Cheese

We seem to place a lot of emphasis on birthday cakes in my family. We like for everyone to have his or her favorite cake, but more than that, we like the variety of awesome sweets we get to eat throughout the year! This cake was once Beth’s birthday cake of choice—or so Mom thought until she learned that Beth actually preferred the chocolate caramel cake I always ask for. At first, I thought she was just trying to copy me (it’s a sister thing!), but then I realized that if it’s her favorite cake, too, that’s twice a year for me!

There are as many versions of this casserole as there are southern cooks and church cookbooks. Beth’s is a compilation of several. I like the potatoes shredded instead of cubed and not as much butter as some recipes have (don’t worry, there’s still plenty!).

This casserole belongs on a plate with roast beef, rice, and gravy for Sunday lunch. We probably didn’t have it every Sunday, but it was often part of the standard after-church meal. I’m a little surprised that as children we ate asparagus, but Daddy always said we’d eat anything with Mama’s cheese sauce on it!

I think people who say they hate grits just haven’t had them prepared correctly. Basic grits are pretty simple, and you can add what you like to make them tastier. My sister experimented with this flavorful herb and garlic cheese version for a yummy twist on an old southern favorite.

When Beth first made this very simple zucchini dish (which she created for our parents), Daddy asked, “Honey, how’d you learn to cook?” I thought that was funny because I think what he was really wondering was how she’d learned to cook something that Mama didn’t make at home!

My mom made this cheese sauce when I was a child, mostly to pour over vegetables she was trying to get us to eat. I was a grown woman before I realized that steamed broccoli didn’t have to be served with cheese sauce! It does make this homemade mac and cheese taste amazingly good, though!

I love pasta—and who doesn’t? Because I didn’t grow up cooking Italian food, I usually save my Italian experiences for my favorite Italian restaurants, like La Mela in the heart of New York’s Little Italy and Anna’s in Los Angeles. But a gal’s gotta make fettuccine Alfredo occasionally. This is the very first home-cooked meal I tried on Garth, and I’m surprised he ever allowed me to cook for him again! It was early on in our relationship, and I wanted to impress him with my cooking skills, so I thought this recipe would be perfect. It is so rich it makes you full fast. That particular night, however, my Alfredo sauce came out so thick it was almost impossible to serve it from the pan. Garth, being the gentleman he is, took a big serving and attempted to eat it. I don’t know if he finished it all, but it was so rich and filling he almost fell asleep in his plate! He says he has no memory at all from about halfway through the meal until he woke up hours later on the couch.

Everybody has a tried and true basic lasagne recipe, but occasionally it’s nice to try something different. Somewhere along the way, I decided to replace the meat with beans, and the result was a hit. This lasagne keeps well in the refrigerator, and if you have leftovers, they freeze well. When I was single and living in Nashville, I would cool this lasagne and freeze portions in individual freezer bags. It was perfect to pull one out of the freezer in the morning before I went to work in the studio, then microwave it for a minute or two when I got home in the evening.

This casserole is hearty and contains everything you could want on the table in one dish. It’s a favorite of our whole family. It makes ten servings, but my husband likes it cold for breakfast the next day, so in my house you’d better take your serving at dinner the night before, ’cause that’s all you’re gonna get!

You see this recipe a lot in the South. It’s great because you do all the work the night before; the next morning, this wonderful meal bakes while you’re having a nice, leisurely cup of coffee! Beth makes this on Christmas Eve so it can bake Christmas morning during the present-opening frenzy.

My family likes casseroles because they get the whole meal in one pan, and this is a favorite. It was probably born as a result of my mom’s trying to put food on the table on a budget, and while a lot of people cook with ground beef because it is relatively inexpensive, I would pay big bucks to get to eat this every now and then! This is similar to a shepherd’s pie, but a bit heartier, I think.

Like most families, we struggle to get enough vegetables into our diets. This pasta salad, served cool, is full of great greens and reds, and it is so tasty! The sunflower kernels give it a nice crunch.

Garth has to claim this recipe because he modified my basic pasta salad to suit his tastes and changed it completely! He likes to eat it warm because he loves the way the cheese melts into the other ingredients, so he doesn’t wait for the pasta to cool down at all. He also says the secret to making the tomatoes taste so good is salting them separately. Who knew he was Gartha Stewart?

What’s great about this salad is that it only involves opening a few cans and layering the veggies with shredded cheese. It’s simple, healthy, and looks pretty in a glass bowl to boot!

My sister Beth’s sister-in-law, Margaret, makes this salad, and it’s a nice alternative to plain cranberry sauce for holiday meals. In fact, it’s rich enough to serve as a dessert!

I am a big fan of Greek salads, but at restaurants I seem to find myself always picking the vegetables and cheese out of the lettuce. One day I thought, why make it with lettuce at all? This recipe is just veggies and feta. I love it!

We always made this to take to Family Night suppers at church. Its official name was Congealed Fruit Salad, but it was known at our house as pink salad, because, well, it’s pink! Besides, anything with the word congealed in the title just sounds gross to me, and this is anything but.

The best description I can offer of my sister’s baked potato soup is that it tastes just like the best potato bar you ever tried. I always used to love twice-baked potatoes, mainly because the work of “fixing” a baked potato with the sour cream, cheese, and so on, was all done for you. It’s the same with this soup. It’s like someone fixed the ultimate baked potato just for you and put it into a bowl. All you have to do is enjoy it.

Chicken tortilla soup became really popular in restaurants a few years ago, but it was never something I made at home. Garth loves this soup and orders it almost every time he sees it on a menu, so I started studying the different versions at each restaurant and questioning Garth about what he liked and didn’t like about each one. This recipe I finally came up with doesn’t actually taste like any of those we tasted in restaurants, but we love it—and now we can enjoy it whenever we want!

A pimiento cheese sandwich made on very fresh white bread is a true southern staple. Nothing goes better with Gwen’s Fried Chicken (page 93). Mama slices the crusts off the sandwiches and cuts them in half for family reunions—very southern belle!