Mr. Mom Essentials II: Homemade macaroni and cheese

A Facebook friend (Hi Lisa!) asked for a homemade macaroni and cheese recipe yesterday, so I posted this on her wall. It started out as the recipe from Better Homes & Gardens, but has evolved over the years.

My youngest daughter loves it, but started having issues with lactose intolerance a while back, so we don't have it as often as we used to. But with the first snowfall of the season still on the ground, it's comfort food time! (I made a meat loaf in the iron skillet last night, so this recipe comes up for tonight.)

Sorry the quantities are a little vague, but if you're comfortable enough to try it, you're good enough to figure them out.

First make your noodles--I use whole wheat elbow macaroni and I make enough for 4-6 servings. That's usually around half a box of dry, maybe a little more.

While those are cooking, I melt about half a stick of butter in my big wok-shaped pan and sauté maybe a cup of chopped onions. When those start to get clear at the edges, I sprinkle them with 2-3 Tbsp. of flour, then dump in about 12 oz of milk, stir it up good, add maybe a tsp. of salt and ½ tsp. pepper and a 1 tsp. of dry mustard, turn down the heat and let it cook until it starts to thicken.

When it gets there, I stir in at least two cups of shredded cheese--your choice of what kind--a couple of chopped Roma tomatoes and some cubed ham. (Sometimes I buy a couple of quarter-inch thick slices of ham in the deli, and cube them myself; other times I get the prepackaged cubed ham at Walmart.)

Drain the cooked noodles and stir those into the sauce. Get a big casserole dish, spray it with (butter) cooking spray, then coat the inside of the dish with finely ground bread crumbs--whole wheat again, if you have them. Cracker crumbs work well, too. Someone mentioned Ritz crackers--those are great for this.

Dump the noodles and sauce into the dish, cover the top with a couple more thinly sliced Roma tomatoes, sprinkle with more breadcrumbs and some additional cheese, then into a 350 oven for half an hour.

I usually serve this with a green vegetable--stir-fried green beans with almonds are the fave, but peas or broccoli are good as well--and some Pillsbury biscuits or Sister Schubert rolls, hot out of the oven.

You can sub frozen chopped onions and canned diced tomatoes (drain 'em good!) in the sauce, and skip the sliced tomatoes on top, if you're in a hurry. (I do that a LOT.)

Here's how mine looks. And yes, it knew I was taking its picture and it put on a sprig of parsley.

Dirty rice, as they do NOT make it in New Orleans

Kathleen and I spent part of our honeymoon in New Orleans, back in January 1990. Walking through the French Quarter, we ran into all kinds of exotic smells, but there’s no way we could try them all. So we had the beignets and the chicory coffee at Café du Monde, and I seem to recall an oyster po’ boy someplace between the kids who bet us five bucks they could tell us “where you got those shoes” (turns out the answer is “on your feet,” and they aren’t much interested in questions of grammar if you want to quibble about proper usage of “got” and “have”) and the first and last time we spent a hundred bucks on breakfast for two.

That was breakfast at Brennan’s (a New Orleans tradition since 1948). While it was good, it didn’t really live up to the recommendation of our older, more sophisticated USIA colleague back in Washington. She told us it would be unforgettable, and at that price she was right! However, while we were there, I got an essential tip from the waiter about why Brennan’s chicory coffee was so good, that may have made it worth it: They use the regular grind sold at A&P, but the secret is New Orleans has really bad water and through some sort of magic, that results in really good coffee. Since we were heading for Mexico City, we picked up a couple of cans and started drinking it all the time.

Anyway, I also picked up a little New Orleans cookbook so I could cook up and sample some of the stuff we’d missed.

This recipe was NOT in that cookbook, but because I started making others of those recipes, I eventually ran across Zatarain’s Dirty Rice, and this recipe (sort of, anyhow) used to be printed on the box.

Not surprisingly, you start with a box of Zatarain’s Dirty Rice. Now, I didn’t even know dirty rice was a Louisiana thing. I first heard of it from my old pal R.B. Nezbit when he, Kevin Kehoe and I were driving from Minnesota to New York City (Brooklyn to be precise) back around 1986 and Ron (as he was known then) said we should stop at Popeye’s and get some chicken and dirty rice. We might have, but if we did, I don’t recall. (And who knew Popeye was from Louisiana?)

