Meal No. 4023: Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole

It's been almost five-and-a-half years since I last made the wonderful and comforting poppy seed chicken casserole. It's an upgrade of a long-time family dish but is made without relying on cans of soup, thank goodness. (We always called it 'Bama Chicken.) With the entirely accommodating shortcut of a Costco rotisserie chicken, the amount of which really bulks up the casserole, and with the succulence of well-simmered and sautéed mushrooms and onion, good sprinkles of thyme, and suitably flavored with marsala wine, the finished product is a wonder of spreading goodness once ladled up onto the plates in abundance. With last Thursday's boys' night supper, I also had roasted herbed broccoli florets, which I really do love. We were well-satisfied by the end of our very short meal—that's how fast we blazed through our servings.

It was a bitterly cold January day, with temps staying near freezing but conditions were formidably inhospitable with full-force icy gusts that pushed you backwards, when they weren't cutting through you altogether. I got out and did over four miles with an aggresive afternoon exuberance, before heading out for a much-needed haircut. Days like that remind me how nuts it is to ever think about moving to Canada, no matter how terrified I am about our national future.

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"Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole," by Ashley Moore in Cook's Country, February/March 2015, p. 20.

Vanilla Snacking Cake with Dark Chocolate Whipped Ganache

Last Wednesday evening's weekly gathering with Amy on hand featured a new dessert, a take on a less-sweet snacking cake with a dark chocolate whipped ganache. It was a tasty evening finisher but dark chocolate is not a universally-loved feature here, so I suspect I'll opt for a less punchy topping if this reappears in the future.

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Adapted from "One-Bowl Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Frosting," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Updated 03 April 2025]

Meal No. 4022: Grilled Teriyaki Steak Skewers with Caesar-Topped Spring Mix

After a couple of days working down in southeast Georgia, I returned home without making it to the grocery store...but for the three of us at dinner last Wednesday night it was not a lost cause. I had spring mix, I had creamy Caesar dressing, and I had beef tenderloin cuttings I'd stored away in the freezer a while back. Cooked mostly via sous vide, then marinated in a teriyaki-style concoction, these were skewered and grilled up in the chill air of a winter night; then we prepared our respective bowls of spring mix with as much or as little creamy Caesar dressing, added roasted sunflower seeds, and eased those beefy morsels off our skewers and on top of our dressed greens. I'd not prepped beef skewers like this since 2020 and it was a happy return to 'em.

Meal No. 4021: Roasted Spiced Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli

Back on Saturday of last week, just before I hit the road for a short work trip, it was the better part of wisdom to use up some vegetables in the hopper, and so it was a supper of roasted spiced broccoli and roasted russet and sweet potatoes, combined. After years of baking or steaming vegetables, I'm glad roasting has come home to roost.

Right outside the house on that rainy Saturday afternoon, the streets were abuzz with pasionate protestors, rallying in response to the killing of mother and artist Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. The point of origin was the parking lot behind the house, and then the group circled the block.

I'm not sure how far the march carried down Fourth Street towards the city's center, but the protestors soon positioned themselves at the intersection of Fourth and Broad.

Lots of bullhorn calls, chants by the protestors, and encouragingly responsive horn-blowing from passing traffic continued for much of the afternoon. The location of the house gave us a pretty good view of their persistence in spite of the rainy weather.

Atlantic Beach Pie

A fun and festive dinner for four on Friday night of last week had a fine evening-ender: Atlantic Beach pie. This outstanding but surprisingly easy pie has been showing up here since I first came across a recipe for it just over a decade ago, but its roots go deep into family beach trips to the North Carolina coast and the typical dessert we'd have after some large platters of fried seafood. While I want to be clear that I fancy myself to have no magic in my chef's touch—that the key often seems to be in doing exactly what the recipe tells me—it seems to wash over guests like something out of this world. I'm right there with 'em.

