Helping Home Cooks Save Time and Money
If you can love an inanimate object, then I love my Magimix food processor. Intensely. It’s a useful, durable, well-designed machine. As Norene Gilletz wrote in her classic book, The Pleasures of Your Food Processor, the virtue of a quality processor is its ability to stop when it gets overheated. On lower-quality machines, the motor [...]
A few days ago, I wrote about the reasons that beans may not get hard after cooking. Today I’ll address a different issue that also relates to beans that may have not been stored carefully: infestation. To avoid problems of infestation of grains and legumes, first follow the suggestions in my earlier post on how [...]
Have you ever soaked and cooked a batch of beans, only to find that they never really got soft? The main reason for beans that are still hard after cooking is the quality of the beans. Drying beans preserves them for a long time, but not forever. Even if you just got them, they may [...]
Reader Ms. Krieger was experimenting with rutabaga, and developed this recipe for Passover. She thought it would work equally well with turnips, and suggested I add it to my links for turnip recipes. Recipe: Unstuffed Rutabaga or Turnip Casserole Ingredients 3 large turnips (or 2 large rutabagas) 1 lb. (1/2 kg.) ground beef 1 cup [...]
Jerusalem artichokes actually originate in North America, although they grow well in any hot climate. They contain inulin, a dietary fiber that may help diabetics. Inulin can also cause gassiness. “Jerusalem” is probably a corruption of girasole, which means “facing the sun.” Sunchoke, the official name for the tuber, probably led to the artichoke misnomer. [...]
Most of us have our favorite recipes. And each time we make them, we do the same tasks again and again. Next time you make that dish, think how you might prepare some of the ingredients in larger quantities. This can cut the amount of time you spend preparing or cooking your food. Let’s say [...]
I’m excited to let you know about the publication of my first e-book. It’s called Cook Smart! Learn the Secrets of Your Kitchen Appliances and is currently available through Amazon Kindle. If you don’t have a Kindle, Amazon has a free program that will allow you to read the book on your computer. Cook Smart [...]
When I see butter and hard cheese in a recipe, I usually skip it. But the recipe asks only for small quantities, and blogger Jenny described how her kids fought over the last piece. My pickier eaters did not appreciate it, but the rest of us loved it. Next time I’m invited to a pot-luck [...]
Getting a hot, healthy meal on the table at the end of each day is a challenge for all parents, but especially for parents who are out of the house all day. I polled readers at the Cooking Manager Facebook page for their best tips, and here they are: Make-Ahead Casseroles. Make casseroles and freeze [...]
I recently met a young woman named Allyson, who just moved to my neighborhood with her husband and 11-month-old son. When she started making healthy apple muffins for her son, her husband found they made a good breakfast to eat on the way to work. They contain no added sugar. I added some variations at [...]