Cooking Articles

Vanilla: The Most Underrated Flavor

Ahhh, vanilla. My absolute favorite. I love anything vanilla flavored, scented or otherwise. I even wear vanilla perfume. I'm addicted to the stuff, I admit. It's got a soft, yet complex, not too-sweet...

Slow Cooking With Fall Flavors: The Halloween Crockpot

With Halloween just around the corner, it's time to start thinking about candy, costumes, and cooking! Halloween is the perfect holiday to rev up your culinary creativity and there is a multitude of ideas...

Pumpkin Seeds Make For Some Un-Scary Treats

About this time of year families around the country pack their kids in the car for a trip to the pumpkin patch. Amongst the misshapen orbs, over-sized behemoths, and miniature decorative types, the kids...

Stop and Smell the Apple Butter

Last weekend my older son and I were out for the morning doing weekend errands and just happened to stumble upon a neat little festival. As we zoomed up the road on our way to the closest kiddie shoe...

Take Me Home for the Ballgame

It has been a summer of “take me out to the ball game” but now it's time to take me “home” for the ball game. Summer is over and so ends the baseball season. With only the World Series left to...

Healthy Kiddie Meal Choices

It’s a parenting conundrum that many of us are faced with on a daily basis when feeding our children. Do you go with something quick and easy that you’re sure they will eat or do you try to offer...

Roll, Jelly, Roll

Jelly rolls. While I had never made ‘em before, I had looked in awe at many a party and picnic where these delightful dessert rolls appeared: pumpkin, apple spice, even raspberry crème. Yet they all...

Butter Beans Make Better Baked Beans

That’s precisely what hubby said when I asked him what he thought of this latest crockpot baked bean recipe. After all, it was a recipe that really was inspired by him: Just the other week when he...

Something Wicked This Way Comes . . . For Dinner

Something wicked this way comes for dinner this Halloween. Unlike most Halloween meals that embrace the holiday with disgusting-looking but good-tasting fare (think peeled grapes as eye balls and bowls...

Sweet, Savory, Spicy Squash

It seems like just yesterday the market was overrun with summer bounty. Then overnight, voila! The winter squash arrived. Great piles of pumpkins ready for jack-o-lanterns. Mountains of butternuts...

Funnel Cake Fun

It’s that fund-raising time of the year. From scouts and school groups to extra-curricular activities, it’s the annual time of students selling wares to build up those low ebbing coffers. And surprisingly,...

Dating Tips for Those Going to a Nice Guy's House for Dinner

Most of the dating advice out there tends to be for men, and often concerns what they should do and say to their prospective lovers. Much of this advice is sexist and does not take into account that there...

Don't Squash the Pumpkin!

October is the month of the pumpkin. With Halloween coming so soon, lots of us are preparing with a visit to the pumpkin patch to find a few choice specimens to decorate, and more importantly, to eat!...

Southern Comfort

It could be the change of weather. Goodbye Indian summer, hello oncoming brutal winter. It could be the unusual number of natural disasters in the last year: tsunamis, hurricanes, mudslides, and earthquakes....

Beware: Calling All Ghouls and Goblins

Warning: This article uses food in ghoulish ways. Read on at your own risk. It’s right around the corner. That haunting time of the year when you can transform your hidden, mysterious, more devilish...

Enjoying Winter Squash

My summer garden has long since given way to its fall production. Large orange pumpkins, deep green winter kale, ears of brown dry husked popcorn, and tan butternut squashes now stand where tomatoes, summer...