Category: Main Dish

As a general rule, I avoid a lot of specialty appliances in my kitchen. While I’ve been tempted in the past to consider a rice cooker or a cake pop baker, I haven’t given in—mostly because I have no idea where I would store such contraptions. But I do have a couple trendy pieces that …

Continue reading “Try a recipe that’s ‘taquito’ happiness”

Well, I can officially say I survived my first experience with hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  I floated the idea a little over a week out from the big day to my mother-in-law, not wanting to step on her toes but also knowing she’s been extremely busy at work lately and could likely use a break from …

Continue reading “Leftovers may necessi’tater’ cooking some soup”

Thanks to this column, I’m constantly on the lookout for recipes I have never tried. If you look at a lot of food blogs and recipe books like I do, you’ll find several common words and phrases in the titles of recipes. There are quite a few that include the descriptor “Amish” in the title, …

Continue reading “Chicken mushroom soup is ‘chowder’ this world”

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 …

Continue reading “Mushrooms are easy ‘caprese’ for dinner”

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 …

Continue reading “Ring in winter with bell pepper soup”

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 …

Continue reading “This soup is ‘dumpling’ you should try”

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’”