One of the pieces of advice you get if you ever put your house on the market is to bake cookies before a showing so that your home feels more inviting. When we had a house on the market several years ago, our real estate agent also banned us from cooking anything too pungent—like curry …
Continue reading “Pumpkin spice donuts make for a ‘gourd’ fall recipe”
It’s amazing how much variety we have at our fingertips at our local grocery stores. There are so many options and ingredients that you’d think no one could ever miss out on finding something they wanted, but as is sometimes the case, I hit a brick wall with this week’s recipe. I’ve been eyeing this …
Continue reading “There are ‘polenta’ of options for this pork dish”
In an online article, author Ossiana Tepfenhart explains that there are lots of foods we now consider “fancy” that were once “poor man’s food.” Dishes that fit the bill include lobster, oysters and even caviar. Another dish that she could have included? Ratatouille. The summer stew, native to Nice, France, was once considered a humble …
Continue reading “Want to be a French chef? You can d’ouille’ it!”
A lot of people took time during their quarantine to learn to make fresh bread. I don’t know how many Pinterest posts I saw where people proudly showed off their sourdough starters. Rather than tackle that particular challenge, I decided to try my hand at some Asian dishes instead. As a lifelong Kansan, I haven’t …
Continue reading “Spicy Korean chicken is a great bite to ‘heat’”
There are so many specialty kitchen items that I refuse to buy. It’s not that I don’t see the convenience factor in owning a cherry pitter or a banana slicer for the few times a year I need them, but I just don’t have the room to store them. That was how I felt about …
Continue reading “Making steamed buns will make you want to take a ‘bao’”
One of my favorite Internet memes is a photo of a blue Royal Dansk butter cookies tin. The caption reads, “Why are there cookies in Grandma’s sewing kit?” It always makes me smile, mostly because I’m glad I wasn’t the only child who was fooled by the reuse of a cookie tin for storage. What …
Continue reading “Nothing is ‘butter’ than simple-to-make cookies”
It seems like everyone has an extravagant friend. The person in your life who likes the finer things, the fancier stuff, the flashy side of life. I have a few, but one who truly fits this description recently looked at me and said, “You know what’s delicious? White chocolate chip matcha cookies.” Challenge accepted. If …
Continue reading “There’s no ‘matcha’ for tea-flavored cookies”
It’s not often I can stump Joey with a recipe. He’s the king of the spice cabinet and my go to when I know a recipe needs “something,” but I can’t quite put my finger on it. So when I managed to completely confuse him this week, I was a little proud of myself. Well, …
Continue reading “This Greek pasta dish ‘itsio’ good, you have to try it”
There are tons of great copycat recipes out there. I was blown away several years ago to learn that you can make a pretty convincing Butterfinger candy bar with candy corn and a few other ingredients. I also once tried a great recipe claiming to mirror Starbucks’s lemon bread. So when I tried a casserole …
Continue reading “Casserole should tread care’philly’ with its cheesesteak claims”
Thanks to the Newton Rotary Club’s annual peach fundraiser and my three-year-old niece insisting that I buy blueberries for our recent fun day, I had quite a bit of fruit in my refrigerator this week. That, combined with Joey itching to use a cast iron Dutch oven he recently got for his smoker, meant we …
Continue reading “Baking cobbler outdoors can be ‘berry’ satisfying”
