I’m so pleased, dear readers, to announce this interactive Vintage Victuals blog event.

Every year, hubby gets about ten 20-lb. bags of Vidalia Onions from his rotary club. They “sell” them as an annual fundraiser. However, we usually end up giving them away to our friends, eating onions morning, noon, and night, and still allowing some of these tasty little guys to go to waste.

But this year, we came up with a way that you, dear readers, can help us out. An on that note, I’m excited to announce the first annual Vidalia Victuals Contest!

Well, the Vidalia Onion crop is officially in! It’s a happy time for Georgians and onion-lovers all over the South. If you’re looking for these babies in your local grocery store, be sure to look for the “Vidalia” on the sticker, as shown in the pictures here.

Here’s how the Vidalia Victuals Contest will work.

1. Submit your all-time favorite vidalia onion recipes to me (either by commenting on this post or by emailing me) by Monday, May 11, 2009 at 11:59 PM. In any cases of duplicate recipes, then I will accept the one that was submitted first. Limit one recipe per person, so pick your very best recipe!
2. Then, the hubby and I will select 10 recipes that will advance to the Final Round. These recipes will be selected based on their creativity, their southern-ness, and their ability to showcase the distinctive Vidalia flavor.
3. I will make these 10 recipes (using our oodles of onions), and post a big round-up featuring all ten of them: pics, links to original recipes (if they are found online), all the goodies.
4. Then, YOU, dear readers, will vote for the winner of the Vidalia Victuals Contest. The winner will not only receive fame and glory being featured on the VV blog, but will also be the proud owner of a Vidalia Onion Prize Package including fresh Vidalia onions, some of our favorite locally-produced gourmet Vidalia sauces/dressings/relishes from our local country store, and some great goodies straight from the official Vidalia Onion Committee.

Update:
Be sure to also enter your Vidalia Onion recipe in
the Vidalia Onion Committee’s
“Sweet Times with Vidalias” Recipe Contest!
Win major cash prizes.
Submit your entries by August 14, 2009.

I know I’m going to be entering this one!!!

I found this excellent cookbook at a book fair recently called “The Meats Cookbook” – it’s from the early ’70s, published by Southern Living and Progressive Farmer. It is so much fun to look through – with instructions on how to cook every cut of meat you could possibly imagine! And the recipes are definitely old-fashioned! I found one that appealed to me, mainly because it combined two rather unusual ingredients: corn chips and hominy. Well, I souped it up a little bit with some extra veggies and some different kinds of cheese, and it turned out to be amazing.

For those fo you not familiar with “hominy,” it’s part of the corn family – tastes like bit puffy corn kernels. The hominy paired with the Fritos makes this meal extra special – it tastes like super-lean nachos in a bowl! And this dish is a great way to sneak some veggies into your kids’ (or husbands’!) meals.

Ground Beef Goodness

1 lb. lean ground beef (recommended: 93% lean)
1 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 can hominy, drained and rinsed
2 cans chili beans in mild sauce (recommended: Bush’s)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar or Monterrey jack cheese
2-3 handfuls of corn chips (recommended: Frito’s)

Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the ground beef and brown, stirring until it’s done all the way through. Remove from the pan to drain on a paper towel.

Return the skillet to the stove and add the onion and peppers. Cook until fragrant and slightly softened, about 3-5 minutes. Add the hominy and the chili beans (and sauce). Continue cooking until heated through.

Finally, add the shredded cheese and the corn chips, stirring gently to incorporate. When cheese is melted and stringy, your dinner is ready. Serve immediately in bowls with big spoons.

Thanks to Mrs. Southern Belle for the Blog Award! You rock, Candy! Thank you for thinking of me!

Here are the rules: These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement.

Our hope is that when the ribbon of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

I choose . . .
1. Brown Dog Boutique Blog
2. Good Things Catered
3. Project Prom Queen
4. Danni’s Soap Box
5. Finding Serendipity
6. A Fraction of Love
7. The Perfect Pallete
8. The Budget Conscious Bride

All of these ladies blog from the heart, and I have been thrilled to get to know them better – online and off!

“Vish ish awshoum!”

These are the words that came out of my husband’s mouth tonight as he ate his slice of pizza.

Have I mentioned that my husband hates pizza?

Well, my husband – he hates pizza. He has been known to call pizza “the torture food.” As in, “Honey, why don’t we order pizza tonight?” – “Oh great, the torture food.”

(For those keeping score, America’s Next Top Model is known as “the torture show.”)

After he swallowed, he declared, more clearly, “I eat my words.” I have succeeded in rehabilitating my husband from his post-college pizza-hangover, to the point where he actually likes pizza.

(I wonder if I’ll be able to get him to say the same thing about ANTM one day?)

I made this recipe tonight in an attempt to re-create a dish that I used to enjoy when I was a college student in Washington, DC. On lovely spring afternoons, like the ones we’ve been enjoying lately here in North Georgia, my friends and I would walk over to a little Italian restaurant in our neighborhood, and this pizza is the dish I would order almost every single time. It is a combination of five of my favorite foods: pizza, goat cheese, chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and spinach.

Paolo’s Pizza

1 lb. raw pizza dough
3/4 cup tomato pizza sauce
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese (part skim makes it less greasy)
1/4 cup sliced sun-dried tomatoes, reconstituted in water for 10 minutes
2 ounces goat cheese (chevre), chilled
1 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken (I recommend rotisserie chicken)
1 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning (or a mixture of dried basil and oregano)
2 large handfuls of baby spinach, roughly chopped

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Grease a large rectangular or round baking sheet or pizza pan. Roll out the pizza dough to desired thickness and place it on the prepared baking sheet. Spread the pizza sauce over the dough, leaving the edges as a crust. Arrange the shredded mozzarella evenly over the sauce.

Next, sprinkle the sun-dried tomatoes over the cheese. Then drop the goat cheese in tiny globs evenly across the pizza. Spread the chicken over the top, and sprinkle the italian seasoning evenly over the crust.

Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the spinach on top. Return to the oven for another 3-5 minutes. Slice and serve immediately.

Just the smell of fresh basil makes me weak in the knees. Luckily, ti’s not a treat reserved only for summertime in our house. For my birthday a couple years ago, my sweet hubby got my an AeroGarden. This thing is amazing – we grow enough basil to have pesto about every other week! I’m planning on doing a more detailed post about this nifty gadget, but for now, here is my pesto recipe.

Classic pesto is simply a blend of basil leaves, cheese, nuts, garlic, and olive oil. It goes well with creamy cheeses on toasted crostini or crackers. It also goes extremely well with fish and chicken dishes (think grilled chicken or smoked salmon).

Our favorite, though, is to toss some farfalle (bow-tie) noodles with the pesto, topped with chunks of smokey grilled chicken.

Fresh Basil Pesto
recipe from our dear family friends Judy and Joe

1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed
1/4 cup parmigiano reggiano cheese, grated
3 tablespoons toasted pine nuts or walnuts
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4-1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Measure all your ingredients except for the olive oil into your food processor. I like to use my mini-processor for making pesto:

Pulse several times to chop the leaves and nuts into the other ingredients. Then slowly stream the olive oil in while you process the pesto on medium speed. Add just enough olive oil to reach your desired consistency (tip: make your pesto thicker for a spread, thinner for a sauce). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Yield about 1 cup of pesto. Serve as desired (with cheese and crackers, tossed with pasta, as a glaze for roasted veggies, etc.).

Refrigerate and use yourfresh pesto withon 2-3 days OR freeze individual portions in an ice cube tray to use at your leisure!