Chattavore Chats Archives

What We Ate: January 1-11, 2025

January 20, 2025

Okay, I am not a narcissist who thinks that you all want to know everything that I ate for two + weeks, or an entire year or whatever this turns into. But everyone needs some fresh ideas, right? I mentioned in my last post that I was going to try not to buy any new cookbooks in 2025, which if I succeed will be a major record (and money saver). So far I haven’t spent a penny on cookbooks, but I won’t lie to you and say that I haven’t perused the “Kindle Deals” cookbook section on Amazon. Can’t hurt to look, right?

My focus so far has been on cooking from books I already have and using the subscription cooking apps that I have paid up for the year (NYT Cooking and America’s Test Kitchen). I’ll give you my honest thoughts (so far) on these apps. I’ve been using NYT Cooking for over a year and use it constantly. My “want to cook soon” recipe file (I named it myself) is overflowing with 55 recipes, but I have also made lots and adore this app. The number of five-star recipes is large and there are tons of helpful, well thought-out comments on each recipe. As someone who wants nothing more than to eat cheesy beans for dinner most nights, I have not been disappointed by the recipes here. America’s Test Kitchen hasn’t given me quite the same number of “dying to try” recipes. The recipes are more aspirational than NYT Cooking, which is a great app for people who need a weeknight dinner. 2025 Mary is not as “aspirational cook” as 2011 early Chattavore (and early thirties) Mary, but ATK is still where I turn when I need a perfectly tested version of a classic recipe.

Anyway, let’s get to the meals. You’ll notice that Friday’s are left out…I usually eat solo (something from the freezer, leftovers, a quick pasta dish) or with my parents on Fridays since Philip works later on these days.

January 1, 2025: Porchetta Sandwiches with Smitten Kitchen’s Salt & Vinegar Cabbage

On New Year’s Eve, earlier in the week, I made America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe for porchetta, which we ate with roasted potatoes and green beans (my favorite canned brand, Allens). If you aren’t familiar, porchetta is basically an Italian-style pork roast (usually either pork shoulder or pork belly, I used shoulder) with a garlicky, fennel seed forward paste either rolled up into it or incorporated into pockets cut into the meat. ATK’s version was delicious (the smell was outrageously garlicky and amazing) but very involved. Definitely a special occasion dish.

Anyway, for this dinner I sliced it up really thinly like deli meat and we ate it on Le Petit Francaise baguettes, which I buy in the frozen section at Publix, with just a smear of mayonnaise. We ate it with charred salt and vinegar cabbage from the Smitten Kitchen Keepers cookbook, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Roasted cabbage may sound weird but I can assure you that this was delicious.

I’d link to the porchetta recipe, but if I link you to ATK, you’ll run into a paywall (unless you are a subscriber) and I couldn’t find a recipe where anyone else has made this.

January 2, 2025: Smitten Kitchen Pizza Beans & Garlic Bread

I make no bones about the fact that I love Smitten Kitchen, and her website and cookbooks are among my favorite places to get recipes. I made the pizza beans on New Years Eve so we had the leftovers tonight with garlic bread and some of the porchetta that I had thinly sliced the night before. Pizza beans are exceedingly simple: white beans in a tomatoey sauce, topped with a blanket of mozzarella (with some kale thrown in for good measure). Deb calls for gigante beans, but I would have had to special order these, so I just used cannellini, my standard white bean of choice.

January 4, 2025: Dinner Out At Malone’s

Dining out for dinner, especially on a weekend, especially at Hamilton Place, is not something that we do often…but Philip chose Malone’s to try for his birthday (which was on the 11th) with some friends. It opened a few months back and he had been wanting to go since hearing it was quite good. We found the food (grass fed filet, mashed potatoes, & Caesar salad for him, twin filets with béarnaise, Gruyere croquettes, and the Lexingtonian salad for me) pretty good, but it was pricey (I think about $170 including tip) and the restaurant was very crowded (not shocking for a Saturday night of course) and very loud, which is hard since Philip has a vocal disorder that makes it hard for him to talk in loud environments.

