Cooking On the Side

Stovetop Cocoa with Toasted Homemade Marshmallows

November 8, 2011

Hot chocolate was that special treat we got to have after school when it was too gray and rainy to play outside (which didn’t happen all that often in the Silicon Valley). It was something I could make by myself – I’d just microwave some water in a mug and tear open a packet [...]

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Chicken and Rice Chile Verde

November 3, 2011

If this dish looks vaguely familiar to you it’s because I previously shared a rather similar recipe, for Honey Lemon Chicken, earlier this year. So I hesitated for a moment to post this Chicken and Rice Chile Verde. But, you know, I don’t think you ever can really have too many good one-pot, one-hour chicken [...]

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Chai Pumpkin Pie

November 1, 2011

I’d been looking for a good excuse to post an updated pumpkin pie recipe on Cooking On the Side. That first pumpkin pie I posted two Thanksgivings ago was great and all, the classic Libby’s version that I and millions around the country have enjoyed for years. But ever since that post I’ve been wanting to [...]

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Easy Chicken Pho + Pacific Natural Foods Giveaway!

October 26, 2011

If you’ve never had pho, I was right there with you until just a few weeks ago. I knew it was a Vietnamese soup (the national dish of Vietnam, it turns out), that it was pronounced “fuh” rather than “foe” and that a lot of people really love it. Like love it. Happily, pho is no longer [...]

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Double Chocolate Cookies

October 17, 2011

I officially have a sweet tooth…or so the new diet and exercise app I recently downloaded to my iPhone tells me. Day after day for the past week, as I’ve logged everything I’ve been eating and drinking, MyFitnessPal has been telling me that I’ve consumed more than double my daily recommended volume of sugar. It gets [...]

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Lemon Spaghetti

October 11, 2011

Exhibit #5978b on why I’ve lived in suburbia for too long: I found it more than a little bit exciting that they recently redid our Target. New carts! Fresh groceries! (and the pièce de résistance) In-store Starbucks! I pushed our cart up and down each aisle of the grocery section (which is a financially dangerous [...]

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White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies

October 5, 2011

I have happy childhood memories of trips to the cookie shop that opened up in our mall at some point in the ’80s called Blue Chip Cookies. Does anyone remember them? Their storefront was set up just like Mrs. Fields, with a case of fresh baked cookies, but they claim to be the first to innovate [...]

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Tamales

September 26, 2011

I hope I whet your appetite for Mexican food with last week’s sopes because I’m back this week with Tamales! I caught the hint that tamales might be a tad labor intensive when three different people kind of sighed and waved their hand when I suggested I wanted to try making them. There’s a good [...]

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Mexican Chicken Sopes

September 19, 2011

I hadn’t heard of sopes until a friend of mine brought over some that her mother, who is from Mexico, had made. This was back in my single days – which seem like forever ago, although we’re only talking circa 2003 – when I had my own one-bedroom apartment in one of those ’50s-era buildings [...]

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Apple Cake with Butter Pecan Glaze

September 12, 2011

This post should come with a long overdue apology to my sister…for laughing at her (hard) almost 30 years ago. Her first grade class put together a little “cookbook” comprised of their own made-up recipes. My sister’s contribution to this handwritten anthology was the concept of an apple cake. “Bwahahahaha!! An apple cake!! Who ever [...]