Recipes for main dishes.
As the leaves began falling off the trees recently, I got the chance to spend some time with my now two-year-old niece. She’s in love with being in the backyard, so we went outside for awhile, and she showed me the crunchy leaves laying in the grass. She would carefully pick up each one she …
Continue reading “Be ready to fall for a casserole with autumn flavors”
On our honeymoon, Joey and I visited a great Italian restaurant in New York City. It was the most expensive meal of our vacation, with us spending a generous gift from a family member that was earmarked for just that purpose. The place wasn’t all that fancy to look at, but when your waiter is …
This past week, we went north to Iowa and Minnesota for a newspaper conference and to visit some friends. One of my wonderful friends, who has inexplicably given up her Kansas roots for the big city of Minneapolis, assured us that Minnesota is generally pretty mild in October, so we were excited to experience some …
I recently unpacked a few boxes of books that were stored away and uncovered some cookbooks I hadn’t looked through in awhile. They’re now all neatly in a row on my new bookshelf, so I suspect they will be getting some use in the coming weeks and months, but as I looked at each one …
Continue reading “Your spaghetti may be the ‘bella’ the ball”
As I was poking around our local grocery store’s clearance bin about a month ago, I stumbled on a box of “dumplings.” I was a bit confused, since they really just looked like really wide noodles, and it certainly didn’t fit my internal definition of what constitutes a dumpling. But they were cheap. So Joey …
I recently came across a photo of an adorable indoor herb garden and immediately became interested in having one myself. I’m not much of a gardener, and I’m enough of a nerd that I love research, so I have spent more time than I’d like to admit over the past few weeks looking at which …
Continue reading “It’ll be tough to ‘leaf’ leftovers of basil sausage soup”
When I was in grade school, our family used to frequent a now defunct Mexican restaurant called Zaki’s. For some reason, at that age, I was particularly fond of making bets with my dad, and I can remember two challenges that centered on that restaurant in particular. The first was a bet I won. The …
Continue reading “Deciding to make enchiladas an open and shut ‘queso’”
My sister and I have a fundamental difference in opinion when it comes to potatoes in Mexican food. I’m in the “absolutely” camp, and she’s in the “never, ever” camp. I discovered this philosophical divergence one day when I recommended a local restaurant’s chorizo and potato fried tacos to her, and we were both shocked …
Continue reading “Expand your ‘chorizo’ns with potato tacos”
I have apparently been misinformed about the difference between scalloped potatoes and potatoes au gratin for my entire life. I always thought they both had cheese involved. But after I decided recently to make scalloped potatoes, I discovered that the dish has no cheese at all, and it led me down a rabbit hole of …
A couple weeks ago, our family gathered around my maternal grandmother’s table, enjoying a meal with her along with all of the cousins and their children and spouses present. It was sometimes a bit loud and boisterous, and there was plenty of laughter as we all ate way too much while telling stories and catching …
Continue reading “It’s tough to see one more empty seat at the table”
