Meal No. 4157: Poppy Seed Chicken

Dateline: Sun 19 July. A small gathering of a mixed bunch from the regular crew was here so we could watch the recent film phenomenon, Obsession. That called for an earlier dinnertime and a doable menu, but I still wanted it to be a decent one. A Sunday night comfort casserole sounded perfect, and that meant dropping a seasoned whole chicken into the Instant Pot and whipping up the mushroom and onion filling on the cooktop. It all comes together in the baking dish with a Ritz cracker buttery crumb topping. When it’s dished up on the plates, the guests are advised, to their happy delight, that they shall dig into poppy seed chicken. And some roasted herbed whole green beans, too.

After the movie, I had some dessert to put together, with most of the prep having been done in advance: chocolate frosty-style shakes. Cold, creamy, chocolatey, and brain-freeze-inducing: we found the cupsful to be an entirely suitable way to close out the night.

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

Guidance from "How to Cook Instant Pot Whole Chicken - Rotisserie Style," by Sheena Strain from noshtastic.com (formerly glutenfreepressurecooker.com). [Printed 08 January 2018 / Updated Online 21 January 2023]

"Rotisserie Chicken Seasoning," by Judith Hannemann, The Midnight Baker. [Published 22 March 2017]

"Homemade Chocolate Frosty," from Tieghan Girard of Half-Baked Harvest. [Updated 04 August 2025]

Meal No. 4156: Taco Cheeseburger Quesadillas

Dateline: Sat 18 July. The previous evening’s cheeseburger gathering left me with two extra burgers. The next afternoon, I finely diced them and added them to caramelized diced onion with taco seasoning and turned it all into oven-baked quesadillas. Some salsa and sour cream rode shotgun and the diners were left content.

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Preparation and cooking based on "Quesadillas for a Crowd," by Morgan Bolling. In Cook's Country, August/September 2015, p. 18.

Meal No. 4155: Cheeseburgers for Game Night

Dateline: Fri 18 July. Summertime rolls around, which includes the happy stretch of days with my brother-in-law visiting, and the crew must assemble for supper and game night. That was our collective endeavor Friday a week ago, as our hotter July held sway and it seemed best to keep the heat out of the kitchen. So: cheeseburgers to the rescue, fresh from the grill, with chips of choice and lots of homemade special sauce.

With plates cleared away, it was time to bring out our homemade version of Cards Against Humanity, based on the Dark Shadows gothic soap opera from the late 1960s. With answer options that would color the cheeks of the prim and proper among us, it’s prudent to keep the contents on the DL…but we sure get a lot of groans, gasps, and hearty laughs from the gathered souls.

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Adapted from "Grilled Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003 [Updated Online 03 February 2011], p. 52-53.

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

Meal No. 4154: Weeknight Chicken Tikka Masala

Dateline: Thu 16 July. A few excellent days up in Virginia with administrators and teachers was so uplifting and rewarding that it made for a happy drive home at the midpoint of July. And then I’m going to be happy all over again when I get to head back into my kitchen, as happened Thursday a week ago. It was the kind of night for pulling out an old favorite that satisfies even if it’s not particularly sensational: weeknight chicken tikka masala. Served over basmati and glooped with enough extra tomato sauce, there was hardly a trace of it left in my cleaned bowl.

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"Chicken Tikka Masala," from Cook's Country, October/November 2014, centerfold recipe cards.

DIY Dog Food for the Ailing Princess

Dateline: Sun 12 July. At this point, it’s not clear if Scarlett keeps managing to quickly slurp up something the proves unsettling to the stomach when she’s in the yard, or if she’s got something more chronic going on. But as we scooted toward mid-July, she was back to some problematic poops and I jumped onto the crockpot version of homemade dog food early Sunday morning before leaving town so that we’d have something to help get her system back on track.

Those two precious pups are amazing at how they welcome me home when I’ve had to be gone, but there is something akin to that exuberant joy when they realize what’s coming to them in their food bowls is some of Daddy’s doggy vittles.

Scarlett voraciously inhales it, and it actually causes Sumner to remain standing, contrary to his usual supine supper posture. But the magic mix of brown rice, chicken breast, butternut squash, sweet potato, green beans, peas, and lentils proved itself once more and everything came out all right (again) in the end.

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Based on "DIY Homemade Dog Food," by Chungah Rhee of the Damn Delicious blog. [Published 27 April 2015 /Updated 19 September 2025]

Based on "Easy Crockpot Dog Food," by Chungah Rhee of the Damn Delicious blog. [Published 13 May 2015 / Updated 08 July 2024]

Meal No. 4153: RoHo Crew Gathering

Dateline: Sat 11 July. With more time at home and the feeling of a more leisurely pace in the summer, it’s always a good night if the gang can be brought together for happily hanging out and also hushing up our hunger. As I sorted through the fridge knowing I was about to leave town for a few days for work, I thought it could be a reason to deviate from the norm and offer up something unexpected to the bunch.

