From the monthly archives:

December 2009

Gifting from the Garden

I won’t lie, skipping Christmas this year due to our tight budgets was difficult. If there’s a bright side, it’s realizing that I’m absolutely grateful for what I already have, which doesn’t cost a dime. I did manage to scrape together some home-made gifts for select friends and family: among them, ribbon-wrapped boxes with most [...]

Read the full article →

New Year’s Eve Contribution

We’re headed to Riverside tonight for a New Year’s Eve gathering: our contribution will be a winter salad with bleu cheese dressing. We’re choosing a blend of mixed greens with apples because that’s what’s growing out back, along with asiago, dried cranberries and walnuts, because we have them in the kitchen. Last 2009 harvest.   [...]

Read the full article →

Therapy for the Overindulged Holiday Feaster

It’s another cold drizzly day at the RGB. That’s code-word for soup. Today’s winner: I’ve been craving pho  all week (this always happens when I overindulge on American dairy and sweets), so we raided the local 99 Ranch Market yesterday to make a pot full. While I’m waiting for my mom to give me her [...]

Read the full article →

Food Foray # 3.1

While tinkering around in the kitchen this afternoon, I realized that I could use the surface of my aging refrigerator as a black-board to post the week’s menu: As I was trying to figure out what to do for Friday, it occurred to me that I should do something to root on my Oregon Ducks [...]

Read the full article →

December Lemons

We’re adding a new category: casting calls. We’re gonna start relying on the blogging community to give us recipe suggestions. Today, between the two trees, we have a boatload of lemons to use and/or give away. Any ideas on what we can do with these? In the meantime, watch out for a lemon asparagus risotto [...]

Read the full article →

Cloning a Holiday Tradition

37 years ago, Barry and his good friend Bruce started throwing annual holiday potluck dinners to get their friends together in the post-college years. The only other person who has attended all 37 years is their friend Ken. Some-time after that first party, Ken and his wife Susan started contributing their creamed corn (which I’m [...]

Read the full article →

Food Foray # 2.2

If you missed it, this is the follow-up post to Food Foray # 2.1. Last week, I pulled the meat out of two cooked King crab legs to make a crab manicotti appetizer for a Holiday Dinner At Home with Barry’s daughters. While the appetizer turned out okay, I think I’m gonna keep playing with [...]

Read the full article →

Second Chance Gobble

You ought to know by now that we’re big fans of using what we’ve got. After our Holiday Party this year, we had a carcass left over from a 16-lb. turkey, just begging to be used. Enter: turkey and wild rice with mushroom soup… mmm. A special thanks to Melissa for gifting us with a [...]

Read the full article →

A Sublime Garden Dessert

Barry hosted the 37th annual Bruce and Barry Holiday Party this year at our home. Two of our guests, Joyce and Louie, were kind enough to bring us some of their Mexican limes and oranges from their yard.  This morning, I decided I was going to use them to make my version of Barry’s favorite [...]

Read the full article →

The Kitchen Sink’s Liquid Gold

If you’ve never tried it, homemade chicken stock is one of the easiest things to do in a kitchen; our dog (who doesn’t have opposable thumbs) could probably do it. And – look at the clarity of this beautiful stock! You’ll never go to the canned stuff again: Our method is simple: step 1) grab [...]

Read the full article →

Introducing Britta’s Munchies

It was just a matter of time before we posted a recipe for Britta: A couple of weeks ago, we made a batch of peanut butter cookies for Britta’s Secret Santa exchange on www.weimaraneraddict.com. Britta loved these cookies so much, she ate about a third of the dough before it was even rolled out. Her [...]

Read the full article →

Brown-Nosing The Boss

In December 2008, I volunteered to cater my office’s Holiday Party. Around the same time, I invited one of the owners to lunch, just to get to know him a little bit better. At that lunch, I learned three things: he was a self-declared introvert, he enjoyed pinot noirs, and he loved pasta puttanesca, but [...]

