I just realized I never actually posted anything about our vacation. The vacation was great, and I'll return to share some words and pictures about crabbing and fresh seafood. But I'm going to use this post to focus on Savannah, Georgia and our trip to The Lady & Sons restaurant, owned by Paula Deen of the Food Network.

I haven't had macaroni and cheese in a while, so I decided to make some last night. I wanted to take another run at a baked mac and cheese because our previous attempt turned into an egg souffle. I'll never understand what Delia was thinking in the Mac & Cheese throwdown. 12 eggs? Ridiculous.

Part one of my meal plan is complete. However I am almost certain parts 2 & 3 will never materialize. Its too late in the week to have them on back to back nights, we've already got plans for dinner Saturday and Lauren specifically said that beer can chicken is of no interest to her when I brought it up. Tonight we're having chicken kebabs.

So last night we had the first burgers of the spring/summer grilling season. I doubt you need a recipe, but here are the ingredients we generally use:

• Certified Angus Ground Chuck (it was on sale, otherwise I'd just use regular ground beef)
• Onions
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Montreal Steak Seasoning
• Pepper
• Egg

Mix it all together to your taste, add one egg for binding, form patties and grill. In my opinion the extra lean (4% fat) ground beef isn't great for burgers. I'd find something with at least 10% fat, or add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil to your ground beef mix.

Anyhow the point of this post isn't the burgers. It is the homemade potato salad. I've always been mildly annoyed that the grocery store deli charges $3-$6 per pound for potato salad. Not enough to do anything about it, but that all ended last night. Never again will I wonder how long that potato salad has been sitting in the display case, subconsciously forcing me to chose the whitest (and typically most bland) variety available so as not to mess with the unknown yellow of the other varieties. Sure, that yellowing might be from mustard, but are you willing to take that chance at $4.99/lb?

The recipe I chose came from Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. It doesn't have a fancy name, just potato salad:

• 3 pounds small white potatoes
• Kosher salt
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion

Directions Place the potatoes and 2 tablespoons of salt in a large pot of water. Bring the water to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until the potatoes are barely tender when pierced with a knife. Drain the potatoes in a colander, then place the colander with the potatoes over the empty pot and cover with a clean, dry kitchen towel. Allow the potatoes to steam for 15 to 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, buttermilk, Dijon mustard, whole grain mustard, dill, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of pepper. Set aside. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut them in quarters or in half, depending on their size. Place the cut potatoes in a large bowl. While the potatoes are still warm, pour enough dressing over them to moisten. Add the celery and red onion, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper. Toss well, cover, and refrigerate for a few hours to allow the flavors to blend. Serve cold or at room temperature.

As for the changes, Lauren and I went in a couple of different directions. First, the potatoes. As I mentioned earlier the whiter the potato salad, the more bland it looks and often tastes. So we skipped the small white (russet) potatoes and went for something with more flavor. When choosing your potatoes here is what you need to know:

While Russets are still by far the most commonly used variety of potato , consider mixing it up a little. There are several high-moisture varieties with a texture that many people refer to as 'waxy'. Among these varieties are Yellow Finns, Yukon Golds, and red potatoes. Their high moisture means that they have a more pleasant texture when they are cold, and their waxier flesh holds up better to chopping and to tossing with dressing than that of the drier, more mealy Russets.

Following that line of reasoning we chose redskin potatoes. I think they may have been some kind of hybrid Yukon Red or at least named in such a way on the packaging. Whatever they are they were on sale for $2.50 for 5 lbs at Meijer this week.

Our second change was that we didn't simmer and steam the potatoes. We placed them in cold water, brought them to a boil and boiled them whole for almost 20 minutes, taking them out when they slid off of our potato stabbing fork (aka fork tender). You could chop the potatoes beforehand, but the smaller the pieces the smaller your margin of error in cooking them. Cook too much and you might as well turn it into mashed potatoes. Once we thought the potatoes were done we dumped them into a colander and tried to stop the cooking process by running them under cold water. As soon as they were cool enough to handle (3-4 mins), we chopped them into potato salad appropriate chunks, layed them out on a baking sheet and stuck them in the fridge for about 20 minutes while we prepared the burgers.

