When I’m searching for recipes, I sometimes stumble across ideas that seem so weird that I’m completely compelled to try them. This week’s recipe is one of those: banana bread hummus. I have made hummus quite a number of times, and it’s a favorite for us, especially when we’re setting up a snack table for …
Continue reading “‘Hummus’ give a strange combination a try”
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”
When we were kids, my mom would give my sister and I each a quarter a day for snacks at the Haven pool when we’d go swimming with our babysitter. That quarter could get you some licorice or Now and Laters, but I would often hoard my coins for several sessions until I had enough …
Continue reading “Here’s a dessert that’s perfect for crunch time”
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”
“It smells like fall in here,” Joey announced this weekend when he came home to the scent of fresh cinnamon brownies in our kitchen. I forget that cinnamon normally evokes a cold weather feeling from people. I’ll eat it any time of year. Find me some cinnamon ice cream, and I’d be all in. But …
Continue reading “Brownies prove spices not ‘cinnamon’ous with fall”
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”
Early on in our marriage, Joey told me he loves Boston cream pie, and I kept that in the back of my mind for a long time as a recipe I should try to make for him. But then I didn’t. I think it’s probably because I often balk at making layer cakes, as though …
Continue reading “These cookies are a ‘cream’ come true”
With heat advisories peppering the weather reports this past week, I found myself in serious need of a cool, summer dessert that wouldn’t heat my kitchen past its breaking point. I guess I didn’t really “need” it, but when the heat index is pushing into the triple digits, I often search for something sweet to …
Continue reading “Gelatin pie will make you say ‘Jell-O, there’”