My Discoveries & My Inspirations

I first caught a commercial on TV for King’s Hawaiian Pretzel buns about four months ago.  Guy Fieri was doing his bit and was promoting Kings Hawaiian slider buns and Slider Sundays.  That immediately got my attention because what a great idea… Slider Sundays just...

Whenever I find a new product that I like, I experiment and find different ways of incorporating it into my menus.  This month, I discovered St. Pierre Brioche Waffles in the bakery department at my supermarket.  I was familiar with the brand since I buy their brioche...

When you open your front door and find bags and bags of lemons from your neighbor (all picked right off his backyard trees) you need to become a wizard at creating new and exciting ways to use them.  A girl can only put so many squeezes of lemon in her tea, soda or on...

Sheet pans, once for baking cookies are now used to cook entire meals!  It makes sense, right?  Everyone is so busy and trying to get a meal to the table in the middle of the week is for most people, another “thing” on the list of “things” to do.  Even for those of...

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know I don’t believe in eliminating any food group from my diet. Deprivation has never worked for me long term. Portion control and balance have always seemed like a smarter and healthier long term solution to keeping the...

I am as impressionable as the next guy and when I saw this fabulous ad on Instagram (A fried chicken leg is being dipped into a jar of this bright reddish/orange liquid and it is completely overflowing…) I immediately went online and ordered a jar.  The power of...

Even though I live in Southern California in Orange County, it is rare that I receive a box of fresh navel oranges hand picked right off the tree.  I’ve been told Orange County got its name from the hundreds of orange groves it was once the home to.  I’ve lived here...

Berries get all the love. Everyone wants an apple a day. Watermelon is the star in the summer along with peaches, plums, cherries and nectarines. You need a banana (no matter what the crazy people say) for potassium. Citrus gets used all year with a squeeze here and a...

Puff pastry is a home cook’s best friend.  It makes you look like a superstar in the kitchen and requires very little manipulation to create fabulous dishes.  Puff pastry is the miracle ingredient found in almost every grocery store’s frozen food section. It isn’t...

Let’s get the boat versus canoe thing out of the way first. Most people call horizontally cut zucchini that has had it’s middle scooped out and then stuffed, Zucchini Boats. A long time ago, when I was cooking with friends, I started calling them canoes because they...

Somewhere in 2019 (right before Covid), I saw whipped feta on a menu. I don’t remember what restaurant or even where I was eating but the idea of whipping feta just sounded amazing. At the time, I was struggling with the concept of getting that hard, block of cheese...

 There are great pancake recipes in every mom’s kitchen; in every part of the world.  Different nationalities celebrate this basic dish using different local ingredients.  Here in the US, we gravitate to a light, fluffy buttermilk pancake as our “go to” breakfast...

Before we get into the recipes, please tell me that you are familiar with Kodiak Cakes Power Cakes Flapjack & Waffle Mix? (I know, that’s a mouthful! No pun intended.) I was introduced to this mix at a WW meeting a few years ago. The conversation revolved around...

I love ravioli! What’s not to love? Pasta filled with a mixture of cheeses, meat or seafood, seasonings and veggies, cooked and topped with a delicious sauce is something you can crave on a regular basis and I do. If the urge comes during a particularly busy week when...

Let me be the first to confess. Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of no churn ice cream, let alone, made it or tasted it. I heard about it from a 10 year old on Kids Baking Championship on Food Network! I didn’t feel that bad after both Duff Goldman and Valeri...

A recent trip to my local Sprouts Farmers Market resulted in a citrus jackpot. My timing must have been just right because I came across a ton of different types of citrus fruit and a few of them I had never heard of – Limequats? Mandarinquats? I considered it a...

One of the joys of living in Southern California is the abundance of fresh produce and the endless choices of farmer’s markets in which to purchase it. Because the weather is almost always perfect, these outdoor markets are just a great way to spend a couple of hours...

It was Thanksgiving and the family was seated around the table and passing the wine bottles – a white chardonnay for one niece, red merlot for mom. My sister in law joined us this year (I haven’t seen her in 7 years so we had a lot to catch up on.). Wendy Robinson,...