The recipe’s in the mail
They always catch you at the busiest time – those emails that expect you to ‘send a recipe to 20 of your best friends.’ So you wait for the sky to fall, and feel guilty and move on. Last week I received one that was manageable. There were just two people on the email. One […]
Holly Jolly Dirt Cake
Holly Jolly Dirt Cake Here’s another no-bake adventure for kids who enjoy cooking. Little kids, if making this for an adult, like to pretend the cake really is dirt! I’ve modified it as the quantity of sugar would have the ‘cooks’ standing on the table throwing the mix at each other and the amount of […]
Praline recipe passes test of Austin pecan expert
Once I stood in line in the grocery store behind a woman whose cart had a pretty ho-hum selection – except for the fourteen boxes of butterscotch pudding. I couldn’t resist asking why she was buying so many and she told me that she lived in Marble Falls and couldn’t buy them there. What an […]
Nursing home dinner bell rings with sounds of patience
Family mealtimes can be a trial, even at home when you have everyone’s likes and dislikes and allergies firmly in place. Imagine the complexity of preparing and serving institutional meals! We tend to criticize without appreciating the effort they involve. This week I visited a friend who is in a nursing home, taking a break […]
Giving – Do It Yourself Hot Chocolate
Giving – better than receiving. As the holiday season comes around the two perennial bugbears loom closer. How can we manage gifts when we have neither time nor money to shop? And how, while we are at this pity-party do we convince the children that it is better to give than to receive? We […]
Kitchen kit – Jane’s top six kitchen essentials
If you were cast on a desert island, what six pieces of music would you choose, and which book, beside the Bible and Shakespeare? This question has been posed weekly on a BBC radio program since 1942. Well-known personalities come up with assorted answers like Beethoven and the Beatles, George Strait and Georges Bizet, Louis […]
Minding the English . . .
Jane Manaster takes this cookery post from Austin back to England with Minding the English . . . Jane was raised in England long ago when eating roast heart or stewed tripe served with a glutinous white sauce were not uncommon. No special names disguised their identity! English food unjustly has a very bad reputation. Wangle an invitation to someone’s home […]
Recipe Risk
Jane Manaster shares her take on . . . risky recipes Selecting a recipe online is such a temptation and such a gamble. Even experienced cooks eager to try something new can be lured into making bad mistakes. My latest failure was bran and raisin muffins. I trawled one site after another, rejecting the recipe […]
Peel and Eat Potatoes-Peelin’ with Jane
Peel This The Cookery welcomes Austin’s Jane Manaster back this week to challenge us with a post on peeling potatoes. Peelin’ with Jane: Remember when potatoes were a staple? At 50 – 99 cents a pound, and with pasta and rice down in price, they are almost a luxury. When a visit to the supermarket […]
Chili and cool weather: match made
A cool breeze is blowin’ through Austin so break out the chili pans or plan to sample cook-off tastings. The Cookery welcomes guest blogger Jane Manaster, Austin writer and geographer, with a heads-up on chili season. Thanks, Jane! Take some heat from Jane: Now that we can look forward to manageable weather, our culinary thoughts turn from […]