Tommy Fries

There’s a restaurant chain in my neck of the woods called T Bonz Gill and Grill. One location is on Market Street, right in the heart of downtown Charleston. I’ve never eaten there, although, we did stop there once for a beer.

So, when one of the guys that I used to work with brought a food concoction for his lunch several months ago and said it was a copy-cat recipe from TBonz, I didn’t have a clue. Potatoes and ranch dressing and cheese and bacon, he said. He called it “Tommy Fries,” and frankly, I thought it sounded pretty damn good.

So, later that day I proceeded to search the internet to find a recipe. I checked TBonz’s website and although, it didn’t offer a recipe, it did list something sounding ridiculously similar on its Appetizer menu: Tommy Texas Cheese Fries, made from potato wedges, ranch, jack and cheddar cheeses and applewood smoked bacon.

Further internet searching did yield a copy-cat recipe, from someone named “Bogey’sMom,” so I used it for my own variation, I call “Tommy Fries.”

This dish is a definite hit with guests who always ask me to share the recipe. And, so today, I share it with you!

Use 5 or 6 medium to large potatoes. Use any kind you like!

Add a little salt and boil until just tender. You don’t want the potatoes to fall apart when you drain them. In the meantime, start frying some bacon.

After you remove the bacon from the skillet, add the potatoes to brown. This skillet is a tad too small for all these taters!

Browning nicely!

Pour some ranch dressing into the bottom of an oven safe dish and tilt the pan to get the whole bottom of it covered in ranch creaminess. Put the potatoes on top.

Add crumbled bacon.

Add cheeses.

Broil in oven until the cheese melts.

Scrape the bottom of the dish to scoop out all the goodies.

Tommy Fries

Ingredients

½ bottle ranch dressing
½ pound bacon
¼  pound shredded cheddar cheese
¼ pound shredded pepper jack cheese
(sometimes, I use shredded mozzarella. That’s the thing with cheese – it’s all good)
5 or 6 potatoes
Salt and pepper

Directions

  1. Peel potatoes and cut into large cubes or wedges and boil until just soft. (You can opt to boil the potatoes with their skins on and peel after they cool, if you want, or leave the skins on!)
  2. Drain and season with salt and pepper.
  3. In the meantime, fry bacon until crisp. Crumble bacon and set aside.
  4. Brown cubed cooked potatoes in the bacon grease until nicely browned.
  5. Pour ranch dressing into the bottom of an oven safe platter.
  6. Add potatoes on top of the dressing.
  7. Add crumbled bacon and cheeses.
  8. Broil for a few minutes in the oven until cheese melts and everything is gooey.
  9. Enjoy
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Hooray, it’s oyster roasting season

Brian and I went to Charleston on Saturday to get me a crab pot as an early birthday present. I know a crab pot is not a common gift choice, but it is exactly what I wanted and since crabbing is really good now, I certainly could not wait the few more weeks till my birthday to get it.

Making a trip to Charleston is always a big deal to me; I call it, “going to town.” I was certainly excited to be going to Boater’s World, a very cool boating store with lots and lots of neat boating gear, in addition to a nice selection of crab traps.  But, when we got there, it wasn’t there! So, then we went to West Marine, where there were no crab pots and very little other cool boating stuff. But, it did have a friendly clerk that sent us to Ace Hardware, where there were quite a few crab pots to choose from! So, yep, I got one and am planning a crabbing expedition next weekend.

On the way home, we stopped at our favorite fishmonger’s and got a 40 pound sack of oysters – just enough for the two of us! (By the way, the woman equivalent of a fishmonger is called a fishwife.)

It’s official: oyster roasting season is here. Yay!

A turkey fryer can be used for so much more than frying turkeys.

A turkey fryer can be used for so much more than frying turkeys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooking a few potatoes and a couple of ears of corn, since 40 pounds of oysters will not be enough.

Cooking a few potatoes and a couple of ears of corn, since 40 pounds of oysters will not be enough.

Steam 'em just till the shells pop.

Steam 'em just till the shells pop.

First batch is done.

First batch is done.

Yum.

Yum.

                                                                                                                                                                  FYI, oysters are one of the most nutritionally well balanced of foods, containing protein, carbohydrates and lipids and are ideal for low-cholesterol diets. They are an excellent source of vitamins A, B1 (thiamin), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), C (ascorbic acid) and D (calciferol). Four or five of these yummy bivalves supply the recommended daily allowance of iron, copper, iodine, magnesium, calcium, zinc, manganese and phosphorus.

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I’m a Palmettovore

melonYes, I’m a Palmettovore. I guess I’ve been one for a while and never knew it! In order to explain what it means, I need to go back a little in time.

There has been a movement in recent years, mostly in conjunction with getting us to live greener, encouraging people to eat locally grown foods. A new word was coined to describe people that go out of their way to consume locally grown – localvores or locavores.

corn-0081There are a few good reasons to aspire to be a localvore. One is that we are supporting our local farmers, our neighbors. Two, is that we are reducing our carbon footprint on the earth by reducing a long chain of intervention from processors, manufacturers, shippers and retailers in getting our food to the table. Three, fresh local products are fresher, more nutritious and taste better.

Basically, a localvore encourages consumers to buy from farm markets or to produce their own food because it is better quality and environmentally friendly since supermarkets import foods using more fossil fuels and non-renewable sources.

veggiesHugh Weathers, Commissioner of The South Carolina Department of Agriculture, says that South Carolinians spend $6 billion a year on food, yet everyone from every facet of the food business in South Carolina gets less than six percent of those dollars.

So, our Department of Agriculture has started a huge campaign to educate people of the benefits of  “home grown” and to get everyone on board.  When consumers see “Fresh on the Menu, Certified SC Grown” on a restaurant menu, they know that at least 25 percent of the product comes from South Carolina. We also see this sign on certain foods in grocery stores: “Certified South Carolina.”  We see billboards that say  “Locally Grown. It’s to dine for,” and “Nothing’s Fresher, Nothing’s Finer: Buy South Carolina.”

The latest is a video. My friend Randolph is in it. He is the ear of corn. You can watch it on You Tube. Yeah, I know, but please watch it for me.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCnh5iPE5t4

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