January 5, 2025: Homemade “Chili’s Chili Queso”

We ate dinner at my parents’ house this night, but for lunch I made Chili’s style chili queso after eating at Chili’s with my mom and sister earlier in the week and discovering that the queso that used to be $6 (I hadn’t eaten at Chili’s in years) is now in the $12 range. I used the recipe from Todd Wilbur’s Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 cookbook, which I have owned for nearly 20 years, but you can purchase the recipe from his website for $.79. I’ll let you in on a secret: the ingredients are a can of Hormel no-beans chili, a pound of Velveeta, the juice of a lime, a sprinkle of cayenne, and a bit of milk to thin it.

January 6-7, 2025: Loaded Sweet Potatoes With Black Beans and Cheese

This was a NYT Cooking recipe, and about as simple as they come. Cut sweet potatoes in half, brush both the cut and skin sides with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast. Drain and rinse some black beans and put those on top of the roasted sweet potatoes; sprinkle with cheddar cheese and bake to warm the beans and melt the cheese. Serve with a salad or a roasted green vegetable. So simple, but I never would have thought of the combo. NYT says that each sweet potato is 2 servings, but we ate 1 medium sweet potato each. One can of beans was enough for two nights. (Here is a post where someone else made the recipe)

January 8-9, 2025: Skillet Chicken Parmesan

Another Smitten Kitchen Keepers recipe. You guys, I cannot recommend that cookbook strongly enough. Probably my all-time favorite. Basically pounded-thin chicken thighs, breaded with panko and shallow-fried, topped with a simple tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese then broiled. We ate it with angel hair and some roasted broccoli. I sauced the leftovers on the second night rather than saucing them the night that I made them, which would have made them soggy.

January 10, 2025: Leftover Chili Cheese Dip

Is five days too long to wait to finish up your chili cheese dip? It turned out fine. I had planned on finishing up the chicken parm leftovers, but it snowed (a fairly substantial amount of snow for Tennessee) and Philip ended up being stuck at home with me (the horror!) so I had to regroup and figure out something to feed two people. We still had quite a bit of dip left, so there you go. Not a bad Friday night snacky dinner.

January 11, 2025: Pasta With Longer Cooked Broccoli (lunch) and Cast Iron Pizza (dinner)

I had a ton of broccoli florets that I needed to use up and because everyone was buying out the stores this past week, I elected to wait until after the snow event to do my grocery shop, so I was trying to use up what I had. I found this recipe for pasta with longer cooked broccoli on (you guessed it) Smitten Kitchen. I also heated the last of the chicken from chicken parm in the air fryer, cubed it, and threw it in with the pasta. Not a bad thrown together lunch!

Ever since my brother told me about Kenji Lopez-Alt’s cast iron pizza recipe a few months back, I’ve been making it on repeat almost every Saturday. The first comment gives the ingredient proportions for one 12-inch pizza and we get 3 meals out of this (I cut the pizza into 6 slices and we have one slice of pizza and a salad). I simplify my sauce by combining a small can of no-salt tomato sauce, a can of no-salt tomato paste, and salt and Italian seasoning to taste. I keep my toppings simple: low-moisture whole milk mozzarella and pepperoni. Perfect every time.

This was Philip’s birthday, so I also made his favorite dessert, creme brûlée. I used the immersion circulator to cook the custards in small mason jars and refrigerated them overnight.

This was a week and a half worth of mostly simple and all delicious recipes. I hope you got some inspiration from them – what has been your favorite thing that you have cooked so far in 2025?

Coming Back (Maybe), Real Life, and Normalizing Normal

December 8, 2024

Oh hey, hi there. It’s been a while, huh? I was just noticing that my last post was on my 42nd birthday, August 17, 2020. More than four years ago. I swear I didn’t mean to ghost you guys! Let me explain.

Chattavore was born in 2011 out of my desire to write. That was all I wanted to do…write about food. Writing was something I had always been pretty good at but I don’t have the mind for writing fiction and didn’t have a great outlet for non-fiction writing. As I read my favorite blogs (back then it was Pioneer Woman, Bakerella, and A Year of Slow Cooking), I realized that I could combine my love of food and cooking with my need for a creative outlet in written form and start a food blog. So here we are.

Writing a food blog has changed a lot in the last 15 years, and one of the changes is that people just don’t. want. to read. food writing. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a meme posted on Facebook where someone was complaining about how food blogs make your scroll through a bunch of writing (GROAN) to get to the recipe, I could retire now.

