Given my recent preoccupation with macadamia nut butter, I’m sure you knew another mac butter recipe would be on the way. How could it not? The stuff is simply fabulous! I’m in a bit of culinary mourning right now, actually, because I polished off my jar this morning when I stirred the last spoonful of [...]
As a kid, I always liked marbled pound cakes and swirled cheesecakes. And two-toned frozen yogurts. Somehow, seeing two flavors intertwined on one plate (or in one cone) makes both of them doubly delicious. And you know what the best part is? It’s ridiculously easy to make marbled and swirled desserts — doing so usually [...]
Continue reading about Chocolate & Vanilla with a Berry Twist
First it was omega-3s, then it was antioxidants; now, the food rage is probiotics. (Mind you, these have all been mainstay elements of whole, unprocessed foods for millennia, long before food scientists and genetic engineers and corporate interests got involved in our food chain. Thankfully, we’re now “discovering” that traditional cuisines contain plenty of foods [...]
When I get on a kick, I get on a kick — I can happily eat the same thing for several days in a row if I like it. It’s even better when the dish/ingredient being eaten is multipurpose-able. After all, leftovers are the ultimate convenience food!
Crepes are my most recent food fixation: first the [...]
It’s summertime, and the blueberries are calling. (So are the strawberries and the blackberries and the rest of the berry bunch.) Time to celebrate with some fruit soup! It’s ridiculously easy to make — which is probably one of the chief reasons fruit soup is on every cruise ship’s menu — and can be made [...]
Until I lived in Costa Rica (and had to watch out for falling coconuts on my way to Spanish class!), I never knew how intriguing and bizarre fruits could be. In the Midwest, we’re fortunate to have a world of berries and apples and pears and cherries at our fingertips — [...]
The word “flour” seems like it has a solid definition: it’s white, it’s powdery, and it’s made of wheat. Fortunately, though, while those descriptions apply to all-purpose white flour, all-purpose white flour is only ONE kind of flour. (And it’s a stripped-out, tasteless one at that.) There are plenty of other flours that can be [...]
Continue reading about Nuts + Grains + Carrots = A Tasty Quickbread
When it comes to most things in life, I think it’s safe to say that the difference between “failure” and “success” is largely a matter of perception. This philosophy is certainly true in the kitchen! It’s even more true when it comes to baking — you never know when breads won’t rise or muffins will [...]
I don’t know about you, but when I find an exciting new (to me) ingredient, I like to drop it into as many culinary settings as I can to see what happens. Some ideas, like my “let’s make hot chocolate with red wine instead of milk!” notion, though, are rather ill-fated. Random combinations are not [...]
Who doesn’t like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? Peanut butter and chocolate just go together. But I guarantee that once you make your own PB&C in solid form or smoothie/shake form, you won’t ever want to go back to the prepackaged kind. The homemade variety tastes better, it’s a whole lot better for your health, [...]
