Mariner's Cookbook

Chewy Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies by Mariner, posted Dec 19, 2024

I thought I would share with everyone one of my favorite desserts from childhood.

When I was growing up, the schools I attended actually had kitchens and cooks, and healthy, nutritious food was prepared on-site. A large chunk of the ingredients used by these kitchens was in the form of commodities, distributed by the US Department of Agriculture - which also provided recipes for best use of those commodities. One of those recipes was for peanut butter cookies!

Uncle Billy's Breakfast Tonic by Mariner, posted Dec 12, 2024

My Honey's Uncle Billy was a very affable man. I don't think he ever met anyone that he couldn't turn into a buddy. This was a very good thing in a salesman, and a salesman he was!

For many years, he started his day with a small libation. He called it his "poor man's bloody mary"; a concoction of tomato juice and beer. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Well, surprise! Suitably seasoned, it is actually pretty good.

Grandma Sallie's Brunswick Stew by Mariner, posted Dec 04, 2024

As the firstborn grandchild, I was the apple of my maternal grandmother's eye, and I've been told all my life that she spoiled me outrageously. I don't really know about that, but I do know that she often went to great lengths to prepare my favorite foods; even inventing new recipes to approximate unfamiliar dishes that she thought I'd like.

Now Grandma wasn't a conceited or highly-educated culinarian, but she did, as far as I was concerned, manage to make everything that came out of her kitchen a masterpiece of eating pleasure. One of my favorites was her Brunswick Stew.

Brown Gravy by Mariner, posted Nov 16, 2024

Sometimes a Southern boy just wants comfort food - something like Grandma used to make - and sometimes that's something covered with a rich, brown gravy.

Mushroom-Swiss Burger with Aioli Sauce by Mariner, posted Oct 23, 2024

In March of 2019 I posted the story of our discovery of the Low Country Boil, and our ill-fated attempt to have a "spontaneous" weekend in Savannah, Georgia. In retelling the tale of my irritation with what we found in that fair city, I neglected to mention the one really positive thing we took from there: to wit, Mushroom and Swiss Cheese Hamburgers.

"Buttermilk" Ranch Dressing by Mariner, posted Oct 08, 2024

Ranch dressing is the "go-to" dressing for a lot of people - and deservedly so. It goes well with most salads, and is frequently used as a dipping sauce as well. Any search of the internet will reveal many hundreds of recipes for making it in your own kitchen, and reading those recipes will have you humming "The Song That Doesn't End" - because they literally all have (a) nearly identical ingredient lists and preparation instructions, and (b) zero attribution.

Bacon Cheddar Salad Dressing by Mariner, posted Aug 26, 2024

I once had a simple garden salad with dressing that featured bacon and cheddar cheese. Having remembered this, I had to try and make one. Recipes for bacon-cheddar dressings are widely available on the Internet, but most of them were too fancy (complicated) for my tastes (or my zeal), so I decided to come up with one of my own.

Blender Mayonnaise by Mariner, posted Jul 21, 2024

Sometime back, in another recipe, I made note of my opinion (paraphrased) that everyone should make home-made mayonnaise once, but that the process is too tedious to repeat on any regular basis. With the advent of blender-based recipes, and the availability of inexpensive "stick" (immersion) blenders, however, I've had to revise my position.

Basic Caesar Salad by Mariner, posted Jun 08, 2024

Unless you just want to eat lettuce all by itself and without any dressing, you can't get much simpler than your basic Caesar salad.

Sort-of-Caesar Salad Dressing by Mariner, posted May 26, 2024

In the summertime we eat a lot of salads, and often those are Caesar salads, which means that we go through a lot of Caesar dressing. Now, for health reasons, I've been forced to cut back on my sugar intake, and most commercial salad dressings - including Caesar dressings - contain significant amounts of sugar; ergo, if I want to continue eating lots of salads, I have to find alternatives to commercially-produced dressings.