Recession Recipes

Last month, Carlo and I headed to Portland, Oregon for a long weekend to check out the city as a potential place to move once Carlo graduates in May. We had an incredible time while we were there and after maybe 2 hours of walking through downtown, both Carlo and I looked at each other [...]

Every week or so, I get a phone call or text message from my little brother Andrew asking for some kind of cooking advice. His questions have run the gamut from how to roast chiles in his electric oven to what he should make for lunch. I do think one of my favourite phone calls [...]

We are big fans of food writer Fiona Beckett, so when we saw on her blog that she was having The Ultimate Macaroni Cheese Challenge, we knew we had to enter. I guess it’s all of the Spanish food we’ve been making and thinking about lately, so independently we both came up with a similar [...]

I read the book Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, by Bill Buford, recently. Buford is a writer who began working in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo in New York City, and ended up staying for a couple of years while [...]

Whenever we are in the UK, we always go and eat at Wagamama (turns out there are now a few Wagamamas on the East Coast too). It is the perfect place to have dinner with a large group of friends, and the noodles are always outstanding.
Carlo was in the mood for some noodles the other [...]

There is nothing better than cooking up a huge vat of soup over the weekend and having an arsenal of lunches in the fridge so you barely have to cook during the week. This Winter Minestrone is packed full of vegetables, but isn’t some sissy soup. Instead it has nuggets of carrots, lots of greens, [...]

I’ve been in a bit of a food funk ever since I got back from the Grand Canyon. The cool weather made me wish that I could fast forward the next few weeks until it is fall in Vegas. I’m fed up with summer produce and I feel like I’ve eaten my weight in zucchini [...]

Carlo and I had a wonderful time camping at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon over the Labor Day weekend. Aside from a torrential thunder and hail storm on Friday night, the weekend was perfect from the cool alpine weather to the breathtaking scenery.
Carlo also picked out some great food to cook too. We [...]

I’ve been loving on the carbonara pastas lately, even though I know that they probably aren’t the most healthy dinner dishes to eat. This Jamie Oliver recipe for Asparagus Fettuccine has no bacon or creme fraiche, and in fact is pretty healthy. But when blended together, the slowly cooked veggies with vegetable broth become surprisingly [...]

I have a tendency to get on these food kicks where I will basically cook an ingredient to death. Carlo still groans about my lentil and chickpea kick when pretty much every meal for a week included either lentils or chickpeas (I think our stomachs are still groaning too ).
Due to our visit [...]