Notebooks, Galore!

As my work schedule slowly eased up as we got closer to the official start of last spring, I utilized some of my extra time to tackle my two huge ongoing notebooks collections: observation notes from the various schools and districts I work in, and the collection of printed recipes that seems to grow ever larger. The work-related observation notebooks include every observation I've done since I started doing this work as a consultant, and in some school districts that became a years-long process or involved a large number of schools. Knowing how small I write anyway, coupled with the dependence on narrow-lined notepad sheets, you might correctly assume that I've really done a ridiculous number of observations over the last 20 years. It takes a 6-inch binder to contain the work I've done through the High Point University Leadership Academy or in Guilford County; Virginia Beach City observation notes require two notebooks to contain them all.

The other notebook project related to my collection of (mostly) printed (mostly web-sourced) recipes. Originally converted into notebooks in 2017 to organize what had once been tucked into folders in a milk crate, and next reworked and expanded in 2022, I had been finding some of them overstuffed and also realized some organizational and categorical shifting was called for. As long as I was on a notebook kick as February rolled over into March, I refreshed my inventory especially of the extra large binders and set to work on once more improving the management of all those many, many recipes. It took a while to finally file away the stack of backlogged recipe printouts, and that dragged on through the rest of the year: Sunday December 7th was when I finally finished! I figured you'd want to know.

Meal No. 4028: Meatloaf Minis

Last Saturday night brought to Winston-Salem a massive winter weather event (more on that to come in a blog post to follow), and once all had been done to get us as ready as possible, there was still a dinner to make. A fun recipe that has never fallen short of delighting the household came to mind, since I still had a couple of leftover containers of terrific homemade sour cream-and-chive mashed red potatoes as the ideal side item. The central feature: mini meatloafs with a sweet and tasty sauce. It's easy enough to put together but a fine variation from the norm here, and I'll boast that supper satisfied quite perfectly that evening.

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"Mini Meatloaf," from Lauren Allen of Tastes Better from Scratch. [Published 20 February 2023]

Meal No. 4027: Teriyaki Steak Skewers on Caesar'd Spring Mix

My recent extravagant purchase of a whole beef tenderloin netted me some incredible filet mignons to grill over the MLK Jr. Holiday weekend, and then I also saved out some fresh cubes of beef to marinate and then skewer and grill on the actual Martin Luther King Jr. Day itself. These perfect tender morsels sat atop a spring mix salad, with a choice either of creamy Caesar dressing or a souped-up Thousand Island dressing that I created as a special sauce for beef and cheddar melts sandwiches.

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

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

Meal No. 4026: The 2026 Chili Cook-Off

When I was on faculty at Wake Forest University, I built into the calendar each year a series of events that were simply reasons to gather: a dessert and decaf in May, a brunch in the run-up to Easter, and each January a chili cook-off gathering. The most consistent continuation of those, albeit with an evolving or shifting guest list because of different directions that life takes us, has been the January chili affair. These troubled times are the very reason we must stay connected, so last Sunday night the chili cook-off came back to life at the Roediger House.

The pandemic put a true kink in the ritual, and the only year since that I made an effort to at least time a chili gathering to its usual spot around Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Weekend was in 2022. Deviled by a nostalgic impulse here in 2026, I wanted this to be a bigger deal: that meant a guest list and an invitation card to be mailed, adapted from the graphic I'd used back in 2010. The weather worried us a bit that day: we were in the mid-30s with precip moving through and a promise of a frozen mix. But for the hearty souls who turned out, it was a great night with a delicious variety of chili to sample.

With it being the first attempt at resurrecting this event for a few years, I didn't have a good measure of how available folks on the invite list might be. Still: better to be prepared, right? So I made a couple of appetizer options for us, including my version of South Carolina-style pimento cheese (above) and my own divination of Virginia-style Mexican restaurant white dipping sauce:

Of course, there had to be a pan of Granny Wilson's honey wheat cornbread. Since this delicious variation makes a full sheet pan's worth of sweet cornbread, the chili cookoff was perfect for bringing it out. I must've missed something in its preparation, though: it wasn't quite as on target as I'm accustomed to. No pictures are available, which is probably for the best.

Let's not leave out the dessert options for that chili winter's night, starting with Ina Garten's marvelous lemon bars on shortbread cookie crust. Well-glucosed and super lemony, these bars are marvelous to the max, each and every time.

Before we no longer had the recent holidays out of sight in the rear view mirror, I also wanted another go at eggnog tres leches cake. Alas, the version I've been most dependent on makes a thicker sponge cake than seems prudent—it can end up with unmilked dry portions that I find problematic. So I skimmed down the cake layer with some clever mathing, but kept the milks and topping amounts constant.

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"Simple Beef Chili with Kidney Beans," from Cook's Illustrated, Number Sixty-One [March-April 2003], p. 10-11.

"Vegetarian Chili," from All About Vegetarian Cooking. By the editors of Joy of Cooking: Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. New York: Scribner (2000), p. 82-83. Cookbook was a gift from former student Alison Pomeroy.

"Granny Wilson's Cornbread," a recipe shared with me by Linda B. Dunlap.

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

"Mexican Restaurant White Dipping Sauce," a recipe worked out by me, sampled by Spring Street, and approved of by all.

"Lemon Bars," by Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. Published in Barefoot Contessa Parties!, Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2001.

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

Meal No. 4025: Grilled Filet Mignon

I grew up in a meat-eating household, and in particular were we extremely fond of grilled steaks: porterhouses, ribeyes, and filet mignon, above and beyond all else. But meals like that are indeed a nearly literal luxury in the current economic climate, and therefore grilling a steak happens few and far between now. Last Saturday night was a joyous indulgence, though, once the early morning's cold rain had passed on and we got a bit of sunshine and the winds had died away. Out to the grill I went and with me were two thick-cut filet mignons, freshly harvested from a larger beef tenderloin I'd allowed myself to exuberantly invest in. Grilled to a perfect temp with just the seasoning of salt and pepper, the meat itself did all the talking and I liked listening. As long as it all felt extravagant, I also made a pot of mashed sour cream-and-chive red potatoes, adorned with a bit of red wine demi-glace. As dinners go at the Roediger House, this ordinary weekend repast felt like a giddy celebration.

Meal No. 4024: Linton Hopkins's Bucatini Carbonara

Every once in a while I have to return to this finer variation of carbonara, built upon bucatini pasta and silkened with several egg yolks. That was the quickly whipped up supper last Friday evening, as the bitter cold of a biting winter made clear its malcontent with Winston-Salem. I still knocked out a 5-mile walk that afternoon without pushing my pace very hard, and then I defeated all those healthy good works with that rather unhealthy dinner. And a cookie afterwards. It helped make up for the 19°F to which I awakened that morning.

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Adapted from "Bucatini Carbonara," by Linton Hopkins. In Food & Wine, July 2009.

"WORST EVER" Chocolate Chip Cookies

Following last Thursday's boys' night supper, the proper thing for this host to do seemed to be a dessert concoction of some sort. It had been a while since I'd made what Sam Merritt calls the WORST EVER chocolate chip cookie, and it's easy enough since it uses melted butter instead of softened (as almost all my cookie recipes require). This is the recipe that steps in when I've not planned ahead, in other words. But it's also really good: these chocolate chip cookies have a distinct air of childhood reminiscence and they also taste awesome. The large batch meant several plates went out to neighbors and as a take-away for the excellent Mookie.

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"The WORST EVER Chocolate Chip Cookies," from Sam Merritt of SugarSpunRun.com. [Published 28 November 2018; Updated 19 December 2024]

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.