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I had an urge to make pudding last night. What to use? A bit of brown rice in the cupboard and part of a huge can of coconut milk! That’ll do the trick. But, what to do with the leftover coconut milk? Salmon thawing in the frig for supper and why wouldn’t coconut milk fit the bill? Think tropics -- hand-caught fish and coconuts falling off tall trees. Well, enough of that talk. After a
Imagine the best English Muffins you’ve ever tasted. Now step it up a notch by baking this English Muffin Bread, then slicing it and toasting the individual slices as you need them. English Muffin Bread has long been a favorite of mine, and I don’t make it anywhere near often enough. So, each time that I do bake this delicious bread, I’m once more pleasantly surprised by the texture and tas
Many, many years ago (shhh... almost twenty!), I attended a vegetarian Thanksgiving potluck supper where someone brought one of the most delicious pumpkin pies I’ve ever tasted (before or since). Not an egg in sight in this creamy smooth pie, but everything else you’d expect to replicate this holiday favorite. The great thing about tofu is that although its pretty tasteless on its own, tof
Has it really been 17 years since I worked at Medleys learning to produce aromatic homemade breads, delicious Cucumber Dill Salad Dressing, speciality cheesecakes, Tofu Foo Yung with its amazing sauces, and -- a favorite -- GARBANZO CHIMICHANGAS? When we made Chimichangas, I had to pull out the calling list and we could be sold out before lunch. GARBANZO (or chic pea) CHIMICHANGAS are still
I may have missed out in the past, but nevermore! This is THE pie crust recipe. Absolutely spot-on perfect ~ tender and flaky! And the simple strawberry filling... delicious! Just right especially for spring when strawberries are ready for picking and if you don’t pick your own, the stores have them at the best prices of the year. Ree Drummond who writes The Pioneer Woman blog, received t
Lunch today included Kale Chips and Deviled Eggs. The Kale Chips were a desperate measure because I had some kale leftover from making soup earlier this week and didn’t want the remainder to go bad. I did find one recipe that called for a 400-degree Fahrenheit oven but knew that was crazy ~ too hot! Instead, I looked further and found a simple recipe that called for a 300-degree oven and th
Happy 10th birthday to my grandson Damian. Each year he and his younger brother tell me what kind of birthday cake they want. This year Damian asked for a giant cookie! I have to admit to cheating. I bought a Betty Crocker 17.5 oz. Chocolate Chip Cookie mix and substituted 1/3 cup oil and 2 T. vegetable oil for the butter, which made for much easier spreading in the 12” diameter pan. Firs
I’ve become addicted to mango chutney ever since I bought it for South African Bobotie. Now you can always find a jar of chutney in my refrigerator and chutney in my muffins. I’m also addicted to muffins and have used the same recipe for years, mixing things up by adding blueberries, chocolate chips, cranberries, craisins, nuts and numerous other special ingredients. There’s never been a ‘f
All right, fess up. Who among you has ever eaten M&Ms before 8 AM? That’s what I asked my Facebook friends in a recent post. I knew I wasn’t alone and the replies proved it. MWM: Only the peanut ones... figured they had a little protein, so they’d probably be ok. PSB: Of course! Isn’t there dairy somewhere in the chocolate? somewhere.....? BK (not Burger King!): M and M's are the
This week I made a double recipe of LEMON BUTTERMILK CUPCAKES from Lindsay at Love and Olive Oil. First time using this recipe and it’s a keeper! Lindsay includes a simple two-ingredient glaze, but for my purposes, I used a buttercream icing. Half of my cupcakes were simply decorated with icing tinted yellow and sprinkled with white non-pareils. The other half of the cup
My son-in-law is not a big fan of cakes or of chocolate or, for that matter, of any sweets. For the past ten years, I’ve made birthday treats for my grandsons (one 6 and the other about to turn 10) and for my daughter (more than 10 years!) , but never anything for my son-in-law. This year was the turning point. I was on a fondant roll and came across a great idea that would fit him. If, I
My youngest grandson will be 6 on Tuesday, but there’s a party tomorrow! Devon, plus seven friends, plus his big brother and his friend, plus Mom, Dad and possibly other parents. You know how it goes. I’m lucky ‘cause I get to make the cakes each year for the boys. One of the cakes, that is. Mom provides a small cake for the four of them to celebrate. Then there are individual cakes for
