From the kitchen of a semi-vegetarian with a serious sweet tooth
It recently came to my attention that I had never made homemade lasagna, which seemed like a major oversight on my part – I’ve made a Greek version of lasagna, called pastitsio, which involves tubular pasta (similar to ziti) rather than flat noodles and a layer of béchamel sauce, but never a traditional lasagna! New Year’s Eve this past year was as good a time as any for lasagna, I decided, since ...
While I was at home in California over the holidays, where it was a balmy sixty degrees or so and there was none of this polar vortex business going on (thanks for the fifteen below/thirty below with wind chill welcome back, Michigan!), where I could go to the grocery store and not find that everyone got there before I did and had already cleared out the store's supply of, well, pretty much ...
Confession: it wasn’t until several months after I started making French macarons that I actually ate a French macaron from a bakery (and I still have yet to try one made in France!), so I can’t say that it was due to a craving that I decided to try making them. Well, I suppose it was a craving of sorts. A craving for a challenge, that is. ...
In my family, it is not uncommon for most of the Christmas baking to take place…after Christmas. Before Christmas, various members of the family are often busy shopping, decorating, travelling, taking final exams and writing papers, getting over colds caught at Thanksgiving gatherings, etc. This year was no exception. My brother and sister-in-law didn’t even arrive until the day after Christmas, ...
I was quite flattered the other day when Haley of If You Give a Blonde a Kitchen nominated me for the Liebster Award. The Liebster Award is a great way to support, encourage, and share relatively new blogs. Blogging can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a lot of work – it’s always nice to know that there are people besides my parents (love you two!) who are reading along, so thank you, Haley! ...
Today I baked these cupcakes to give away to some of my parents’ neighbors, and because filling the house with the fragrant scent of gingerbread seemed like a great way to get more into the holiday spirit – I only finished my work for the semester yesterday, and it’s always difficult for me to be fully in holiday mode while I’m still writing papers and such. ...
Surprise – it’s another recipe with cranberries! I may have been a tad overzealous when I was buying cranberries at the grocery store before Thanksgiving, but their color was so vibrant and tantalizing that I couldn't resist. Plus, cranberries have lots of antioxidants, so they’re really healthy for you (possibly less so when surrounded by cheese and buttery crust, but let’s not dwell on that). ...
Earlier this fall, I named pumpkin as my favorite fall flavor. I’m going to have to revise that statement. Apple has now pulled into the lead (along with its partner in crime, the cranberry), and if you don’t like or are already tired of apples and cranberries, you should probably just stop reading now. ...
We recently took another cooking class – a tamale workshop at Sur La Table! It was a lot of fun (and the food was phenomenal!), but I had no idea how long it takes to make tamales. It’s definitely more of an activity to be shared and enjoyed with other people, rather than just a recipe to make for a meal. Because of the two-hour class schedule, the instructor had done a few of the steps ahead of ...
As I mentioned in the previous post, I had signed up to bring cheesecake bars to our graduate student Thanksgiving potluck dinner. I used the same recipe, tweaking only a few things, and was really pleased with how they turned out! (2016 edit: you can get the full cheesecake bar recipe as well as updated photos here) ...
