An Overlooked Texas Sheet Cake

A discussion of recent desserts in the casual outdoor conversation space under the Bradford pear tree caused me to realize a rare failure to properly document, and this post is a belated catch-up so as not to miss a single culinary endeavor from the Roediger House kitchen. When friend and colleague and UNC chum Chris was here back on August 19, the dinner was followed by the longtime family favorite of Texas sheet cake (which in the Winston-Salem area is also called Scotch Chocolate Cake). But I didn't commit it to the blog, so here I shall rectify that oversight. This was something my mother used to make pretty regularly, and I particularly remember her generously sending me back to college at UNC after a home visit with a whole pan of it to enjoy (and share, if I were so inclined). That's what the first bite of it that night transported me back to immediately: imagining the desk cubby where I kept my foodstuffs in Avery Dorm, and digging into the luscious chocolatey sweet marvels of this faithful standby.

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"Scotch Chocolate Cake," [in my world, also known as Texas sheet cake]. Credited to Susie Timmons. From "Popular: Cake Request Gets 22 Responses," by Michael Hastings, Food Editor of the Winston-Salem Journal. [Published 06 October 6 2010 / Updated 16 April 2021]

Meal No. 3894: Chicken Broccoli Ranch Supreme

Coming up from deep in my childhood was a delighted memory of a simple (but to us: exotic!) dish my mother learned from someone, a variation from our meat-and-two-sides pattern, and it inspired a created on-the-fly dish Thursday a week ago. Spiced and sautéed chicken breast morsels, plus roasted broccoli florets, dressed with a creamy sauce, hinted with lemon, enhanced with a mix of spices and herbs, and topped with grated parmesan to be finished under the broiler. It worked, a little too well!

Springtime Snackables

As the work of the academic year was wrapping up for me this month, it also signaled the arrival of my brother-in-law Beau, following the conclusion of his own university teaching semester. Part of the joy of his visits is found in the familiar features of favorite snackables that it gives me the excuse and impetus to make. Those whipped up ahead of his arrival included the house version of pimento cheese (above), plus my own divination of a Virginia-centric dip often served alongside salsa at small-town Mexican restaurants...white dipping sauce:

I didn't stop there, though, because it's also kind of fun to have a tall Mason jar of sugar peanuts to reach for:

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"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.

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

"Sugar Peanuts," long a staple of holiday gatherings in the Jones Family household. Recipe from my mother, identical to what is linked here.

White Wine Coffee Cake

Last Monday's supper was supplemented by a sweet finishing treat: white wine coffee cake. This is a recipe I got from my mother, and she'd gotten it from other ladies in our hometown of Buies Creek. It's not fancy but it's fantastic, and it's certainly made a lot of appearances in my kitchens: from my faculty apartment at Wake Forest University to the original kitchen here, and plenty of times from the new kitchen that has now marked 15 years of operation as of this past year.

Meal No. 3745: Baked Herbed Chicken Thighs

As a dinner suited to a Sunday, as last weekend rolled gently to its conclusion, I baked some herbed chicken thighs to an amazing juicy tenderness. A skillet of Rice-a-Roni and some canned green beans made it seem like I was back home in Buies Creek as an adolescent or young adult: it's right in line with what my mother might've thrown together.

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.

Meal No. 3702: Sheet Pan Beef Nachos

It's always a delightful time when the dinner table is filled with dear friends, and the cast of regular characters was on hand back on Friday the 13th as I rolled over into another year on this earth. It was a busy day from start to finish, which meant the supper could not be a grand affair. Instead, I think we were all comfortable with a couple of sheet pan beef nachos trays, along with a near-perfect lime crema. We all seem to dig that meal, and it's a bonus that it can be put together in short order.

While the pursuit of seconds seemed a universal condition for the six of us, we still found our way back to the kitchen later to partake of a house favorite dessert: Atlantic Beach pie. It's one of those temptations where the left brain knows the slice size is wisely proportioned but the right brain thinks it's not been drawn nearly large nor lifelike enough.

