To any of you who, like me, enjoy breaking out one of those blue boxes of cornbread muffin mix to accompany a nice homemade dinner: After you try this recipe, you will never feel the need to buy another box of mix again. I was surfing the web for a cornbread muffin recipe and somehow ended up with another nugget from the Neelys. These cornbread muffins are just as easy as fixing up the boxed muffins, and are easily more delicious:

Honey Cornbread Muffins

I actually made these as part of Mario’s birthday dinner Pt. 1, and he had a hard time believing they were made from scratch. These came out moist but still a tad crumbly with a kiss of honey goodness.
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Lately, I’ve been trying to act like the grad student that I am and respect the fact that I should be living and eating on a budget. This means more cooking at home…for now anyway. In addition to being a budget-friendly meal, this is also my “meatless” Lent post for the week. These shrimp tacos were very quick and easy to put together and also crazy good:

Shrimp Tacos

I was purposely looking for a taco recipe with a mango accoutrement after my successful foray into avocado salsa, and these did not disappoint.
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While I’m talking about New Orleans, I suppose I should mention what was served at my Saintsbowl party on February 7, 2010, the day the SAINTS won the Superbowl!! Yeah, I was excited. Anyway, my New Orleans-themed party was complete with jambalaya, king cake, and hurricanes for sippin’. I tried to keep my prep simple and my cooking to a minimum so I could fully enjoy the game, so one of the few “from scratch” items I made was meatball sliders:

Meatball Slider

These were quite easy to make, and more important, quite delicious.
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This week’s Lenten fish dish is a flavor-boosted version of one of my least favorite fish. I’ve always found tilapia bland and sometimes dry, but I guess that was the fault of the cooking method and not necessarily the fish itself. This baked tilapia has a yummy Parmesan topping which keeps the fish moist and flaky. I baked some frozen mixed veggies in a foil packet along with the fish to round out the meal:

Baked Tilapia + Veggies

It’s Lenten season, and I told myself I would try to do a fish series for any readers looking for ways to spice up their meatless existence. Plus, I need to eat more fish myself. It’s brain food after all! So, I’m going to try to have a new fish recipe up every week. First up, Honey-Balsamic Glazed Salmon:

Honey-Balsamic Glazed Salmon

Typically, I like my salmon pretty naked: simply seasoned and pan-seared in olive oil. But for something to spice up its rotation during the next 40 39 days, this glaze offers a nice change of pace.
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Oh, Atlanta. Your climate is classified “humid subtropical”. Your summers are unbearably hot and sticky. So why do you insist on remaining well below freezing (this Louisianian considers <50 “freezing”) for weeks at a time?? The only upside to this dismal weather is the hot foods I’m finding to keep me warm. A few weekends ago, I decided to make a warming comfort food: French onion soup.

French Onion Soup

I’ve had to try to convince people before that even if you don’t like onions, you will like this soup. I mean, who could resist such depth of flavor, such heartiness, such…cheesy melty goodness? French onion soup does take a while to make properly, but even for my first attempt (for which I am already plotting improvements), it was well worth the time.
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One evening after a gauntlet of classes, I was racking my brain for something quick to throw together since cooking and a lecture-fried brain really don’t mix. To any teachers/profs out there: if students aren’t specifically signed up for night class, we don’t want to be in class at night! Ok, off my soapbox. I decided on chicken tacos, but had no condiments aside from store-bought salsa. I used the magic of cell phone internet to find a recipe for avocado salsa in the last 10 minutes of class and stopped by the store for a few things on my way home. The super easy recipe required a lot of chopping, but in this case, “rustic” looking is ok:

Avocado Salsa

This is, of course, pre-mixed, but afterward this salsa made a wonderful taco accoutrement.
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To start off the New Year right, I bought a copy of the Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook. Before you judge/laugh, 1) It’s a diet cookbook with a cupcake on the cover! and 2) I’m not really on the diet (so I can’t speak for its efficacy), but I always need some fresh “healthy eating” recipes around. So during the ridiculously cold snap we had, I decided to make the vegetarian Curried Apple & Pear soup from my new cookbook. This was a little outside my tastebuds’ normal comfort zone spice-wise, but I ended up enjoying it a lot!

Curried Apple & Pear Soup

Due to copyright issues I don’t think I can actually reproduce the recipe here, but I’ll give a walkthrough and maybe you can find something similar via your favorite search engine.
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This weekend I faced one of my culinary fears: Making bread. Bread making has always seemed like it was super difficult and required some measure of skill that I did not possess. However, I proved myself wrong by making these delicious looking cheese buns I found on The Pink Peppercorn‘s food blog:

Cheese Bun

Cheese Bun

The recipe is for a basic dough (PP says she actually usually uses it for pizza dough) which is then kind of cinnamon-rolled with aged white cheddar and baked. Not only was the process easier than I expected, but they tasted great too.
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Ellie Krieger is known for preparing delicious “light” versions of favorite comfort foods, and for a post-Christmas brunch I made up a pan of her peach French toast bake. This oven-baked French toast is a pretty good substitute for the pan-fried stuff you’re used to, so you can save a few calories and some time with this easy recipe.

Peach French Toast Bake

I made this using my copy of Ms. Krieger’s The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life, but it is also available on foodnetwork.com.
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