Read the full article →

Food Foray # 2.1

There’s a lot of good stuff in the market ads this week. Among the specials: King crab legs, $7.99/lb. Snow crab clusters, $5.99/lb. Lobster tails, $4.99 each Medium raw shrimp, $5.99/lb. Mozzarella cheese, $2.98/lb. Ricotta cheese, $1.68/15 oz. tub We also have a bunch of brown onions on the counter and beefsteak tomatoes growing out [...]

Read the full article →

Continuing the French Nostalgia

With chuck roast on sale this week for $1.99/lb., three thoughts went through my head: 1. I now have an excuse to kick-start The Whole Cow. 2. I miss springtime dinners on Paris sidewalks. 3. Boeuf bourguignon, here we come! So here it is, our version of bœuf bourguignon. It’s a little bit Julia and [...]

Read the full article →

Rained In With Julia, Louisette and Simone

It’s raining; it’s pouring… and our ‘lil dog is snoring (and eating ornaments off the Christmas tree). Here’s a couple of garden shots from the RGB today. Scroll over the pictures for captions of the photos:             Since we’re cooped up in the house today, we’re pulling out our 1977 [...]

Read the full article →

Food Foray # 1.2

If you missed it, this is the follow-up post to Food Foray # 1.1. It was a busy week, so we just got around to playing with the roasted butternut squash. The plusses – the butternut puree mixture that went into the ravioli was outstanding. So were the fried sage leaves. The construction of the [...]

Read the full article →

Sweet December Redibles

It’s now the second week of December, and we still have vine ripened tomatoes in the garden, so we just lunched on tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches: Here’s a quick photo-journal of our December tomatoes: Normally enjoyed during summer months, we’re just now finding our roasted tomato soup is equally good in December. Hmm… [...]

Read the full article →

Playing with Butternut, Soup Style

Over the weekend, we were asked to contribute a simple soup to a good friend’s holiday dinner party. Since butternut squash was on sale (and I’m on a butternut squash kick), we decided to make a soup out of it. While we think everyone happily ate the soup we brought, we’re not exactly married to [...]

Read the full article →

Assisting Good Genetics

Roberto Maurice Brunelli likes steak, and today is his 90th birthday. In honor of this major milestone, we’re posting a steak dinner recipe. The below is one our typical protein/starch/vegetable dinners from this summer. It is by no means healthy, but it hits the spot for those steak and potato cravings. We hope that when [...]

Read the full article →

Meat Sauces

Click here to view a printable version of this recipe. Cranberry Red Wine Reduction Dresses 4 pork chops ~ ~ Ingredients ~ ½ tbsp. olive oil 1 shallot ¾ cup dry red wine 1 cup fresh cranberries ½ cup chicken broth / stock 2 ½ tbsp. light brown sugar 1 tsp. fresh thyme or ¼ [...]

Read the full article →

Caramelized Onions

We’re big fans of caramelized onions. Below, a basic recipe. We use them on: cheeseburgers appetizer crostinis pizzettas steaks Click here to view a printable version of this recipe. Caramelized Onions ~ ~ Ingredients ~ 1 red or brown onion 1 tbsp. butter 1 tbsp. olive oil 1 tbsp. red wine vinegar 1 tbsp. sugar [...]

Read the full article →

Food Foray # 1.1

We’re breaking away from this blog’s initial concept by not posting a recipe. !!!!! Enter the food foray category – a place to store musings about capricious and whimsical recipe ideas. We’re hoping that by reaching out, we could get some feedback. Maybe? Okay, here we go. While watching this weeks’ episode of Top Chef [...]

Read the full article →

Tomato Sauce

One of the highlights of living in sunny (or this week, windy) Southern California is that in the first week of December, we’re still harvesting tomatoes. Two pounds’ worth this week made for a quart of tomato sauce. If you happen to have a bunch lying around, this is a good way to use them [...]

Read the full article →

Banishing Arugula

On my way to a friend’s house in Newport Beach on Monday, I snuck in a visit to our favorite nursery: Roger’s Gardens. In honor of the Season, they’ve got all sorts of holiday lights up. They also have a lot of fake Christmas trees. ??? OK, I won’t judge.   While I was there, [...]

Read the full article →