Anyway, you have this box of Zatarain’s Dirty Rice. Lately they've been offering a brown rice version, so I get that. Might even be good for me, who knows?

The directions say brown up ¾ of a pound of hamburger, but I usually use a pound because that’s almost always how they sell it in the stores. Sometimes I use ground pork, instead. Today I’m making a double recipe, so I used a pound of each.

When the meat is almost browned, I throw in about half a bag of frozen three pepper blend, found in most grocery store freezer cases these days among the frozen veggies. Sometimes it has onions in it, sometimes not. If it doesn’t, then add some onions as well. (“Some” might be a small handful if chopped and a little more if sliced and cut up.)

That’s quickly followed by a couple of handfuls of raisins (I use regular and golden, one handful each) and a small bag of sliced almonds. Stir all of that around with a wooden spoon or spatula until the meat is browned.

Then you dump in the Zatarain’s Dirty Rice mix and a couple of cups of water, stir it around real good, turn the heat down, cover and cook for about 25 minutes. When most of the water is soaked up, stir in a handful of crumbled bacon--you can use the kind that comes in a bag if you're in a hurry, but NOT something like Bac-Os. Those just get soggy.

If you want to get all Southern about it, serve it up with okra on the side (or greens or maybe possum—no wait, that’s a main dish). Otherwise corn or corn on the cob or corn pudding works good. And heck, it already has some vegetables in there—the peppers and onion—and even fruit (the raisins)!

I’ll post that corn pudding recipe later. We usually have it at Thanksgiving and it’s one of those old-fashioned comfort foods that probably isn’t great for things like your cholesterol and your blood pressure, but it GREAT for the soul.

And for those of you unwilling to risk my version of the dirty rice, Zatarain’s no longer prints it on their boxes, but they have it up on their website here.

Here it is on the table..

...and an appropriate accompaniment.

Mr. Mom Essentials: Pot roast in the Crock-pot

One of the first tools I got when I became Mr. Mom was a crock-pot. You won't be cooking a lot of fancy dinners in one, but it sure is nice to have something working on dinner all day while you take care of other business!

The first one we got matched our Corelle Shadow Iris dishes. Since then, I've since picked up four more (although maybe it's just three, because I'm counting the double my daughter gave me for Christmas as two), and although I haven't had occasion to use all of them at once yet, I will.

Anyhow, I like roast beef. In my younger years I'd run over to Hooley's (the local supermarket, with a great meat department) buy a roast, put it in a pan in the oven, (over)cook it until it was gray, tough and dry, then slice it thin to make sandwiches. My only defense is that I didn't know any better.

While the crock-pot still gets you into the "well done" range, the meat is always moist and tender, and you can start with the cheapest roast you can find and still get compliments from your wife and kids on the results.

Here's how I make mine:

I get a chuck roast or a rump roast in the 2-3 pound range. I shop the sales and freeze them when I find them, so there's always one in the freezer if I'm stumped for dinner or know I won't have time to cook something later in the afternoon. And yeah, you CAN you nicer roasts, but to be honest, why would you? Save those for cooking in the oven when you want to put a nice medium-rare chunk of beef on the table and impress company.

My ingredients are pretty basic: onions, garlic, season salt, paprika, black pepper and a can of beef broth.

I use red onions, but it really doesn’t
make lot of difference what kind you
use. Sometimes when I’m in a hurry
I use the chopped frozen ones. Heck,
I’ve even used the dried ones!

First I chop the onions and put them in the bottom of the crock-pot. I'm using my original crock-pot here because that's my tradition. I like tradition. It's also just about the right size for the 2-3 pound roast.

Next, I slice up some cloves of garlic, then stab the roast a dozen or so times with my sharpest, pointiest knife so I can spike the garlic into the meat. (This can be a therapeutic step if you're have any unresolved frustrations, find yourself with a sharp implement in hand, but want to avoid any activities that could get you into trouble with the law. A lot safer than going all West Side Story in an alley someplace.)

Maybe someone with
professional training (or at
least a more experience)
can tell me why cooking
fat side up seems to work
better. In a regular oven
I can see how it would
protect the meat if you’re
cooking at a higher heat,
but that doesn’t really
apply in the crock-pot.

Do both sides, sprinkle liberally with the season salt and conservatively with the paprika and pepper. Then the roast goes into the crock-pot on top of the onions, fat side up. Pour the beef broth down the sides.

