>When I am cooking a dinner, I like to start my prep with a salad. That way, I have a light dish to steal bites from while I work on preparing everything else.

Shred the cabbage with a grater, toss it with the apple cider vinegar, and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Wash the carrots thoroughly and shop fine. Toss them in the bowl with the olive oil salt and pepper. Once the cabbage has pickled slightly (at least 40 minutes before serving), combine it in a bowl with the carrots and toss. Serve.

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browning the onions, peppers and sausage I am starting off the Soul Food Revival series with Red Rice- my Aunt Sara Jean's signature dish and one of our family's most prized recipes. It is innocuous in many Charleston homes but rarely appears in restaurants - it is a taste of 'real' Charleston, if you will. Red Rice is essentially a tomato pilau that might remind you of a simplified Spanish peaella, with sausauge but no seafood. It's rich, satisfying flavors inspire a cultlike following among those who make and eat it. It is a simple one pot dish that you can prep in 10 minutes and leave to it's on devices while you attend to other matters around the house. When it's all said and done, you get a warm bowl of savory goodness that is a snap to make.

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Photo Credit :: b.vikki vintage

FOOD + A DASH OF FOLKS + SOME TUNES + FALL WEATHER = A DARN GOOD TIME

FALL is the perfect time to gather friends and family to make - and enjoy together - savory, rich, flavor filled meals whose preperation are a warm up for fast approaching holiday feasts.

I am officially designating this Fall as the season for Slammin' Dinner Parties at the Crib.  I kicked mine off with a birthday blowout for my BFF Jeanette's birthday. We both have Southern roots, so we decided to create a menu inspired by the old school roadside diners, chicken shacks, and juke joints (speakeasies with food that I would liken to pub fare) that made significant contributions to Southern food's reputation for deliciousness in the popular imagination.

For the next few weeks, I will be posting dishes here that are very simple and require only a few ingredients; many of them are culled from my family's recipes.

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