Spaghetti Squash casserole is one of my signature dishes and definitely one of my favorite to make, especially when cooking for the week, when I spend a full day cooking and spread the leftovers over the course of the week. The flavor of this gets even richer when made the day before!
I love starting with [...]

CONFESSION: I was afraid of making my own stocks for a long time. It was tedious, quite frankly, and I’m all about the shortcuts, right? Well, who knew that spending a little time to make the stocks could be an awesome shortcut?
When I made my Shrimp Scampi a couple weeks ago I knew I’d be [...]

The Food4Less near our house has the most amazing seafood section. Almost every time we go they have piles of great seafood that’s marked for half-price, and it’s always excellent. With our FoodSaver we can stock up!
These enormous shrimp were so cheap it was amazing they were still fresh and delicious, but their seafood’s never [...]

This actually wasn’t the plan when I picked up some pork cubed steaks from the discount meat bin, but when I started poking around for recipe ideas for cubed steak I felt silly for never considering it! Also, it’s ridiculous how easy this was to make. So easy that I’m sure this will become a [...]

Bravado? Maybe a bit, but it’s true. My meatloaf, even when not in MEATCAKE! form, is the stuff of legend. Back when I made the MEATCAKE! I promised a recipe but failed to deliver. Today I give you my secret (modified from Mark Bittman’s recipe in How To Cook Everything). You’re welcome.

Italian restaurants and I have a tricky relationship. It’s because I make REALLY good Italian food. I’m better at some cuisines than others, but Italian is easily the one I understand the most completely. Because of this I find a lot of Americanized Italian food bland, often salty, and usually end up saying “My lasagna/ravioli/pesto [...]

CONFESSION: I love cookbooks. Like LOVE cookbooks, even though I rarely use the recipes as described. I like browsing through for fun, getting ideas, learning new techniques I can apply elsewhere. Sure, I use the internet to find recipes on occasion, but my first stop is almost always my shelf of cookbooks. And that’s where [...]

Perhaps my most successful experimentation ever, this meal was born from the need for something very quick and I had a few off ingredients that I needed to get rid of, and I sort of made this up as I went along. One of my favorite meals that my grandfather used to make is smoked [...]

CONFESSION: To say my husband’s a little timid about cooking is an understatement. Still, occasionally he’s willing to tackle dinner, as long as he has VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS. This is the email I sent him to make this delicious beef stew. You really can’t go wrong with this recipe, just season to taste (I season [...]

Since I started teaching in August, my 10-hour days plus my teaching schedule have made dinners at home generally boring and certainly nothing worth posting. Lots of repeats of previous favorite meals, that sort of thing. But I’ve decided to begin harnessing what time I *do* have to begin cooking meals ahead of time. As [...]

Inspiration hit tonight and boy was it a good one. I present to you a new favorite. The flavor was complex and intense, sharp and sweet. It was kind of the perfect meal, and if I had a restaurant this would so be on the menu.
Since I don’t have a restaurant, I present to you [...]

Okay, so our friends had this party that involved a taco bar. And they overprepared. Like OMG overprepared. Like after TWO dinner parties that weekend they still sent guests home with bags of chopped onion, tomatoes, peppers and cheese. My cooking usually features a lot of peppers and onions, but these formed the base of [...]