This time around I had some nice red potatoes from the local farmers' market (Carper Sweet Corn & Produce, out of Rutland, SD) that I cut up, seasoned and put on top.

You also can put in carrots, pearl onions or whatever other vegetable you might enjoy cooked alongside a roast and soaking up the flavors all day.

Then cover the crock-pot, walk away and let it cook. I set mine on low and cook all day if I put it together before I go to work in the morning. If I cook one of these on the weekend and get started later in the morning, it goes on high.

When it's done,  I take the potatoes and some of the onions and garlic and mash them together with some milk in a separate bowl and the roast goes onto a serving dish or cutting board.

Then I strain the solids out of the remaining liquid to make the gravy. Usually I have about 3 cups of liquid. I heat that to boiling in a saucepan and add about 3 Tbsp. of corn starch dissolved into about half a cup of cold milk, pour it into the boiling liquid and whisk the daylights out of it until it thickens up. Then off the heat and into the gravy boat.

We always have this with sliced beets—most often Harvard or pickled. I probably should check the quality of my photos before we start eating, but here's how it came out yesterday:

Lox and bagels for breakfast

I should learn to take photos of the food I make, at least when I plan to post about it. But I let two chances go by again this morning. That said, I ate and enjoyed both of them!

I discovered lox and bagels at least 20 years ago, but it wasn't until we moved to East Lansing in 2001 that I discovered Einstein Brothers Bagels and their version. It quickly became my favorite from their menu. Sadly, the campus Einsteins here in Brookings stopped offering it shortly after we arrived last year. The good news is I'd taken one apart years ago and learned to make my own:

• 1 everything bagel, sliced and toasted
• Spread both sides with cream cheese (the salmon-flavored kind is great, if you can find it)
• Press a spoonful of capers into the cream cheese on one side, then top with a few layers of lox
• Add a slice of tomato on top of that, with salt and fresh-ground pepper
• Top with a few slices of red onion, then cover with the other half-bagel
• Press together, cut in half and enjoy!

Having a crock-pot pot roast for Sunday dinner today—that's a core Mr. Mom staple. After I get it cooking, I'll post the recipe here. If you don't have a crock-pot, run out to Walmart and get one now! (I have five, but I'm not sharing...)

Mr. Mom's Beef, Cabbage & Garbanzo Hot Dish

The other day I found myself wanting something that wasn't "too meaty" (my youngest daughter's term), which kind of morphed into a craving for stuffed grape leaves, a/k/a dolmades. But the grocery store here doesn't carry the ready-made kind, and I didn't have the patience to try making them myself.

So I thought about what goes into them: rice, meat, garbanzo beans, chopped tomatoes and some spices. It dawned on me that there's no reason I couldn't just combine all of those things into something else for dinner: a hot dish, or as they call that elsewhere, a casserole.

One of the things I do when I want to make something I haven't made before is go online and look at a bunch of different recipes, then combine the parts I like into something that sounds good. It almost always works.

And while this recipe does have meat in it, I have it on good authority that it's not "too meaty," a subjective analysis performed by Sarah at the dinner table. For my vegetarian daughter Rose, there's no reason you couldn't swap in Morningstar crumbles for the ground beef. (And for my carnivorous daughter Emily, we'll get to big chunks of meat on the grill another time.)

Anyway, I realized after I got it made that I'd kinda wandered away from the stuffed grape leaves inspiration, so I went back later and figured out a few additional flavors that might work. It tasted great as I made it—Kathleen even allowed as to how she's starting to like cabbage (!!!)—but CAUTION: I have not made it with the the parsley, cilantro and lemon juice yet. (I will and it sounds good, but you never really know until you actually taste it.)

