Cooking On the Side

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 [...]

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Japanese Pork Cutlets (Tonkatsu)

September 1, 2011

It would happen every single weekend. I’d sit down to sketch out our family’s meals for the week…and drive myself crazy deciding what to make. Didn’t we just have that last week? What’s something good I can make in the slow cooker since I’m out all day Monday? That’s too many chicken dishes in a [...]

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Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

August 22, 2011

I recognized that first time that I brought homemade cookies with me to the hair salon that I would be setting a precedent. None of the stylists ever come out and ask when I arrive for my appointment. They greet me with smiles and hugs as always. But I try to put their curiosity to [...]

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Chicken Curry

August 18, 2011

It was about time we switched things up at lunch. On most days, my kids get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a quesadilla for lunch. They like it and I can pull it together and get it onto their Dora the Explorer sectioned plates before a meltdown erupts (that’s mainly my 20-month-old little [...]

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Overnight Belgian Waffles + a Waffle Skillet Giveaway!

August 15, 2011

Not a week after receiving a sample tub of Land O Lakes cinnamon sugar butter, I went to the refrigerator to see if there was enough left for the caramelized cinnamon apples I wanted to make with it. Nope. Not even close. My husband and our two kids, breakfast by breakfast, had made their way through [...]

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Balsamic Marinated Lamb Chops

July 27, 2011

We walked into the restaurant for a good friend’s birthday dinner a few years back and right away we noticed there was something odd about this steakhouse. Smoke rising from steaks searing on an open grill was, of course, expected. But as we moved further into the dining room the smell of those steaks actually [...]

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Peanut Butter Crunch Shortbread

July 18, 2011

These little five-ingredient Peanut Butter Crunch Shortbread elephants marched their way into my kitchen the other day. Even though they’re made with peanut butter (get it – elephants? peanuts? ha ha), the crunch doesn’t actually come from peanuts. Even better: it’s turbinado sugar. Until now, I’d only ever used turbinado sugar – the kind with the large [...]

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Homemade Pad Thai

July 14, 2011

There was a time, not so long ago, when I wouldn’t even have considered trying to make Pad Thai at home. It was out of the question. The ingredients would be way too hard to track down, I was unsure of how to use a wok and just how authentic would my version of Thailand’s [...]