• Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

    Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

    The other night I was very cold so I made a hot chocolate. My method for a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants hot chocolate is pretty simple: I warm milk, whisk in unsweetened cocoa powder and a bit of sugar. I taste and allow it to thicken a bit at a simmer. Then, at the last minute, I add…

  • Carnitas Tacos with Green Salsa and Pico de Gallo

    Carnitas Tacos with Green Salsa and Pico de Gallo

    To understand my Mexican food expertise, consider this: when I was younger, I took several cruises with my family that brought us to Mexico. Cozumel, mostly. Upon arriving in Mexico, my family would immediately trek to the center of town where my mom would shop for jewelry and my brother, dad and I would stand…

  • Nine Years

    Nine Years

    Nine years ago I wrote this and my life changed. Thank you all for continuing to make this blog a place where I can share recipes, tell emotional stories, make cartoons about trips to fancy restaurants, write songs, reenact the fall of Saigon from “Miss Saigon” with eggs in my microwave and procure advice about…

  • Chicken Liver Toast & The Secret To A Good Chicken Salad

    Chicken Liver Toast & The Secret To A Good Chicken Salad

    For as long as I’ve been roasting chickens (and I roast chickens all the time) I’ve been throwing away the liver that comes stuffed inside, along with the giblets, because–well–I don’t know: am I supposed to cook and eat that thing? Well, yes. I mean not all the time. But they don’t put it in…

  • Leftover Broccoli Sauce

    Leftover Broccoli Sauce

    You know that thing where you buy two big bunches of broccoli for dinner one night and then you only end up using one bunch so the other bunch sits in your refrigerator in a plastic bag for a week? And then, one week later, you look at it and kind of feel sorry for…

  • Lebanese Chickpea Stew

    Lebanese Chickpea Stew

    The first post of 2013 has to be a winner–that’s a rule–and so it’s a huge relief to share with you a dish that I made for dinner the other night that’s such a winner, it portends very good things for the year to come. I’m at the point now where I can read a…

  • The 10 Best Dishes That I Ate in 2012

    The 10 Best Dishes That I Ate in 2012

    I know you’re probably sick of these end-of-the-year listicles, but after a year that took me all over the country, I just had to do a list of the 10 best dishes that I ate this year. I ate so much good food, in fact, that 2012 may very well have been the best eating…

  • The 10 Best Things That I Cooked in 2012

    The 10 Best Things That I Cooked in 2012

    You’ve gotta admit, I cooked some really good things this year. So many, in fact, that narrowing this list down to ten took some work. But I’m confident that these ten dishes are the dishes that dazzled the most, the ones that made me pat myself on the back most vigorously, praising my myself in…

  • What To Buy The Food Lover In Your Life

    What To Buy The Food Lover In Your Life

    If you’re anything like me, you leave things until the last minute. And presumably many of you will be doing some last minute holiday shopping this weekend, scrambling through malls, climbing over parked cars, desperate to find gifts for the food lover in your life. Allow me to help! Here are 10 things that I…

  • Anything Goes Salad

    Anything Goes Salad

    After my New York Public Library event with Deb Perelman (there were 230 people there!), I’m rethinking my whole blog. Somehow, through my aggressive questioning, I forced Deb to give up her blogging secrets. And the one that’s really staying with me the most is the fact that she cooks during the day to have…