Okay, enough yapping. Here's what I came up with for my beef, garbanzo and cabbage hot dish:

INGREDIENTS
    1 lb. ground beef (or lamb, if you want to get tricky)
    2 cups cooked rice
    ½ head of cabbage
    1 cup chopped onions
    2 cloves minced garlic
    1 can garbanzo beans
    1 can diced tomatoes (the garlic/olive oil kind)
    1 tsp. salt
    ½ tsp. pepper
    1 tsp. oregano
    ½ tsp. ground cumin

Some possible additions to make this into a "Dolmades Casserole"—sounds kinda fancy, huh?—aiming for the stuffed grape leaves flavors:
    ½ bunch fresh parsley, chopped fine
    ¼ bunch fresh cilantro, chopped fine
    2 Tbsp. lemon juice

    Heck, you probably could swap grape leaves (you can get them in a jar, soaked in brine) for the cabbage as well. Rinse 'em good first, though, or leave out the salt! (Edited Sept. 30: Grape leaves = BAD idea! They taste good, but they're too tough to put in a hot dish, even chopped up pretty fine. I'll be sticking with cabbage. The seasonings, on the other hand, were great!)

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Brown ground beef in a little olive oil
3. Stir in onions and garlic. Cook until the onions start to get transparent.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients, with the cabbage and rice last. Stir until heated all the way through.
5. Add a little Swiss cheese, stir until melted, then everything pour into a casserole lined with breadcrumbs. Sprinkle the top with more bread crumbs and more Swiss, then bake uncovered for 35 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the breadcrumbs browned.

Hummus, pita chips and whiskey for sides.

Mentioning the whiskey reminds me: This time around, I was going to complain about distillers changing the designs of a couple of my favorite liquor bottles. It's still a sore point, but I guess I'll get around to it another time.

Sunday dinner

The truth is, the Sunday dinner I made today wasn't too special—something I sort of squeezed in while doing other stuff, and probably nothing to write about. I roasted a traditional chicken (slowly, because Kathleen and Sarah were in Sioux Falls) with Zehnder's seasoning and made some rice pilaf and Dutch green beans for the sides.

The Dutch green beans were something I came across when two of my enthusiasms intersected: I was trying to duplicate the green beans they have at KFC; and I was browsing through old school lunch menus and saw them listed from one dating back to the late 1960s.

That got me scouring the Internet for an appropriate recipe. The one that sounded most like what I wanted turned out to be cafeteria-sized: you START with a No. 10 can of cut green beans, which seems to be something like 6 or 7 pounds of them. I like green beans, but I don't like them THAT much.

Anyway, I scaled it down to just two 15 oz. cans.

The first thing you do is fry up three or four pieces of bacon, nice and crisp.

Those come out of the pan (onto a paper towel) and I toss a Tablespoon (or so) of finely chopped onions into the hot bacon grease and cook until they start to get translucent.

Then in go the two cans of (drained) green beans. I sprinkle those with about a Tablespoon of white vinegar and some salt (you don't need a lot of salt with the bacon) and black pepper (you can be fairly liberal with the pepper).

Stir it all around until the beans are heated all the way through, then crumble the bacon and add that to the mix. Out of the pan and into the serving dish.

You can shortcut this if you're in a hurry:

I keep a container of bacon grease in the fridge (learned that from my dad) that I use to start things, then just add bacon pieces (like Hormel) at the end.

And if I don't have a fresh onion handy, I'll use frozen, but chop it really fine and let the water cook out before I add the beans.

If you don't have the beans—well, in that case you probably should make sometime else.

Next time I'm going to complain about a couple of my favorite liquors changing their traditional bottles. It's not really a recipe, but Mr. Mom likes a drink when cocktail hour rolls around. So there IS a connection.

Labor Day dessert

Quick follow-up as we move toward Labor Day dinner. As I mentioned over on Facebook, earlier this week I saw a photo of an apple pie someone had made using flattened out cinnamon rolls (the kind that come in a cardboard tube) as the crust. I thought Kathleen showed it to me—she says I showed it to her, so I have no idea who actually sent it to me or where I saw it in the first place.

Anyway, that means I don't have a recipe, but I decided to make it anyway.

Not a lot of thinking involved: seven of the eight rolls get laid in a circle in the bottom of the pie plate with one in the middle, flattened out as much as possible. Then I uncoiled one and ran it around the top because it seemed to make sense with the kind of pie plates I use. Two cans of apple pie filling (yeah, I'm lazy, but Mr. Mom learned a long time ago to take shortcuts when it made sense to do so—Ann, did I mention I parboil my ribs?) and an apple crisp topping (oatmeal, flour, brown sugar and butter) on top.

When it came out of the oven, Kathleen talked me into dribbling the cheesecake icing that came with the rolls across the top. That's okay, I have an electric toothbrush and sweet is good.

