Sweet Success with Leek Cooking

Cooking offers so much more than just some food we can eat to not be hungry anymore.  Like a sense of accomplishment.  That’s what I felt after cooking some leeks that were really good. Successfully cooking leeks may not sound like much, unless you know all the hesitancy, and even anxiety, I felt about developing … Read more

Why I Won’t Be Watching the Olympics

“Olympics Offer Flatt, Abbott Chance for Marketing Mettle.”  So read the headlines after Rachael Flatt and Jeremy Abbott won national skating titles.  Not to take anything from these athletes.  They both sound like wonderful people.  And it’s not a lack of interested in figure skating.  I used to love watching it. But now, it’s the … Read more

Vegetable Exhaustion

Ever suffer from vegetable-making exhaustion and wonder if there’s any hope for a peaceful coexistence with vegetables? “Investment thinking” may be your ticket for hope.

The “Good to Better Cooking Continuum” at 11,000 Feet

Maybe cooking was never meant to be an exact science, subject to one-dimensional assessment on a good/bad scale. Taking this perspective eliminates the pressure to achieve absolute “rightness” in the kitchen, replacing it with a no-pressure opportunity to just make things better.

Last-of-Summer Marinara Sauce

Cooking and Eating with the Seasons There’s not much to a basic marinara sauce: Tomatoes cooked down with onion and garlic, then seasoned with salt, pepper and herbs.  In summer, a fresh tomato sauce doesn’t go much beyond that.  Moreover, it’s kept light by cooking only briefly and using sweet onions, fresh garlic and fresh … Read more

How to Use Up Halloween Pumpkins

Picture Recipe:  Pumpkin Red Bean Tostadas About now, there are likely a lot of pumpkins sitting around having the post-Halloween blues.   While most are the big Jack-O-Lantern variety with little flavor (and many of those are coated in candle wax), you may have a couple of the small, round sugar pumpkins left over from … Read more

Danger in the Gluten-Free Aisle

New gluten-free products are making it easy to live without gluten, but are we missing the bigger, teachable moment–and rewards–of a gluten-intolerance diagnosis?