Pardon this personal rumination, that the occasion seemed to dredge up, but I'll try to keep it brief. To wit: I don’t know if the fact that my mother was a math and PE teacher, and my dad briefly a science teacher before taking his first principalship, is what explains the orderliness, precision, and symmetry of the birth order of my siblings and me. The girls are 12 years apart; the boys are 12 years apart; two years after the first girl came the first boy; two years after the second girl came the second boy. I am that last child.

Whereas the older pair were both born in November, my nearer-aged sister was born in May and I didn’t come along until September. I remember my mother saying my father’s first heart attack, around age 41 or 42, threw off the “plans” for the last child. I was supposed to be a May baby.

The second massive heart attack that killed my father occurred when he was 58, and on this latest birthday I rolled over to 59. I’m obsessive about order but this was a matter of symmetry that was happily unrealized.

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Sheet Pan Nachos seriously modified from "Loaded Sweet Pork Sheet Pan Nachos," from Elyse of Six Sisters Stuff. [Published 14 March 2018]

Taco-Style meat depended partly on "Crispy Beef Tacos," by Hilah Johnson. From HilahCooking.com.

"Homemade Chili and Taco Seasoning," from Jamie Lothridge of MyBakingAddiction.com. [Published 03 February 2011]

"Easy Lime Crema," from Lisa Bryan of DownShiftology.com. [Published 22 April 2020]

"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. 3615: Coq au Vin

Another Wednesday filled with productive stuff ended on a high note, in honor of National Coq au Vin Day. That silky long-simmered wine sauce, the succulent mushrooms, the snappy pearl onions, the scattered chew of full-strength bacon pieces, and the tender braised thighs: this almost-reasonable-for-a-weeknight dinner hardly needed an accompaniment, but homemade mashed potatoes fit the call of foodie duty.

I’d been referred to a retina specialist, after my yearly eye exam gave the optometrist pause because of a newly-spotted abnormality along the left eye's edge. But the specialist I saw Wednesday morning was glad to report that I might have been born with this slight scarring, or at least carried it a long time [photo above for illustration/pulled from Google!]. It’s the higher-grade imaging equipment in my downtown eye care shop that he believes made it possible for them to see it for the first time. I like when the diagnosis is: “Nothing to see here!” Taking the new Camry in for its first 5,000-mile servicing happened mid-day, followed by a full grocery shopping trip. There was hardly enough time to enjoy another glorious perfect spring day...but I was determined that this special meal would be the supper that night!

Finally: as of late Tuesday afternoon, May 28th, my childhood home in Buies Creek is now proudly owned by our long-time renters, the Sorrell family. I drove down to Harnett County that day to be present for the rather speedy closing. While home and Buies Creek and Parkwood Circle (our quiet neighborhood tucked in on the northwest side of the Campbell University campus) are absolutely dear to me, what especially tied me to it passed away with my mother, who was the rock and anchor and reason for that deeply-felt bond to a place and time. There was a little scrambling for signatures on a final document, as I sat with dilated eyes at the retina specialist's office, but now it's all sealed and delivered. I think Josh and Amber are pretty happy, and we are all very happy for them.

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"Modern Coq au Vin," by Sandra Wu. In Cook's Illustrated, Number Eighty-Three (November & December, 2006), p. 18-19.

White Wine Coffee Cake

Last Saturday was National Wine Day, but my menu was already set for chicken fried rice...and for me, that's not a wine-associated meal. There was an easy solution to be had, thanks to one of the recipes handed down to me from my teetotaling mother: white wine coffee cake. A simple recipe long associated with the cozy days of old home, growing up in Buies Creek, this recipe from the little old ladies of church occasonally has me imagining the sneaks of sips that might have occurred in the small quiet kitchens with their backyard-facing windows and out of the watchful eye of all the Baptists of our small community. Here in Winston-Salem in the present moment, when I made this last weekend, I could give two hoots about who thinks what about whom. I was too busy smacking my lips and dreaming of the next slice of this goodness.

