American Grub – FL, AZ, AL, and OR

by heavenstobetty, posted in Homeschool

We started cooking our way through the 50 states with this cookbook in March 2024. We’re making the recipes in no particular order.

Florida

My parents gave us some homegrown oranges (from California) and the recipe for Florida was fresh squeezed orange juice.

California oranges

After juicing the oranges and enjoying the fresh juice, we tried an idea I’d seen in a camping cookbook and scooped out the stringy juiceless pulpy stuff and filled the rind “cups” with brownie mix and baked them.

Orange rind brownie cups

Our secret ingredient in the brownie mix is orange olive oil. It’s So Good! If you can find orange olive oil, you’ve got to try it. My younger sister gave me this idea several years ago. She’s a culinary genius! Unfortunately, this particular batch of brownies was inedibly underdone but the concept was so unique I had to share the idea.

I also wanted to make key lime pie because that’s the culinary dish that reminds me most of Florida. I found a recipe online.

www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/key-lime-pie

This lime pie was So yummy!

Arizona

We made a version of Navajo fry bread as part of our Arizona Unit Study.

We put Cowboy Caviar on top, 4 out of 5 people in our family liked this dinner a lot! Some of is even requested to have it again tonight!

Fry bread and cowboy caviar

Alabama

There are two recipes for Alabama in the book, homemade peanut butter made in a food processor. This was a hit! My husband loves it, he says it’s so much better than store bought peanut butter (don’t tell him that I threw in the last bit of honey roasted peanuts).

“Wait, wait, put those back – I didn’t get a photo yet!” – sampling the PB on graham crackers

There was also a recipe for an interesting concoction called “nutty putty” which was an edible play-dough made with equal parts peanut butter, honey, powdered sugar, and powdered milk. None of us liked it.

Nutty putty

Oregon

The recipe for Oregon was simple, cherries and sweetened cream.

Simply delicious!

We had leftover cherries.

So we made cherry hand pies aka semi-homemade pop tarts with frozen puff pastry and homemade cherry filling.

I couldn’t pass this up at Grocery Outlet, it was too perfect!

Where do you live? What food or special recipe reminds you of your home state? Maybe we’ll make the recipe for your state next!

20 thoughts on “American Grub – FL, AZ, AL, and OR”

  5. This is such a fun idea! We never went back to Joanie’s Blue Crab Shack in Big Cypress. That’s where we had the fry bread with the really good salsa. We plan to go back next Winter, so I’ll be on the lookout for what that salsa is made of. I’m not sure what foods Missouri is known for. Toasted ravioli. Ice cream cones. We do have apples here – so apple pie, maybe. Fun post!

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  7. What a fun idea! Especially the cowboy caviar; I’ll have to look into it. I’m from the West Coast, so oranges would probably be one thing that reminds me of my home lol. I did have a few friends from NC who said livermush was a dish from their homestate…but I probably won’t try it XD.

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