Cooking Articles

Proposal Pork Chops

I have a friend who can remember nearly every outfit she wore during special moments in her life. Her red Mary Janes on the first day of kindergarten, the hand-embroidered peasant blouse for high school...

Thanksgiving Dinner's Late? There's an App for That.

Thanksgiving always begins with the best intentions. Guests are told when to arrive and what to bring. The turkey goes in the oven anticipating that it will be coming out with crisp golden brown skin...

Breakfast For Dinner!

You’re in the middle of another hectic week, and nobody has had time to do a grocery run. Between work, going to the gym, and shuttling kids back and forth from school and their various activities,...

Fancy Hot Cocoa: A Holiday Feast

Loyal readers of The Sweet Lowdown know that I'm not a huge chocolate fan. I've tried to extol the virtues of many other delicious dessert flavors in my column, but for some strange reason, it keeps coming...

A Chinese Restaurant Favorite

My family and I have been enjoying more than our share of takeout and restaurant meals lately and one of our go-to choices for a meal out is Chinese food. Our local Chinese haunt really is one of the...

Hot Chili for the Autumn Chill

Since the clock fell back last weekend, the evenings have instantly taken on the unmistakable feeling of autumn. Parts of the country have already had their first snowfall and others have felt a chill...

Crazy For Tortillas!

Tortillas are one item that have become a weekly staple on my shopping list, just like bread. In fact, sometimes you are more likely to find a bag of flour tortillas in our house than a loaf of bread....

Double-Layer Teen Adventure

There wasn’t a speck of anything for dessert in the house—well, besides some old dark chocolate baking bars. And while I’ve been known to break off a piece to pair with peanut butter in a pinch,...

Grab a Dozen Ears of Fresh Corn--Only

Or don’t make this slow-cooker soup. Seriously. If you think that it doesn’t matter, I guarantee you’ll be writing in to me telling me about this starchy, chewy, just overall-unappealing soup:...

A Thanksgiving Feast All Rolled Into Three

Did you ever see that episode from the first season of Friends where the gang’s Thanksgiving plans all get canceled? They end up staying together and Monica cooks. What starts as a simple gathering...

The Benefits of Crockpot Cooking

Even though I use and write about my crockpot all the time, it’s easy for me to forget just how cool crockpot cooking is. I remember my mom’s crockpot. The outside was scarred with burnt food and...

The Green Bean Casserole Alternative

Green bean casserole was not a part of my Thanksgiving upbringing. Green beans were, but not the casserole. Likewise with sweet potatoes and yams. They may have been served in the white ceramic dishes...

Bacon and Butter Make Everything Better

Bacon and butter make everything better. This was the motto of the French Culinary Institute. Well, not officially, but any institution with “French” in the title might as well have this adage to...

Yes, that’s one advertising jingle that has stuck in my head. While media headlines have grappled to-and-fro with both the pros and cons of the health effects of this little white orb, eggs are still...

Tune In, Chow Down, Turn On

With a string of tragi-comic dates under my belt, I have vowed that I will not date again until the new year, when the forces of the cosmos hit the reset button, weight-loss regimens begin (as the gym...

Chili For When It's Chilly

Around these parts, the weather quickly went from pleasantly cool and crisp to bone chillingly cold, or at least it felt that way. For those of us living in colder climates, when the weather changes so...