A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Taylor's Drive In since 1947

Taylor's Drive In.  Open since 1947 in downtown Springfield (MO). 

139 Memorial Plz, Springfield MO. North and West of the Shrine Mosque.

Mmmm….Taylor's.  My first thought on opening any jury duty notice over the past 35 years has been "Fantastic!  I'll be having lunch at Taylor's." 

According to their menu cover, Taylor's was one of the "it" cruising spots for teenagers of the 50's and 60's.  That's more than a little before my time but when I worked at University Plaza Hotel, also downtown, in the 80's and early 90's I'd been known to stop in at Taylor's fairly often. They are Springfield's original steakburger and shake joint, long before the Steak N Shake franchise came to town. The hubs, Gene, worked for a printing company in the 80's, also downtown, and he reminisced that he and all the guys would often call in a big order in to Taylors and they'd take turns making the grub run.

Herbed Tilapia for One

Since my husband works evenings several nights a week, DJing at (five) local radio stations, or "slaving over a hot mic" as he calls it, I'm often left to scrounge up dinner on my own. Don't get me wrong. I do cook for him.  I've actually changed our eating habits to a 3pm dinner (biggest meal) and then sometimes I eat again later ir more often, I don't. And sometimes he grabs a Jimmy John's on the way to work or not and sometimes he's ready for a meal when he gets home at midnight.  My point is that in the war to at least give lip service to eating healthily no matter what time it is, this fish is super easy and hits all the right notes.  It works on just about any easily available species of fish but we usually buy frozen tilapia or cod in bags with individual filets, and sometimes when we're lucky, and my cousin Kim has been to Alaska to fish, we get frozen bags of assorted fresh caught fish, which is a huge treat.  

Let me just cut to the punchline of this post.  The recipe I'm going to give you is a bastardization of the recipe my cousin, Ann (Kim's wife) gave me.  So delicious, and she doesn't even like fish!  

You ready? I promise you this is super easy, very quick, and oh so yummy!

Orange Cranberry Bundt Cake

I baked this Orange Cranberry Bundt Cake as dessert when a couple of  good friends came over to dinner.  In full disclosure, not only did they come to dinner, they brought dinner.  I needed a special dessert to stand up to Janell and Jerry's wonderful lasagna, which we've had before and knew would be delicious treat.   However, did I get a photo of it? No. Did I forget to try to wheedle her recipe out of her? Yes.  Another time.

But I digress. I was talking about Orange Cranberry Bundt Cake.  Wanted something citrus to offset the richness of the pasta but nice and sweet as an ending note to the meal. This works quite well.  The orange and cranberries are tart in a sweet velvety, almost pound cake-like texture.  Perfect with a glass of milk to catch up with old friends over.

The cake is a simple straightforward two bowl method, well, two bowls and a cutting board when you count the fruit. Preparation is creaming the wet ingredients, followed by adding the dry ingredients, and stirring in the cranberries.   The most time consuming part is the zesting the oranges and chopping the cranberries up a bit.  The cranberries are then tossed with a little flour to help keep them suspended in the batter, instead of racing to the bottom. The only "odd" addition is a bit of corn starch to help lighten up the batter a bit and create a finer crumb.

Easy Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

I'm a firm believer in Ecclesiastes' saying "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.."  It's true for everything in life, including the sometime mundane things in life like cooking.  I love spending hours in the kitchen making long, complicated recipes....when I'm in the mood. But there are just as many days when I just want to put dinner on the table without a fuss or other days when I crave something cheesy, comforty, and gooey and uncomplicated.  Today was a comfort food day: all the taste of Chicken Cordon Bleu in a velvety sauce, without all the fuss.

I've made a couple of cordon bleu casserole recipes and the idea is pretty simple, very genius, really.  Instead of taking all the time and effort to pound out chicken breasts, fill them, roll them up, bread them, sauté' them, and then bake them....you layer those same ingredients in a casserole dish and serve it up.  Definitely not as elegant and pretty, but it's the same yummy eats in a fraction of the time. Some recipes go to the trouble to bread and pre-cook the chicken bits, some don't. Some heavily spice, some don't.  My recipe is different in one crucial way: the sauce.  Most Cordon Bleu Casseroles are put together with cream of chicken soup.  Mine uses alfredo sauce to pull those simple, easy layers together. 

Gene, the hubs, is my best taster.  He's always honest even if it's not what I want to hear.  Tonight, he thanked me at least three times.  He'd been in the mood for something cheesy, gooey, comforty too.