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"One Phenomenal Pie: Atlantic Beach Pie," from Chef Bill Smith. Published in Our State Magazine, May 2014. Also featured in "Found Recipes" on All Things Considered from National Public Radio, broadcast April 13, 2013. First made in the RoHo: July 2014.

Meal No. 4020: Cheddar Crust Chicken Pot Pie

Last Friday night was a mix of new and old at the dinner table, so for the four of us I put forward a selection that seemed suited to the drear and mist that had moved in on us: cheddar crust chicken pot pie. A long-time favorite here, but one which does not show up all that often, it's a comforting dish that seems to win some reasonable admiration from the friends who are here to feast. I added in roasted garlic whole green beans but they were overshadowed by the main feature, I think.

That forecast got me up and moving earlier in the day, knocking out a 4.33-mile stroll at the surprisingly aggressive pace of 13m45s per mile. I mean: I try to keep it under 16m/mile but am happy if it's under 15m/mile. So I guess you can tell I jogged some of it, and boy was I drenched with sweat once I returned. Still: for January, I'll take it.

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"Chicken Potpie with Cheddar Crust," from Food Network Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 8 (October 2011), p. 132-133.

Chai-Spiced Snickerdoodle Skillet Cookies

For the first time in over a year, I brought back the wonderfully easy and perfectly delicious chai-spiced snickerdoodle skillet cookie for after-dinner last Thursday night. A reasonable undertaking when I've got no other plan in motion, this sweet treat comes together quickly and then presents itself as an irresistible vixen with an unimpeachable siren song. We handled our sizable slices with aplomb.

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

Meal No. 4019: Soy Sauce Ramen Noodles

When it's the mid-week treat of the customary confab with Amy, it is a lifter of spirits and a time to be treasured. Last week I fell back onto a dependable quickly-whipped-up supper for our waiting bowls: soy sauce ramen noodles. It's plenty good on its own, but I wondered how the option of some yum yum sauce might be received by the diners, given that I'd made a batch not so long ago and had it tucked away in the fridge. The verdict: it was a welcome adornment.

We did not get into record-setting territory that glorious sunny day, but I absolutely loved that we knocked it up to 70°F my mid-afternoon. The breezes were pretty pushy but they were a welcome cooling agent as I entered the final mile of my aggressive downtown stroll. I knew real winter was poised to reassert itself by the start of the following week, and that just made me revel all the more so in that sunshine.

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Based on "Viral Ramen Noodles," from Brian Gerwig [NC]. Instagram Profile: g_bque. [Posted 15 May 2024]

"Yum Yum Sauce," from Kimberly Killebrew of The Daring Gourmet. [Published 02 April 2025]

Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake

Sometimes dessert must be a wee bit overdone, as in: it was all too much. That seems to have been the collective view on Monday evening last week, when the three of us with already full bellies still found a way to conquer bowls of chocolate pudding cake with vanilla ice cream. If one can be happily miserable, that’s what you could put beside my senior superlative.

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"Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake," from Holly Nilsson of SpendwithPennies.com. [Published 13 May 2020 / Updated 07 July 2020]

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

Meal No. 4018: Beef Bolognese

The happy return to the RoHo of dear friend Chris, a fellow UNC alumnus, occurred on Tuesday of last week. He’s always running in so many different directions that it can be rather cool to nail him down for dinner. On this occasion, we sat down to fettuccine with homemade bolognese, big bubbly focaccia, and creamy Caesar-dressed salads, eating our contented fill and wanting just a bit more, while also knowing a dessert offering was in the offing.

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"Homemade Bolognese Sauce," from Holly Nilsson of SpendwithPennies.com. [Published 17 January 2023]

"Big and Bubbly Focaccia," from King Arthur Baking. [Published January 2025]

Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim Hardesty of lowcarbmaven.com.

