Remember that when Halloween jack-‘o-lanterns are mildewed heaps of mush on the front doorstep, the time for pumpkins has just begun. Small, sweet pumpkins, often called sugar or pie pumpkins, will be readily available in grocery stores until the end of the year and will last in a cool, dry spot through winter. [...]
I’d like to think the man who taught me that “You can’t argue taste” was a foodie. That’s because foodies proved in this informal poll of favorite restaurants that their individual tastes varied just as much as their opinions diverged (mostly) from participants in the Mail Tribune’s annual Readers’ Choice survey. So we won’t argue [...]
Mention restaurant food, and opinions start piling up faster than peanut shells at Original Roadhouse Grill on a Saturday night. Maybe that’s why the brains behind this year’s Mail Tribune Readers’ Choice awards saw fit to fill a full one-third of the ballot with restaurant and other food-related categories. I’m all for the democratic process [...]
There’s good reason to eat walnuts. While researching today’s A la Carte story, I found numerous references to the health benefits of walnuts. Yes, they contain fat, even a bit of the saturated kind. But walnuts’ high level of essential fatty acids make up for it. The California Walnut Commission claims the nut contains the [...]
Any cook worth his or her salt aims for perfection. Those pesky imperfections are reason to keep making a dish until it comes out right. But sometimes, cooks just have to admit they’re beat — when the results don’t taste good enough to justify the effort involved. I threw in the towel this weekend after [...]
Some restaurant dishes seem so elegant that the average home cook never even considers replicating them. For me, escargot fell into this category until I found a reliable source for the snails and authentic but affordable dishes to cook and serve them in. Although the snails seem expensive for such a small quantity, I can [...]
Last fall’s editions of A la Carte passed without a pear story, not because I don’t like pears (I love them, in fact), but because I couldn’t think of a new angle to put on a topic the Mail Tribune covers multiple ways multiple times throughout the year. This year, though, I knew the food [...]
If your house is anything like mine, Monday nights this time of year aren’t exactly the opportune time for elegant, quiet dinners. It’s not because we’re too tired from the first day of what promises to be a hectic work week. It’s not because the weekend was fraught with overindulgence. No, it’s because we’re powerless [...]
When my husband and I decided several years ago to build a house, I knew we’d be able to grow vegetables on the rural property. But because 2005 wasn’t the greatest year for local fruit, I didn’t suspect several well-established trees near our new home eventually would yield such a bounty — and with hardly [...]
Today, I would ordinarily add my two cents to the A la Carte section’s main story. But cooking in my college dorm never engendered much creativity. I never even made it through my first Costco-sized flat of Ramen noodles because I was lucky enough to date a guy who lived off campus and had his [...]