Anyhow, here's what I ended up with:

Barbecued ribs: Am I doing them wrong?

It's Labor Day, and that means barbecued ribs at our house. One of the cool things about holidays is that we've always either followed or established traditions for what we eat. That saves a lot of thinking going into what are usually pretty busy days.

Today started busy: We were out putting up flags on the boulevards of Brookings. It's a marching band activity—probably raises some funds for the band (maybe I should pay closer attention at the parents' meetings!)—but more than that, it was kind of fun. We got up a zero-dark-thirty, rendezvoused with other band parents at a storage shed to pick up the flags, then hit the streets. The whole thing took a little more than an hour, after which we had a leisurely breakfast at Perkins. We go out again at around 6:30 to take them down and back to the shed. So it's good to know dinner is already planned.

However, this year I'm approaching the ribs with a little trepidation: Apparently I've been doing them wrong for the last 15 or 20 years! I recently posted something on Facebook about how I parboil them first, and I caught heck from one of my old friends who told me in no uncertain terms you DO NOT parboil (or boil) ribs. Yikes!

Here's what I've been doing since my earliest days as Mr. Mom back in Texas. I got away with it there for a couple of years, but that was before Facebook, so all anyone ever knew about was the result, not how I got us there.

Parboil a rack or two of pork ribs (either short ribs or baby back ribs, depending on what I find on sale) for about 45 minutes in a stock pot with a few big glurps of white vinegar in the water. I don't know how big a "glurp" is, but that's the sound the vinegar jug makes when I pour it in. I'm guessing that altogether it's about a cup, maybe two. If I don't smell vinegar while they're cooking, I didn't use enough. Sometimes the ribs go in frozen, sometimes I cut them into smaller sections, sometimes they just go into the boiling water/vinegar.

Anyway, after about 45 minutes a lot of the connective tissue has been broken down and they're ready for the oven. I fish them out of the water, set them on a cutting board and season them. I always do one of two things: season salt and Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning; or my homemade Cuban rub. (I'll post the recipe for that below.)

Then onto a rack (sprayed with olive oil) in a covered pan with a little water underneath, and into a 375° oven for another 45 minutes.

When that's done you can finish them however you like. Sometimes I serve them as dry ribs—especially if I used the Cuban rub—which means jacking up the heat to 450° for another 15 minutes uncovered. Most of the time I brush them with barbecue sauce—I tend to use the cheap stuff, Kansas City style or original Kraft, sometimes Jack Daniel's brand, occasionally even homemade— and back into the 450° oven for 15 minutes. And sometimes they get the sauce then go on the grill—over mesquite charcoal in the Weber, or with some mesquite or hickory chips in the smoker box if they go on the gas grill.

And that's pretty much it.

But today I'm going to try something a little different. I'm not willing to let go of the parboiling just yet—I think it makes the ribs more tender—but I'm going to move them from there directly to the gas grill, indirect heat (as low as I can get it) with a pan of water over the flames on both sides and hickory chips in the smoker. I have no idea how long they'll need to cook, but I can tell when they're done by how easily I can pull the meat off the bone. (The beans and rice, corn and Texas toast all go pretty fast and can wait until the ribs are finished.)

I'll get back to you on how they turn out. Who knows, maybe next time I'll get all traditional and try low heat and smoke them all day!

Meanwhile, here's the recipe for the Cuban rub (for me, each "part" is a teaspoon, but if you want to make a larger quantity and store it, you can substitute some other measurement, then do the math for the bay leaves):

6 parts Montreal Steak Seasoning (yeah, that's kind of cheating, but it works)
2 parts anise seed
2 parts ground coriander
3 parts ground cumin
1 part dried lemon peel
4 bay leaves, chopped very fine

If you'd rather do this as a marinade and use fresh ingredients, here's how that could work, with this caveat: I haven't done this one specifically, but these are roughly the proportions I use for liquids, spices and solids in other marinades:

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped fine
Fresh rosemary, chopped
Fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tsp. anise seed
3 tsp.  cumin
1 tsp. Kosher or sea salt
1/2 Tbsp. fresh ground black pepper
1/2 Tbsp. paprika
4 bay leaves, chopped very fine

It occurs to me that I ought to be posting pictures, so maybe after I make them today, I'll do that. Assuming, of course, they come out okay!

First, full disclosure...

I'm not Mr. Mom anymore.

