One of my very favorite, and first cookbooks, is the Frog Commissary Cookbook from a now-defunct restaurant in Philadelphia. The spine is a mess, with many pages holding on for dear life. I wrote my whole name in the book, back before I was married, probably because I brought it along to college and did [...]
We had a pile of pears left over last week and I needed a quick recipe to use the stash before our next box from Happy Child CSA ripened. Fortunately, there was a great recipe included in the weekly newsletter, Becky’s Pear Cake. It was easy to make, and I modified slightly with the addition [...]
When I quit my regular 9-5 job outside of the home a couple years ago, I did so because at the time, life felt short. My great aunt was 93 and moving into a retirement home. My Dad was getting older. And my kids were growing so quickly I could hardly keep up. Fast forward [...]
We needed to feed a crowd last night and with a busy day ahead of us, wanted to just plop stuff in the slow cooker and forget about it. The Husband had also just laid in a supply of dried Chile Pasao from The Shed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we were dying to [...]
Two times in the last few weeks I have been asked to bring a breakfast treat for an event the family was attending. Both times I brought Almond Brioche, created from a recipe in my favorite Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day book. Both times I received rave reviews, which I shook off since [...]
Today we made pudding. Bittersweet chocolate pudding. A favorite from when I was first living on my own. The recipe comes from Puddings Custards and Flans by Linda Zimmerman, and the original recipe calls for white chocolate chunks, but we are not fans of white chocolate, so we left that out. Otherwise, the recipe is [...]
Our newest family baker comes home from school today determined to make brownies. I tried to tell encourage him to make my favorite brownie recipe, a one-bowl version that my Grandmother used to make, originally off the back of the Baker’s Choice unsweetened chocolate (and is now repeated many other places, including Mark Bittman’s How [...]
International cookies! Wow. What a great idea. Thanks to Adrienne of Gastroanthropology (Cinnamon Mexican Wedding Cakes) and Lori of Fake Food Free (Russian Tea Cakes), I partnered up with a holiday cookie baker in the UK, Michelle of 5AM Foodie (On Festive Baking and a Recipe Exchange), who sent along the following cookie recipe. Light [...]
One of my very favorite cookies from childhood was the Sand Tart, a cookie my Mom made only at Christmas (not sure why, nothing particularly holiday about it!), and each year I think about bringing it back for my cookie tray. For one reason or another, usually that there are so many other interesting cookie [...]
Coach’s gifts for soccer were easy this year – the team name was the Whoopie Pies and once I saw the new Whoopie Pies: Dozens of Mix ‘em, Match ‘em, Eat ‘em up recipes by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwell, I had my plan in place. A copy of the book for each coach, along [...]
Remember last month when I participated in a blogger roundup about the new cookbook, Perfect One-Dish Dinners? Well, in addition to being fun, I also had the opportunity to meet several new bloggers. Bonus. This month, Shauna James Ahern, of the Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, proposed a similar roundup, focused on a Gluten-Free Thanksgiving. [...]
This week, my favorite local vegetable CSA, Two Small Farms, is delivering another load of tomatoes, maybe the last of the year. As I was encouraging others to participate in the buy, I thought it might be nice to write up the different ways you can preserve tomatoes for the winter, especially since I have [...]
