud cover by mid-afternoon, and a chilly rain that evening. Yuck, yuck, yuck. It put me in the mind of soup, but I was pressed for time and panicked...until I remembered the stored-away portions that were ready to be dropped into the sous vide immersion circulator. One bowl had potato cheddar, and the other had Vierling Saloon chicken and wild rice. Oh, so good!

Meal No. 3726: Murgh Makhani

The Sunday night meal last week was quite a feast: Indian butter chicken, or murgh makhani, with yet another different recipe to guide me in making this regularly fantastic dish. This version really produced a hearty full-flavored sauce, and the broiling of the spiced-yogurted chicken gave an approximation of tandoori-style cooking. With basmati rice and roasted cumin-coriander cauliflower, this was a tasty abundance, and an overindulgence.

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"Indian Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani)," from Andrew Janjigian. In Cook's Illustrated, No. 158 [May & June 2019], p. 6-7.

Meal No. 3725: Potatoes & Broccoli

Saturday a week ago was a clean-out-the-hopper supper: roasted spiced potatoes and roasted broccoli florets. Nothing fancy or remarkable, but the habit here is to document it all.

Beauty and the Beast

Here are two snaps from autumn life in the Roediger House, featuring the house pooches. Above, it's the moment one evening when it was actually a challenge to get them to finish their bedtime business and come back inside. A taunting stationary cat just sat in the driveway across the street, and these very good pups locked their gazes with intense ferocity while knowing the wall they stood on was the limit of their free range. I'm of the biased opinion that the cat nonetheless recognized these were stares of death and did not linger.

This next photo we might term Beauty and the Beast: Sumner, in a playful mood, with his still-startling growl fixed, superimposed on the first-of-the-season camelia blossom at the front wall.

Meal No. 3724: Carrot Cake Oatmeal

Last Friday morning, I left the house at 4:23 am, driving mostly in the dark of night, arriving only 80 minutes early for a full introductory day with administrators in Sampson County. It was a shock to get out of the comfort of the new car and to step out into a bracing 46°F dawn in Clinton. But it was an easy drive down, through the town where I spent my first year teaching, through the quaint hamlet I grew up in, past the closed movie theatre of my first car dates in high school, and ending up in front of administrators in the school district where my father took his first principalship in 1950. When I got back home that night around 7 pm, I chose an easy supper but dressed it up a bit: carrot cake oatmeal.

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Based on "Carrot Cake Oatmeal," from Molly Watson of TheSpruceEats.com. [Updated 02 July 2019]

Meal No. 3723: Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup

It was a Thursday evening threesome for dinner, as the autumn began to assert itself a bit more, making steaming bowls of cream of roasted tomato soup an ideal choice for our menu. The rest of a store-bought loaf of sourdough sandwich bread allowed me to griddle four tasty grilled cheese sandwiches. Once more, I'm struck by the good fortune of simple delights and the rewarding fruits of kitchen endeavors.

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"Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup," from Cook's Illustrated, November 1999. Recipe can also be found online at Cookography.com.

Brown Sugar Cinnamon Rice Krispies Treats

Tuesday night of last week, I had to have something sweet after a somewhat early dinner. An easy answer to the dilemma was the new addition to the treats stable, and I do mean "treats": cinnamon brown sugar rice krispies treast. I made a double-batch this time, so they'd be thick and plentiful.

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"Cinnamon Brown Sugar Rice Krispies Treats," from Christine Goff and published on JustAPinch.com.

Meal No. 3722: National Salmon Day

Last Tuesday was National Salmon Day, and I was all in for it. Spiced nicely along with an olive oil coating, roasted to perfection thanks to my wireless monitoring probe, and accompanied with a large, large pile of roasted broccoli: I was living large and eating heartily this latest offering of one of my favorite meals.

Meal No. 3721: Smashburgers!

After a good day of work last Monday with an early enough return home, I set to work on the quick prep necessary to be ready to pull off the very quick grilling of buttered buns and well-smashed burgers, topped with oozy America cheese singles and plenty of homemade burger sauce. It's a greasy mess to eat but that just makes it all the better.

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"Simple Smashburgers," from the Roediger House. [Published 04 September 2024] I make no claim that these are the right steps for you, but as long as I've recorded them for myself, I thought I'd make a recipe sheet available should anyone like it.

