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 [...]

Seriously. Chicken Helper. I know. Doesn’t it look awesome? Yeah, it was.
I make a mean jambalaya from scratch. But Tuesday night isn’t the night to make things from scratch, especially on Fat Cat Tuesday.
Tonight we added a new member to our family, our newly adopted fat cat Pippen, so naturally we needed some cajun goodness [...]

Usually I can’t say enough good things about Patak’s Indian Sauce blends, but while their new Butter Chicken sauce provided an awesome base for what turned out to be Shrimp Vindaloo, it was surprisingly and disappointingly bland. By adding some Penzey’s Garam Masala and Vindaloo I turned this into a really fantastic Vindaloo sauce.
The recipe [...]

Among the many items in my pantry that I consider staples is Classico’s Roasted Garlic Alfredo sauce. Whether I’m using it in my famous cajun chicken pasta (which I surprisingly still haven’t shared on this blog!) or tossing it with shrimp and sun-dried tomatoes, it’s restaurant quality and simply the best out there, especially [...]

CONFESSION: Nearly all my über-gourmet ingredients come from the Clearance Bin. I can’t help it; I simply can’t pay full price for gourmet ingredients, and I don’t really care how fancy they are. $10 for infused grapeseed oil? Tell me $4 and we’ve got a deal. $6 for Japanese Panko breadcrumbs—hell no. But for $2, [...]