Sunday Is a Good Day for Making Stock

I am trying to get in the habit of making my own chicken stock regularly. Making stock is not that hard to do, but it is very rewarding. Homemade stock just elevates soups to a whole different level. You can also freeze stock in ice cube trays to have smaller amounts on hand for use [...]

What’s Cooking in October

Image via Wikipedia

It may be 85 degrees here today, but fall has arrived. With the humidity dissipating, the air has that wonderful fresh crispness I love about fall, and the sky is a clear, scrubbed blue. The garden is looking very sad, indeed, and needs to be dug under after we salvage the last few [...]

Pan-Roasting Boneless Chicken Breasts: A No-Fail Technique

Aren’t those chicken breasts gorgeous? I often pan-roast bone-in chicken breasts using a combination of stovetop and oven cooking. But I tend to use other techniques for cooking boneless chicken breasts, such as pan-frying. Now I have found a foolproof technique for pan-roasting boneless chicken breasts with meaty, juicy results, and it has become my [...]

What I’ve Learned About Feeding Babies and Making Baby Food

Time goes by fast. It seems like it wasn’t too long ago that I was anxiously waiting for Sean to get here, and now he is already 6 months old! And he’s just starting to explore the wonderful world of food. Before he was born, I promised myself that I would try to make as [...]

Review: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry

Book cover via Amazon

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn (2007)
Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from Penguin Books, the publisher. But I had already been eyeing the book at Amazon, so of course I jumped at the offer.
When Kathleen Flinn is unceremoniously fired from her [...]

What’s Cooking in September

Risotto with Corn and Tomatoes, originally uploaded by shannon_turlington.

It’s hard to believe that Labor Day is already upon us, school has started and summer is winding down. Now is the time to be using up everything in the garden and getting our fill of fresh veggies because they won’t be around much longer. Here are [...]

Garden Goodness: Mixed Sauteed Vegetables

When the garden starts really producing at the end of summer, you need to think of lots of ways to eat up all those lovely vegetables. You can’t go wrong with a mix of sauteed vegetables.
This versatile dish goes with so many things. Use it as a bed for grilled chicken, steak or fish, or [...]

Don’t Try This at Home: Basil Ice Cream

We haven’t been paying a lot of attention to our garden this year, being distracted by having a 5-month-old in the house, but alongside the cherry tomatoes, the basil has been flourishing. So much so that I have been using it in everything I can: salads, bruschetta, even infused olive oil. But last night I [...]

Managing Leftovers: Use It or Lose It

With the costs of food rocketing up and more awareness about how food production and distribution impacts climate change, I’ve been seeing a lot of news lately about food waste. Apparently, we Americans (and the British too) waste a lot of food. Well, it’s no wonder with food being so cheap and plentiful here, but [...]

Useful How-tos for Cooking Bacon & Eggs

My how-to articles are among my most popular posts on this blog. I don’t write nearly enough of them, because it’s tough to write a good how-to, especially for tasks I might do all the time and consider second nature.
That’s why I wanted to highlight some great how-tos that I’ve run across recently on my [...]