The last two changes in potato salad were the use of green onions instead of red, and dried dill instead of fresh. Drieb herbs are quite a bit more potent than fresh (generally 1 tbsp fresh = 1 tsp dry, so 3:1), so if you make the potato salad this way you're going to want to use about 1/3 of what the recipe calls for. I didn't really measure, but I estimated about 1/8 cup of dried dill.

One thing I forgot was that while I did let the potatoes cool a bit, I in no way came close to waiting hours (or even one hour) to eat the finished potato salad. It might be better today at lunch than it was immediately after we made it last night, but this isn't a recipe you must make the night before.

I am about 90% certain that the next time I'm asked to bring a side dish, this potato salad will be it.

I've wanted to make this recipe for a couple of weeks, but had a hard time lining up the fresh tilapia and the opportunity to make this. It seems as though Meijer gets it freshest seafood in preparation for the weekend. I say that because I went there on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (I am a terribly inefficient grocery shopper) and the first two days they had a very limited selection of some very odd types of fish. Then Thursday night rolls around and they've got fresh cod, tilapia, tuna and quite a few other varieties I've actually heard of.

So I think from this point forward I'm only going to buy fresh fish Thursday through Sunday. For this recipe I used a package of frozen tilapia fillets. They worked out pretty well as far as taste was concerned, but they stuck to the grill and had pretty much fallen apart by the time they were cooked through. I'm sure I flipped them too much. I have a habit of doing that on the grill in an attempt to get perfectly brown grill marks on all sides.

One final note. Amazingly this recipe is probably the one Paula Deen recipe that doesn't use butter or heavy cream:

Peach BBQ sauce:

• 3/4 cup ketchup
• 3 tablespoons prepared mustard
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• Pinch garlic salt
• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup onions, finely chopped
• 2 cups fresh or canned peaches
• 4 (7-ounce) tilapia fillets
• House seasoning
• 1 lime, juiced

Directions Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan, excluding the peaches and simmer over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes. While the sauce is simmering, puree 2 cups of canned or fresh peaches. Once the sauce is cooked, add the pureed peaches to the sauce and stir together. Preheat the grill to medium heat. Season the tilapia with house seasoning. Cook the fish on each side for 3 to 4 minutes. During the last few minutes of cooking, brush the fish with some barbecue sauce. Once cooked and plated, ladle a nice spoonful of the Peach barbecue sauce on top of the fillets.

The sandwiches were very good, but the Food Network really needs to learn how to post better sauce recipes. The flavor was great, but the recipe made more than a quart of sauce. The four sandwiches didn't make a dent in that. So there are about 30 oz of peach bbq sauce in the refrigerator right now. Also, the sauce doesn't reduce during the simmer. I thought it might reduce and turn into a glaze, but that didn't really happen. I think in order to make that happen you'd have to up the brown sugar tremendously. Like upwards of 1/3 cup. But for starters I'd recommend you cut everything in half or more so you end up with a manageable amount of sauce. Lastly, "prepared mustard" = "not dry mustard". It doesn't matter if you use dijon, spicy brown or just yellow mustard. Choose according to your own tastes.

I've made this quick egg salad a few times, but always forget to include it here. Frankly I find it pretty difficult to trust other people's egg salad. I'm not sure why, but it just seems like one of those things that could spoil without anyone really noticing. So the only way to guarantee that its fresh is to make it yourself. The recipe comes from the Food Network Kitchens:

• 1/2 medium red onion, chopped
• 12 large eggs
• 1-2 stalks celery, diced
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
• 1 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

In a small bowl soak the onions in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, place the eggs and cover with cold water by 1 inch. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute. Cover the eggs, remove from the heat, and set aside for 8 minutes. Drain the water from the pan and cool the eggs in the pan under cold running water. Peel the eggs and cut into sixths.

In a large bowl, mix together the onion, celery, mayonnaise, dill, mustard, lemon juice, and salt.