Meal No. 3720: Madame Cristo Grilled Ham & Cheese

Seemed to be about the right time to bring back a Madame Cristo-style griddled ham, Swiss, and turkey sandwich, as happened last Sunday night. I'm eager to supplement such a concoction with a fair-sized dollop of raspberry preserves, with suitable slathers applied grandly to each bite.

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Based on "Madame Cristo—Grilled Ham and Cheese," from Chef John Mitzewich of FoodWishes.com and AllRecipes.com. [Updated 03 July 2018]

New Orleans Pecan Pie Bread Pudding with Whiskey Butter Sauce

Last Saturday night's dinner had a rather special conclusion: New Orleans pecan pie bread pudding with whiskey butter sauce. With all that round challah I'd made looking for some clever employment, bread pudding seemed like the smart move for using it all up in a fell swoop. Cut into cubes and staled up a bit on the counter, those heavenly morsels soaked up the sweet creamy custard like gangbusters. While it ended up being far from my best bread pudding to date, that whiskey butter sauce is quite capable of covering all manner of sins.

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Recipe was an amalgamation of two different versions of bread pudding:

• "New Orleans Pecan Pie Bread Pudding," from Marzia Aziz of Little Spice Jar. [Published 14 November 2016 / Updated 17 May 2020]
• "Emeril's New Orleans Style Bread Pudding," from Emeril Legasse.

"Whiskey Sauce," based on a recipe from Mimi's Cafe. [Recipe no longer available on Mimi's website.]

Meal No. 3719: Emeril's Skillet Beef Stroganoff

Perhaps the break from the easy house favorite of skillet beef stroganoff had lasted long enough, and that's what came out of the kitchen machinations for three of us last Saturday night. Well-spiced, boosted with onion and tender mushrooms, nestled on a bed of egg noodles, the bowlful of goodness more than satisfied.

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Based on "Beef Stroganoff Hamburger Dinner in a Skillet," by Emeril Lagasse. Found online at The Food Network and also on Emerils.com.

Squirrel No. 12

Here is the word of warning that this blog post is about the death of a squirrel at the hands of the house pooches, working in concert with one another. In this household, we do not grieve for the squirrels, who outnumber us considerably and who regularly prove to have destructive tendencies. (Just ask the neighbors to the south, whose neglected rental units have several squirrels’ nests residing in the walls of that ramshackle house.) We do not pretend that this is not a natural world in which we live, even if it's on a quaint quarter acre almost in the middle of downtown Winston-Salem.

It happened last Friday while I was gone for the day to Chapel Hill, to take in a homecoming activity for my UNC fraternity. Part of the kill was caught on camera, and then the stiffening little guy was ready for his final memorial portrait before the proper disposal was performed. Sumner was the primary executioner, but his success required the agile cornering and corralling offered by his sprightly sister. It's been about a year-and-a-half since he last expedited one of these annoying yard rats, and I suppose he is proud to have acquired Trophy No. 12.

Meal No. 3718: Challah French Toast

Let none of us be too surprised if one of the meals to follow baking up a large round loaf of challah is the house favorite version of French toast. That's what played out mid-day on Friday in the humble homestead, ever so tasty and filling. I'm careless and unrepentent about the grand sloshes of maple syrup I add to my paired toasts, and they quite typically are consumed gleefully but also all too quickly.

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"French Toast," by PJ Hamel of King Arthur Baking online.

Meal No. 3717: Juicy Burgers on the Grill

Last Thursday's beautiful weather and some ground beef lurking in the fridge, plus two remaining burger buns, all combined to bring out the griller in me. For that day's meal, it was cheeseburgers in the manner long embraced by this household, juicy and flavorful, well-cheesed, and good slathers top and bottom of the house-made burger sauce.

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Adapted from "Grilled Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003, p. 52-53. After Pillsbury was purchased in 2001 by General Mills, home of Betty Crocker (founded in 1921, mind you!), it basically ceased to exist as a company and lives on just as a brand. I guess that's why a Pillsbury cookbook recipe from 2003 is now only found on the Betty Crocker website.

Quickly-whipped-up burger sauce was this recipe mostly from memory: "Thousand Island Dressing," which was based on a version from Graybert on GeniusKitchen.com.