Some food, some drink.

Anyone with a decent food processor can process horseradish. But if you wanna bring the devil out in your horseradish, you truly gotta pay attention to the details. Surface area is key to great horseradish, but without the right amount of vinegar to lock in that pungency, all the heat in your horseradish will fizzle in just a few weeks' time. This video I did for The Hays Daily News is proof of just how good homemade horseradish can be. It's a lot easier to explain what you're doing when you're not in tears, so if you want to really know how it's done, then be sure to check to check out this original post…

It's just not Christmas at our house if we don't do a little cookie baking as a family. My kids wanted to decorate some gingerbread men, so I took the opportunity to kick the tires on a gingerbread cookie recipe from my modest collection of community cookbooks. This is a cookie carried by the aromas of ginger, cinnamon, and clove; bolstered with the sweetness of molasses and brown sugar. And, while I've not changed much in the way of proportions for this eggless gingerbread cookie recipe, I have taken the liberty of putting more of a Kansas spin on the whole deal by making this a 100% whole wheat gingerbread cookie, and spiking the dough with an apple cider made right here in the Sunflower State.

While some folks believe that the warming aroma of cinnamon best represents the Christmas season, there are just as many people that identify with the cool tingle of mint. Christmas cookies are best when made with a healthy dose of tradition; and ever since I began doing a holiday baking regiment, these Andes mint-topped chocolate cookies have been a must-bake. The hardest thing about making this mint chocolate cookie (other than unwrapping all those wafer-thin mints) is the waiting involved: Dough must be sufficiently chilled so as to prevent too much spreadage, and ensure that each cookie is ever so chewy on the outside while remaining rich and fudgy on the inside.

The holidays are busy for most of us, and a serendipitous quality of this cookie recipe is that it's…

I make no excuses where my lack of temperance is concerned. Sometimes, it's just nice to kick your feet up at the end of the day and sip on a nip of liquor and forget about all the crap you didn't get done (if there's one thing I've learned it that it'll still be there tomorrow).

Anyhow, during the holiday season I figure if you're gonna take a booze break that you might as well be seasonal and festive about the whole thing; and where that's concerned You can't do much better than homemade cinnamon schnapps. This schnapps recipe started out as one passed around by neighbors that ended up in my father-in-law's pocket. It was always good, but still needed just a little tweaking to make it consistent. One of the secrets to this recipe's consistency and mouthfeel is the judicious…

I'm no expert when it comes to designing cakes. Even a simple layer cake takes me forever to assemble. One layer cake in particular took me so stinking long that I had to film the thing in time-lapse to show it all step-by step. Seriously, if I gotta bake, I'd much rather have my mitts in some bread dough; but you can't really get a birthday cake outta that now can you?

Anyhow, I reckon that y'all are busy too; and while sometimes you're doing good just to throw a box cake mix in the oven,…

Somewhere along the way, casseroles got a bad rap. I'm a big fan of a good casserole, but I gotta say that there's a dogma associated with one-dish cooking that inherently dooms a casserole to mediocrity. The good casseroles are not a "dump and bake" affair. Proper casserole making is akin to Tetris in a Pyrex dish; flavors are built up and balanced in a way that makes somewhat disparate ingredients all fit together.

For this weeknight-friendly turkey and rice casserole dish, my surplus leftover holiday turkey is showcased in a matrix of rice, fresh spinach, and cheddar cheese that's been all bound together with a creamy turkey stock-fortified sauce that's entirely devoid of any canned, condensed soup. A drizzle of Sriracha to finish is optional, but recommended.

The dust has settled. The dishes are clean. Company has all gone home.

Your big ol' holiday meal is all but a memory, but there in your fridge tucked under a tent of foil is the remains of your meticulously-prepared turkey. Once the meat's picked from the bone, the party ain't over. Your turkey has one swan song left to sing, and that means a few quarts of really good stock for you. Making turkey stock is so stinking easy that it truly makes it a crime to chuck that carcass without harvesting all that full-bodied flavor first. If you have a large slow cooker…

Every year, I do my Thanksgiving turkey a little different, and as long as I got this little patch of Interwebs here, I figure it'd be a crime for me to share my post-game report as far as what worked and what didn't for the greater good of all of us that work hard to put the biggest meal of the year on the table.

For Thanksgiving Turkey this year, I went with a recipe I'd been tinkering with since last Christmas: A fifteen pound bird brined in copious amounts of black pepper and garlic, rubbed down with even more black pepper and garlic, and finally slow-smoked over big ol' hunks of pecan wood on my barbeque. While there was a pretty significant charcoal malfunction, I was able to use the science behind smoking to take the problem in stride, and still be able o serve one of the most distinctly flavorful…