Shortbread Cookies and Vanilla Ice Cream

While the baby back pork ribs dinner enjoyed on the first Saturday night of 2026 might well have been sufficient to leave us all satisfied, I still felt like we were due a dessert offering. I'd made and stored away some vanilla ice cream, using a perfect and perfectly dependable approach from King Arthur Baking. Then I also whipped up a batch of shortbread cookies, which are generally supposed to be left to set up but I went ahead and served 'em warm and a bit pliable with the sweet frozen dairy scoops of heaven.

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

"Shortbread Cookies," from Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTinEats.com. [Published 16 March 2019 / Updated 18 June 2025]

Meal No. 4017: Baby Back Ribs & Mac 'N Cheese

On the first Saturday evening of 2026, it was three at the table and the specials at the Harris Teeter set my menu, which was our much-loved oven-roasted baby back ribs together with a huge dish of macaroni and cheese. Those ribs emerged with a high-factor deliciousness, although not as tender as I was shooting for, and the mac 'n cheese is always seductive. We feasted well, keeping alive for a little while longer the spirit of the holidays.

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"How to Make Great Ribs in the Oven," by Emma Christensen. From The Kitchn. [Published 01 July 2017]

"Willie Mae's Mac and Cheese," shared by Willie Mae's Scotch House of New Orleans via Good Morning America. [Published 19 May 2020]

Meal No. 4015: Chicken Swiss Stuffing Casserole

With only hazy notions bouncing around about dinner possibilities on New Year's Eve, I tossed spiced prepped chicken breasts into the sous vide mid-day with hopes something more concrete would settle out in my menu planning. After walking across town to the CVS and back, I felt I'd made my commitment, but it required a broad interpretation of a recipe I've been making for almost 30 years: creamy Swiss baked chicken casserole. I stuck with the same approach to the "goop"; I made sure to still layer in sliced Swiss cheese; and I thought it might be interesting to let the stuffing be a pseudo-crunchy topping. It all came together reasonably well, and the addition of roasted spiced broccoli is always a good idea. For the three of us together on the final night of 2025, it was a casual repast that met our easy-going moment.

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Grandly adapted from "Easy Creamy Swiss Baked Chicken Breasts," a recipe shared with me by Cindy Coulson in 1997. A matching version of the recipe can be found on Cooks.com.

“You Can’t Hold a Candle to These Filters”

From November 27 past the middle of December, our area underwent a prolonged unseasonal chill, with below-average temperatures every single day, save maybe one. It reached its nadir in the wee hours of December 15, when the house weather station recorded a low of 14°F. That’s certainly inhospitable, but the injury added to the insult was that the front of the house got down to 56°F, even though last February I had a completely new HVAC system installed.

When the tech from Webb Heading & Air Conditioning came out that Monday morning, his all-too-speedy verdict was that the filters on the new system (which were supposed to be good for 6 months; they’d been installed in August) were blocked by...candle soot.

This has long been a candle-burning household but this is also a house that’s almost 5000 square feet. I am having trouble wrapping my mind around two or three candles burning several days a week bringing my system to its knees in about three months.

But apparently that’s the price of progress, when looked at a certain way: advances in filtering technology mean a whole lot of stuff you don’t want blowing around your house, or passing through your system, might also include some trade-offs. The comfort specialist who did the original design of the new system and the service manager from Webb Heating & Air Conditioning came out just before Christmas and worked me through the options for striking a better balance on maintaining the system’s integrity and functionality while also living a normal warm-scented life in a candle-loving household.

We’ll have to experiment with less efficient filters and I’ll need to look at how to manage their cost better, but I appreciated the cooperation and collaboration to figure out how the dilemma could be navigated.

Meals No. 4014 and 4016: Spring Mix with Chicken Breast

Spring mix and the sous vide were the essential combo for a midday salad on the final Monday of 2025. I prepped homemade Thousand Island dressing to adorn it all with, and the standard finishing touch of roasted sunflower seeds got their last-minute shake-shake on top. It was a satisfying bowl of green and good, although I was pretty darned hungry again within a few hours.

