My mother makes this cheese ball for family gatherings, so when I got the recipe from her, I wanted to make sure I could always find it. It works great with all kinds of crackers.

This is a copycat version of the Olive Garden restaurant soup. It’s another great recipe for cold weather, especially served with fresh, homemade rolls.

I wanted a low effort sweet and sour rice dish, and this was the best I could find. I do need to check into finding a different meat to use that doesn’t require any more effort, though.

This is truly comfort food on a cold winter evening. And with the Instant Pot, the whole thing can be done in an hour.

This Basmati Rice flavored with aromatic spices makes the perfect bed for any curry.

My wife and I love Indian food, but most of the recipes I’ve tried at home haven’t come out nearly as good as what we can get at the restaurant, so I usually don’t bother. She finally talked me into trying this one, and although butter chicken isn’t one of my favorites (it’s at the milder end of the spectrum), this turned out really well.

I always liked Cream of Wheat cereal growing up, but we didn’t have it very often. And while we’ve been raising our kids, we’ve usually opted for hot cereals that I could buy in bulk, since they end up much cheaper. But this week I found that our local WinCo sells Bob’s Red Mill Wheat Farina in bulk, so I bought some to see how it compares. Turns out it tastes just like I remember, for pennies per serving.

Yet another something I dug up for our Christmas in Bethlehem dinner. This was probably the most exotic thing I served, and I may have been the only one who enjoyed it. That being said, a little goes a long way.

When we did our Christmas in Bethlehem dinner, I needed some kind of bread to go with it. Barley is probably more traditional than wheat, so I went with this recipe.

I originally put this together for a Christmas in Bethlehem dinner, but it turned out well enough that I thought I’d better record the recipe, if only in case we make the Christmas Eve dinner thing a tradition.

I really only make this stuff for New Year’s Eve, but I want it how I remember it as a kid, not the current incarnation in a bag at the grocery store. The hard part is actually finding bagel chips anymore.

I’m not a big fish lover, but occasionally I serve it to the family. This is the simplest thing I’ve ever found. I just grab a big bag of individually frozen tilapia fillets and cook up the whole thing.

I’ve made Jambalaya for New Year for 10 or 15 years. Red beans and rice is much more traditional, but this is much more compelling. Here is my current incarnation, hurried along with the pressure cooker. It pairs great with collard greens (though I’m one of the few who actually eats them).

For some strange reason, I actually like greens, and when I was looking for something to go with our New Year jambalaya, it had to be collard greens. The key to good, Southern-style greens is lots and lots of fatty pork, and we all know bacon is the world’s best fatty pork.

I needed a side dish filler to go with various Mexican dishes I serve at home (so that I can get away with serving less of the expensive stuff), and this fits the bill. Some of my kids really love it, while others just ignore it and focus on the expensive dishes. I’ve listed it here with Instant Pot instructions, since that’s how I now prepare it, but it’s easy enough to adapt to a regular stove top.

I love Chile Rellenos, but the level of effort is just too high to make at home. This casserole, on the the other hand, is simple enough to serve occasionally. We’ve been making this for a few years now, but when I had to go digging through a box of loose recipes in order to make it for Christmas Eve the other night, I realized I’d better get it online.

For our church Christmas dinner this year, we were invited to dress up in biblical costumes and imagine that we were in Bethlehem on the night of Christ’s birth. Unfortunately, we were one of only two families that actually dressed up, and the meal served was ham and potatoes. That was fine, but it put my wife and I in the mood to go a little bit further at home. So when Christmas Eve came, we decided to serve a meal closer to what might have been eaten in Bethlehem during that time period. It’s certainly not accurate, but it did give a better feel for what it might have been like to be there and gave us things to talk about that centered more on the birth of Jesus instead of presents and Santa Clause.

My wife has been a big fan of this type of soup for a long time, but this is only the first or second time I’ve attempted to make it for her myself. Fortunately, it turned out so well that I had to record the recipe for the future. To make it fancier, you can garnish it with sour cream, grated cheese, diced avocado, tortilla chips, and/or chopped fresh cilantro.

Since I can no longer eat pita bread or gyros meat (because it contains breadcrumbs), this is the best I can do for a Greek food fix. Luckily, this combination is fabulous.

One Monday evening my kids were begging for a sweet treat, but there wasn’t anything readily available. It sounded like too much effort to mix and bake cookies or cupcakes (even if my daughter did it), and I didn’t feel like driving everybody through the McDonald’s drive through for a 59 cent ice cream cone.