Vegan Oyster Mushroom Po’ Boy Recipe

Mushroom Po’Boy from Cafe Le Fleur

Until I was dining with a vegan friend at the restaurant Cafe Le Fleur in Laurel, Mississippi, I never entertained the idea of Cajun/Creole vegan cuisine. Although, not on the menu, my dining partner said the restaurant always obliges her with making a Mushroom Po’ Boy. Thus, after dining I did my research to find out if mushroom po boys were in a thing in the vegan/vegetarian community and low and behold it is. I found a couple of recipes for the vegan oyster mushroom po’ boy. Take your pick:

Vegan Oyster Mushroom Po’ Boy by Vegnews.com

Vegan Oyster Mushroom Po’ Boy by foodrepublic.com

Vegan Oyster Mushroom Po’ Boy by loveandlemons.com

The Legend of Alabama White Sauce & Recipe

Image from the Tasteandtellblog.com

As a member of the casting team of Home Town, I had to watch what was going on Home Town Takeover. Eddie Jackson from the Food Network stopped to help some Wetumpka, Alabama bar & restaurant owners with his special spin on a burger with a touch of Alabama White Sauce. I had to know the story of this legendary sauce which I’d never heard about.

History of Alabama White Sauce

Seven days a week, folks from all around make the pilgrimage to the port city of Decatur, Ala., to discover the wonders of a magical liquid concoction known simply as “Alabama white sauce.”

Decatur, a city of about 55,000 people on the banks of the Tennessee River in North Alabama, is considered the birthplace of that famous barbecue sauce, and one of its favorite sons, a towering railroad man aptly named “Big” Bob Gibson, is the one who originated the recipe nearly a century ago.

So, among connoisseurs and curiosity-seekers alike, a visit to either of the two locations of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur is like going to the promised land.

“Big Bob Gibson is a destination,” says Chris Lilly, a world champion barbecue pitmaster who is married to a great-granddaughter of the legendary Gibson. “At any time, if you go out into the Big Bob Gibson parking lot, you see license plates from all over. READ MORE

Click Here for Eddie Jackson’s Alabama White Sauce Recipe

Restaurant featured on Home Town Takeover was Coaches Corner.

New Orleans: C & A Seafood

Although most restaurants in New Orleans are worth the wait in the more touristy locations such as Jackson Square, Magazine St and Bourbon St, you’ll find C&A seafood off the beaten path of Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard and close to the major interstates by 5 minutes or less. My mother at age 75 was not up to standing in line or walking the streets so we searched for a non-tourist location.

Shrimp Po’ Boy

C&A is Asian owned so not only will you find New Orleans cuisine but a few Chinese offerings. This would not have been my pick for an authentic experience. I wanted the glamorous trendy/classic but it seems C & A has repeat local business so that was a good sign.

Sitting outside at picnic table eating gumbo

The front the building has a pleasing decor with picnic tables fun for eating with friends or family. Perhaps you’ll share a tray of crawfish or crab boil tray you can order.

However, my mother and ordered smaller classic New Orleans cuisine such as gumbo and a Shrimp Po Boy. We were both pleased.. Including the one large tea, the price was $23 bucks.

Address: 1429 S Jefferson Davis Pkwy, New Orleans, LA 70125-1729

Order a to go tray of the crab boil or crawfish

Phone: +1 504-822-8497

How to: Baked Beans from Scratch

 

While isolating during the Coronavirus Pandemic, I stayed with my sister.  I presumed she had good survival food in the form of baked beans.  I was wrong.  Instead, she had pinto beans.  I knew with this all hope was not lost.

A Makeshift Recipe:

I poured contents from the can in the pot, added a pad of butter, three generous squirts of barbecue sauce, a scoop of bacon fat, chopped red onion and two squirts of maple syrup.   Then the beans were slowly cooked on a low flame for 30 minutes.  It turned out well but ideally I’d bake it. – Crystal Johnson, Multi Cultural Cooking Network Editor

Let’s check out a more formal preparation for making the beans.