The sky overhead on those last couple of days of 2025 also brought us an unusual sight, more common down at the beach or over a football stadium: an airplane towing a banner of some sort. I'd spotted it on a downtown stroll but the plane was over the central business district and I was down near Old Salem, so I couldn't make it out.

But then on New Year's Eve, it flew directly over the house when out we went with the pooches, so I was able to snag a couple of quick photos. Mystery solved: an advertisement for the following weekend's Duke's Mayo Bowl game between Wake Forest University and Mississippi State (which WFU handily won 43-29).

By the end of the week, we'd leaped over into 2026, and that Friday invited a repeat of the salad-with-chicken meal. Broken record that I am, but these holidays had been an ongoing battle with the morning weigh-in and I dithered between impulsive determination and surrendering to impulses. My downtown walking regimens had been intense and aggressive but my body was operating with a mind of its own. The battle waged after that first Friday salad lunch was taking another pass at what I call the College Tour route: I walked through all five college campuses within striking distance of the house, clocking in at a sweaty 6.4 miles once I ambled in pain back up the driveway.

Still, let's celebrate how the year's inaugural Friday started and ended: with a fiery dawn to begin the day, and the nearly-full Wolf supermoon appearing over the city that evening, trying to break through the day's cloud cover.

The Saturday timing of the fullness of that moon coincided with a rainy drizzly day, so my next chance to catch sight of it was as it was charting its brilliant exit path toward the western horizon Sunday morning.

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

December Vacation Snacks and Sweets

This past holiday season was not wildly focused on sweets or fun foods, as I might have hoped, given the extra time at home. But that doesn't mean there weren't some goodies to please us while family gathered or friends were on hand. The earliest entry into that suite of treats was peanut butter fudge (pictured above), a pretty simple concoction that's worth breaking out the double-boiler for. It sets up nicely and brings out the peanut butter flavor in earnest measure. I also made a double-batch of pimento cheese (pictured below), using a recipe I came up with after reviewing a number of competitors. I've included a link (at the bottom of this post) to the recipe that was most impactful, if you feel like playing around a bit yourself.

I also made another kind of chocolate pie. You'd have to go all the way back to the winter of 2011 to find the first time I made Emeril Legasse's chocolate cream pie. It is a stunning concoction, not because it's particularly fancy, but because the simple alchemy behind it brings out the most marvelous heavenly slice of chocolatey goodness, almost light in feel but definitely well-massed in endorphin delights. It has made semi-regular appearances here over the last decade and a half, although it's been missing from the dessert rotation for over a year and a half.

Many a time it's been on the dessert menu here, I've shortcutted its prep by using store-bought chocolate crusts...but Nabisco discontinued that product. I don't love chocolate graham cracker crusts but my grocery stores don't seem to carry those either. Isn't it better to make one's own, though? That's definitely the route I took for that chocolate cream pie. It seemed to be well received when I served it on Christmas Eve after we'd had our fill of skillet pizzas.

I might as well throw in for good measure the way I used up the rest of a peasant bread loaf: a fine round of nighttime cinnamon toast. Well-buttered and then thickly sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar, these crunchy sweet delights were much more than I could handle on the evening when temptation compelled that I make them.

Finally, as the holidays were wrapping up, I wanted to send my brother-in-law back on the road with a bagful of white chocolate macadamia nut toffee cookies, given his fondness for them as road snacks. I had to sample a couple myself, as they came out of the oven the night before his Sunday morning departure, and I could attest most assuredly to the latest success with this new-found recipe. Gone so rapidly, and knowing only one possible solution: make another batch. That happened a couple of evenings later:

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"15-Minute Peanut Butter Fudge," in the article "Simplifying Fudge" by David Pazmiño. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2007, p. 22-23.

"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese. [Published 23 October 2009]

"Emeril's Chocolate Cream Pie," by Emeril Lagasse (2007). Featured on The FoodNetwork.com website.

