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Night Barbecue

Night Barbecue

As I’ve mentioned, the in-laws gave me a big pile of wood chips for Christmas: three kinds of which I’d never used before, and one (apple) that I had, but wasn’t sure about. Faced with twenty-plus pounds of wood filling up my closet, I decided that I needed to try them out, one at a […]

Improv: Harvest Breakfast

Improv: Harvest Breakfast

Out of a desire for breakfast that didn’t involve low-carb bread (Mark has trouble with his blood sugar in the mornings), and also out of a desire to try to work more veggies into my day, I concocted this dish last night, and made it this morning. This is a total winner — sweet from […]

Picspam and Recipe: Christmas Eve and Cu...

Picspam and Recipe: Christmas Eve and Cuduridi

I could go on and on and on about how fabulous my Christmas was this year. I really could.  I think, instead, I’ll let the photos speak for me. Sadly, I have no pictures of the wonderful cannoli that my Grandma made. They were fabulous. They were so good they were gone before pictures could […]

Feast of the Seven, er, Two Smoked Fishe...

So we hosted the Feast of the N Fishes for Christmas Eve, and yours truly was responsible for two of them (both smoked, of course): a salmon, and a catfish. The salmon is pretty simple. So simple that the original only takes two paragraphs in the 1969 printing of the Sunset Barbecue Cookbook. Place your […]

Christmas Traditions 1: Potiça for the

Christmas Traditions 1: Potiça for the In-laws (and the rest of us!)

Several years ago, when my mother-in-law told me that she rarely got potiça for the holidays, and no one made it any more, I vowed to find out what this mysterious substance was and make some for her as a surprise. Only I didn’t know how to spell it. It took a while for me […]

Infinite Fudge Variations

Well, maybe not infinite … I haven’t figured out how to make pumpkin fudge with this recipe yet. And Alton Brown will tell you that technically, this is not a fudge, but a different kind of candy. He’s right. But it’s got the same consistency and creaminess with a lot less work and fuss, so that’s good enough for me. Especially because it is delicious. I make batches and batches and give it as gifts for the holidays.

Got cranberry sauce? Make muffins!

I love cranberry sauce, but Uncle Pasto, who is a supertaster, basically can’t eat more than a bite of it before declaring it “too sour”. He likes cranberry bread, though. So when I brought home two cups of the family cranberry sauce, I knew I’d have to do something with it, rather than just serve […]

I’m alive, really.

I know things have been kind of quiet around here. Sorry ’bout that! Springside is currently eating my life, as my buffer is a miniscule two weeks’ worth of comics. I ran up to the wire getting the script written and haven’t really recovered from it yet. I spent another day volunteering at Olivewood Gardens […]

Tasty Lunch: Pics Were Demanded

Tasty Lunch: Pics Were Demanded

So I made this lunch last week, and observed to some friends that it was the prettiest throw-together lunch I’d made in some time. Pics were demanded … only by then, I had devoured it. The lunch is pretty simple. Sticky rice. Tamagoyaki (I use Maki’s recipe, but I put milk instead of water in […]

4-P Pasta and Polenta Sauce

4-P Pasta and Polenta Sauce

4-P: Pork, Pumpkin, Peppers, Pomodori — combine to make a tasty sauce for pasta or polenta. Or you can serve it by itself kind of like a chili. (Pomodori is Italian for tomatoes.) I totally made this up on the fly last night. Most measurements are approximate. I know you can figure it out. Looks […]