History of Baked Beans

Baked beans is a dish traditionally containing white beans which are parboiled and then baked at a low temperature for a lengthy period of time in some sort of sauce. This is the usual preparation of the dish in the United States when not using canned beans. In the United Kingdom the dish is sometimes baked, but usually stewed in a sauce. Canned baked beans are not baked, but are cooked through a steam process.^[3]

Baked beans has its origins in Native American cuisine, and the dish is made from beans indigenous to the Americas. The dish was adopted and adapted by English colonists in New England in the 17th century and, through the aid of published 19th century cookbooks, the dish spread to other regions of the United States and into Canada. Today in the New England region of the United States a variety of indigenous legumes are still used when preparing this dish in restaurants or in the home, such as Jacob’s Cattle, Soldier Beans, Yellow-Eyed Beans, and Navy Beans (also known as Native Beans).^[4]

Originally baked beans were sweetened with maple syrup by Native Americans, a tradition some recipes still follow, but some English colonists modified the sweetening agent to brown sugar beginning in the 17th century. In the 18th century the convention of using American-made molasses as a sweetening agent became increasingly popular in order to avoid British taxes on sugar. American Boston baked beans use a sauce prepared with molasses and salt pork, the popularity of which has led to the city’s being nicknamed “Beantown”.^[5] Today baked beans is commonly served throughout the United States alongside barbecue food of various kinds and at picnics. Beans in a brown sugar, sugar, or corn syrup sauce (sometimes with and sometimes without a tomato base) are widely available throughout the USA.

Krispy Kreme Peach Cobbler

Y’all!! Krispy Kreme Peach Cobbler!!

A recipe from Kar Julie’s Page on Facebook

INSTRUCTIONS:
1 ) Start by putting 2 bags of peach slices, half a cup of brown sugar, half cup of stick of land O’lake butter, cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg.

2 ) Cook it over medium heat for about 10 minutes.

3 ) Mix 2 tablespoons of corn starch and a little bit of water, add it to the peaches mixture to thicken the sauce.

4 ) In a mixing bowl, use a cup of heavy whipping cream, a cup of carnation milk, 2 eggs, 1/4 brown sugar, and cinnamon then mix together.

5 ) Cut 2 boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts up, and put them in custard mixture for 5 minutes to soak it up. Transfer your cooked peaches cobbler to a baking pan, then put on the soaked doughnuts and do not pour the custard mixture in. (You can spread some extra peaches over the doughnuts if you want to)

6 ) Let it cook in the oven for about 20min at 250 degrees, and enjoy it!

Click to Check out cool food/cooking apparel

Get Your Fantastic Fried Chicken Sandwich Howlin’ Rays in Los Angeles

Read the Howlin Rays website and it says:

The story of Howlin’ Rays isn’t simply about a restaurant. It’s a tale about love – for the people in our lives and for the dishes that bring us together. Since 2015, Chef Johnny Ray Zone and wife Amanda Chapman have been bringing the heat to the people of Los Angeles, courtesy of their Nashville-inspired hot chicken…  

 

Fantastic fried chicken sandwich and a lively show by the crew at the boisterous and fun Howlin’ Rays. Prepare to wait in line, or time-it-right to get in sooner. Spiciness is up to your own discretion – note the blue gloves !  Report by James Schneider

First Black MasterChef after Nine Seasons

Colorstream Media

Photo Courtesy of Fox

MasterChef Gerron Hurt tweeted, “After 24 hours I am still on cloud nine.”   He also said, “You are now looking at America’s first Black MasterChef.

Halfway through the two-hour finale of Fox’s “MasterChef” season nine, Louisville native Gerron Hurt had a feeling he’d be headed home with the coveted “MasterChef” title and the $250,000 grand prize.

“I am a very humble person, but when I got to the finale, I walked into the studio feeling really confident about what I was cooking,” Hurt told the Courier Journal. READ MORE

His style of cooking is Southern-inspired.

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Food Truck Wednesdays in Maryland

Hooray for Wednesdays! Yay! Fun! Fun! Fun! 

Why the cheers for the week’s “get over the hump day?” Well, it’s because in Maryland, there are tantalizing tastes just waiting to be discovered at Food Truck Wednesdays. This fiesta of food happens every Wednesday from spring to the end of October at the Arbutus Volunteer Fire Department in Arbutus, MD and Red Lion Hotel’s parking lot in Timonium, MD. 

