BasilandFig

Several years ago, Andy’s workday looked like this: Teach from 8 to 3:30. Bring a turkey sandwich (2 slices turkey, mustard, whole-wheat bread) and an apple for lunch. Get home by 4. Walk the dog. Prep for next class. Eat something, but not too much that it will make you [...]

This is, apparently, a thing—the engagement roast chicken.

I first read about it years and years ago in, of all places, Cosmo magazine.  The jist of it is, “Hey, make this roast chicken for your boyfriend.  It is so delicious that he will want to marry you.”

My first reaction to the article was something along the [...]

Last fall I did something that could either be called brilliant or insane (I’m leaning towards brilliant): I bought a 45+ pound box of sweet potatoes.  For $12.  At a hardware store.

It was for a good cause, okay? (I think it was a church, or something?)

And they were dug from a farm just a few [...]

There are a few things I learned about people and about grocery shopping during my time as a cashier, chief among them being OH MY GOD LADY, Why is your shopping cart full of 80 pounds of ground beef and 1 gallon of bleach?!

I also learned that the only thing more embarrassing than buying a [...]

The other day I was, for some reason, going to link to the Thai Red Curry recipe I had posted on this site.  That I was sure I had posted to this site because we make it so often, how could it be possible that I had, actually, never posted it?

Because after much searching and [...]

I wish I could say that I was a master of tofu recipes, a guru of soybean curd cookery.

And I wish I could also say that I loved tofu every time I ate it, in every permutation.

And while there are so many different things you can do with it—burgers! stir-fries! vegan cheesecakes!—most all of these [...]

We make a lot of pasta around here.  And we also make a lot of casseroles.

So it seems only natural that we’d end up making baked pasta casseroles, too.

One of the first dishes I ever learned to make was lasagna.  I mean, how hard is it, really?  Lasagna just falls into the ‘tedious’ rather than [...]

Pretty certain I will never be a hand model as there is always dirt under my fingernails. Sorry.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, geez, couldn’t you have posted this recipe before the Superbowl, so that I could’ve had something easy and delicious to eat while we watched the game commercials?

Well, yeah.

But [...]

When I was a kid, broccoli was a persistent companion at the dinner table.

Often, to get us to eat more of it (or to eat it at all) it was accompanied by Cheez Whiz.

And I’m not gonna lie: it was delicious.

Usually the whole jar was microwaved, stirred at 30 second increments until it was hot [...]

I only recently stumbled across the idea of putting oatmeal into smoothies and I have to say, it totally blew my mind.  Adding a whole grain?  To a drink?  It’s more delicious than it sounds.

The first time I made this, I found out (the hard way) that my blender wasn’t quite up to the task [...]