Recipes
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Citrus Roasted Mahi-Mahi
I confess, I do not cook fish as often as I should, despite the fact that three of the four of us love it, and it typically makes an easy (and fast) meal. Salmon, swordfish, and mahi-mahi are my three go-to choices at the fish counter of our favorite market. Leaving the soccer fields yesterday afternoon, I asked the Boy if steak (which was sitting in the refrigerator) would be too heavy before his next match. It was a tournament weekend, and he has been pretty diligent about taking his coaches direction on eating healthier. He gave me a look that replaced the typical response of “duh” and asked for fish, instead,…
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Soup’s on – Slow Cooker Minestrone
A bowl of soup and a grilled sandwich is probably my all-time favorite comfort food, whether I’m feeling under the weather or burrowing in on a cold day. Recently my hubby came down with a terrible cold and just looked miserable, and I thought that a warm bowl of minestrone soup was just what he needed. I’ve been experimenting with various recipes over the years, and this is the result of my tinkering. I love cooking soup, especially when I can put it together in the morning and let it simmer all day. Other than a quick saute of fresh veggies, this is all cut and dump, if you will. My…
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On The Go Breakfast Egg Muffins
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #QuakerRealMedleys #CollectiveBias Do you know what my biggest struggle has been as the kids have returned to school this week? Waking up and getting EVERYONE moving extra early after a summer of sleeping in! Since birth, my two have been early risers and it took until kindergarten just to get them to sleep until 7am. Something switched in their brains this summer and they both took to sleeping in until 8 or 9 – fantastic until school starts, and with it the 6am wakeup call. I don’t know who is having a more difficult time…
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Fourth of July Twinkie Cake
If you are a follower of a Paleo or whole foods lifestyle, look away. I’ll be back with a fun drink ice or post momentarily, but for now, I’d like to talk about a dessert that includes ingredients that do not fall on your super healthy shopping list. This is a FUN dessert with some fruit thrown in so it isn’t totally crazy: Twinkie cake. Let’s be honest, there are two kinds of people: the “Twinkie – YUM!” and the “there is nothing natural about that snack cake” people. And yes, while the ingredient list reads (to those who bother) like a college chemistry experiment, Twinkies are yummy. (Obviously,…
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Chocolate Eclair Dessert
Some foods can bring to mind a moment or a memory with the very first bite. My mother had such a recipe. It was a chocolate eclair dessert, and it seemed to me that it was really only ever made for special occasions – mostly holiday potlucks or family picnics. (Ok – I may have asked for it for my birthday instead of cake.) It was rare to see it during the winter, come to think of it. If she got a wild hair, we might come home to find it in the fridge – a visit home would become a special occasion – but that was more the exception than the…
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Oatmeal Carmelitas!
Some time back in the ’90s, I was the only female on an otherwise all-male trade execution desk for a major brokerage firm. I liked to bake but didn’t have roommates for a time, and I sure didn’t need to eat all that sugary goodness on my own, so I routinely brought my bounty into work to share. Basically, I was the desk mom. One day my boss, who was divorced, was bemoaning how much he missed a dessert his ex-wife would make. He would do ANYTHING to get another helping of this wonderful dessert. He said he would buy me cookbooks if I would only make this dessert. I’m slightly…
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Thai Pork with Peanut Sauce
I’m lucky. My kidlings are tweens/teens now and are completely capable of entertaining themselves, so a snow day (or two) doesn’t seem to be the challenge that it once was when they were younger. We hang out in our PJs, they make their own snacks, and it’s all quite low-key if I can keep the squabbling to a minimum. Then and now, when we have a snow day, I tend to reach for comfort foods and well-loved slow cooker recipes, the kind that you put together in the morning with little fuss and with ingredients that I generally have in my pantry. This, my friends, is one of them, and…
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Some Kind Of Cake
There is something about being holed up inside the house, fingers curled around a hot cup of tea for both heat and caffeine, a worn afghan wound around your legs, while the wind blows wildly outside, slipping through unseen gaps in the windows as snowflakes swirl in hazy late afternoon light . There is something about being all cozy and warm…that made me crave cake. (This is me, not getting skinny.) I wasn’t sure what I wanted, other than something I could dig into while it was warm from the oven. I think what I had in my head was an old memory of a cake, perhaps made by my…
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Mango White Sangria
Of the many things you may know about me, one fact that you don’t know is that I tended bar in college. The place where I worked was a combination nightclub/bowling alley/outdoor bar with sand volleyball courts. We wore white tuxedo shirts with bow ties and cumberbunds (even for the ever popular “teen night”. I kid you not. We were classy.) As you might expect at a college bar also frequented by locals, we served a steady mix of beer (college boys) and frou-frou drinks (college girls), and so had what we termed the “funky drink list”, which we worked our way through with the waitresses when stuck on volleyball…
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Day 9 of Giving Thanks: Comfort Foods (& My Favorite Snickerdoodle Recipe)
Living in another country is a wonderful experience, but every now and again the inevitable pangs of homesickness (or melancholy in general) set in. When this happens, I turn to my cookbooks and favorite recipes and work a little kitchen magic. Granted, it’s not much good for my waistline, but food has such a strong pull to memory for me that it will generally do the trick. One favorite childhood cookie, long forgotten to me but recently rediscovered, is the humble Snickerdoodle. Crispy on the outside, a titch chewy on the inside, redolent of cinnamon, it’s one of my many the perfect comfort food. This afternoon I baked a batch…