Add the eggs to the mayonnaise mixture and gently mix them together. Season with pepper, to taste. Use in sandwiches, with lettuce and tomatoes, or in a salad.

I don't always use the onion, sometimes I sprinkle in some paprika like a deviled egg and I usually put it on toasted whole wheat bread with some provolone cheese. Generally I'll make it on a Monday or Tuesday night, stick it in a tupperware and have it for lunch a couple of times during the week.

This is another recipe I saw on Food Network during the past weekend. We made it last night. It was very simple and very delicious.

Turkey and Bean Burrito Burgers

1 cup cold leftover white or brown rice
1 pound ground turkey
1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained 3 teaspoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander
1 tablespoon grill seasoning, (recommended: Montreal Seasoning by McCormick)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ripe avocado
1 clove garlic, grated or finely chopped
1 lime, zested and juiced
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup sour cream
4 red leaf lettuce leaves
1 ripe tomato, sliced
4 crusty rolls, split

Combine rice, meat and beans with spices and grill seasoning. Form 4 big patties from the meat and bean mixture then heat 1 tablespoon oil, a turn of the pan, in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook patties 7 to 8 minutes on each side.

While burgers cook, combine avocado with garlic, lime zest and juice, jalapeno and red onion. Mash to roughly combine, then stir in the sour cream.

Place burgers on buns with lettuce and tomato and top with sour cream guacamole.

We made quite a few changes. We seasoned it with what we had and what we liked. So we reduced some of the chili powder and went with some cayenne pepper and garlic powder. We didn't have coriander so we used thyme. Those sorts of things. The one significant addition we made was that we added the diced red onion to the turkey mixture rather than the guacamole, figuring it would not overpower the burger the way we figured it could with the guacamole.

For the guacamole we skipped the ripe avocado and just picked up a container of guac from the dairy section. Then we added the sour cream and lime juice. We also left out the serrano/jalapeno pepper, and just used dried cayenne pepper.

The final result came out to be 5 patties rather than 4. Cooking was very simple, 7-8 minutes per side was pretty accurate, even though it doesn't look like it will cook all the way through when you go to flip it.

Lauren left the kaiser buns from the salmon sandwiches at work, so we used some sourdough foccacia rolls instead, which may have been a blessing in disguise.

About twice a year I get a craving for a fish sandwich. This weekend I was watching Food Network and was basically forced to have one of them. I don't know if it was related to Lent or what, but every show I watched seemed to be preparing fish or some type of seafood.

Along the way I saw Paula Deen making blackened tilapia with cilantro lime mayonnaise. So I took that recipe to the grocery store and wound up making Blackened Salmon Sandwiches with Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise. Fresh salmon fillet was on sale for $6.49/lb, and much to my surprise 1 lb of salmon goes about twice as far as the same amount of chicken. So for about $9 we got 1.32 lbs salmon and made four blackened fillets, with a side of Zatarain's Yellow Rice and some steamed asparagus. As I recall from the show, Paula said her main reason for choosing tilapia was that it is relatively inexpensive, so we figured salmon we be an acceptable substitution. We also couldn't find fresh tilapia and were wary of defrosting frozen fish.

On to the recipe:

1/4 cup sweet paprika
2 tablespoons ground thyme
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
4 (10-ounce) tilapia (or salmon) fillets
4 Kaiser buns, split, buttered and toasted

Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon fresh lime

In a shallow dish, combine first 6 ingredients.

Pour melted butter into another shallow dish. Dip fish fillets in melted butter and coat with seasoning mixture.

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Cook prepared fish, in batches if necessary, 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Spread Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise evenly over toasted buns. Place blackened fish on bottom half of bun, top with mango salsa, and cover with top half of bun.

Now I don't know what sweet paprika is, but I couldn't find it at the store so I used paprika. The rest of the recipe is solid. We didn't bother with the mango salsa, though it would have been awesome. My best suggestion is that if you aren't using cast iron, which we weren't, you may want to consider either pouring the seasoning mixture into an empty spice jar and shaking it on your fillets or taking a pastry/basting brush and lightly brushing away any extra spice mixture that isn't adhering to the butter after you dredge it through the seasoning. Dredging the fish as though the seasoning is flour is a bit of overkill, and I don't think a normal skillet has enough heat to completely blacken it without burning the fish.

