You don't have to buy canned cream of chicken soup. I'm embarrassed to say this notion only just occurred to me. Instead, I've generally avoided any and all casseroles that call for either cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup. Chalk it up to the childhood trauma that is tuna casserole (and the extreme amounts of sodium). Continuing that lightning bolt, you can make what is basically cream of chicken soup – a béchamel with part chicken broth, part milk. That’s exactly what went down with this King Ranch Casserole.
Ever get the feeling we’re all making the same 100 recipes in slightly different ways? I make a black bean salad periodically that’s just a thrown together mix of black beans, corn, red onion, tomato, sometimes cucumber and avocado with lime, cumin and olive oil, and a little salt and pepper. A few states over, it’s got black-eyed peas, jalapeno and cilantro and they call it Cowboy Caviar. Call it what you want, this salad doubles as a rustic salsa, and it’s spot on for those of us getting our vegetable on, for those watching football and for general New Year’s good luck.
Half Price Books has been an amazing source for cookbooks. Somehow there are always good finds, whether semi-recent releases or books of a certain vintage. I always want to leave bookmarks or post-its sticking out of some books saying, "BUY THIS ONE!!" And while sometimes you know why books end up on the clearance shelf -- 80s microwave cooking, anyone? -- others are a mystery. The El Paso Chile Company's Texas Border Cookbook
-- was one of those mysteries, but the recipe for masa biscuits alone made it a bargain at twice the price.
