From Scratch

I have a rule: only one carrot item per Easter dinner.  It’s not that I don’t especially like carrots — I love them — but the holiday, after all, is not about a mythical bunny. In fact, if I didn’t love carrots, I might banish them from the Easter menu just to avoid any suggestion of […]

If you’re going to use parchment in cake pans, there’s no need to buy expensive parchment rounds, nor do you have to go to the bother of tracing and cutting. Here’s the quick and simple way. Tear about a foot of parchment off the roll and fold it four times, until you have a small […]

You might have seen Zero Trans Fat Crisco in a small green can at your supermarket. You might also have seen it, as I did, at a clearance price. The green can has been discontinued because all Crisco shortenings have been reformulated to be zero grams trans fat.
That does not mean there is no trans fat […]

Not much worth gossiping about escapes the attention of the fun folks at Gawker. They’ve noticed Top Chef Season 1 winner Harold Dieterle is running a help wanted ad on Craigslist for his upcoming restaurant in Greenwich Village.
I’m glad the show enabled him to persue his dream. I like Harold and I loved Season 1. I’ve […]

Has it been four years already? And so many innocent lives lost.
I don’t think one’s politics has much to do with the dismay over the ever-rising death toll in Iraq. Perhaps it was conveyed most effectively by this cartoon in the Calgary Sun last Tuesday.

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Mr. Knife Skills and I have spent a good part of the day working on our menus and cooking schedules for Passover and Easter. If you haven’t figured it out, he’s the Jewish half, I’m Catholic. My mom, G-d rest her, was Protestant so blended beliefs are a way of life for me. This year, Passover […]

Note: The url in the photo is my old url. I did not swipe the photo. I plastered the url on it because someone did steal it. Sad, really, when you consider it’s not such a good photo. Oh, well..on with the recipe! They taste better than I can make them look in a picture.
Let’s […]

So this little blog is a week old now — thank you to everyone who gave me a few minutes of your time — and I think we need a cup of coffee, a chunk of yesterday’s cake and a smile.
Remember those sets of recipe cards that used to come in the mail every few […]

I rarely need a reason to eat chocolate, but I’ve discovered it’s American Chocolate Week, so now I have a good excuse. This is one of my favorite chocolate cakes. It’s delicious and very light, thanks to cake flour. The whipped cream frosting is what makes it special — don’t be tempted to leave […]

Now…does ANYONE actually believe that Bobby Flay can’t make a better chili than a supermarket ground beef bearing amateur? I don’t. It’s a cruel exercise in humiliation.
So wrote Chef Anthony Bourdain in a scathing  February 8 blog post some are still chattering about. Bourdain, the outspoken author of several books, was the guest on fellow chef Michael […]

How lucky! The first political post involves food.  Eleanor Clift, writing in the new issue of  Newsweek, wonders whether Al Gore is running again, as he’s lost a little weight. Officially, she was told, no he’s not. She’s not buying it. The door is open, said a Gore friend who hopes he will run.
While looking at […]

Actual review from allrecipes.com for shepherd’s pie. You know, the comfort food with ground meat and mashed spuds:
I did a combination of all the reviews added some garlic to the mashed potatoes, I took a pack of brown gravy mix a pack of onion soup mix and some water and flour and mixed it with the […]

With its seemingly-backwards URL — at least to me — and the fact that it doesn’t show up on my “my Yahoo” page, I finally bookmarked this site when I found it again. You can find it in the Links.
I’ve come to appreciate this well-designed corner of Yahoo for the depth of the content, from […]

Many years ago, I spent a week or so at an equestrian center in rural Ireland. At every meal we were served thin slices of the most delicious, almost nutty-tasting, whole wheat soda bread, called simply “brown bread .”  It was made daily by a wonderful baker and cook named Nuala. She was happy to share […]

I’ve spent a lot of time in Ireland and was active in the Irish-American community in New York, and whenever I was asked why we Yanks think corned beef and cabbage go hand-in-hand with St. Patrick’s Day, I’d admit I didn’t know. I did know it wasn’t standard March 17th fare over there — bacon or […]