It’s almost that time again. Out with the old, in with the new, creating resolutions that may or may not change your life, or at least your habits for three weeks. All that jazz. My cooking resolutions include a complete redo of my pantry, creating a full kitchen inventory system, learning to make pastry cream, committing random acts of cupcakes, taking some more cooking classes and perfecting a barbecue sauce recipe. I also intend to not burn down my kitchen. Continue reading
Photo by Isha Dusseau
This week’s bubbly celebration of life comes to you from my friend Isha. “Isha” is ancient Egyptian for “amazing, awesome and ridiculously beautiful.” That might not be technically true. But it’s a general translation.
Anyway, Isha made a fun, beautiful cocktail that she describes as being, and I quote, “holy sh– delicious.” Apparently the flower tastes like rhubarb berry pie. That alone is worth a trip to your local S-Mart to pick one up (remember, shop smart. Shop S-Mart). I think this is definitely something you want to make to impress your friends on New Year’s Eve. Continue reading
Did you have a merry Christmas? Or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, did you have a terrific Tuesday? I did. I got to spend time with friends and family and relax and eat good food. That’s what holidays are truly about. And I’m lucky enough to be off work for the next two weeks, and it’s a good thing too because I have serious plans for my kitchen and pantry…but more on that in a later post.
I promised you the third and final installment of our Citrus Dinner series—that is, the recipes and dishes we made for our citrus challenge, featuring delicious and fresh satsuma and clementine oranges from Whole Foods. Thus far we’ve covered a delightful Champagne Wednesday cocktail (berry punch with clementine simple syrup) and a wholesome cheese plate (goat cheese, olive oil, raw almonds, fresh satsumas), plus two main courses (clementine-roasted chicken with thyme, mushrooms and tofu en papilotte). Now, for the grand finale….
…dessert. Continue reading
Whew. Say that three times fast.
Continuing with our citrus fest, let’s move on the main show, shall we? If you remember from last time, Whole Foods sponsored a little bit of experimentation using their fresh, in-season clementines and satsumas. And with these beautiful little balls of sunshine, we made a delightful feast.
So we covered the berry punch with clementine syrup (which I already have another request for—as one of our New Year’s Eve cocktails) and our lovely fresh satsuma, almond and goat cheese plate (still one of my favorite appetizers ever).
But there was more. Oh, so much more. I’d been wanting for a while to make a thyme-roasted chicken dish and figured that adding a bit of citrus would make it even better. And I was right. Continue reading
What I love about winter is that it’s when some of the brightest, cheeriest fruits are available: oranges of all kinds. And beyond the basic navel, there are other delicious citrusy goodies to be had, like clementines and satsumas. To be honest, I’ve never really worked with either of them. Sure, I’ve had the odd clementine now and again, but I was mostly a navel girl. And satsumas, a variation of mandarin oranges that originated in Japan, were never really on my radar until recently. Continue reading
When Amanda (a fellow geek, foodie and Twitterer) told me about some of the ways she collects original, hand-written family recipes using Evernote and a Doxie scanner, I knew this needed to be shared with the masses. Full disclosure: Amanda works at Apparent, the company that makes Doxie, so she knows all the best tricks to using it. Check out her fabulous guest post below–it might inspire you to create a family recipe notebook of your own over the holidays!
[divider top=”0″]How I: Use Evernote and Doxie to Save Family Recipes by Amanda
I have various means of keeping track of my favorite recipes. I toss recipes into my Evernote “Cooking” notebook to keep track of everything. From cook books, saved PDFs, screen shots, magazine clippings, and handwritten family recipes, I like to have my entire catalogue on me at all times. As a cook, you never know when you’ll need ingredients or a recipe on hand.
Me: What do you mean, there’s only 12 more days til Christmas?
Calendar: That’s what I’m saying, you have a week and a half.
Me: No, that’s not right. I have way more time than that.
Calendar: Uhhhh yeah no, you don’t.
Me: Yes I do.
