organizing my most useful kitchen tools
I love healthy food, but I love it more when it doesn’t taste like healthy food. Best of both worlds! Click around to find some of my tried and true staples - and new recipes too, whether my own ideas, inspired by other blogs, torn from the pages of a magazine, or passed through friends or family. Learn more about me and My Utensil Crock HERE.
"Pad See-Ew with chicken." That's my order when I go for Thai food. Every time. I don't deviate. I knew that "Pad" means stir-fried, but I had to look up "see-ew." Looks like it means "soy sauce"! That must be why I like it. Stir-fried soy sauce. Well, some other things too. When you order Pad See-Ew at a Thai restaurant, it is made … [Read more...]
If there is kale in it, it’s healthy, right? How about THIS much kale? * Crickets * Ok, I will not pretend this recipe is healthy, but I will assure you it is delicious, and is a total winner for party snacks. If there are three things people are loving on these days, they are kale, bacon, and cheese. I had a few ladies over to … [Read more...]
When we last left our heroines, they were chowing down on Italian Quinoa Breakfast Casserole and a huge tray of Indoor S'Mores in a cabin in the woods in honor of LS's bachelorette weekend. Man, life is good sometimes. Our leading ladies, however, had a bit too much to eat and drink over the weekend and couldn't finish the billion Indoor … [Read more...]
As summer comes to a close this evening, I would like to pay homage to a favorite taste of summer*: The S'More. * Also fall, and winter. And I have never turned down a Spring S'More. My cousin SFH put the idea for Indoor S'Mores for a Group in my head before her annual July 4 party this year, and it has been looming large since then. She … [Read more...]
When people ask me if I could do anything instead of my job, what it would be, one of my stock answers is: "Hang out with friends in a big vacation house and make brunch and sit around and drink coffee all day." The salary on this fantasy is a bit lower than my current gig, so I reserve such activity for special occasions... ...Such … [Read more...]
... and Cilantro, and Roasted Peanuts, and other deliciousness. I subscribe to a few food magazines, but I don't read them when they arrive. I stock them up and go through a big bunch at once, looking for submissions for my "to make" pile. Years before I started my blog - in 2010! - I had a mega-session of poring through stacks of magazines. … [Read more...]
Some days, I just need healthy veggies until I can't chew any more. Today - sandwiched between last week (a busy week at work where I wasn't able to bring lunch), and this coming week (with a trip to Omaha for several days of wedding festivities for a friend) - was one of those days. So I got out my food processor's shredding disc, … [Read more...]
Breakfast Pizza. Let's go there. I was a little too excited to realize this is technically an "in-stock" recipe. I usually have all of the things needed to make this recipe in my apartment. Yessss.... For this particular photographed pizza, I used pizza dough from a little gourmet market, Centrolina Mercato. But fresh homemade pizza dough … [Read more...]
I love looking at Flatbread offerings at restaurants. Far from traditional pizza combinations like pepperoni or spinach, it seems that any three ingredients + a spread = a delicious $14 appetizer. Sometimes the ingredients obviously complement each other - caramelized onions and mushrooms with goat cheese; other combinations, like a recent … [Read more...]
This is a recipe I would have shied away from when I first started cooking. Several techniques, "weird" ingredients, and do I even like "Ropa vieja"? Well, let's smash the why-I-can't list with a meat mallet. Upon further reflection, the "several techniques" were just a few rotations of searing (browning in a pan), and braising (cooking in … [Read more...]
