While watching random cooking shows over the years, I picked up the advice from several chefs that if you’re cooking with wine, you should choose a bottle you would actually want to drink, or it isn’t worth using in your recipe. I have never heard the same advice for beer. I have used some of …
Continue reading “Everyone will polish off their plates with this sheet pan meal”
A few months ago, I did something I do all the time: make a recipe for this column. Unfortunately, I forgot a crucial step: taking a photo of the end product. We hosted a stop on a wine walk in Newton, and after looking up good pairings for wine, I landed on homemade cheese straws. …
Continue reading “This easy snack is simply ex‘straw’dinary”
One of my duties as a speech and debate coach over the years was hosting weekend tournaments. And part of that duty was organizing a concession stand to feed all of the students who came. That meant buying what felt like a heinous amount of hot dogs, chips and candy, along with tons of pop …
Continue reading “Make a pie that feels like it’s payday every day”
I first met Joey when I was 19 years old, and even then, he was forced into being my recipe guinea pig. I decided that I wanted to make a fancy meal for him one weekend, so I hunted for some ideas and came up with a brisket dish for two, and I decided to …
Continue reading “Making this for someone special could create a ‘meat’ cute”
In 2024, the Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University released a study about the ongoing popularity of pumpkin spice lattes. Apparently, according to their study, apple spice was starting to edge out pumpkin on the popularity scale last …
Continue reading “Bake a ‘cinn’sational treat to celebrate autumn weather”
One of the best parts of hosting events in our office is that I can make food I know Joey will hate and share it with everyone who comes. Last week, when we hosted a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the newly finished windows on our Newton building, I pulled out one such recipe, which featured green …
Continue reading “‘Olive’ making snacks for a crowd of readers”
Every time I use turmeric in a recipe, I remember back to the time I ruined the one and only manicure I’ve ever had while using it in a delicious Jamaican recipe. Knowing it has the ability to stain everything, I have been diligent about wearing an apron when cooking with it ever since (although …
Continue reading “Turmeric-based veggie soup will help you feel golden”
I am generally pretty useless when it comes to remembering the different cuts of meat. If I’m ordering a steak, I know that a t-bone will have, well, a t-shaped bone in it, but I forget which cut has the best marbling or is the leanest, etc., etc. But after this week’s experiment, I now …
Continue reading “Nothing about wine-braised ribs falls short”
It’s amazing how memory works. There are so many experiences from my childhood that seemed so big, so awesome, so magical, and once I experienced them again as an adult, I realized that those were better left as cherished memories than something to revisit. I remember, for example, taking Joey to see Coronado Heights near …
Continue reading “Sometimes it pays to give memories a fair ‘cake’”
Editing for the newspaper leads me into strange rabbit holes sometimes. This week, it was a fair amount of research on hash browns. I have always spelled it as one word “hashbrowns,” but it turns out that I’m wrong. Also, apparently it’s not “hash brown,” although you can have “hash brown potatoes.” If it’s on …
Continue reading “Hashing out language isn’t always an easy task”
