Reddit mentions: The best new england cooking books

> and you’d be surprised how many condiments are soybean oil based (mustard, ranch, bbq sauce, salad dressings and marinades etc)

Not really, no. Soy, corn, wheat, sugar, and misc. refined starches are everywhere, in shelf-stable packaged foods. You can find mustard with made with no oil or other oils if you look, and proper BBQ sauce without soybean oil (by that I mean savory mustard/turmeric sauces, not that sugar syrup junk that Yankees, and even Carolinians, think is worth eating ;)), but your choices get really limited, really quick. Given all that goes into typical BBQ, I've come to treating it like cake, or ice cream, rather than as an every day food.

> I’ve genuinely tried exploring in the grocery store but so many things have allergens!

Don't buy those. In fact, try to minimize going into the isles, without specific items that you already know you want to buy from them, and stick mostly to the periphery.

Start mostly from actual ingredients, and you will have plenty of variety. Most people don't even realize that I'm a picky eater, thanks to autoimmune issues, including but not limited to allergies, because I'm the one going to the exotic restaurants, and bringing in weird food for lunch at work, or to the pot lucks. I have to mentally strike out most of any restaurant's menu, anywhere I go, or pass on most most of what other people are making. I can't eat a hamburger and not get sick, but my local Korean places make kimchi jigae with all stuff I can eat in it, and it's tasty AF.

With a full kitchen, if you can do some basic cooking, IMO, go to the library or a book store, and check out some big comprehensive cookbooks. It's nice to have something you can just grab and look through (I find Pinterest is great for this, on the modern high-tech side, but good cookbooks tend to have been tested on people, and have little things that your average [b|v]logger will miss). Or, start learning those basics, if that's where you're at. While I've been cooking since I could physically reach everything, I've known a couple people that went from 99% frozen food and take-out to being good cooks within just a couple years, so...

Three come to my mind that are excellent, which I've had for many years now, cherish, that have plenty of easily adjustable recipes, plenty of them that should be just fine, lots of text on process (which matters a lot, and is often overlooked), and with minimal fancy foods:

https://www.amazon.com/Justin-Wilsons-Homegrown-Louisiana-Cookin/dp/0026301253

https://www.amazon.com/Cocina-Familia-Authentic-Mexican-American-Kitchens/dp/0684855259

https://www.amazon.com/Original-Boston-Cooking-School-100th-Anniversary/dp/0883631962

Plenty of taste bias, there, but that's life.

Very Nice. My British friends call this a yorkshire pudding for some reason. I learned it as "egg pancake" cooked in a "spider" (cast iron pan) from Marjorie Standish

http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Cooking-The-Maine-Way/dp/0892723912

Now I have to go make one. You made me hungry!

I wanted to make something that reflected local ingredients as well as some historical recipes. Locally, baked Beans are made not so sweet. The recipe calls for:
3C dry beans (I used Jacobs Cattle and tripled the recipe)
1/4C molasses
2 tbsp mustard (recipe did not say dry or wet, I used both)
Hunk of salt pork
Salt and pepper to taste

Soak beans overnight. Drain and cover with new water in pot. Simmer until skins burst. Add all other Ingredients and cook I'm oven at 250 for 4-6 hours.
The beans came out a perfect consistency and I just added each ingredient until it was to my liking.

The biscuit recipe called for AP flour but I used the buckwheat flour because it was local. I was a bit worried as it is not glutinous but they came out fine. They could have been a bit fluffier. The recipe was as follows:
4C flour
5 tbsp butter
1.5C milk
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Sift dry ingredients. Cut butter into dry ingredients with pastry cutter or two knives. Add milk. Turn out dough onto floured surface. Knead dough until combined. Roll out to an inch thick. Cut biscuits and cook for 10 minutes in a 430 degree oven

I don't have any pictures of the pickles as I made them last year but the traditional way to eat the bean and biscuit dish is to accompany it with Muddy Water Pickles. They are also called mustard pickles. The recipe calls for:
Small cucumbers
2 quarts cider vinegar
1/2C salt
2C sugar
1/4 C dry mustard

Pack cucumbers into sterile jars. Combine other ingredients and pour brine on cucumbers. Put on lid and let sit for 2 weeks

All of the recipes used are from Maine Home Cooking