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Orange Bourbon Cranberry Bread

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We are in full swing of the holiday season & my favorite holiday will be coming up this month, Christmas! I love this time of year! The holidays allow for us to take a step back from our every day lives, to reflect & enjoy what is most important, our families, friends & loved ones.

For me & my family cooking is a traditional part of the holidays. We spend the week before Christmas preparing cooking & baking for the Feast of the Seven fishes on Christmas Eve, then another big dinner on Christmas day. Needless to say its a lot of food for two-3 days, but thats just what we enjoy doing, sitting around the table together, catching up eating, drinking, laughing & crying!

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Sweet Potato Cornbread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce

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Food is a way of life in the south, and looking at southern cookbooks, magazines, and television shows, one could easily assume our favorite part of the meal is dessert. From church pot-luck suppers, to office holiday parties, to a night out with friends, desserts are always plentiful. It’s also fairly easy to sneak a little whiskey into your dessert recipe.

The recipe I’m sharing today is inspired by Chef Ed Lee, of 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky. I started with Chef Lee’s recipes for Sweet Potato Cornbread Pudding and Bourbon Sauce, but then messed with it a bit, because I can’t leave well enough alone. This recipe is broken into 4 steps; cornbread, sweet potatoes, custard, and sauce. If you’re like me and like to make cornbread regularly, this is a great way to use leftovers, and also save a little time when building the dish. Instead of the traditional, cloyingly sweet bread pudding, you end up with a dish that contrasts sweet and savory, and would make as good a breakfast as it would dessert.

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Bubba’s Honey Sting Wings with CC’s Honey Fire BBQ Sauce

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The inspiration for this recipe came from my most recent trip to Kentucky where I attended this year’s Kentucky Bourbon Affair. One of this year’s evening events was a dinner with the Russell’s. What a fantastic evening where I was able to spend time with Jimmy, his wife Joretta and of course their son Eddie. We started the night off with drinks & appetizers on the 127-year-old Young’s High Bridge. Young’s’ a former railroad bridge, is now one of the highest bungee jumping sites and even if there was bungee jumping that evening, I’m not sure if I could have gone through with it.

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People’s Choice Beef Jerky Review: Extra Protein Edition

In Food by Patrick "Pops" GarrettLeave a Comment

When Brian Bianchetti from People’s Choice Beef Jerky reached out to us a few weeks ago, it didn’t take long for us to agree to try his family’s jerky a possible review. It wasn’t just because we’re fans of beef jerky but because we’re fans of folks who still take the time to create things by hand and with passion. Brian’s father calls this “made with purpose.”

Representing the fourth generation of the Bianchetti family, Brian works alongside with his family proving that if you focus on making a quality product and build healthy relationships a business can survive and thrive, ultimately becoming something more than just a way to make money. It’s that focus on values which are all too often absent in today’s business world that sold us on featuring them on Bourbon & Banter.

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Bourbon Inspired Foods: Great Ways To Eat Your Bourbon

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Since the bourbon trend has been popular over the last several years, increasingly, bourbon is being infused into food culture as an ingredient. Living in Portland, Oregon, eating and drinking is serious business and taken to the highest art form. Bourbon is no longer regaled as just an ingredient in barbecue sauce, but can now be found in everything from ice cream to pickles. Therefore, I set out to sample some of these bourbon infused/inspired foods to see if they are worth a try, or simply a marketing gimmick to make money off the hot trend of bourbon?

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How to Throw an Authentic Last Minute Kentucky Derby Party

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Derby time in the Commonwealth of Kentucky is a big deal. Partying begins weeks before the festivities at Churchill Downs with fireworks, festivals, concerts, and, of course, lavish gatherings. It’s no surprise that even when we leave the Bluegrass, we still see the first Saturday in May as a reason to look fancy and party. (Unless, apparently, you are a Dartmouth sorority and will henceforth miss out on everything that is wonderful about this historic event.) Even if you aren’t a native of Kentucky, we still encourage you to share in the revelry that is – according to Hunter S. Thompson – decadent and depraved about the Kentucky Derby. But I am going to focus on the decadence here; I’ll leave the depravity up to you.

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BJ & The Smoker

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About five and a half years ago my wife bought me a smoker for my birthday. Sometime before she had brought up the idea to me and I was a bit lukewarm to it. You see, I wasn’t sure I wanted to put the time and effort into another new hobby and have it become a bit of an obsession. Besides, I already had a battle tested Weber that keeps going like a German automobile and that doesn’t even take into account my less than healthy relationship with bourbon and cigars. If you know me, I’m a HUGE carnivore. I LOVE meat. All kinds. Basically, I’m an animal lover. I LOVE eating animals. Healthy or not, I don’t do lots of fruit and vegetables. At least not nearly the amount that I should be eating. I just kind of feel like vegetables are what my food eats.

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Bourbon Brined Chicken Breasts, Halleluiah!

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Bourbon love is widespread, and if you’re like me, well, first of all, welcome to my world, and second, you’re likely wondering “How can I can get more bourbon into my life?” One of the easiest ways to do this is in your food prep, and in this case, your grilling. It turns out that bourbon is a wonderful and tasty way to flavor grilled foods and satisfy that bourbon fix you’re after.