In 1984, I was anticipating my 39th birthday (with mixed emotions) and about to give birth to my second child. It was around that time that I discovered Whole Foods For The Whole Family , a cookbook from La Leche League International. My WFWF's pages are worn, some torn, some covered in clear plastic contact paper to preserve what is left of them, and many have pencilled-in notes telling whe
That’s right--two recipes! Two fan-tab-u-lous recipes that I found in Menu Magazine, put out quarterly by Wegmans supermarkets (located in the Northeast U.S.). I had never tried their recipes before and was finally ready to take the plunge. Am I glad I did! I can’t tell you yet which is my favorite of these two. I love them both. And I love the fact that I have the recipes in print with
My new favorite butternut squash recipe! In fact, this healthful squash/beet green/walnut/mint/goat cheese creation is so outstanding that the first time I made it, I started eating it right from the mixing bowl -- and, I completely forgot to click one of those photos showing a prettily-plated individual serving. This recipe which I found in the December 12, 2011 issue of Woman’s World m
Yes, I’m enamored with cranberries and you will be, too, after you taste this Pear-Cranberry Pie. The sour flavor of the craberries combines beautifully with whatever sweetener you choose. And the color! Who can resist the bright, shiny reds of cranberries. No need to buy canned cranberries or canned cranberry sauce. It’s so easy to cook your own, starting with raw cranberries that can easi
Bare Cupboard Soup, based solely on what I had available in my cupboards and refrigerator-- and the whims of my tastebuds-- was the perfect ending to a chilly New York State day. BARE CUPBOARD SOUP (2 servings) Ingredients... 1 tablespoon oil 1 small carrot, diced 1 stalk celery, diced A pinch each of salt, pepper, onion powder, dried oregano, dried parsley, crushed red pepper flakes
Among the first recipes I tried out on Step by Step in the Kitchen was a quick and easy dish with beautiful red highlights provided by a homemade raspberry sauce and tender sautéd scallops from the sea. After over a year of blogging, I’ve been reminiscing about past culinary creations and feeling the urge to retry and perhaps recreate many of them -- which is what I did on January 14 with Gri
For my second time preparing Ellie (Food Network) Krieger’s light (as in fat content) Better Burger with Green Olives, I used my George Foreman grill and made my life easier by covering the grill in foil. I read somewhere that covering these indoor grills with foil makes for easier cleaning. I hate cleaning all the nooks and crannies of my GF, so this is a win-win situation in my opinion. U
Gingerbread Cookies are so good, I want to eat them all year round. Hmm, Valentine Gingerbread Cookies (heart-shaped for sure), Washington’s Birthday (I’m thinking little hatchets!), St. Patrick’s Day (4-leaf clovers). You get the idea. My 9-year old grandson came to me shortly after Thanksgiving with a request for gingerbread cookies for his 4th grade class’s Christmas party. Of course, I s
I -- lucky for me! -- discovered this scrumptious Candy Cane Cake on FoodBlogs. What an ideal addition to our family’s day-before-Christmas-eve dessert party! You can find the original recipe for Candy Cane Cake at What’s Cooking: Happenings in the Kitchen and Around the Home. Lots of detailed directions, but in spite of the length of the recipe, it turned out to be fairly easy to follo
Maryland in October and it was time to step out of the kitchen. It was a three-plus weeks visit with my son and we often ate out. Among our favorite spots are Nando's Peri-Peri in an Annapolis mall, Wegmans in Columbia, Red Hot and Blue (in Laurel, I think) and Roundz in Crofton. An even newer Wegmans just opened Sunday in Crofton, within walking distance of my son's house. Hurricane Sandy
Peanut Butter Cup Brownies... that may be slightly misleading, or a slight misnomer, take your pick. What makes them pb “cups” is that peanut butter is poured into an indentation in the top of a chocolate brownie. Then they are topped with peanut butter chips and chocolate chips. Oh, come on, can there be anything better than that? Well, maybe the real Peanut Butter Cups by Reeses. But we won
