This year, my family is doing two separate Thanksgiving dinners. Thursday is with my mom’s side of the family. Saturday, is with my father’s side. Normally, I don’t make anything for Thanksgiving dinner. But, this year, that changes.
Tag: featured
Barefoot Contessa 53 – Crinkled Chocolate Chip Cookies
Well look at this! A Barefoot Contessa recipe! The first since sometime in May…I think?
I was in the mood to bake, but didn’t really want to have to go out and purchase any additional ingredients. Which basically means that I had the necessary items to whip up chocolate chip cookies. Then came the decision to make this version from Ina.
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Magnolia Bakery 15 – Lemon Vanilla Bundt Cake
Sometimes you’re just in the mood to bake a cake.
That was me one day last week. I had been feeling a little out of sorts and figured baking a yummy treat would help cheer me up. I also wanted to bake something other than cookies. Eventually, I settled on yet another recipe out of the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook and I wasn’t disappointed.
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Magnolia Bakery 14 Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies
After suffering a baking dry spell for more than two weeks, I finally had the opportunity (and the desire) the bake once again. I can’t really explain why I wasn’t in the mood to bake over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps it was just a lack of free time issue, or maybe it was the increase in the cost of ingredients was starting to make an impact on my wallet. Whatever the issue was, it seems to have fluttered away.
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Herbal Update 11/3/2021
Wow! I can’t believe how long it’s been since my last Herbal Update post. I don’t know about you, but it seems like ever since we started August, we’ve been in this whirlwind. Here we are, the day after Election Day. It seems like I blinked and September and October were over!
Just because I haven’t been blogging about my herbal education, doesn’t mean there has not been progress made.
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Kitchen Questions: How Do Vegetarians Get Their Protein? And Other Common Questions
If you’re one of those people that is skeptical of a vegetarian diet, then let me alleviate some of these concerns for you. I’m also going to talk about some of the benefits of a vegetarian diet. Some people are hesitant to switch to a meat-free diet and lifestyle simply because it is the “fear of the unknown.” That’s what this blog post is for. It’s an attempt to answer some questions and make people feel better about the possibility going meat-free or reducing the amount of meat in their diets.
Long-time readers of my blog may be wondering why I am posting something like this. Are you a vegetarian? I am not. However, I’m slowly making the switch to a more plant-based diet and working on cutting out certain meats and other animal products. For example, I have not consumed cow’s milk directly from the jug in years. Instead, I use almond or soy milk. In baking, that’s a different story — at least for now. The reason why I compiled this information is to have a resource for those who are curious about making the switch to a more “flexitarian” diet or a plant-based one.
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Kitchen Experiments: Making Vanilla Extract
A couple of weekends ago, my partner and I finally put an idea of ours into action. We would try our hand at making our own vanilla extract. This is something both of us wanted to do for a while, but life always caused delays to it actually happening.
We were first inspired to do this separately, getting the idea from different chefs. He is a fan of Claire Saffitz’s YouTube channel and I became obsessed with a TV chef on Discovery+ who also uses her own vanilla extract. Additionally, I first stumbled on this idea from one of Ina Garten cookbooks where she details the steps to making one’s own bottle of vanilla.
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