Rick's Recipes

05/24/2026

It's a cold rainy Memorial day weekend. I'm going to make some beer.

05/09/2026

Neese's sausage
One of the secret ingredients I use in my cooking is Neese's sausage. It's local and delicious. I use it in my meatloaf, my lasagna, and it is my favorite breakfast sausage. It has now become too difficult to find. I guess it's time to find a replacement. That's sad because usually when I move on from a product I don't come back. They may as well go out of business now too, I don't believe they can come back from this latest shutdown.

05/05/2026

Cornbread
Susan and I love beans and cornbread and we make it a couple of times a month. We always make "Jiffy" cornbread because we both like it a little sweet...then we read the back of the box. I prefer natural ingredients when I can use them and if (or when) SHTF we want to use what ingredients we think will be available. Cornmeal and flour we hope will be a couple of those things. I found this recipe and adjusted it to taste just like "Jiffy" without all the preservatives. We prep the dry ingredients in pint jars and vacuum seal and band them.

Dry ingredients
1C. Cornmeal
1C. All purpose flour
1/3C. Sugar
1Tbsp. Baking powder
1/2 tsp Salt
Store in a pint jar.

Mix dry ingredients with...
1 lg. Egg
1C. Milk
1/4C. Vegetable oil

Stick the 8" cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 400°. When oven (and pan) are preheated add 1tsp. Avocado oil to the pan and distribute evenly then add cornbread mix and bake at 400° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly before removing from pan. Enjoy!

03/15/2026

Dang, I talk a lot.

03/15/2026

Cast iron
This all started because I wanted to make my own cornbread from scratch. I remembered my mom and great grandmother used to make their cornbread in a cast iron skillet and it always turned out beautifully. I watched a few videos and went looking for my skillets. Since I haven't cooked with them in more than 20 years they were pretty nasty. I stripped all of my skillets down to bare metal and started over. The main thing that I learned is that the smoke point of the oil matters. Most oils have the smoke point info on the label. The best to use are soybean oil, canola, or my favorite avocado oil. The rule of thumb is to set your oven 25° higher than the smoke point of your oil. I feel uneasy cranking my oven above 450° so that's what I set it at. The smoke point of avocado oil is 500° so smoking wasn't an issue. Preheat to 450° wash and dry the skillets and bake them for ten minutes to ensure that they are totally dry. All it takes is a quarter size amount of oil. Use a paper towel to apply the oil to the skillets. DO NOT USE MORE THAN A QUARTER SIZE AMOUNT ON EACH SIDE. After wiping the oil on, wipe it off! Then put it in the oven face down for 10 minutes. Then wipe both sides again and put them back in for 45 minutes. I repeated this process three times on each skillet. Let me suggest for safety's sake that you stay in the kitchen while all this is happening. The result was skillets that were "slick as a baby's butt". The cornbread recipe called for an 8" skillet, it was perfect. I'll start using these skillets and recipes now that they are perfect.

03/02/2026

Time to do this again!

Beer can Chicken!

03/02/2026

This came in handy.

Jan 23, 2020 - (36) How To Cook Perfect Rice in the Instant Pot - YouTube

01/20/2026

Ground beef.
Susan and I have both been a little disappointed in the ground beef we have been receiving lately. I don't know, it just seems to be more chewy lately. We decided to try some Angus or maybe a Wagyu. We did some research and found an Angus/Wagyu blend at Food Lion. We made taco's with it and they were perfect. I wouldn't recommend it to make burger patties because I don't think it would hold together well. We also made a chili out of just Angus beef and it was also much better. Both were a little more expensive but I think they were worth it for the change in flavor profile. You get what you pay for.

06/06/2025

Cinnamon Rock Candy
I love to make this every year!

Please say something when you see the recipe! Saying ANYthing is good, it helps you continue seeing my posts! Thank you!

Ingredients :
1 cup water
3 3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp red food coloring
1 tsp cinnamon oil (2 tsp. if you like it spicy)
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 butter, for greasing the surface

Directions :
1 butter a 15 inch x 10 inch x 1 inch sheet cake pan. Line the pan with parchment paper and butter the parchment paper, making sure the edges of the parchment paper are well buttered to prevent the candy from seeping underneath.
2 in a large deep sauce pan combine water, sugar, corn syrup and food coloring. Mix over medium high heat until sugar starts to dissolve. Attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan making sure it does not touch the bottom of pan for an accurate temperature. Continue to boil until sugar mixture reaches 300°F (hard crack stage) – about 20 minutes. Watch closely, if mixture starts to boil too close to the edge of pan remove pan from heat and stir until bubbles subside and then return to medium high heat.
3 Once mixture reaches 300°F remove pan from heat and stir in the cinnamon oil, working quickly. Keep your face away from the mixture as it is strong like onions and keep the work area well ventilated. Pour immediately into prepared pan. Allow to cool for 4 hours.
4 after 4 hours dust the top of the candy with powdered sugar. Flip candy over onto a large cutting board or cookie sheet and remove parchment paper. Return candy to the pan and use the tip of a sharp knife to break candy into bite size pieces. Dust with more powdered sugar and store in a airtight container.
Food. Com
Enjoy!!!

12/24/2024

Pecan pie
Mix together 1 cup Karo light syrup,
1 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 2 Tbls. Melted
Butter, 1 tsp. Vanilla extract . Add 1 1/2 cups of pecan halves and pour into 1 frozen deep dish pie crust and bake at 350 for 60 minutes.
Cool pie for 2 hours. Store in refrigerator.