Lisa on January 7th, 2013

When it comes to cookies, why settle for a tiny chip when you can have a big chunk instead? Besides, when you make chocolate chunk cookies, you can make them as dark-chocolate-y as you want. I used 85% dark for this batch; if I had had some 90% dark on hand, I would have used that instead. [...]

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Lisa on June 11th, 2012

Although we’re a few months away from prime pumpkin season, when I found a can of pumpkin at the back of my pantry last week, I couldn’t resist making muffins with it. You could just as easily use bananas if you’d like to take on a more summery approach — chocolate goes just as well [...]

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What’s a grain, a flour, and a sweetener? Hint: it used to be a popular foodstuff in the U.S. back in the pioneer days, and it’s still popular in African and Indian dishes. You can make beer out of it, too. It has more fiber (and iron) than and nearly as much protein as soy [...]

Continue reading about A Grain Too Useful to Ignore — Especially for Breakfast!

Lisa on August 16th, 2010

Food is like fashion: trends keep coming back. In the case of fashion, that’s not always welcome (the current resurgence of 80s-style Spandex pants — c’mon, folks, not a good look then, not a good look now!), but when it comes to food, reclaiming traditional ingredients is a wonderful thing.  We’ve gotten so enamored of [...]

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Lisa on October 14th, 2009

Pie pans are great for making pies.  (They also make beautiful tortilla presses — the bottoms are nice and wide and the curved sides become handy handles.)  But you can make more than pies in pie pans:  the roundness of them makes them ideal for laying out scalloped potatoes, for example, or making quiches or [...]

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Lisa on June 22nd, 2009

Although I don’t have much of a sweet tooth (these cookies are dusted with sea salt), when I get the urge to bake cookies, I reach for sucanat.  It stands for “sugar cane natural” and is essentially dried sugar cane–no more, no less.  It’s the only cane sugar that has not been stripped, refined, and [...]

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Lisa on June 3rd, 2009

Good crackers are hard to find–most of them contain unpronounceable ingredients, damaged oils/fats, and several kinds of sugar…and then there endless lists of artificial dyes and flavorings.  But crackers are so handy to have around! Whenever I make pancakes or crepes, I always have plenty left over–why not make extras for the next day’s breakfast? [...]

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Lisa on April 24th, 2009

…flour, that is!  Why just just one when you can mix and match to your heart’s desire?  Just be sure to remember a few rules when baking standard recipes (gluten-free is a different ball game): You can freely substitute gluten-containing flours for one another.  (Gluten is a protein found in some grains.)  These flours include:  [...]

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Lisa on April 10th, 2009

What a handy kitchen tool!  Although it’s sold as a coffee/spice grinder, I bought this to grind my own flour.  Thanks to its fast-spinning blade and its relatively-small size (trying to grind a puny cup of grain in a Cuisinart is like trying to roll a bowling ball down the length of a strip mall), [...]

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Lisa on March 7th, 2009

No pictures today, folks–this is a big topic and a very serious one.  I hope you’ll stick with me as I give you the bare brushstrokes of the picture. Oils and fats form the basis of our food preparation:  we use them for cooking, baking, and roasting.  We dress our salads with them, season our [...]

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