Reader Interview: Ilana-Davita

Welcome Ilana-Davita from France for this week’s reader interview:

1. Name, location, family: Ilana-Davita, France, me and my partner whose grown-up kids have left the house.
2. What do you remember about family meals when you were growing up? What was your mother’s cooking style? (If she did the cooking of course.) Were you involved? My mother loved cooking, she still does, and she was an example to me. Even now whenever she goes to the hairdresser,’s she looks at the magazines and copies recipes that she will adapt. She never follows a recipe to the letter.

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Learning to Cook, Step by Step

When I wrote Make Your Own Sourdough Starter at Home, I also started a discussion on the Facebook fan page to walk readers through it.

Here’s what Aleeza had to say:

Guess what I don’t get is why recipes can’t be simple. I need directions with numbers like step 1, 2, 3, 4.

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Friday Roundup #26

The week of January 17, 2010 at Cooking Manager.Com: Have you ever foraged for wild edibles? You can read about my experience at the Middle Eastern environmental blog Green Prophet: Five Wild Plants You Can Pick Yourself. I started off the week on this blog with a look at an Efficient Cooking Session Reader Fern […]

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Refreshment Help for Hosts

I often host clubs, committee meetings and speakers in my home. The standard refreshments in our community at these events are bought or homemade cakes, soft drinks, bottled water, packaged “snack” foods, fruit, and nuts. I prefer not to buy the prepared foods both because of health and cost. Whatever is left, my family will eat.

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Rice Pudding in the Microwave

Thanks to reader Ilana for submitting this recipe, along with her notes.
Rice Pudding

From The Jewish Low-Cholesterol Cookbook by Roberta Leviton

* 1 cup raw rice, cooked (I use brown rice — it comes to about 2.5 cups cooked)
* 2 T sugar
* 1/2 t vanilla
* 1/2 t cinnamom
* 1 t lemon juice (I have also used orange juice instead)
* 3 egg whites (comes out fine with two whole eggs instead)
* 3/4 cup milk
* 1/4 cup melted margarine (I leave this out)
* 1/2 cup raisins or chopped dates (optional — I leave this out too).

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Festival of Frugality #213: Long-Term Planning Edition

Welcome to the 213th Edition of the Festival of Frugality. The Festival is a weekly listing of frugal posts from around the internet. For more information about hosting or submitting a post, see the website.

Thank you for visiting CookingManager.Com. I share tips and recipes for home chefs who want to save time and money in the kitchen, using fresh ingredients and cooking from scratch. I especially like to save on water, gas and electricity so be sure to check out my series on appliances. I post recipes every Wednesday. You can get new posts by email or RSS reader, or join my Facebook fan page.

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Reader Interview: Fern Richardson

Reader Fern Richardson

Please welcome reader Fern Richardson, author of the excellent urban gardening blog Life on the Balcony. Name, location, family: Fern Richardson; Fullerton, California; Husband & four cats What was your mother’s cooking style? My family very rarely ate meals at home, and when we did it was one of a handful of meals (fish sticks, […]

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A Look at an Efficient Cooking Session

Vegetables for Roasting

As a challenge, I decided to see if I could prepare two Shabbat (sabbath) meals in an hour, not including cooking time.

Here’s the menu:

  • Roast chicken with garlic, lemon juice, and oregano
  • Potatoes in the pressure cooker
  • Roast vegetables: Turnip, onion, garlic, beet, sweet potato, yellow pepper, rosemary.
  • Cholent (a stew in the crockpot)
  • Techina (sesame paste dressing).
  • Cake, challah and soup from the freezer. I try to separate baking from cooking when I can, because they use different ingredients and tools.
  • Salad, made by my kids closer to the meals.
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Friday Roundup #25 and Preview

Image by grand grrl via Flickr It’s been a busy week here at Cooking Manager. Here’s a run-down of posts. Thank you for reading and commenting, both here and on the Facebook page. Sunday: Coupon Coup or Frugal Folly? A video about coupon-clipping gone overboard. Monday: From Tuna Surprise to Persian Chicken: Interview with Ariela. […]

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Do Picky Eaters Inhibit Your Cooking Style?

Some readers have family members that can’t eat certain foods because of allergies, intolerance, or medical conditions. But when they are just picky, it gets annoying. You are left with the choice of making what you want and having the child eat something else, or going along and winding up with a dish you don’t enjoy so much.

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