Saturday night for dinner Lauren and I made an attempt to recreate her favorite sandwich from a local restaurant, Marie Catrib's. The chicken cranberry sandwich on challah bread. Traditional challah bread is a three piece braid eaten mostly as a breakfast bread. Marie Catrib takes that same challah dough and makes it into a loaf.

We basically cheated by using a bread machine. So I won't pretend like I know what I am talking about and tell you exactly how to make it. Here are the basic ingredients. I am drawing a blank on the actual recipe we used because I had to adjust for what I thought the bread machine could handle. Almost everything I found on the internet was for making it by hand:

1/2 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
1 package active dry yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups bread flour
1 1/4 cups wheat flour
1/4 cup olive oil
2 eggs + 2 egg yolks
1 1/4 teaspoons salt

Here is a complete recipe that I have not tried. I am not sure what would make this challah bread since we weren't braiding it, because the ingredients are pretty common to wheat bread. But thats what they call it at Marie Catrib. Oh well.

Two and a half hours later we had bread with no mess which I later determined to be dumb luck. I don't know if it was the eggs or the olive oil, but Sunday I tried making a loaf of wheat bread with the same amount of flour, 3 less eggs, honey instead of olive oil and butter instead of sugar, and the loaf blew up on me. It totally overflowed the bread machine and there was a faint smell of smoke because the dough was touching very hot metal. Back to the sandwich.

Next we took a thin cut chicken breast, marinated it in balsamic vinaigrette and sauteed it for 4 minutes per side over medium-high heat in a non-stick skillet. For the cranberry part of the sandwich we took a can of whole berry cranberry sauce, heated in a sauce pan and added a splash of white wine, two tablespoons of brown sugar and the juice of one orange. Once everything was warm and mixed well we poured it into a bowl and stuck it in the freezer so it would thicken.

We then sliced our challah bread, grilled both sides of both pieces in a buttered skillet, added provolone cheese to the top slice and cream cheese to the bottom half. On top of the cream cheese we spread our cranberry sauce, and then laid down our chicken. On top of the provolone we added some baby spinach, then pressed the two sides together and we were done.

The sandwich was easy to make and turned out great. Again, I don't know that what we were calling challah bread made a great deal of difference in how it compares to the real sandwich, because I've never had it. I think the simple fact that we made fresh bread probably made as much a difference as it being this kind of bread instead of that kind.

So if you wanted to make this sandwich with some of your favorite wheat bread I think it would probably turn out fine.

Last week I came across an episode of Good Eats on macaroni and cheese. More than half the episode was spent on your typical fancy baked macaroni and cheese casserole, which is wonderful but ultimately not very practical for someone that typical cooks for one or two.

But just before the episode ended, Alton Brown talked about how to make a quick homemade stove top mac and cheese to compete with the powdered Kraft Mac N Cheese and Velveeta Shells N Cheese. It is ridiculously simple and really only requires one or two oddball ingredients, but you can buy and store those ingredients at room temperature almost indefinitely.

Alton Brown's Stove Top Macaroni and Cheese:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni (2 cups dry)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 eggs
• 6 ounces evaporated milk
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh black pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 10 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente (6 minutes) and drain, then rinse with cold water. Return to the pot and melt in the butter. Toss to coat.

Whisk together the eggs, milk, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and mustard. Stir into the pasta and add the cheese in 3-4 separate handfuls. Over low heat continue to stir for 3-5 minutes or until creamy.

I used mild cheddar rather sharp and I just bought bag of shredded Meijer brand. I didn't feel the need to be fancy by buying a block of cheese and shredding it myself, and some of the reviews I had read weren't so keen on the sharp cheddar flavor. I tried to limit my ingredients to whole containers (where possible) so I could get a read on how easy everything would be to buy, store and then make on demand, similar to the boxed macaroni and cheese. Evaporated milk comes in 5 oz containers (not 6 oz) and shredded cheese is sold in 8 oz bags (not 10 oz) so those were the amounts I used. I also skipped the hot sauce because all we had was habanero hot sauce and I didn't feel like taking that risk.