Meal No. 3600: Indoor Barbecued Chicken

On the occasion of the 3600th meal since completion of the new kitchen in May 2009, it was a gathering of nearly all of the Roediger House regulars. With five at the table and a desire to overcome the week's grey overcast mood (an extended wet and dreary weather pattern settled on us for about eight days), something in the comfort realm was called for. Oven baked barbecued chicken, using a new recipe from a dependable source, was at the center of the supper. And it was juicy and full of flavor...but maybe a step down from the previous oven-baked version I made about six years ago.

In a nod to the urge to take it too far, I brought back Willie Mae's mac and cheese, always scrumptious and hearty, consistently just a bit too much, hard to regret nor easy to excuse. As a cooling balance, I had some of my mother's coleslaw prepped and ready as well. This was certainly a meal that left us all feeling pretty stuffed!

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"Oven Baked BBQ Chicken," by Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTinEats.com. [Published 18 May 2020 / Updated 03 May 2023]

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

Sweet Southern Coleslaw based in part on a recipe from Allison M. Jones.

White Wine Coffee Cake

A bit too much time has passed since I last made my mother's white wine coffee cake, which is based on a recipe she got from Barbara Taylor and Lib Tripp in our small community of Buies Creek. It's been a staple of the Jones family dessert pantheon although as a professional and adult, I seem to have lost my ability to get it to eject clean from the tube pan. Fortunately, the flavor remains unaffected. I've gone almost seven days without any dessert-making; this soothing dinner finisher was gladly received by all following our Saturday night supper of salmon croquettes.

Meal No. 3384: Chicken Supreme

It's been over five years since I brought out this recipe handed down from my mother, the rare deviation from her good but generally standard fare. I remember her treating it as experimental and unique and it may well have been: I've yet to find a comparable recipe on the web that does not go either the chicken divan route, or that doesn't require condensed soups and cheddar or processed cheese. Mother called it "Chicken Supreme," and it's cooked chicken and steamed or roasted broccoli florets covered in a simple lemon-mayo-sour cream sauce, with grated parmesan in the middle and on top. It's put under the broiler to finish with a bit of browning and a touch of crisping. It might be really good, or it might be warm nostalgia with the golden benefit of bringing to mind a wonderful mother...but I happily consumed it Thursday evening.

Meal No. 3368: Pulled Pork Barbecue Sandwiches

The final Friday of May, at the front end of Memorial Day Weekend, a crew of us attended a wedding on the campus of the University of Lynchburg. We journeyed up US 29 to take part in those celebratory festivities. Honeymoon travel plans put the newlyweds flying out of nearby Piedmont Triad International Airport, so down the highway they came the next day, staying overnight here, sitting down to an evening meal together, followed by a super early Sunday morning departure, with me as their shuttle driver. That Saturday night menu: Cuban-hinted pulled pork with homemade chipotle barbecue sauce, piled onto homemade burger buns (slathered with creamy avocado-lime sauce), and accompanied either on top or on the side by oozy heapings of sweet Southern coleslaw inspired by my mother's example.

These were messy sandwiches on those pillow-soft buns with their spongy crumb, and every wipe of a soiled cheek was its own silent moment of victory.

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Based on "Easy Crockpot Carnitas," by Lindsay Ostrom of PinchofYum.com. [Published 04 May 2021]

"Mexican Chipotle Street Taco BBQ Sauce," a Roediger House original recipe. [First Made 08 May 2023]

"Beautiful Burger Buns," from Ellen "Moomie" Dorsey of King Arthur Baking. See also the accompanying blog post, "Burger Buns with a Beautiful Backstory," by PJ Hamel. [Published 28 June 2021]

"Cilantro Lime Sauce," from Alexa Blay of Key to My Lime. [Published 04 September 2019]

Sweet Southern Coleslaw based in part on a recipe from Allison M. Jones.