Portobella and Gruyère Sandwich ~ a simple, simply-delicious sandwich featuring a portobella mushroom with gruyère and a few seasonings which you’re sure to have on hand. I did a little research on mushrooms while writing this post. Now I know that a portobella (aka portobello) mushroom is “a very large, rich-flavored cremini mushroom”. Conversely, a cremini* is “an immature portobello* mush
Muffins or cupcakes? They started out as plain muffins, until I took creative license and added cocoa, cranberries, pecans and Grand Marnier. Coming out of the oven, these beauties cried out for more dark, creamy goodness, so I dipped them in melted chocolate and zig-zagged them with a decorating gel. The end result was heavenly to look at and heavenly to bite into! (The added in
An acorn squash sat on my counter as I waited for inspiration. One acorn squash, one recipe, two servings ~ there it was on the internet, straight from the kitchen of my blogging friend Sala at Veggie Belly. All I had to do was run (walk, actually) to the nearby supermarket and buy cremini mushrooms. Sala’s recipe also invites the optional addition of halloumi cheese. Because of the price
What wouldn’t you give for an fairly inexpensive, healthy and absolutely delish food that would please every eater! Something that requires the least bit of preparation. Eat with a fork or your fingers. Yep, Gruyére-Stuffed Baked Potatoes are finger-licking good. Even your diehard meat eaters will be asking for seconds. The basic requirements for Gruyére-Stuffed Baked Potatoes are *
Woke up early on this USA fall-back-one-hour, change-your-clocks morning and lay in bed thinking about French Toast. Not just any French Toast. Rather, something fresh and lively and fruity. Three pounds of raw cranberries waiting in the freezer and calling to me. Okay, so what could I do with cranberries? And what else did I have on hand? I knew there was small amount of Organic Blue
We’re back from our Maryland vacation, and it’s so good to be in my own kitchen again where I know what everyday items I have and exactly where each is located. My son’s kitchen is lovely and ultra-modern. But, you know those all-important items we always have on hand in our kitchens? His supply is so-o limited that I couldn’t build up the enthusiasm to do much cooking. In a way that was
Does it matter what kind of apples you use in a recipe? I think so, yes, since apples have different textures, skin and taste. My first visit to a u-pick apple farm this year yielded two types of apples ready for harvesting – one sweet and one tart. Sweet and tart apples are a perfect combination for this easy Fresh Apple-Yogurt Cake. Where did I find this recipe? Oh, no, I can’t r
I’m back in Maryland and D.C. for the third time this year! One of the reasons I love visiting my son is because we love eating out. Find out about foods on my previous visits by visiting my February and July posts … EATING OUT ~ February 2012 VACATION MEANS EATING OUT ~ July 2012 STILL TESTING FOODS OF MARYLAND ~ July 2012 So far this time, we’ve (my son and I) eaten
The ice cream picture got your attention, didn’t it! More about that later, but right now I want to share some 1950’s food history from my house, the one I lived in as a child. When I was a kid, we ate meatloaf and casseroles weeknights. On weekends, Sundays in particular, we indulged in an inexpensive cut of beef or a whole roasting chicken baked in the oven while we were at church. Accompa
So few tomato plants, yet so many tomatoes. I’m overwhelmed with tomatoes. Even knowing that I’m competing with a greedy squirrel (or could it be the skunk I smell several nights each week), there seems to be a plethora of tomatoes in my little garden. I made a tomato vegetable pie and I’ve given some tomatoes away, but still I pick tomatoes. Because of the previously-mentioned creature, the
Corn muffins and cornbread are high on my list of flavorful, satisfying foods. Add cheddar cheese and jalapeno peppers and this food jumps right to the top of my winter favorites. These Cheesy Jalapeno Corn Muffins are quick and easy to make, using a packaged cornbread mix or making them from scratch. Sometimes I won’t touch a mix -- have to make everything from scratch. Other times, what th
A lip-smacking veggie pie that even your meateaters will be crazy about! Now that my tomatoes are starting to ripen and it’s become a race to use them before they over-do, Veggie Pie keeps popping into my mind! And BASIL. The original recipe calls for 1 tsp. (dried) basil. Since I have a gardenful (exaggerate!) of basil, I could use that (3 x dried amount). OMG, dried is nothing like fresh.
