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But we can fix that!!! I’ve been taking some time away from the blog, in order to make my knife a little sharper- literally and figuratively. I’m “getting a taste” of life in the kitchen. I knew how to put together a mean dinner party before… but now I’m learning how to do it the [...] Keep reading Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer… Number one Question on the minds of Thanksgiving hosts and hostesses everywhere: How do I make sure I serve a moist Thanksgiving Turkey? Here are Jen the Catalyst’s Top Tips for a great Turkey on Thanksgiving! Begin the Great Brining Thaw on Sunday. Why brine? Brining allows the Turkey to absorb more water before [...] Keep reading Thanksgiving Week is Here! Yesterday, it snowed. and snowed. and snowed! I wanted to be in the kitchen… not the car. I wanted to bake… not shop. So I raided my pantry. I had pumpkin, but no milk. Flour, but no whipping cream. I found a recipe at myrecipes.com (Oxmoor House, June ’07) that was easily adaptable for what I [...] Keep reading Snow Day Pumpkin Bundt Cake (Chef Ron, this one is for you!) ‘Tis the season- I’ve been collecting beautiful leaves, bought a humongo pumpkin to put on the hay bale out front, and have a bowl of squash sitting in the middle of my table. I bought beautiful apples- SweeTango, Honeycrisp, and Haralson. We ate the first two, but I [...] Keep reading Can your own Apple Butter (Great things are often a surprise. So it is with my friend Faith- we met, clicked, and wanted to collaborate right away! Here is a blog post we wrote together introducing this great collaboration…) The holidays evoke memories of family gatherings, traditions, warm hues of orange and brown and the deep reds of the changing leaves [...] Keep reading Make Healthy Holidays Happen! I like the number three- everything seems to come in trifectas! Thanksgiving is no exception- where the First Part is guests/menu, the Second Part is sketching out what needs to be done and asking for help, and the third part is: Actually doing it. The week before Thanksgiving is such a rush! And yes, I [...] Keep reading Thanksgiving Primer III Like most anything else, if I break a big big thing down into smaller pieces, it doesn’t seem so unwieldly. Thanksgiving is like that too. I like to think of Thanksgiving in three parts. Part One is to figure who is coming, and what (and how much) we’ll have to eat. You can learn all [...] Keep reading Thanksgiving Primer II You read about my adventures getting a Viili starter earlier this month… so how did that turn out, anyway? Well, as I am prone to do, I thought I would outsmart the way everyone has always made Viili and instead follow the method I’ve been using to make regular yogurt. (Meaning, I’d boil the milk [...] Keep reading Viili and Yogurt Making Follow Up… I love love love hosting Thanksgiving, after my first time many years ago. I was intimidated even just to cook back in those days, much less host a bunch of people for the best fall holiday. Doing it the first time showed me that I could do any dinner party I wanted… practice is the [...] Keep reading Thanksgiving Primer, Part I  Today, I canned a few of the summer harvest tomatoes. If you find a farm where the sun has been hot, the rain just enough to keep the tomato plants happy, and the farmer rocks (like at Deardorff Vineyards for example!) then you have some great tomatoes on your hands… the perfect time to explore your [...] Keep reading Canning Tomatoes: Step by Step |      |
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