"Perfect Oreo Cookie Crust," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 11 November 2022]

Adapted from "THE BEST White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 19 February 2025 / Updated 11 October 2025]

Meal No. 4013: Party Ham Biscuits

On the final Saturday evening of December, a holiday snack became the central feature of dinner: caramelized party ham biscuits. ’Twas another special request, and I wanted all the more to fulfill it because of the disappointing tally of holiday-themed goodies that did not get made this season. Sometimes, the strictness with which I manage my own eating habits has a cascading spillover effect on others nearby.

Ah, but let’s note with tremendous satisfaction that the roller coaster of weather as 2025 finished out gifted us with another day in the 70s on that weekend after Christmas. The sunshine was soothing and renewing and I loved my mid-day 5-mile downtown stroll. My steps were quickened and intensified in anticipation of the pre-emptive battle against the size of the evening’s eggnog tres leches cake I was absolutely looking forward to.

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"Party Ham Biscuits," a recipe shared with the Jones family by fellow UNC alum Susan Brown. I recorded her version in my recipe collection in 1988. There are various takes on this recipe, of course. Pretty popular is the "caramelized" version, such as this one: "Caramelized Ham & Swiss Buns," by Iris Weihemuller of Baxter, MN, in Taste of Home, December 2013, p. 59.

Horseradish Sauce based on "Horseradish Sauce Recipe," from Natasha Kravchuk of Natasha's Kitchen. [Published 07 February 2019]

Eggnog Tres Leches Cake

Our post-Christmas feast with friends had a decadent dessert to help close out the evening’s game-playing: eggnog tres leches cake. This rare wonder that sings seasonal bliss when I peel back the cake cover is a carol song of Christmas. In the spirit of exaggerated retelling, I’d like to think members of the dinner party almost gasped with giddy delight when the plates began to be distributed. It might’ve happened that way, but to be honest, I was singularly focused on how much my own oversized square of confectioned evil was going to elevate my mood into munchy mania.

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"Eggnog Tres Leches Cake," from Michele Feuerborn of FlavorMosaic.com. [Published 13 December 2015]

Meal No. 4012: New Year’s Day Meatballs

This year’s Christmas feast gathering of the tightknit crew of dearest friends occurred on the day after Christmas. It called for one of our other celebratory menus, a dish we refer to as New Year’s Day meatballs in honor of the first occasion I ever got to sample ‘em. It’s a standard call to bring company mashed potatoes along, and while we’re doing the easy casseroles, why not also go with layered green bean casserole?

All this was followed by our latest rounds of the homemade Collins Against Humanity game, with plenty of belly chuckles, a smattering of gasps, and the occasional difficulty of navigating the tortured alliterations that recur all too often on some selections of response cards. It was another great evening of togetherness. Keeping us all company while the frivolity played out over his head was the ever-faithful and truly golden child pooch of the Roediger House:

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"New Year's Day Meatballs," from Carol Fultz; recipe shared with me in 2001.

"Company Mashed Potatoes" and "Layered Green Bean Casserole," longtime family favorite sides.

Meal No. 4011: Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

...and then it was Christmas, a bright sunny warm holiday with a quiet city and crows squawking: the absence of muss and dearth of fuss were among the best gifts of the day. At dinnertime I tried to make a menu wish come true: biscuits and sausage gravy. A bit too spicy, after an intended hot sauce shake was more akin to a glub, but that’s what tall glasses of water are for.

I thought it was awesome for Christmas Day to get up to 74°F here. The dogs loved it too.

And the officials at Piedmont Triad International Airport, just across the Guilford County line from here, tell us it was the warmest Christmas ever observed, reaching 75°F, breaking the previous record of 74°F that occurred in 1955 and 2015.

So all that pleasantness allowed for a pretty brisk walk midday through multiple neighborhoods, and then I got out the lawn mower to knock down all the monkey grass for winter. Who needs a White Christmas when there’s yard work that needs doing?