I really, really wanted to be a full-time food writer. So I spent a lot of time researching, learning about SEO, trying to follow all the directions for how to make sure that my blog was something that people actually wanted to read and that Google actually wanted to show them, buying dishes that were exclusively for photography because my beloved Fiesta dishes “don’t photograph well”, and trying to turn myself into a food photographer.

I spent an unbelievable amount of time doing all of this, to the detriment of my “real life”. I was on my computer until 9:00 every night (after coming home from my full-time job as a behavior analyst for a relatively large school system). I was tired, I was neglecting myself and my husband, and I was not getting what I wanted out of my blog. Apparently, no one wanted to read food writing, which is why I started blogging in the first place. I was making a little money, but it certainly wasn’t paying the bills, and also, writing a food blog doesn’t come with those sweet, sweet school system benefits (not sarcasm, the benefits are great).

So, I just left it. Just stopped writing.

My life looks different now. My now 23-year marriage imploded (not due to the blog, but that definitely contributed to the implosion) and we have spent three years putting it back together (we’re great now, but we have learned a lot of what to do and what not to do). I left my job, left the school system altogether to do clinical behavior work, then realized that public education was for me so I went back to my first love. I am teaching PreK special education in the school I attended as a child, and I have never been happier professionally. I no longer feel the need to escape my job. I can be a hobby blogger and be happy with that.

I’ve been thinking about my blog again for a while now, trying to think about how to start it up again, in a way that doesn’t end up hurting this time. Writing for me and hoping maybe someone else will want to read. While I still own (and love) my fancy camera, I probably won’t be pulling it out anytime soon. Y’all will just have to settle for my iPhone 12 Pro Max camera (old iPhones for the win!).

We’re going to live real life here, nothing aspirational. The “blog dishes” have been given away and we eat dinner on our colorful Fiesta dishes using Target flatware we were gifted at our 2001 wedding. We don’t go out to eat much these days, certainly not often to newer downtown restaurants. If I don’t feel like cooking, I pull something out of the freezer (I’ll tell you guys about my freezer cache one of these days) or we go to (gasp!) Taco Bell.

My small split-level house was built in 1977. My tiny, closed concept kitchen was too. It’s small, and it needs to be remodeled, but remodels aren’t cheap. We’ll get there someday, but today is not the day. Tomorrow isn’t looking good either. We are normal people who live in a normal house, and I am hoping that if I focus on normalizing normal, then maybe people can relate to what real life looks like, not always the perfect open-plan kitchen with dinner served on pristine matte white dishes with spotless linen napkins. No offense to those people! I read those blogs and follow those social media accounts. But I am not them.

I paid for subscriptions to NYT Cooking (I did this last year, and I have made so many great recipes and consult this app frequently) and America’s Test Kitchen (just bought this subscription and still making up my mind about it) and I am going to try (TRY, people, the key word is TRY) not to buy any new cookbooks in 2025. We’ll see how it goes. If Ina Garten or Deb Perelman release a new book in 2025, all bets are off. There won’t be a lot of recipes. Probably even less about restaurants. I can’t promise frequency. There are a lot of errors on my website that need to be fixed, so I need to work on that too. I can’t promise anything.

But I’m back. Maybe. We’ll see.

How to Keep Your Kitchen Cool During the Summer

July 26, 2020

It gets hot in the summer here in Tennessee, and electricity can be pricey. Here’s how to keep your kitchen cool during the summer!

Keeping the Kitchen Cool!

Okay, so you can only eat so many salads and sandwiches in the summertime, and (as I mention in #2), I can’t run my ceiling fan while simultaneously cooking on my gas range. Over the years I’ve discovered a lot of tricks to keep the heat factor down, and these are my 9 suggestions for how to keep your kitchen cool during the summer!

By the way, all of these links and photos are Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you click the link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Keeping the Kitchen Cool!