Mother's Day 2023

Above is a picture of my mother with her mother, from May 1954...long before I was born.

One of the many quiet and consistent stand-out memories I have of my mother is the pleasure she took from her long sits on our front porch. Our small neighborhood of 17 houses was a square block tucked up against woods on three sides, so we were not a pass-through to anywhere. Traffic was minimal, the comings and goings of neighbors regular and predictable, and she found special joy in the activity of birds. She had a couple of feeders that she kept well-stocked, and for a while there was a homemade platform at the kitchen sink window for tossing out bread and nuts and getting a good closeup of feathered friends.

The bluebird house delighted her as it was a nesting home for many successive generations of those beautiful creatures. Finally having a sporadically inhabited house of my own in this busy downtown spot is a selfish pleasure but a small tribute to her as well. The photo above, from this past March, captures the exploring bluebird when he took a lunch break at the suet pellet feeder.

At the peak, I had around a dozen active feeders of varying types: wild bird seed, suet bricks, suet nuggets, hummingbird nectar, and a platform (which also is quite comfortable for squirrels). Those hungry consumers had me refilling the seed feeders a heckuva lot, and I was coming home from Costco with three or more 40-pound bags at the time.

Alas, with those bulk bags having jumped from $16.99 to $27.99, I have gotten out of the game for now. There’s still a supply of suet nuggets stored up but the evil invasive starlings find them much too attractive. The birds remain active here even without the plentiful feeders, with robins nesting in the corner of the porch again, finches setting up a home in the crepe myrtles, and bluebirds popping in and out without definite signs yet of commitment.

(Photo Actually From May 2020)

And the running count this spring of getting splattered by bird poop out on the driveway from the overhead flight path now stands at two. I think that equals the grand total of shithits from the entire preceding 19 years. I count myself fortunate that we are not yet in a season of juicy berries.

Happy Mother's Day!

Snackables and a Sweet for the Super Superintendents

When indulging in the unparalleled joy of a long-overdue reunion with two amazing colleagues from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, one should offer in return some indulgences to help the visit be sweet and savored.

A staple for decades back home in Buies Creek, as part of entertaining and get-togethers and especially Christmas family gatherings—and a tribute to the prime Eastern North Carolina agricultural offering—sugar(ed) peanuts are an addictive snack. Starting with raw shelled peanuts, preferably still in their red skins, they are boiled in what is essentially a simple syrup before getting a good baking in a low-temp oven. The sugar crystallizes as an adorning shell and the actual number consumed in a sitting remains classified. This is one time I'm happy to work for peanuts.

While I wanted to avoid repetition, I did make a new batch of pimento cheese even though I'd served that to Donna and Ebbie when they were here before. Donna made the insightful discovery that a bit of toasting of slices from Monday night's maple milk bread creates a pretty remarkable landing spot for the pimento cheese, as an alternative to the usual dependence on Wheat Thins.

Our mornings were helped along by bowls of fresh fruit, along with our coffees or teas. None of us are real breakfast eaters so this all worked out splendidly.

The dessert I made to follow Monday evening's meal was aplenty and appreciated enough to carry us through the rest of their all-too-short time here: apple crisp cheesecake bars on a brown sugar shortbread crust, with a drizzle of bourbon caramel sauce I made a while back. Our squares looked too large each evening, upon first glance, but grew disappointingly smaller with each tasty bite.

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"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.

"Sugar Peanuts," long a staple of holiday gatherings in the Jones Family household. Recipe from my mother.

"Apple Crisp Cheesecake Bars," from Meghan McGarry of ButtercreamBlondie.com. [Published 03 October 2014]

Meal No. 3304: Japanese Milk Bread Bacon Sandwiches

This picture is of a special gathering that took place last Friday night at the Roediger House. My first cousin Judy and her husband came to town, because her daughter Leslie (with husband Lou and son Will) live here; also along was Jennifer, Judy's niece and also my first cousin once removed. Judy's mom and my mother were sisters, and very close ones at that.