As far as the ingredients are concerned if you are in the habit of weekly grocery shopping, butter and eggs should be staple ingredients that you'll have on hand for your other needs. Here is a complete price break down. A "serving" in this case means the amount of ingredients you'll need to make one batch of mac and cheese.

Elbow macaroni - $0.46 per serving (servings per box)
Butter - $0.25 per serving (2 servings per stick)
Evaporated milk - $0.69 per 5 oz
Shredded cheese - $2 per 8 oz
Eggs - $1-$3 per dozen ($0.10-$0.25 per egg)
Dry mustard - $0.35 per serving ($2.35 per oz, 6 teaspoons in one oz)

Give or take some sale prices this comes out around $4 per batch. The difference is that when its all said and done this 8 0z of mac and cheese can easily feed four adults. My experience with the 7.25 oz Kraft mac and cheese and the 12 oz Velveeta shells n cheese is that you're looking at feeding about 1.5-2.5 people if you're lucky. So in the end when you weigh all the pros and cons of the various macaroni and cheese preparations, they all come out pretty close to even in price per meal. Which means the winner should be decided on taste, and nothing comes close to the home made stove top macaroni and cheese.

In my opinion this is the kind of mac and cheese you're going to want to put out at family gatherings/work parties/potluck dinners as a side dish. A little bit goes a long way, people will love the taste and then you can impress them by telling them how simple it is to make.

Lastly, I didn't take a picture of my mac and cheese because its hard for a picture to capture how it tastes any different than any other mac and cheese.

Also worth noting is that if you refrigerate it and heat it up later (like I did for lunch today) the cheese doesn't get all clumpy and oily and the noodles don't get weird and rubbery. I'll stop short the hyperbole of saying "I'll never buy mac and cheese again" and just say that I don't see any reason why I shouldn't make a habit of keeping all the ingredients on hand so I can have it on demand.

With some encouragement from Rachel (The Sheldons), I have decided to return to maintaining a blog. Since I last did this I've added a few new hobbies. So this time around the blog is going to center primarily on beer, cooking and baking, television and movies. Technology is probably going to come up as well.

On to the chicken salad. I've wanted to make it for quite a while now. I don't really know why. One part is because it seems healthy. Who knows, it might actually be healthy, but either way I can walk around the house thinking "I could have eaten pizza, but I made something healthy". The other part is that I hate paying $5+/lb at the grocery store for chicken salad because usually it kind of sucks. At best I find most deli salads to be way too hit or miss to take the gamble. So I waited for chicken breasts to go on sale and then made my move. Here is what I used:

• 1.5-2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, cubed and marinated in Italian salad dressing.
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup real mayonnaise
• 1 cup (2 stalks) diced celery
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cup - sliced red grapes
• 1/3 cup - crushed pecans
• Juice from 1/2 lemon

Saute the chicken 5-6 minutes (or until cooked all the way through) in a skillet, drain any excess liquid and then cook it "dry" for another 2 minutes to add color. Empty the chicken into a large mixing bowl, add celery, salt and pepper. Squeeze lemon juice, add mayonnaise, stir thoroughly, add grapes and pecans, stir again and then serve.

You can probably add the ingredients in any order you want, but I figured the idea of having the grapes was to keep their original flavor for the complimentary sweet/salt/sour flavors in the chicken salad.

This recipe makes about 6 large sandwich size servings, maybe more. I split the leftovers with Lauren, so I don't know exactly what she got out of the portion she had. I'd estimate that when it was all said and done, this probably cost me $15 with a loaf of (Aunt Millie's 12 Grain) bread and some Swiss cheese and made about 3 lbs of chicken salad. So maybe it wasn't a whole lot cheaper than the grocery store, but at least I could be sure it didn't suck.

That photo is not the actual dish I made, but in the future I'll try to take pictures of the food I blog about.