That’s how we came to have Mediterranean-style chicken kabobs with more tzatziki sauce but also baby back pork ribs.

I’d gotten the ribs prepped the night before with a good spice coating, and the usual approach here for oven-roasting usually results in something more tender. It was a challenge for the group to harvest as much of the meat as might have been desired, but they were good sports about it.

To bridge the gustatory gap between those offerings, I had chopped romaine with a Greek-style balsamic dressing, plus plenty of chopped Roma tomatoes and diced onion...

...and the ribs seems to require something along the lines of my mother’s stylings for coleslaw, which I’m always happy to chow down on.

And when you get to enjoy the company of such a fine cadre of friends, it’s best not to overlook the simple joys of a terrific dessert like a pan of Ina Garten’s lemon bars, well-dusted with powdered sugar and boosted with an extra punch of lemon tang.

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"Greek Chicken Souvlaki Recipe with Tzatziki" [Published 11 June 2018 / Updated 16 October 2020] and "Authentic (Easy) Tzatziki Sauce" [Published 03 June 2016 / Updated 27 September 2023] from Suzy Karedsheh of The Mediterranean Dish.

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

Based on "Greek Salad Dressing," from Jeanine Donofrio and Phoebe Moore of Love and Lemons. [Updated 13 May 2024]

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

Meal No. 4151: Chick-Fil-A Dupe Sandwiches

Dateline: Thu 09 July. Not a common dish here but I’ve happily made it for the third time in the last several weeks: copycat Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. Always better than the mushed mess that I only encounter if it gets ordered when I am working or presenting (otherwise, I avoid Chick-Fil-A because of the social stances of the company), this latest occasion was based on an alternative recipe that popped up on my Instagram feed.

After clean-up, with a hankering for something sweet to wrap up the night, I threw together a batch of lemon sugar cookies. They were awesome.

Dateline: Fri 10 July. There were three substantial fried chicken breasts remaining from that copycat endeavor from the evening before. A recent Costco run offered the bounty of glorious green hearts of Romaine ready to be chopped up, and I’d also prepped a fresh batch of creamy Caesar dressing. That’s how we came to make Meal No. 4152: Caesar Salads with Chick-Fil-A-Style Chicken Breasts diced and laid atop.

As I recently noted, I’ve got quite a backlog of blog entries in the queue, which is what led me to start adding “Dateline” notices at the start of each post. On the day we had these chicken Caesar salads, that morning’s check of the RoHo blog was the documentation of what we had 12 meals ago. Come August, I’ll be hitting the road again for work and my obsessive tendency to post something daily will be backfilled with these saved musings whilst I’m away.

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"Chick-Fil-A Dupe Sandwiches," from Drew Reilly of Dish with Drew. First spotted on Instagram. [Published 25 June 2026]

"Lemon Sugar Cookies," from Melissa Stadler of ModernHoney.com. [Published 21 March 2016 / Updated 06 September 2018]

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

Meal No. 4150: Chicken Shawarma Wraps

Dateline: Wed 08 July. If it’s Wednesday, it comes with the rewarding promise of an Amy evening, and she’s always up for one of my kitchen experiments. So I made sheet pan chicken shawarma that I finely diced to serve as the base for chicken Caesar wraps.

With shaved parmesan and Asiago and fresh-made Caesar dressing on chopped Romaine, it was a well-filled burrito shell that went into the oven for a short bake. I also made a fresh batch of tzatziki sauce and diced up both tomatoes and the last of the English cucumber.

For the four of us that night, it hit us just right. And we still had room enough in our bellies to eat up the last of the maple-praline ice cream.

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"Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma," by Sam Sifton of New York Times Cooking. [Updated 23 January 2024]

"Layered Yogurt Flatbreads," from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen. [Published 30 April 2020]

"Authentic (Easy) Tzatziki Sauce," from Suzy Karedsheh of The Mediterranean Dish. [Published 03 June 2016 / Updated 27 September 2023]

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

Meal No. 4149: Afro-Caribbean Beef & Macaroni

Dateline: Tue 07 July. Among the dish wish-fors when my brother-in-law comes to visit is this spicy and cheesy Afro-Caribbean beef and macaroni casserole. It’s worth asking for, if you ask me, given its spice and flavor profile, its hearty goodness, its comfort cache. Two weeks ago found full bowls of those bites, immaculate as promised by the dish's developer, and happily partaken of by the crew on a summer Tuesday eve.