Although Leslie and Lou live just over in the Ardmore Neighborhood (walking distance on my strolls), it's been years since we could get together. Everybody was so very nice about how the house looks and how all the renovation and restoration work has turned out. It was a terrific evening for catching up with these good kin.

Daytime on Friday was a free day and I played the easy schedule to my advantage, using the time to try a new recipe for milk bread. This inaugural run resulted in a responsive and workable dough, gorgeous in its rising, and dreamy soft when the baked loaf was sliced at dinnertime. I won’t claim its role in the evening meal was sexy, because it was just simple plates of rather plain bacon sandwiches. But on amazing bread slices like that? It felt like a high-dollar niche trendy restaurant had it as a hit item at a ridiculous price.

Amazing bread, relegated to yeoman's work as part of good ol' plain bacon sandwiches, with a well-apportioned smear of classic Duke's Mayonnaise...that's how it was done on the final Friday of February.

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"Chef John's Milk Bread," from Chef John Mitzewich of FoodWishes.com and AllRecipes.com. [Updated 07 September 2022]

Snacks for the Thanksgiving Crowd

It's the time of year to restate my love of Thanksgiving, ranked for me as the best holiday of them all because of its focus on two awesome things: time with good folks and forks to good food. While past Thanksgivings have had enduring and stable elements, 2022 granted us a different drummer's beat: the Oklahoma crew of friends who made the very long journey (plus two from Massachusetts) just to guarantee this would be an especially terrific celebration. (It was.)

And they gifted the Roediger House with these most awesome bar towels for Ray's the Bar, up on the third floor. I love 'em.

With a house full for the bulk of Thanksgiving week, I was hoping to keep a reasonable supply of snacks and munchables on hand for the gathered crew. Recurring favorites (i.e., pimento cheese, pictured below) were supplemented with a couple of seldom-seen or long-missing treats (i.e., my mother's sugar peanuts, pictured above). Having the week free leading up to their arrival allowed me to get a headstart on prep, so by Tuesday most of these were made and tucked away.

Mexican Restaurant White Dipping Sauce is a new-found obsession:

By the end of the guests' time here, on a Black Friday of terrific Thanksgiving leftovers, a warm dish of bacon Swiss dip seemed called for:

Not substantial enough to qualify as a "meal," the Thanksgiving morning sustenance was the simple small plate contrivance of turkey and Swiss breakfast sliders, an adaptation of the much-loved party ham biscuits but with a meat substitution in consideration of those who do not eat pork:

With Monday's still-chilly temps overshadowing Winston-Salem as the week started (29°F outside, and 62°F in the kitchen area), I had one more morning fire, which seemed pleasing to Sumner:

This was Fire No. 83.

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

"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.

"Swiss and Bacon Dip," from Rachael Ray. Available online at the Food Network website.

"Sugar Peanuts," long a staple of holiday gatherings in the Jones Family household. Recipe from my mother.

Turkey Swiss Breakfast Sliders adapted from "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]

Meal No. 3206: Baby Back Pork Ribs

A BOGO special on baby back pork ribs meant I had an especially thick and meaty package to cook up on the final Thursday of September. I have found over the years that I rather like the ease and results of the oven-baked method, and that's what I went with. Once more, the ribs had great flavor, but this time they did not quite reach the fall-off-the-bone stage. I managed to turn it into a too-large-too-much meal with the addition of homemade potato salad (with freshly hard-boiled eggs) as well as a riff on my mother's southern coleslaw. It was a pretty stupendous meal, and I really underwalked as bedtime approched, which means I did not burn off nearly enough of all those calories!

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

Sweet Southern Coleslaw based in part on a recipe from Allison M. Jones.

Potato Salad based on "The Best Potato Salad," by Ben Rayl of ComfortableFood.com [Accessed 20 February 2016]; and "Instant Pot Potato Salad with Dill Pickles," from Becky Hardin of TheCookieRookie.com [Published 20 March 2018].

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