“Those apples were kind of pricey, weren’t they?” Joey asked me as we exited the grocery store recently. “They’re honeycrisps,” I told him. “So, they’re high-end apples?” “I mean, kind of.” It’s amazing that after 15 years of marriage, I can still discover new things about my husband. Case in point: he has no knowledge …
Continue reading “Can’t tell the varieties apart? You just have to ‘apple’y yourself.”
Back in college, when I decided I was going to change my major and get my teaching degree, one of my first undertakings was to learn what I deemed to be a very important teacher skill: how to drink coffee. Growing up, the coffee maker only came out at our house if we were having …
Continue reading “Make your own coffee ice cream from the ground(s) up”
With plans to have company over recently, I was on the lookout for something easy to share for our snack table. After perusing several websites, I landed on one of my favorite ways to make a quick sweet without working all that hard for it: a cake mix transformation. The recipe I tried promised to …
Continue reading “Turn to easy lemon cake when you’re squeezed for time”
One of my unofficial New Year’s resolutions each year is to try to use up the random ingredients hiding in my pantry. In this case, one of the culprits was a large can of pumpkin pie filling that I bought by mistake, thinking I found a great deal on plain canned pumpkin. It’s been staring …
Continue reading “Combo recipe is piece of cake and easy as pie”
As we head into the home stretch of 2024, we’re officially entering snacking season. It’s that time of year when we all concede to our stretchy pants, eat with friends and family, and hope that our New Year’s resolutions will save us from having to size up when shorts season comes around again. That being …
Continue reading “With the holidays in view, it’s time to dip into the season”
Throughout our marriage, one of my side projects with Joey has been figuring out how to make foods he didn’t think he liked into something he likes. This has been really easy for tons of vegetables and mushrooms, but I recently decided to tackle one that I thought might be impossible: raspberries. I knew it …
Continue reading “Beautiful pastries are just within your ‘rasp’”
Earlier this week, I made a fabulous apple cake. (I promise to share the recipe with you in an upcoming column.) I realized after I peeled and diced all my apples, though, that I had more than the recipe called for, and while I put a few extras into the batter, I was a little …
Continue reading “Beat the heat with a yummy microwaved dessert”
During my junior year of high school, we read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” in English class. Our final project included the option to create a video, and for some reason, my group thought it would be an excellent idea to recreate scenes from the classic novel in a mashup with jokes from “Monty Python …
Continue reading “Want to try something new? ‘Mousse’ around and find out.”
Every once in awhile, I run across a food idea so dumb but so obviously delicious that I just have to try it. It happened when I made poutine tacos. It happened when I decided to try Mountain Dew and Doritos cupcakes. And it happened again this past week, when I saw a simple recipe …
Continue reading “Combining cookies and cinnamon rolls is totally friend‘chip’ goals”
I was recently given the opportunity to speak to the Newton Kiwanis about the many projects I have been working on at the newspaper. We enjoyed a great lunch and good conversation before I spent a bit talking about my job, including my over 10-year expedition into writing this column. I noted to them that …
Continue reading “Put this ‘four’midable cake on your list for this week”
