This is truly the best time of the year in my little corner of the world. If you live out in farm country like I do, everything is in season right now, so everything is fresh and readily available at the local farm stand. This includes ginormous boxes of stewing tomatoes for next to nothing. We scored a beer-case of them from Hopkins Produce for about $10. So this long Labor Day weekend was stewing tomatoes weekend.
Read More2013: The Year in Review
2013 was another exciting year for us in the kitchen. We continued our exploration of cooking techniques, new and old, with delicious results. Here are our ten favorite posts from the last year.
Read MoreShaping Up the Dining Room
We've taken the first half or March off from blogging to do a bit of work on the dining room. Ours was covered in wood paneling - actual natural wood - stained to a dark and dismal coffee brown that has always made our dining room feel like a cave. So this year we decided to do something about it.
Read MoreThe VacMaster VP112 and Preparing for Spring
This weekend was a weekend to take care of things. As the seasons change, so does the kitchen. Casseroles and roasts and pastas make way for lighter fare. In our case, we invariably migrate to the quick and easy protein of Mexican food similar to what my counterpart was exposed to as he came of age in Escondido and San Marcos. This always serves us well as the longer, warmer days pull us out into the yard to make further inroads into the holly and creeper and roses gone to seed that surround our home.
Read MoreA Note about Kitchen Organization
This week I took a break from holiday cooking to evaluate the food storage situation in my kitchen. Several weeks of serious food prep (cookies, candies, something for the holiday potluck, plus at least one holiday dinner) will really make all the shortcomings of the kitchen obvious. This is actually a pretty good time of the year for cleaning and reogranizing, and a few years ago I declared the day after Christmas to be Annual Kitchen Reorganization Day.
Read MoreKnow What You're Eating: Stevia
I admit, the catchy tune had something to do with it - those commercials for "all natural" stevia sweeteners featuring frustrated women and a jingle many of us can relate to. And I was pretty happy. I've often wondered why there are some many artificial sweeteners out there (especially in supposedly health items - Airborne anyone?) when there's stevia. Then I read the label. Here are two popular stevia products and what they contain:
Read MoreKnow What You're Eating
Heavy Cream vs Heavy Whipping Cream
Heavy Whipping Cream
Heavy Cream - WTF?????