Liz Carey

You know, if you want to eat healthy, the best thing to do, in my opinion, is move out of Kentucky. Heck, you may even want to move out of the South all together. I mean, let’s face it, Kentucky cuisine, and Southern staples, are not exactly healthy eating. The state dish — the Hot Brown — is essentially two slices of white bread layered with turkey and ham, slathered under cheese sauce and topped with bacon and more cheese … and then there’s a tomato slice just to show off we do eat vegetables, right? And then, there’s...

When my youngest was in middle school, I started making him lunch to take to school. I did this partly because he was a picky eater, partly because I didn’t think the school lunches were particularly healthy, and partly because I’m a skin-flint in some areas. While the lunches at his school cost $3.50, I could make my own lunch for him for a fraction of that. Think about it — a pack of hot dog buns costs $1, a pack of hot dogs costs $1, a pound of apples costs $3, peanut butter is $3 a jar and...

For years, I have used bourbon in cooking as a flavor booster.  I put it in my Derby Pie. I put it in sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving. I put it in my egg nog on Christmas Eve.  But according to Liquor.com, it’s much more versatile than that.  Adding bourbon to dishes does give it that smoky goodness we’ve all come to associate with Kentucky’s favorite spirit. But it can also give it a punch of alcohol if you don’t cook the spirits out of the dish. Just like with wine, you want to give your dish the flavor of...

In the words of the old poem — “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz/ I wonder where the flowers is.” If you are willing to get creative, said Jennifer Wilson with Wilson’s Nursery, you can find them in your food.  Flowers in baking is all the rage on cooking shows these days, but for Wilson, cooking with flowers has been something she’s done for years. While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted her “Cooking with Flowers” class last year, her love of teaching others about edible flowers hasn’t waned.  Flowers add not just color and decorations, she said, but their...

Every now and again, you’ll find an ingredient that people are going nuts for and think to yourself, “Well, heck, that grows wild in my backyard!” Ramps is one of those ingredients. Ramps are wild leeks and every spring they pop up for a brief period to add a deliciously delicate, spring-like flavor to dishes. Lately, well, before the pandemic anyway, you would find them in menu items in the toniest of gourmet restaurants. But they weren’t always the hip new thing everyone just had to use to show off their culinary skills. Ramps (Photo by Anna Voss on...