Real Life

(With Ingredients You Probably Already Have in Your Pantry!) Are there any schools left that haven’t gone nut-free?  If there are a few left, I am surprised, and feeling a little badly for the kids who are sitting at the nut-free lunch table (though perhaps at this point there is a special room for kids …

The other night, I was traveling, and my husband was on his own. We were on the phone, and he said, “Uh, what do I do for dinner?” We will pause to acknowledge that I have clearly enabled my people to a sad degree, when it comes to feeding themselves. I said, well, if you’re …

2017 was a bit of a mixed bag, to be blunt. Plenty of things to be happy and grateful about, from work to family to just being renewedly appreciative for some basics, like a warm bed and electricity. But boy oh boy, life isn’t all Instagram filters and cheesecake with raspberry sauce dripping both daintily …

My pantry was a total disaster. A black hole. A closet of chaos. Despite periodic efforts to reclaim the area, my pantry closet looked like an eclectic and confusing supermarket had exploded, and someone swept up a large portion of the miscellaneous goods and thrown them onto shelves with no rhyme or reason. Yes, the …

Getting chicken safely from a rock-hard frozen state to a thawed ready-to-cook state raises a lot of questions.  Here are the answers. First, chicken should never be thawed on the counter at room temperature or in a bowl of hot water. The following methods should allow you to thaw chicken and keep it out of …

The minute November hits, we’re all on the on-ramp to the holidays. Planning becomes the name of the game, to get all of the things done that need doing. Top of the list this month is Thanksgiving dinner. This is the kick off to all the holiday meals that will surely follow, and also a …