By the way, most of the links below are Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you click the link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Air Fryer

This one honestly surprised me! Several people asked me in classes that I have done for The Chattery if I had ever considered doing an air fryer class. Well, honestly – I had never even considered getting an air fryer! After so many people asked, I asked my Facebook followers about it and a ton of people told me that they were completely in love with their air fryer. I decided to take the plunge. Some of the things that I make in mine include: homemade fries, baked potatoes, fried squash, chicken tenders, frozen spring rolls, and reheated pizza. It’s basically a mini convection oven, and it is so convenient to have around! Since I originally wrote this post a few years back, I have switched from a traditional air fryer to a pressure cooker/air fryer combo, but love both kinds. The one pictured is a Cook’s Essentials 5.3 quart air fryer from QVC.

2. Instant Pot

Did anyone question whether I was going to put this on the list? Doubtful. It’s no secret that I’m pretty much obsessed with this appliance. I use it weekly, year-round. If the Smart Oven was the best birthday gift I’ve ever gotten, the Instant Pot was the best Christmas gift (thanks, Mom!). It’s great for roasts, soups, stews, and even one-pot pasta dishes. Really! And yes, I know you can pressure cook on the stovetop, but I use my Instant Pot for a lot of things that I would do on the stovetop because it allows me to keep the ceiling fan in my kitchen running. Ceiling fans are essential in a Tennessee summer, but when you have a gas range, you have to turn them off while you’re cooking on the stovetop. No need with the Instant Pot!

3. Convection Microwave or Toaster Oven

This is probably my number one “keep the kitchen cool” tool. I started with a cheapie toaster oven from Walmart, and it did a pretty good job but my in-laws bought me a Breville Smart Oven (linked above) and it was amazing. When I replaced my microwave a couple of years ago I upgraded to a microwave/convection oven. The Breville Smart Oven and my convection microwave are both large enough to fit my 9×11 USA Pan cake pan, a 12-cup muffin tin, and my 10-inch cast iron skillet. There is virtually no reason for me to turn my oven on from the time the temps outside get into the 80s (which happened in April here) until cooler weather hits in the fall.

4. Grill

Maybe this is the most obvious one on the list? I mean, who doesn’t love grilling in the summer? There is just something about that slightly charred taste of a freshly grilled chicken leg or burger that you can’t get from even the best pan-fried burger (and pan-fried burgers are my favorite, but when you want a grilled burger, you need a grilled burger). Plus, you get to cook outside. All you need is a beer and maybe a picnic table? We use propane, but my dad swears by his Weber charcoal grill (there have been many iterations of this exact grill at my parents’ house since my childhood).

5. Slow Cooker

The next best thing to an Instant Pot! Honestly, I don’t own a slow cooker anymore…I gave mine away when I realized that I had only used it once after a year of having the Instant Pot! But…the Instant Pot has a slow cooker function and I do use that, so it counts. I probably don’t have to try to sell you on the usefulness of an appliance that (a) doesn’t heat up the kitchen; (b) does the work of cooking for you while you’re out for the day; and (c) is super-affordable.

6. Vitamix or Another High Quality Blender

Another great gift, this time from my husband. The Vitamix is a thing of beauty. Not only can you mix up the obvious cooling summer treats (smoothies, milkshakes, etc.), it’s also powerful enough to whip up creamy hummus, smooth as silk salad dressings, and perfect salsa that just requires dumping in all of your ingredients (I never chop anything beforehand). And – get this – you can even make soup in it. I don’t mean that you can puree soup in it. I mean the motor is so powerful that if you let it run long enough it will heat your soup. That’s for real, people.

7. Food Processor

a photograph of a Cuisinart food processor

Obviously, this is along the same lines as the Vitamix. I usually use my food processor instead of the blender to make hummus, pesto, etc., just because it’s easier to scrape stuff out of the blades (since they’re removable and all). I love cold dips for lunch and snacks, and the food processor is my go-to for making them. This particular model is the one recommended by America’s Test Kitchen.

8. Smoker

a photograph of a Masterbuilt electric smoker

So…this is hotly contested – should smokers be powered by gas or charcoal? How about electricity??? That’s totally my cop-out. We like smoked meat but we do not want to babysit our smoker. I mean, we’re stuck at home (which is great for an introvert like me) but I don’t want to have to watch my smoker to make sure it doesn’t catch anything on fire. With my electric smoker, I load it up with chips and let it go, just watching to see if smoke stops pouring out of it, then I add more chips. Smoked meat = happy Mary. I mean, even just the smell of the smoker makes me happy. And, like the grill, you can totally hang out outside if you’re watching it.

