For me, the hardest part of going away is not the planning (I guess I’m not really a planner), nor is it the packing (just take all of your clothes and stuff them in a suitcase). It is using up the contents of the fridge for that final week at home, that works me up. Because, yes, in the past I have left that solitary carton of milk on the shelf chilling, and let me tell you, after weeks of sitting alone in the refrigerator, that milk punished my olfactory senses heartily.
Going to the market and buying just a smattering of ingredients has never been one of my strong points. But sometimes, in using up what I already have, it is necessary to actually do a wee bit of grocery shopping, as counterintuitive as it may seem. So cruising up and down the grocery aisles, [...]

Ambrosia has always fascinated me, not the food of the Greek gods, rather the good ol’ American buffet speciality. (And maybe by fascinated I should clarify– repelled.) I remember a few family BBQ’s at my grandma house. All the food would be lined up on the dinning room cum buffet table: potato salad, crocks of baked beans, ears of corn, and way down, at the end of the table, a Melmac bowl full of ambrosia.
You would think this salad would be endlessly pleasing to a child’s palate, mandarin orange segments, chunks of pineapple, dried coconut, mini-marshmallows tumbling about. Sounds pleasing enough. But it was the “dressing” that turned me off every time. The thick, globby, preservative-laden dressing, or sauce…maybe covering is the best choice of words for the concoction, which was so dense you could not even see what it concealed. Sometimes it [...]

When we moved to New York, we lost our outdoor space, that tiny patch of land, right outside our front door where Brian and I grew a sorry collection of succulents. We also lost our BBQ. But have no fear, I have a stovetop grill pan. And with that pan comes my latest fixation, the Grilled Pear.
Yes, a grill pan is an indispensable tool for getting the look and some of the taste of a classic BBQ. I use my grill pan to prepare all sorts of meat and fish. But now I can add the grilling of fruit to that list. Grilling pears proved to be the perfect use for an autumn fruit. It is early in the season. While the apples aren’t at their most flavorful, and the pears are sort of firm, I just don’t feel like eating the [...]