Nan’s 'Pasta Cooking 101'

What is the best way to cook my Pastamoré pasta?We get this question a lot.  And Nan always is ready with her answer.  Here are her...

Nan’s ‘Tapenade 101’

Tapenades come to us from the Provençal region of France, which stretches along the Mediterranean from Northern Italy and into Spain. ...

Rosemary with Roasted Garlic Spread on Toasted Pita Crisps

This has always been one of my favorite recipes; I have made these dozens of times since the 1990’s.  Back then, I used to sauté fresh...

Simple Uses for your Nan’s Goodies

Make Your Own Croutons When I was a kid, my mom used to make croutons for her salads.  Salads were her signature dish, and so making fresh...

Handy Pasta Combination Chart - Both Pages Now Posted

Above is the flip side to Nan's New Tool - a handy dandy chart to help you with ideas for pairing our NO SAUCE pasta!  Remember, we want...

Pasta Combination Chart - First of 2 Parts

This is page 1 of our 2 page Pasta Combo Chart.  You will find this chart handy for ideas on how to pair our pastas with great ingredients...

Guide to Crabs: how to clean and pick meat from a crab

Seattle is best known for salmon but my favorite local seafood is the Dungeness crab. Eating crab is messy and time consuming so the puny guys...

Valentine's Day 2012

Steven and I just celebrated our 9th Valentine's Day dinner and our last as an unmarried couple. Instead of going out, we continued our yearly...

Chocolate Berry Mousse w/ Raspberry Balsamic Vinegar

It is common in Italy to make an easy, delicious dessert of simple cut strawberries and a drizzle of a well aged balsamic vinegar.  This...

Basil Parmesan Grilled Flatbread

Here is a simple idea to be used as a snack or as a side to soup or salad.  Prepared flatbreads are more common these days in higher...

Thanksgiving 2011

I'm a night owl. It is officially Thanksgiving as of an hour ago, which marks the start of the holiday season and my favorite time of year....

Blueberry Muffin

The fact that this is my seventh muffin recipe on the blog shows how much I love them. I'm certainly not the first to proclaim the muffin top...

Meat Lasagna

updated from archives Every time I open the pantry, I'm accosted by two lingering boxes of lasagna noodles that have been sitting at eye level...

Hearty Spaghetti and Meat Sauce

(updated from archives) I grew up on spaghetti with Ragu. Not the lowercase italicized ragu, but the capital R followed by a copyright sign...

Fondue for Two

I'm in the process of tidying up the blog after months of being away (pardon the dust). While I was going through old flickr photos, I stumbled...

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Carbonara is Steven's most requested dish. It's one of the few recipes on this blog that I make regularly, so I'm a little embarrassed I haven't...

Chicken Adobo

update from April 2007When I first made chicken adobo 4 years ago, I was a little apprehensive about the seemingly large amount of vinegar the...

vanilla pound cake

Two years ago I bought 2 dozen vanilla beans for a great price. They were my precious babies so I used them oh so sparingly. The vanilla beans...

the pantry

My pantry has become increasingly cluttered over the last few years. The new year was a good time to reorganize and figure out just what is...

Leftover Turkey and Seafood Paella

 I hope everyone had a spectacular Turkey day. I was too busy eating so I unfortunately don't have any photos of the spread. *sadface*...

Thanksgiving 2010

First I told myself I would blog again after spring quarter, then it was after summer exams, pretty soon after that I planned to put something...