Spice Up Your Life

One of the best parts of post-Thanksgiving leftovers (in my humble opinion) is going to the fridge and grabbing a piece of pie to just eat with your hands over the sink. It’s not the most elegant move, but it’s definitely one of my favorite things. I was thinking about that experience of getting to …

Continue reading “‘Lattice’ talk about blueberry pie bars”

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my adventures in making garlic confit. After slow-roasting all those beautiful garlic cloves, making them soft and deeply flavorful, we’ve been using them on everything we could think of, but if you’re interested in using a boatload of cloves in one recipe, I have the perfect one …

Continue reading “Rich garlic pasta is the ‘confit’ package”

I seem to always be several years behind on the big Internet cooking trends. I can’t tell if that’s because I’m skeptical of the hype or because I have too many recipes to try already. This week, though, I finally crossed one that I just hadn’t gotten around to off my list: garlic confit. Apparently, …

Continue reading “Slow-roasted garlic confit creates ‘clove’ at first bite”

When I go to try a recipe I think sounds tasty, I often follow the directions pretty closely, only deviating here and there to kick some of the flavors up a notch. When Joey is inspired by a recipe, he looks up a few more versions of the same dish and then goes completely rogue, …

Continue reading “It’s OK to wing it, even with classic French chicken dishes”

In one of our first shopping trips together over 20 years ago, I remember Joey grabbing a bottle of ketchup off the end cap at the grocery store. “Whoa,” I said. “Why are you buying the expensive ketchup?” He looked perplexed. And that was the day I probably made my then-boyfriend reconsider his relationship choices …

Continue reading “Don’t have the right fruit? Your ingredients may ‘berry’”

There’s a phrase we often hear when we travel north: Minnesota Nice. It refers to how friendly the folks in Minnesota are, and that’s especially true when you visit in the summer months. After being snowed in and freezing in sub-zero temperatures all winter, they are ready to go out and about and are happy …

Continue reading “‘Chew’se a chocolate-free bar cookie for your summer treat”

When I graduated from college and rented my own home for the very first time, I decided that I would do my darnedest to cook meals for myself as much as possible and avoid premade stuff from the freezer section. I remember one of the first times I fired up the stove, heating some oil …

Continue reading “Oven mistake? Just keep calm and ‘berry’ on”

Until I really started exploring some Asian recipes during the pandemic, the ginger in my spice cabinet was pretty much only for baking sweets. If you would have asked me, I would have said it was there merely for projects like pumpkin bread and ginger snaps. Boy, was I missing out on an entire, delicious …

Continue reading “‘Rice’ to the occasion with tasty caramelized pork”

It’s the time of year that Joey’s bowling team comes for their end-of-season cookout at our house. That means Joey throws something on the grill or smoker, and I figure out some tasty sides and desserts to make them all happy. The guys are always gracious enough to put up with new experiments from me …

Continue reading “Your guests will go hog wild for this amazing bean dip”

When I was a kid, Hershey’s sold powder for chocolate milk in brown, kind of rectangular containers. I loved (well, love) chocolate milk, and I remember a specific day where I was snooping through the cabinets, seeing what I could find, and there I spotted it: a brown, rectangular-ish container, emblazoned with “Hershey’s” in big, …

Continue reading “‘Espresso’ yourself with some great chocolate cookies”