The food trucks include all kinds of scrumptious local and international cuisine including: soul-food, Greek, Mexican, Korean, Indian and even dessert trucks. Here are just some of the food trucks who frequent the event:

• The Gypsy Queen
• Greek on the Street
• Beef on the Street
• Wanna Pizza This
• Kommie Pig
• Jimmy’s Famous Seafood
• Farm to Charm
• Mexican on the Run
• Deja Roux

The Multi Cultural Cooking Network had the opportunity to catch up with one of the founders of the event, Chad Houck of H2 Markets. What a chat! We talked to him about the origins of the event, how the trucks are selected and what to expect in the coming months. Check out the interview above, and find out more information about Food Truck Wednesdays by going to FoodTruckNites.com.

Photo and video provided by Foundation Media Services

Eat your food on the run at Food Truck Wednesdays. Here is a Korean Beef BBQ Wrap from the Gypsy Queen food truck

 

 

History of the Hoppin John Bowl

“Hoppin-john-bowl” by Srjenkins – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

The origins of the name are uncertain; one possibility is that the name is a corruption of the Haitian Creole term for black-eyed peas: pois pigeons(pronounced: [pwapiˈʒɔ̃]).

The Oxford English Dictionary’s first reference to the dish is from Frederick Law Olmsted‘s 19th century travelogue, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States(1861).^[7] However, a recipe for “Hopping John” in The Carolina Housewife by Sarah Rutledge,^[8] which was published in 1847, is also cited as the earliest reference.^[9] An even earlier source is Recollections of a Southern Matron,^[10]which mentions “Hopping John” (defined, in a note, as “bacon and rice”) as early as 1838.^[11]

Hoppin’ John was originally a Low Country food before spreading to the entire population of the South. Hoppin’ John may have evolved from rice and bean mixtures that were the subsistence of enslaved West Africans en route to the Americas.^[12] Hoppin’ John has been further traced to similar foods in West Africa,^[9] in particular the Senegalese dish,thiebou niebe.^[13]

One tradition common in the U.S. is that each person at the meal should leave three peas on their plate to ensure that the New Year will be filled with luck, fortune and romance. Another tradition holds that counting the number of peas in a serving predicts the amount of luck (or wealth) that the diner will have in the coming year. On Sapelo Island in the community of Hog Hammock, Geechee red peas are used instead of black-eyed peas. Sea Island red peas are similar.^[14]

The Fascinating History of Moon Pie and Recipe

Since 1917, Moon Pies have been made at the Chattanooga Bakery  Earl Mitchell Junior said his father came up with the idea for MoonPies when he asked a Kentucky coal miner what kind of snack he would like to eat, and the miner requested something with graham cracker and marshmallow which had been dipped in chocolate. When Mitchell’s father asked how big it should be, the miner looked up in the night sky and framed the full moon with his hand.

There is a custom for eating moon pies with RC Cola, although the origin of this is unknown.  It is likely that their inexpensive prices, combined with their larger serving sizes, contributed to establishing this combination as the “working man’s lunch”. The popularity of this combination was celebrated in a popular song of the 1950s, by Big Bill Lister, “Gimmee an RC Cola and a Moon Pie.”.  In 1973, NRBQ had a minor hit with the song, “An RC Cola and a Moon Pie.”

Since New Year’s Eve 2008, the city of Mobile, Alabama raises a 12-foot-tall (3.7 m) lighted mechanical moon pie to celebrate the coming of the new year. The giant banana colored MoonPie is raised by a crane to a height of 200 feet (61 m) as the clock strikes midnight.    Also, the city had for the 2008 New Year’s celebration the world’s largest moon pie baked for the occasion. It weighed 55 pounds (25 kg) and contained 45,000 calories.

See Video:

An annual RC & Moon Pie Festival is celebrated in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, and a Moon Pie Eating Contest is held in Bessemer, Alabama.

On October 16, 2010, Sonya Thomas, a competitive eater known as the “Black Widow,” ate 38 MoonPies in eight minutes in Caruthersville, Missouri.

Newport, Tennessee held its first annual Moon Pie Festival in May 2012.

Click for Moon Pie Recipe