Forgive me if I pause to discreetly gag while writing this, dear reader, but our house currently smells of roast wet dog. The lesson to be learned from this is that the expiration date of a fresh turkey should not be stretched — not even by a couple of days. We're not...
I love to cook, and one of the easy, healthy, go-to chicken recipes that I make quite a bit is Chicken Chili with Beans. I thought I would share it — and experiment with making a YouTube cooking video. I start off by making my own beans. I use my pressure cooker,...
I have been craving potatoes lately. I wake up drooling at the thought of eating McDonald's hash browns — maybe six or eight of them — for breakfast. At dinner time, I imagine myself tipping large orders of French fries into my mouth straight from the cardboard...
Here's something we watched while my blog was getting redesigned. It's the Alton Brown diet plan — the January 4 episode of Good Eats, titled "Live and Let Diet." We had noticed, going back to a recent season of Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt, that the guy had...
The thought of Thanksgiving dinner coming up and people having to figure out how to carve the bird reminds me of two extremely helpful things: The baseline cutting trick, as demonstrated by Alton Brown in the video above from his Food Network show Good Eats. This...
In late June and early July of 2003, we vacationed in the South Carolina Lowcountry, staying in Beaufort and visiting Charleston, as well as Savannah, Georgia. One of the meals we ate on the trip and have made many times since is a...
For more quick and easy healthy meal ideas, see our list: Easy, healthy recipes With warmer weather comes our desire to grill — but the notion of grilling usually conjures up images of fatty pork, heavy beef or troublesome chicken. We would like to cook outdoors, but...
I f you ask, many people will tell you that you cannot find Indian food in Racine, Wisconsin. The one Indian restaurant we did have closed a while ago, and it was not spectacular to begin with. This is too bad. Amy is intoxicated by Indian spices. We have made many...
I have written here before about Good Eats — about the steel-cut oatmeal show, the gumbo show. Good Eats is one of my all-time favorite shows on television. At the same time, I currently loathe the Food Network. Where I once looked...
For more dinner ideas, see our list of Easy dinner recipes, chicken recipes, side dishes. As the weather here already begins to turn cooler, our oven is getting some use again. Last night we roasted a chicken, accompanied by a simple, rustic roasted potato recipe that...
Even on public television's extensive menu of food and cooking shows, Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie is a standout offering. It's a globe-hopping, half-hour magazine of on-location footage and interviews featuring all sorts of fascinating topics from the primitive to the...
Update, April 17, 2009: With the addition of the new YouTube Shows section, you can now watch all 13 episodes of Made in Spain at YouTube. I seem to be on a little bit of a Spanish kick with my posts here recently, so let's go for trillizos. If you like chefs with...
As a Chicago-born guy of Polish descent, these pierogi recipes have always been central to my Christmas holiday. The humble pierogi is Poland's take on the ubiquitous filled noodle dumpling, enjoyed elsewhere as ravioli or kreplach or pelmeni or jiaozi (pot stickers)....
Well, this is right in my wheelhouse! I watch a lot of chef shows and cooking TV, and I love strange Internet finds. There is a YouTube playlist out there intended to hold my food and cooking favorites, but there are only two videos on it so far. I never imagined...
A few weeks ago, while buying a book I needed, I added this one, which had been sitting on my wish list for a year or so. Thomas Keller's Bouchon, published in 2004, is pretty hefty for a cookbook. It's about a foot square, weighs almost six pounds, and features...
Here is the gumbo recipe from Alton Brown: Shrimp Gumbo.This is yet another example of why I think Good Eats is one of the best shows in the history of television: Not only does Alton Brown give us an entertaining half hour of viewing, but we also get some real life,...
Amy and I visited New Orleans in the spring of 1992 on a road trip through Arkansas and Louisiana, and immediately fell in love with the culture of the whole area, which has had a lasting impact on our cooking, reading and musical tastes. Another road trip in 2003...
After a couple of days near 70°F. last week, cold weather is back in southeastern Wisconsin this weekend, so we're turning to hearty, savory dinners. Beef is on the menu tonight, and Friday there was a veal meat loaf, so I wanted something...
My sister-in-law Marianne mentioned our Hungarian Goulash the other day. She says our nephews love it. It's a great, beefy stew that really hits the spot in autumn, or on a rainy evening like yesterday, and the kitchen smells fantastic as it gets close to done....
Poet Stanley Kunitz died on Sunday. In one obituary there was a quote from him which began, "The deepest thing I know is that I am living and dying at once ..." At age 45 and counting, I feel the same thing, and that makes it harder to waste time on many of the...
Kenosha, Wisconsin — Dinner tonight is at Karen's, and she has been cooking.