Early to mid-October is one of the harder times of year for me to decide what to cook. Since the Kansas weather can’t make up its mind, I’m never sure if it will be a day where I’m happy to heat up my kitchen by firing up the oven or if I’ll regret raising the …
Continue reading “Cook up all the ‘gourd’ things for fall weather”
“They have some gross cookies over here,” a gentleman said into his cell phone at a Hesston event we held this weekend, making sure to say it just loud enough for me to hear. Luckily, he was joking. Or at least I think he was. The cookies, made with lots of fresh raspberries ended up …
Continue reading “Chewy cookies can be a real ‘raspberry’ in blue”
When we went on family vacations during childhood, we always packed plenty of snacks and a cooler with pop for the journey. I didn’t know until I was nearly an adult that people could actually buy the snacks and drinks at roadside convenience stores. What a world. One of our stand-by car trip snacks was …
Continue reading “Get cheesy with your snacking this week”
Although I have never joined an official weight loss program—tracking points, writing down my calorie counts and eating only pre-portioned foods delivered to my door—I have always been fascinated how they work for so many people to slim down. For me, when working on trying to eat healthier, I normally just follow the rules of …
Continue reading “There is no point(s) to this easy ‘cheesecake’”
On a recent free evening, Joey and I decided to watch a movie together, and I wanted popcorn. Of course, I couldn’t just toss a bag of microwave popcorn in to cook; I needed to make the real stuff on my stovetop. I melted a spoonful of coconut oil in a pot and waited for …
Continue reading “It’s good to have a fallback recipe for whatever pops up”
Three years ago, I shared a recipe in this space for an easy homemade pizza dough. If you remember that recipe, this week’s experiment is going to look very, very familiar, as it starts with the exact same basic ingredients. That’s why I knew it would turn out well, and I definitely wanted to try …
Continue reading “This easy air fryer recipe will totally ‘bagel’ your mind”
“Well, these are a disaster,” I told Joey, pulling my baking sheet out of the oven. “I guess they won’t be going in the column.” Earlier in the week, I was excited to try a recipe I ran across that used soy sauce in chocolate chip cookies. It sounded just weird enough that I had …
Continue reading “‘Soy’ vey: These cookies were quite the weird experiment”
Earlier this summer, while on a trip to Kentucky for a conference, Joey and I asked around to the locals where we should grab lunch in Frankfort. One of the recurring suggestions was to visit a little Honduran restaurant, Mami Monchita’s. I don’t know what food genre I expected people in Kentucky to recommend, but …
Continue reading “The food choices surprised us ‘Honduran’ this trip”
Upon being invited to a barbecue recently, I announced that it would be a good time to try out a recipe for some cheesecake-y blueberry lemon bars. “No. No lemon,” one of our friends declared. “Lemon is gross.” (I think he was at least halfway joking.) The rest of the group immediately objected. “Yes! Make …
Continue reading “You’ll have strong ‘peelings’ for lemon blueberry bars”
If you have read this column for any length of time, you know that I am, in no way, a gardener. Despite that, I still follow a Kansas gardening group on Facebook, and I love seeing the posts of beautiful gardens, weird plants and bugs that show up in people’s yards and discussions about how …
Continue reading “Pepper recipes abound for whatever might pop up”