Some Of My Favorite Recipes 

Learn how to make your own Italian Bread. This is a very simple and great recipe! There is nothing like fresh made bread at the dinner table. Keep your family at the table longer with delicious fresh baked bread!

Crappie are one of the most sought after freshwater game fish in North America. Due mostly to there mild flavored, white, flaky meat. They are wonderful table fair. Fried, baked, broiled, or blackened they are always delicious. Spring is the time of year crappie make their annual spawning run up in to the shallows. Here in NC that is normally around mid April. At this time they are much easier to catch than the rest of the year. Crappie normally stay in the cooler depths during the summer. When deep they are much harder to target. Spring's crappie spawn brings angles by the thousands to N.C. lakes. Spring crappie fishing has been a tradition for me for as long as I can remember. Very few years went by where I did not go. It has always been one of my favorite fisheries. It is hard to top the excitement of the peak of the spawn. Many times we have caught hundreds of crappie in a day. Often filling up coolers with delicious fillets for the family to enjoy. Crappie fishing during the spring spawn can be one of the easiest fisheries in the world. But one of the most frustrating. If you do not time your trip during the peak of the spawn. It can be very hard to locate the fish. They could be from 12 feet to 1 foot of water. Being able to find the fish during this time is what makes a good crappie fisherman.

Make and can your own spaghetti sauce from fresh home grown tomatoes! There is nothing like opening up a jar of home made spaghetti sauce in winter. Store bought sauce can’t hold a candle to sauce made from fresh home grown tomatoes. Learn to can your own and have it on the shelf for up to a year! My family loves spaghetti. We eat it every week or two. Before we started making our own sauce we would eat it once a month or two. It is just so much better than store bought. As well as much more convenient when you can just grab a jar out of the cabinet. In every jar is the fresh taste of home grown tomatoes. This recipe is my grandmother’s. She taught me how to make it and can it many years ago. I have made 30 or 40 quarts every year since. Growing up we would always eat Sunday lunch at her house. Everyone’s favorite was her spaghetti made with homemade sauce. Canning has become a part of life for me. Every year I can corn, green beans, jam, tomatoes, peppers, salsa, and spaghetti sauce. We love having fresh fruit and veggies for the dinner table. We do not eat out much so having canned goodies at our finger tips is very nice. We can eat at home much cheaper and often have better meals. I hope everyone tries their own spaghetti sauce. You will not be disappointed. Just be careful because it is hard to go back! Once you get a taste you will be hooked! I have used a tomato and fruit strainer from Cabelas for years. It makes the sauce making experience much easier. If you do not have one of these it is not a problem. Quarter your tomatoes and dice your onions and peppers. Cook for 45 minutes and run through a food mill. Then return to the pot and heat your sauce back up before canning. For those who do not know what a food mill is I will link one for you. I haven’t used this one, but you will know what I am talking about. OXO Good Grips Food Mill https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000I0MGKE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_t-ZoFbJB09CG6

How to Smoke chicken quarters on your smoker or grill. Chicken quarters are a go to for fundraisers. Due primarily to their very low cost. These are a delicious and cheap way to feed your family! The key to making juicy chicken is to watch the internal temperature. Over cooked chicken can ruin the best seasoning ever!

BBQ is a universal term that is created by cooking meat over a fire. For generations the go to BBQ recipe is pulled pork. Be it a cut of pork from a butcher or a whole pig! Pulled pork is a favorite of so many and even has a festival celebrating North Carolina’s BBQ heritage. Growing up in North Carolina BBQ pork was a large part of what we ate. Mostly on special occasions. This was always one of my favorite foods to eat. As a child I remember my Dad painstakingly smoking pork butts and shoulders for hours on end. All that work made a delicious meal for the whole family for a few days. My go to was always the BBQ sandwich. Smoking a whole butt or shoulder takes time and commitment. Over the years as I started a family of my own time was not always easy to come by. Therefore I started to find ways to make the process faster without loosing the traditional flavor. When smoking meat it only takes three to four hours to get that traditional smoke flavor. After this time the meat can be taken off the smoker and placed at a lower temperature in the oven. Doing this keeps the meat at a more ever temperature allowing cook time to decrease. As well as turning the temperature up to 300 degrees. Smokers have come a long way over the years. Electric smokers are much safer but still have a very slight chance of catching fire. When I am using the smoker I will never leave home. Just to weigh on the side of caution. By moving the meat to the oven it is much safer to leave it unattended. Still only for short amounts of time. This allows you to do a lot more with your day and still have an amazing meal for the family.