It was, without question, the best job I ever had. I did it for ten years, until the youngest of my three daughters was heading into first grade. A big part of it was learning to cook for my family, a task I had to learn, but something I now do for fun. So how did I get there?

We quit government service back in the nineties when we had only two daughters, both born during our time at the embassy in Mexico City. They were about a year and two-and-a-half years old when we decided we didn't want to raise them in the Foreign Service—if we had, we would have spent a year back in DC, then, then at least two years at the embassy in Managua, where they most likely would have started school. We already had our onward assignments there, and the welcome cable said all sorts of things about how many hours a day we'd have electrical power, how often we'd be able to get things like bread and milk... It didn't sound like a great environment to raise a couple of kids.

So we decided to leave government service and move back to the States to raise the girls in a more stable environment. We landed in Texas, where Kathleen was hired by a small, private university. The plan was to get settled, then I'd find a job in my field, we'd put the girls in daycare, and we'd get to the business of living our lives.

Kathleen started work and I went about getting our household set up. After having a job where the government took care of pretty much everything except shopping for food, making the meals and sleeping in the beds, it was quite a change. We decided we'd have out big meal at midday and that Kathleen would come home for that. I could cook some basic stuff—spaghetti, roast chicken, various breakfasts—but I'd never done that for more than just two people, at least not with any regularity.

As near as anyone can recall, I made the chicken the day Kathleen started her new job, and had it on the table with mashed potatoes and a vegetable when she came home around noon. We all ate, she headed back to work, I cleared the table and did the dishes. Then I sat down in the living room, pretty much exhausted. It seemed like I'd been sprinting, on a dead-run that started around seven that morning. But I did it! The family was fed!

Then it struck me: I have to do this again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that...

But it turned out that I kinda liked it. Kathleen had The Joy of Cooking and I got a copy of The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. I made my first meat loaf. I looked for a stroganoff recipe that didn't use tomato sauce. I started doing the grocery shopping, based on what I was planning to cook that week. I realized we could have pretty much anything we wanted for dinner as long as I was willing to learn how to cook it.

I also realized that I was really enjoying being a dad.

That probably sounds silly—after all, my older daughter was 2½ years old, so it's not like this was some kind of new experience. But actually, it was. When we worked for the government, the nanny took care of the girls all week long. I'd kiss them goodbye in the morning and hold them on my lap to read a book or watch TV in the evening. No nanny on the weekends, but Kathleen was a pretty engaged mother, so my parenting experience was a lot like a stone skipping off the surface of water. The water was there, but I never really got down into it.

That changed dramatically in Texas. I was with the girls all day, every day. I dressed them, I fed them, I changed diapers, I picked up after them, I took them shopping with me and to the park to play. And I liked it. Heck, they were even more fun than cats! And it turned out you could actually toilet train them!

But there was this plan: me finding a job, the girls into daycare. Suddenly that didn't sound so good any more. But I needed to talk about it with Kathleen.

Kathleen's favorite meal is lasagna.We always have it on her birthday and on Mothers' Day, and sometimes we just have it to have it. But at that point I'd never made a lasagna, and in looking at the recipe in the Better Homes cookbook, it seemed a bit more daunting than a meat loaf. But I did it up, along with garlic bread and a fresh salad. After dinner, when she was well-fed and happy, I said something like, "So about me looking for a job..."

She said she needed to look at the numbers—that would be a significant difference in income from what we'd planned, but like me, she liked the idea of us raising our girls instead of someone else. By the time we had the girls tucked in bed she said, "I think we can do it." My career as Mr. Mom—and the full-time cook—began the next day.

That was something like 50 pounds ago. I figured out how to make all kinds of different meals—actually planned them out a month in advance for a while, until I got better at improvising—and I don't think I ever enjoyed learning and doing something so much in my life.

What I plan to do here is something a lot of folks have told me for a lot of years that I should do: Share some of my recipes and my experiences in the kitchen. In the old days it was, "You should write a book."  More recently that gave way to, "You should start a blog."

I've done blogging before—as a ghostwriter in my professional life, and in irregular and sporadic bursts elsewhere on Blogger. I hope to do this one a little more regularly. There's rarely a week when I'm not trying some new recipe or inventing one of my own, so it seems likely that I'll have enough material to get that done. One way or another, I guess we'll see!