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 [...]

I went to the farmers’ market by our house today to stock up on our weekly produce and the strawberry guy was back with a stand after being gone for a few months. Yes, it was 70 degrees and sunny today in Las Vegas, but strawberry season at the beginning of March? It just seems [...]

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 [...]

Happy Pancake Day! I have been dreaming of lemon and sugar pancakes all day and can’t wait to make them tonight. I’m still debating about whether to make enough pancakes so they can become dinner, or half the recipe and just make a small batch for myself as dessert.
Pancake Day reminds me of the powerful [...]

We have never been the kind of people who cook and eat a prescriptive diet. There are no pork chop Wednesdays or spaghetti Thursdays in our house, and the same 5 or 6 dishes aren’t cooked week in and week out. We have always enjoyed making different meals to taste and always anticipate cooking something [...]

The simple things can often be some of the best. When in Catalunya, the part of Spain that holds Barcelona, this holds true for the well-known pan con tomate (or pa amb tomaquet in Catalan). It’s simply toasted bread rubbed with a clove of raw garlic and a tomato, then salted — and it’s the [...]

I really enjoy a good salad. Meat is an easy way to bulk up a salad, but another trick is adding roasted butternut squash as a topping. It adds a nice sweetness to your salad, as well as some beautiful colour and perhaps more importantly, another way to squeeze in an extra serving of vegetables.
In [...]

We have been slowly eating more and more vegetables instead of meat over the last six months or so, but my goal for 2010 is to eat even more vegetables. A few months ago, I read Mark Bittman’s book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, which discusses all of the health and environmental impacts [...]

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great holiday and 2010 is treating you well so far. We had an incredible time back in Texas and an even better time in Mexico where we swam, snorkeled, and sunned ourselves to our hearts’ content every day.
The only downside to our adventures is returning home and [...]

Ever since we came back from Tucson, I feel like my diet has largely consisted of Asian food and beer. I’m addicted to this new Sichuan restaurant, Yun Nan Garden in Asiaville (Carlo’s term for Vegas’ China Town), and I dream about their spicy and tongue numbing food ALL the time. When we weren’t eating [...]