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"Macaroni Beef Casserole," from Imma Adamu of Immaculate Bites, a blog found at AfricanBites.com. [Published 22 May 2018 / Updated 21 April 2021]

Meal No. 4148: Middle Eastern Beef Gyros

Dateline: Mon 06 July. As the heatwave continued over us, with heavy humidity and only slightly moderated high temps, I made sure to invest my energies in the cool of this air-conditioned house. Once more, it was something that passed by in an Instagram scroll session that situated my meal choice, an experiment in sheet pan beef kebabs in order to make gyros. The homemade tzatziki sauce came out great and garlicky, and I was ready to tackle homemade yogurt flatbreads again, to rave reviews.

I didn't pull together the accompanying salad fixings but we didn't seem to miss it once the chowing down began. A fresh hot flatbread, that zingy creamy tzatziki, and the well-spiced beef kebabs: it was sufficiently feastworthy for the three of us.

Fine though the supper was, it left me certain we could manage some white chocolate macadamia nut toffee cookies for a dessertish nightcap.

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Based on "Juicy Middle Eastern Sheet Pan Beef Kebabs," from Nicole Keshishian. On Instagram: @kalejunkie. [Posted 18 March 2026]

"Authentic (Easy) Tzatziki Sauce," from Suzy Karedsheh of The Mediterranean Dish. [Published 03 June 2016 / Updated 27 September 2023]

"Layered Yogurt Flatbreads," from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen. [Published 30 April 2020]

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

Meal No. 4147: Salads with Nashville Hot Chicken

Dateline: Sun 05 July. A couple of wonderful fried Nashville hot chicken thighs were left over from the Fourth of July gathering, and they were pretty perfect to dice up and add atop salads dressed with homemade Thousand Island dressing on the first Sunday of July. With all the good food that's been coming out of my kitchen lately, I needed a meal of moderate intake.

Lemon Meringue and Chocolate Meringue Pies

Dateline: Thu 02 July. It was double-duty for me on the first Thursday afternoon in July, when I let Pillsbury pie shells take some of the pressure off and then I compensated by making both a lemon meringue pie and chocolate meringue pie. They had time to chill a bit and then the chocolate version served as that evening’s dessert when Kristen and Mookie were over.

Additional Dateline: Sat 04 July. I saved the lemon meringue pie to bring out for dessert on the Fourth of July, though, because that was our big gathering of Roediger House regulars. I regretted that my approach to meringue left it shrunken and sweaty in the intervening days from making and baking to greeting and eating. But was it still a fine pie? In the sweetest mouth-puckering way possible, yes indeed.

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"Chocolate and Lemon Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

Meal No. 4146: Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwiches

Dateline: Sat 04 July 2026. It was a casual gathering of seven on the occasion of the nation's 250th anniversary, a hot day very nearly for the record books. Figuring out how to put supper on the table without unnecessarily heating up the kitchen with the oven was a challenge, and I didn't think I liked the idea of grilling in the direct sunshine with that kind of heat and humidity about. All that indecision and imprecision resulted in quite a remarkable menu, though, with the inaugural attempt (and with happy success!) of Nashville hot chicken sandwiches.

Yep: all breaded and fried and spiced and seasoned, these boneless skinless chicken thighs were amazing. In turning these into sandwiches, folks could choose between standard Duke's mayo or spicy ranch, and for those so inclined pickle chips could be added.

There was macaroni salad befitting the hot summer day. I'd also made tasty appetizer items, like southwestern dip and pimento cheese.

And lordy, for the first time in about three-and-a-half years: my dear friend Barbara's take on creamy stuffed eggs.

And in his usual spot under that table, close at hand to all these folks he loves, there was Sumner laid out happy and safe:

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Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwiches based on:

• "Nashville Hot Chicken," from Melissa Nolan of Budget Bytes. [Published 26 May 2025]
• "Crispy Fried Chicken Thighs," from Brendan Cunningham of I'm Hungry for That! [Published 26 September 2025 / Updated 03 January 2026]

Macaroni Salad based on "Classic Macaroni Salad," by Jaclyn Bell of CookingClassy.com [Published 15 April 2017 / Updated 23 June 2025]

"Southwestern Dip," in Betty Crocker Monthly Recipes, December 2001.

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

"Creamy Stuffed Eggs," a recipe shared with me by Barbara Huneycutt of Crozet, VA.

