Mariner's Slow-Cooker "Baked" Beans

This time of year, many of us are looking forward to several, if not many, celebratory gatherings with family and friends. Quite often those gatherings are organized around a feast of some sort, which means food and cooking are on my mind... again.

Mariner's Quick and Easy Italian-Style Sausage

Let's be clear about this, right from the start. This recipe is not an Italian Sausage recipe. For one thing, there's no fennel in it. For another it has a lot of what Americans think of as traditional Italian seasonings, that do not appear in any of the "real" Italian Sausage recipes I have found. So, what we really have here, is a basic pork sausage that attempts to taste the way most Americans might think an Italian sausage should taste - hence the appellation, "Italian style".

Mariner's bologna

As a child I was never a great fan of bologna, but I could eat it without gagging. It wasn't that I disliked the flavor, or even that we had it so terribly often that I grew tired of it — in fact, although we had bologna more often than other cold cuts, we rarely ate cold cuts at all. It just never inspired any great desire in me, and this response continued pretty much into full adulthood. This all changed while I was visiting my sister this past summer.

Liver Pudding, Mariner's First Try

Not long ago, I posted my Grandma's recipe for Liver Pudding (as remembered by my Mother), and.early this week I decided to give it a try. I ran into several problems, however, the greatest of which was procuring the main ingredient: pork liver.

Fish Sausage

"Why fish sausage?" you might ask.  Well, more and more, so might I.

Olive Loaf - "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes the blues get a hold of you..."

Olive loaf has always been one of my favorite sandwich meats. While I was growing up, it was an expensive treat, only to be had once in a great while.

Mariner's Tartar Sauce

For most of my childhood, ketchup was the only dressing I ever knew about for fried fish. During that time, my family didn't eat in restaurants very often, and when we did, we didn't usually order fish of any kind. Somewhere along about my freshman year of high school, I discovered fried fish sandwiches at some of the fast food establishments, and those sandwiches were dressed with tartar sauce - a new experience for me.  Naturally, I wanted tartar sauce on my fried fish from that point on.

"Buttermilk" Biscuits

This morning I decided to try my hand at biscuits - specifically faux Hardiee's® buttermilk biscuits.  Searching the Internet for existing recipés  yielded quite a few hits, and many used some very strange ingredients (strange to me, anyway - like mayonnaise!); anyhow, the one that hit home with me was actually not in a published recipé, but in a comment made to one.  Thanks to TOTHINEOWNSELFBETRUE, in comments to a post on recipesecrets.net, for a recipé that resonates.  The amounts of ingredients shown for the 4 dozen recipé are pretty much identical to those quoted in the comment.

Grandma's Liver Pudding

Anyone who ever knew much about my father, knew also that he was very fond of dishes containing liver; specifically, the sausages known as liverwurst, braunschweiger, and in particular, homemade Liver Pudding. For those who don't know, braunschweiger is just smoked liverwurst (or these days, perhaps, liverwurst to which commercial liquid smoke has been added...), but Liver Pudding is a completely different, and much simpler, thing.