A pickin’ we will go A pickin’ we will go Heigh-ho, the derry-o A pickin’ we will go And so we did... my daughter, son-in-law and their two boys, and my son who’s in town visiting. We spent a beautiful Sunday afternoon picking first apples of the season and raspberries at Reisinger’s Apple Country near Watkins Glen in New York State’s Southern Tier. We picked Ginger Gold and McI
My apple recipes last Fall featured Apple Almond Cake and Roasted Cardamom Applesauce. Both were simple and tasty recipes for apple picking families. Somehow two other apples recipes got lost in the Fall shuffle and now that we’re headed toward cooler weather (only nights so far) here in New York State, I know it won’t be long before it’s apple picking time again. So, today I'm giving you one
A family supper. Son-in-law was at work, but daughter and the two grands (5 and 9) came over for Homemade Vegetable Soup (aka Weight Watchers’ Zero Points Soup) and Homemade Vegetable Pizza with a No-Yeast Crust. Dessert was -- wait for it! -- ice cream from Hokey Pokey, a little ice cream stand across the street. From the day I made my first batch of Weight Watchers’ Zero Points Soup
Omigosh, has it been two weeks since I've written for this blog? It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about food. Or cooking. Or even taking photos. I have--all those. Just no long step-by-step creations. More in the line of take each day, one step at a time (step by step). Whatever comes of it, that’s what you have. There has been so much heat in my life for the past couple of month
If you look back through Step by Step in the Kitchen, you realize that I have a love and appreciation for salmon. First there was Sante Fe Salmon with Brussels sprouts, Philly Cooking Creme and tomatoes. Next came Salmon with curry, lemon, sesame oil and Greek yogurt. Finally, there was a Stir Fry Salad with mesclun (mixed greens), olives, spinach, zucchini slices, green
I’m back from vacation and back to cooking. So much stockpiled on Pinterest and dying to be tested and tried. CORN ON THE COB Although all five recipes are super and the results are guaranteed to show up in my house again, I’ve got to start out by spotlighting the Corn on the Cob from Instructables. I’m not talking about the taste. You can minimize with butter, salt and butter.
Oh, no! A blog post on Step by Step in the Kitchen with NO PHOTOS! Can’t have that, so I’ve put up one photo from a meal I fixed while on vacation. No details, just a photo. What was I thinking when I looked through my son’s cookbook collection on my recent trip to Maryland? I knew I wanted to share a list of the books, but I never thought to take a photo. Good grief, Charley Brown! In
It could be that I’m my son’s excuse to eat out – a lot! Whatever the reason, I’m loving it. I get to know the area, the roads and the best places to eat. This will probably be my last post while here in Maryland. We’re headed back to New York State on Saturday and son plans to spend a week there with family before returning to Maryland. WEGMANS We’ve eaten at the new Columb
I’m vacationing in Maryland again and now I’m here to tell you about the delicious foods I’m experiencing. It’s vacation time, people, and I’m not cooking, except maybe to pop something in the microwave. Luckily, both son and I love – absolutely love – to eat out. We search out treasures from small establishments featuring down-home cooking to larger places that offer a variety of foods
In my February 28, 2012 blog entry, Eating Out, I wrote about my two-week visit with my son in the Washington D.C./Baltimore MD area. We typically eat out a great deal when I visit and this time was no exception. To keep the blog from stretching for miles, I only wrote about half of our travels and today I want to take you along on the rest of my journey. Red Hot & Blue... When m
Haven’t you had enough of chocolate? Isn’t it time for a break? Not a complete break. Just a short foray on the wild side. Maybe “wild” is a little much for this brown floury powder that comes from the carob bean. But it is definitely different from chocolate, even though often touted as a “substitute for chocolate”. If you think carob will taste like chocolate, you will be sorely disapp
Remember the cookie mixes I recently put together? I pulled one sugar cookie mix packet out yesterday morning to make a treat for a meeting today. FROSTED ORANGE SUGAR COOKIES Following the instructions, I added one stick (1/2 cup) of softened butter and one egg to the dry ingredients. In place of the 1/2 tsp. vanilla, I substituted 1/2 tsp. orange extract and finely grated zest from
Chocolate chip cookies are a classic and the recipe is always the same: flour, soda, salt, butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg and vanilla. And, of course, chocolate chips. While most chocolate chip cookies include equal amounts of white and brown sugar, my Cranberry-Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies are based on a recipe in Woman’s World (10/17/11) which uses more brown than white. Plus
Monday, I think it was, when the weather was so-o hot and humid. I wanted to bake, but didn’t want to risk turning on the oven and making the entire (upstairs) apartment any hotter than it was. As I wandered around Pinterest, I came across an idea for making cookies mixes -- dry ingredients only -- and thought to myself: Aha, a way to cook (kind of) without actually cooking! You can see the