Guidance for Hard-Boiled Eggs from "Instant Pot Hard Boiled Eggs," by Jill Winger of the Prairie Homestead [Published April 2016 / Updated 26 May 2020]; and from "Instant Pot Recipes Everyone Should Know," by Alina Bradford from c|net.com. [Published 17 May 2018]

Meal No. 4145: Creole Pork Chops

Dateline: Thu 02 July 2026. It’s always awesome if Kristen and Mookie can come over for a weeknight dinner, as occurred on the first Thursday of July. I’d thought about grilling but on a 100-degree day, that no longer proved appealing. I let the sous vide step into that breach and finished the Creole-spiced pork chops with a skillet sear. We also had roasted herbed whole green beans plus convenient stovetop stuffing. A meat and two sides is how this chef rides.

The run-up to the Fourth of July saw much of the country enduring that brutal heatwave, and in Winston-Salem, we topped out at triple digits for the first time this year and for the first time since 2012 (when we hit a record high of 102°F). Official temp readings for that string of hot days around our nation's 250th birthday did not hit that mark again (although we reached 99°F on the 3rd and 4th). My weather app's predictions notwithstanding in terms of that magical mark of 100, it was still blistering.

Maple Pecan Praline Ice Cream

Dateline: Wed 01 July. Pushed into action by the most recent occurrence of National Pralines Day, I whipped up a batch unsuccessfully using a recipe that I've now thrown away. And then I made a maple ice cream base into which the pieces of praline could be mixed. It was a sugar-intense result in the end but served as a delightful sweet evening-concluder on the opening day of July.

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Adapted from "Maple Bourbon Pecan Ice Cream," from Alanna Taylor-Tobin of The Bojon Gourmet. [Published 29 September 2012 / Updated 22 April 2025]

"Buttermilk-Pecan Pralines," by Nancie McDermott and Jill O'Connor, from Southern Living online. [Printed 24 June 2019 / Updated 10 October 2022]

Meal No. 4144: Cheeseburger Wellingtons in Puff Pastry

Dateline: Wed 01 July. It was just a crazy cool idea that crossed my radar and that then set me into motion as July commenced under a brutal heatwave: puff pastry cheeseburger Wellingtons. Outrageous, no? But it seemed too fun not to foist it upon Amy on her weekly Wednesday visit that day. And she knew immediately what I was doing when she walked in, likely because Instagram knows we have similar interests and fed us the same post that inspired that evening's meanu. I fried center-cut bacon, and I got a batch of onions almost perfectly caramelized, and I made some more souped up special burger sauce. Then I got to work on the thin and small burger patties. Once they'd been given a good sear on each side, the wellingtons underwent their assembly. I had a pretty messy result overall and yet these really were pretty darned good...and incredibly filling!

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“Burger Wellington (Cheeseburger Wrapped in Puff Pastry),” from Chef Josh Gale, The Chef Out West. [Published 30 June 2026]

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

Meal No. 4143: Mushroom & Swiss Burgers

Dateline: Mon 29 June. As we hit the penultimate day of June, I reached for my long-time favorite and faithful recipe to whip up some burger patties to then go onto the grill for a perfect cook. I topped 'em with Swiss cheese and buttered and toasted the buns on the grill as well. Earlier, I'd set to work on Madeira mushrooms; these were ready for me when I came in from the grill in order to assemble absolutely delicious mushroom and Swiss burgers for that evening's supper.

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Adapted from "Grilled Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003 [Updated Online 03 February 2011], p. 52-53.

Meal No. 4142: Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

Dateline: Sun 28 June. Breakfast for dinner ruled the evening for the final Sunday of June, and I leaned on my faithful buttermilk pancakes recipe for yet another excellent batch of those buggers. It was also a chance to break into my new mail-order jug of dark amber maple syrup, which proved to be an excellent coverer and sweet delight.

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

Sumner's 10th Birthday Cake

Dateline: Sat 27 June. Between the gastric distress afflicting both pups and the storm-driven power outage on Sumner’s official 10th birthday, it seemed prudent to delay making his special treat. But before that week was out, we got down to it.

I fully expected both Sumner and Scarlett to greet it with great trepidation, as they are subjected to a tightly-regulated and highly-scheduled diet and dining routine.

With little need for encouragement, permission, or assurances, those pups did indeed execute their best doggie dive into the suitable celebration snack, with its heavy concentration of pumpkin and homemade peanut butter and adorned with non-fat Greek yogurt with even more peanut butter.

Sumner was quite certain that his single small slice was not nearly enough.

And much to their delight, controlled portions could be offered up for midday snacks for a few days following. Also: here's the cake before it got cut up and served:

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”Dog Birthday Cake,” from Sofi Llansó of Broma Bakery, a baking blog founded by Sarah Fennel in 2010. [Updated 05 June 2026 ]