If you didn’t know, we recently celebrated the first-ever “Local News Day” on April 9. The effort to observe local journalists around the country came from a push in Montana. In Newton, we had a small, but mighty, group of community members who stood outside our office with signs, touting the importance of having a …
Continue reading “There’s no doubt you should cobble together dessert this week”
The National Pecan Shellers Association has a wealth of knowledge about pecans on its website. One of the items that interested me the most is that the pecan tree is the only major nut tree native to North America. I thought that was strange, because I know quite a few nuts who were born here, …
Continue reading “Raise the bar with a dangerously easy pecan dessert”
I believe that it’s a universal truth that everyone who loves to make family recipes has a moment where they just can’t figure out why, despite following the instructions to the letter, the end product just doesn’t taste as good as when the person who gave up the recipe in the first place made it. …
Continue reading “Get ready to strut your fluff with a light, easy cake”
“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”
