My #AllstarsMazola® Mission

Boy have I missed my Allrecipes Allstars assignments the past couple of months!  The program took a little bit of a break as it reorganized and evolved a little, and my fellow Allstars and I were going through withdrawals of sorts.

Until I got a surprise box in the mail from Allrecipes a couple of weeks ago!  Woohoo!

Inside the box was a bottle of Mazola corn oil and quite a bit of information about recent studies that show that corn oil can be part of a healthy diet.

I can honestly say that I've never purchased a bottle of corn oil in my life...I'm picky about my olive oil, but tend to go with what is cheapest for the rest of my cooking oils.  Vegetable, canola...always kind of overlooked the corn.  That's one of my favorite things about being an Allstar, though- I get to try products I might have otherwise overlooked!

A California Girl Learns a New Trick

I love green beans.  Period.

I don't care how they're prepared- fresh from a farmer's market or simply reheated from a can, I'm going to love them.  

I'm going to DEVOUR them.

My mom laughs about how I used to eat them by the can as a kid.

Well, then I moved to Tennessee ...Southern cuisine is the one type of cooking that I continually struggle with- and between Mississippi and Tennessee I've lived in the South for 12 years now.  That seems like such a long time!  Ugh.  I'm getting old.

I once made corn bread so bad my ex-husband spit it out.  I couldn't fry anything- I had no idea what I was doing.  And green beans?  Well...um...I wasn't used to cooking them with bacon grease/fatback/etc.

Pull-Apart Soda Bread Rolls

In keeping with my recent St. Patrick's Day theme, I was looking up recipes for soda bread.  I stumbled across the idea of Pull-Apart Soda Bread in Martha Stewart's magazine...but unfortunately I've had pretty bad luck with her recipes.  In my experience they tend to be off in lots of ways and I'm a little wary of them.

 

The idea, though, was great!

I started with this recipe for Amazingly Easy Irish Soda Bread and it definitely lived up to it's name!  I did have to add a little extra buttermilk, but that's ok.  I liked that it was basic- a lot of recipes dress the bread up, and I wanted to keep it simple to go with dinner.

Starting the Day Off Right on St. Patrick's Day

Growing up, I swore up and down that one day my kids would be able to eat whatever cereal they wanted.

They'd have their pick of the cereal aisle!  Bring on the Golden Grahams, Trix, and Cookie Crisp!

It seemed wrong that while my friends could eat whatever they wanted in the morning, I was limited to Cheerios, Kix, Chex, Grape Nuts, Wheeties, etc.

It seemed CRAZY that my mom allowed my sister and I to pick out sugary cereal once a year- for our birthday.

It was a big deal.  My sister and I would spend weeks, dreamily planning which cereal we would pick with sugary dreams running through our heads.

Corned Beef Cheeseballs- Made Mini of Course!

So, we've discussed my love of mini foods ad nauseam, right?

Well...here we go again.

This is one mini food that is super awesome, though!

A couple of years ago I came across this recipe from Taste of Home (back when it was affiliated with Allrecipes.com) for Individual Cheese Balls.

Why are mini cheese balls so brilliant?  Well, cheese balls are yummy...but we generally don't eat them unless there's some kind of gathering.  I don't generally find myself sitting in front of the TV with a giant cheese ball and a box of crackers on a regular basis- do you?

My original photo from 2012 of Individual Cheese Balls

These itty bitty cheese balls are game changers!

(Delicious) St. Patrick's Day Treats

My daughter was an almost-St-Patrick's-Day baby.

Via Our Best Bites

Though she doesn't share her birthday with a holiday that REALLY overshadows her special day, it does mean that her classroom birthday celebrations tend to pull double duty.

A couple of years ago, when she was in Kindergarten, her teacher asked me if I wouldn't mind making the cupcakes green and running with the St. Patrick's Day theme.

I think it was my favorite birthday celebration yet- and those homemade cupcakes were way more yummy than the store-bought Justin Bieber cupcakes she had me buy last year...

Broccoli Cheddar Nuggets with Comeback Sauce

Have you ever heard of Comeback Sauce?  It seems that every mention of it I come across in a cooking magazine heralds it as "The Sauce of the South," yet I had yet to try it once.

I hadn't seen it on a menu, or had it served to me by a friend.

Have I just been frequenting the wrong places?  I know it's supposedly more popular in Mississippi than Tennessee, but I don't remember seeing it during my 4+ years there, either.  Catfish, yes...lots of catfish.  :-)

I dunno.  Whatever the reason for this sauce staying under my culinary radar, after seeing it mentioned yet again- this time in Southern Living magazine- I knew I had to finally break down and try it for myself.