Tag: cooking

Penzeys Nicaraguan-style Red Beans with Pulled Chicken

This is Marie, contributing a recipe from one of our beloved Penzeys catalogs. This one comes under the easy-but-not-quick category. As with any recipe involving dry beans, you will want to take your time in order to ensure that the beans reach that level of buttery softness that makes them so good – nothing spoils a bean like a crunch in the middle. Continue reading “Penzeys Nicaraguan-style Red Beans with Pulled Chicken” →

Kristin Sollenne’s Stuffed Peppers

This is Marie, contributing an article on the stuffed pepper recipe I mentioned in our previous story about a Kristen Sollenne dinner. I finally got around to it and can share the results. I did cheat and used a good quality tomato sauce rather than making my own as the recipe called for, but the sauce recipe is similar to others I’ve made before and should be fine. Continue reading “Kristin Sollenne’s Stuffed Peppers” →

Kristin Sollenne’s Chicken Piccata

This is Marie, contributing an article about a recipe we tried from Domestic Chic, a new book by Kristin Sollenne that we received for preview. There are always cookbooks out there, and I know full well that the vast majority of the ones I own are going to be used for one thing and one thing only: for food porn. I have a much-abused box of slightly stained cards that have the family recipes on them; I have my Joy of Cooking which breaks automatically to the waffle and pie sections, and then…there is the endless stacks of print-outs stuffed haphazardly into a 3-ring binder of “oooh, nifty!” from the internet – some used, some not, but all forgotten the instant they are filed. Continue reading “Kristin Sollenne’s Chicken Piccata” →

White Cherry Jam

This is Marie, contributing another article about jam. Now, this one is less for our regular readers than some hypothetical person who happens to be standing next to something interesting in the produce section and doing an internet search to see what the intriguing something is good for – in this case, white cherries. Can you tell I’ve done this a lot? Continue reading “White Cherry Jam” →

Food From Fiction 7: Sunshine’s Cinnamon Rolls

“Tell me, what were your first cinnamon rolls like? And didn’t the recipe look simple and pure and beautiful on the page? And the instructions your teacher gave you, before he left you to get on with it, were perfectly clear and covered everything?” – from Sunshine by Robin McKinley (Berkeley, 2003)

One of my very favorite books is called “Sunshine” by Robin McKinley. It’s about a coffeehouse baker who finds that she has more power than she thinks, and would rather not have found out as the discovery is made under the most stressful of circumstances. She’d rather be making muffins and pies and bread and her signature cinnamon rolls, but instead finds herself in the uncomfortable position of being able to do unlikely things that make a huge difference in the world. However, baking is her passion, so food and cooking are used as metaphors throughout. Continue reading “Food From Fiction 7: Sunshine’s Cinnamon Rolls” →