Calendar: Yeah no. That’s not how time works.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably had similar conversations with your calendar. Probably quietly. I mean, if other people heard you talking to your calendar, they might think you were crazy. And you’re not craz…ier than anyone else.
But just in case you’re starting to feel a bit crazy about the impending holidays, don’t worry. I’ve been assembling some great boards on Learnist to help you make it through.
Let’s start with gifts. The best gifts are homemade…
Continue reading
Champagne Wednesday is, as you probably remember, our quick, easy to way to liven up the boring midweek with a bit of bubbly. We do this by buying the tiny, 187-ml bottles of sparkling wines that you can get at grocery stores and Whole Foods and making two little cocktails out of them.
This week’s cocktail was the D’Artagnan, a nice little mix of orange, Grand Marnier and sparkling wine. I’ve noticed that most champagne recipes have a citrus flair to them. I think next week we’ll try something entirely different, but this one was pretty good. Continue reading
I was very excited to learn about the Food Blogger Cookie Swap this year. I love getting mail from random strangers, I love cookies and I love the food blogging community so everything about it appealed to me, including the opportunity to donate to Cookies for Kids’ Cancer.
I decided to make a recipe I’ve had in my Evernote recipe notebook for years but never got around to making, an Algerian treat called “Bousou La Tmssou” or some variation of that. These are adorable little things made very simply with powdered sugar, ghee (clarified butter), flour and orange blossom water. Continue reading
As a tech-geek, I have long been a fan of the service If This, Then That (IFTTT–rhymes with “gift”). IFTTT is a really easy way to connect the different pieces of your digital information puzzle. It lets you automate the sending of resources and information from one source to another using easy-to-put-together “recipes”. Recipes. That’s a word we all know and love, right? These recipes basically say, “If this trigger happens, then do this action.”
There are three main reasons that I love IFTTT:
But it is doing something. It’s being truly, utterly useful. And now I’m going to show you some ways to make it utterly useful to the average home cook using nothing but variations on a single IFTTT recipe based on RSS feeds. Simple, standard RSS feeds. Continue reading
Are you a fan of Google+? Or at least, G-curious? They’ve finally unleashed a feature I’ve been wanting for a long time: joinable communities. And of course, us foodies are flocking to them. A bunch of great ones have just opened up. The one I’m going to plug, though, is the Home Cooking Community–a great place for home cooks like us to share, chat and play. Check it out!
I’ve decided on the perfect description for this #champagnewednesday thing: “It’s like a tiny Christmas, covered in bubbles.” I think that pretty adequately sums things up.
This week’s cocktail is called the “French 75″–a pretty potent blend of gin, lemon and sparkling wine. We used Meyer lemon and cava in ours. It was good, seriously potent, but I think I’d make a few swaps next time, namely that instead of lemon juice and powdered sugar, I’d make a lemon simple syrup. Also, a bit of ginger. I feel kind of ginger-y these days.
This is one of those weeks that just calls for tiny m&m cookies. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it’s excitement from my Skillshare class starting this week. Maybe it’s end-of-the-year stress. Maybe it was half a bag of tiny M&Ms sitting leftover on my counter and a half bottle of Amaretto out on the bar. Who’s to say, really?
The point is, there are two things currently in my house that we should all strive to emulate. Continue reading
I am super excited about this post! Today I get to introduce you to Chad Williams, who is an awesome, amazing and hilarious person. Starting today, he’s going to start sharing a little bit of that awesomeness with all of us.
Chad is a fellow Evernote Ambassador (Fitness) and runs his own online fitness coaching company: AnthroPhysique. Fitness and health are his life and his goal is to help people create the body they were born to have. He takes advantage of Evernote and other technology to offer his online fitness coaching services to clients around the world.[divider top=”0″]
Chad Williams, AnthroPhysique
Thank you! I’m am very excited to be a part of this blog! Food and cooking are obviously a huge part of my life and my clients lives, and I believe this website is a great resource for new ideas and inspiration. I hope I can help by giving tips, advice, and nutritional information to the readers.