9. Waffle Iron

I recently got a new waffle iron, and I’ve so far only used it for waffles. But if you are a watcher of food videos, you know that you can make cinnamon rolls, grilled cheese sandwiches, paninis, hash browns, and all kinds of other things on a waffle iron. I wouldn’t say it’s essential, but it’s certainly fun and useful!

What are your favorite tools for keeping the kitchen cool?

2017 March of Dimes Signature Chefs Auction

October 25, 2017

I did not receive any financial compensation for writing this post. As a sponsor of this event, my logo was featured on the Signature Chefs Auction website and brochure. I am sponsoring this event because I believe in the work that the March of Dimes does for babies.

Friday night, October 27, 2017, The March of Dimes will host the 2017 Signature Chefs Auction to raise money to help the March of Dimes “fund research, education, advocacy and programs that help more moms have full-term pregnancies and healthy babies”.

The Signature Chefs Auction will be held at Stratton Hall, located at 3146 Broad Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37408. The event begins at 6:00 p.m. and tickets can be purchased at this link. If you are unable to attend or purchase a ticket, there is an option at the link I just mentioned to make a donation of any size to the March of Dimes.

The Signature Chefs Auction will begin with a 90-minutes tasting of foods from various local chefs, then the auction will begin. Guests will be able to bid on available items while sampling delicious desserts.

The chefs and restaurants participating in the Signature Chefs Auction include:

1885 Grill – Chef Chase Cope
Embargo 62/Ceniza/Red Sauce – Chef Andrew Platt
Feed Company Table and Tavern – Chef Charlie Loomis/Cliff Phillips
Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse – Chef Roger Burrows
Culindard/Virgina College – Chef Nick Theirs
Terra Mae – Chef Wade Cowan, Jr.
Cafe on the Corner – Chef J. R. Crutcher
Mean Mug – Chef Monica Smith
Daily Ration – Chef Jeff Schwenke
Artisanal Chefs
Milk & Honey
Stir – Signature Cocktail
Late Night Artisan – Mojo Burrito

For more information about the Signature Chefs Auction, you can contact check out their website, signaturechefs.marchofdimes.org/chattanooga, or contact Jennifer McAfee at JMcAfee@marchofdimes.org or 423-637-7829.

Station Street Sip & Savor 2017

July 26, 2017

Benefitting Kids on the Block, Station Street Sip & Savor was a fun event with lots of great food and drinks. We can’t wait until next year!

This week’s “restaurant” post is a little bit different. Instead of visiting one restaurant last week, we spent a couple of hours checking out food, wine, and beer at the Station Street Sip and Savor 2017 event.

Benefitting Kids on the Block, Station Street Sip & Savor was held in the formal gardens at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Philip and I went along with a good friend of ours (the same friend who got us backstage to see New Kids on the Block on our 16th anniversary, so he’ll be my favorite for a while) and we had a great time melting in the July Tennessee heat.

When you enter the Station Street Sip and Savor event, you are given a complimentary tasting glass that you can get filled with lots of different libations as you walk the perimeter. There was lots of wine, beer, and even liquor to sample. Of course, you guys know I kept it pretty simple…a little bit of moscato and some lemon radler (non-beer lovers out there have to try radler…the one we’ve found most commonly around here is Steigl’s grapefruit radler. If you’re in Chattanooga you can go buy some from Philip at Sigler’s!).

And, of course, there was more food than I knew what to do with. Some of my favorite restaurants were there, including Feed Co. and The Bitter Alibi. Then, of course, there were some that I haven’t tried but after tasting their samples at Sip & Savor, well, I’ll be checking them out (looking squarely at Chatter Box…that was some fabulous BBQ!). And an old favorite, Famous Nater’s, was back under a new name – 2 Sons Kitchen. I’ll get there soon.

We had an awesome time trying great food and drinks, hanging out with our friend, stalking local news personalities (okay, not stalking really), and schmoozing craft breweries (guess which one of us did that?).

By the way, if you’re in town, come see me at the Chattanooga Market Sunday. I’ll be judging the Five-Star Food Fight that concludes Chattanooga Magazine’s Restaurant Week. And stay tuned for a fun announcement coming up soon!