I've gotten more adventurous in trying out new fruits as I've gotten older.

Not DURIAN level adventurous, but persimmons are pretty adventurous for someone whose teens were limited to eating apples, pears, oranges ... and grapes.


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Today's supper came to the top of the posting queue because it's an amazing combination of two simply prepared dishes, a main and a pasta side, and a green salad of your choice.


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Meal planning strategy: I haven't cooked anything Italian in some time, there was a jar of capers languishing in the fridge and a couple of boneless, skinless, chicken breasts in the freezer, so I looked for a recipe for Chicken Piccata that used ingredients that I already had. The breasts weighed a bit over a pound so I split them horizontally ( Read more... )

The last post on the theme of easy Japanese dishes features a Japanese version of the classic Western hamburger, hambagu, or hamburger steak patty. I'm including a couple of miso soups, a vegetable side dish and some pudding (or purin, in Japanese) to finish things off.

The recipe for the hamburger comes from TabiEats and it was meant to be used ( Read more... )

Sometimes you just get inspired by a recipe, even when you don't have enough of the ingredients to make a full recipe. Or the right sized container to assemble it in.

There's a sad, romantic story about the purported origin of this chocolate mousse cake, involving a gypsy violinist and the unhappily married wife of an impoverished Belgian prince. ( Read more... )

I was in the mood for something sweet that didn't involve chocolate and was fast to make. With a can of mandarin oranges from the pantry as well as a package of Savoiardi (Italian lady fingers) I came up with this creamy dessert. I didn't have any instant pudding so I made my own using a basic vanilla pudding recipe spiked with a touch of orange ( Read more... )

NOTE: The potato gnocchi soup below is a tomato based adaptation of the kale and sausage soup posted here.

After an indulgent last dim sum outing with my nephew, on Friday, I used the afternoon to make another bread that I had added to my 'to do' list, while I was flourless.

The recipe came from the King Arthur Flour web site and is called a " ( Read more... )

A picture of some lovely ripe mangoes (88 cents each) in the most recent Food Basics flyer led me to consider making either mango creme caramel or a mango panna cotta. I decided on the latter since it didn't involve turning on the oven. In the current heat wave, even with the A/C on, that's an important consideration ( Read more... )

I've posted the recipe/technique of making ice cream, without an ice cream maker, before. However, I thought I'd give it another look before the holidays, when an easy make-ahead dessert might be just what you want. Especially if you have some leftover cranberry sauce. You may even want to make some cranberry sauce just so you can make this.


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ETA (07/21/2017): Replaced both the Ferrero Rocher and lemon curd scoop pictures ( Read more... )