(I found this photo on this blog.  She gives credit to FoodNetwork, but when I go there, I get a video.) The other day I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner, and decided I wanted to make something with shrimp, since I had some in the freezer. (The folks at America’s Test Kitchen say to buy your shrimp peel on, frozen, because what you get at the store in the fish aisle is thawed anyway, and the longer it sits there thawed, the more flavor it loses. As to the peel on, they use some kind of chemical to get the peel off, so if you…

Yesterday I looked in the fridge and saw a pint and a half of ‘beyond their prime’ strawberries, and started thinking about the jam I made last year.  I decided to make a batch, and then I started thinking about the strawberries in the freezer.  Every time I buy new strawberries, I clean and trim the last of the old ones, and freeze them in a bag.  I assume we’ll use them for smoothies, but I guess we haven’t had smoothies in awhile, because there were a lot of strawberries in there, and a few bananas as well.  So I decided to use my frozen strawberries, in addition to my…

Does anyone else watch ‘Man vs. Food’? We’ve been watching sometimes lately, and we saw an episode where they were in Hartford, Connecticut, and the secondary restaurant that was featured claims to be the birthplace of the hamburger. Louis’ Lunch says that they served up the first burger in 1900, and that they’ve been serving it pretty much the same way ever since. We all thought it seemed like fun to try the Louis’ Lunch burger recipe. So I looked around online to see if I could find a recipe, and I came across this one, and we made them that evening. The keys to a Louis’ Lunch burger are…

My lovely friend Lei brought gifties for the rest of us to brunch at Brown Sugar Kitchen on Sunday…jams and marmalades. Marmalade always makes me think of my mom and her funny love of collecting things. When I was in 5th grade, I got into reading the Paddington Bear books, and my mom read them, too, so we could talk about them. I don’t know if you know Paddington, but he ADORES marmalade, and is always getting sticky with it. So my mom started buying different marmalades, lemon and orange and lime and whatever other flavors there were. Then she started buying tea pots, so we could have tea with…

I read a review a in the Chronicle for Clabbered Cottage Cheese from a wonderful local creamery, Cowgirl Creamery. Ted and Maya aren’t big fans of cottage cheese, and I don’t want to eat it every day, but once in awhile I love a bowl of it for lunch, and the rave review in the paper had me Jonesing for a try. It took a few weeks for our local Whole Foods to carry it (though after the newspaper review, people were definitely asking), but yesterday when I saw it on their shelf, I had to try some. At $6 for 8oz, it’s not something I’d buy all the time,…

The other day I was craving a nice fish dinner…and not salmon. I love salmon, but sometimes I get in the mood for something else, something like Halibut or another delicate white fish. I went looking for a recipe and came up with this one, from Giada, on Foodnetwork.com. When I’m looking for a recipe on Foodnetwork, I generally look for one with a lot of stars, and a lot of reviews, and then I read a few, because sometimes they have some good pointers. The only pointer I found on this one was to let the broth simmer a little while, which thickened it up more than a broth,…

Ted’s birthday was a few weeks ago, and we had a barbecue theme. I made chicken, ribs, and I wanted to make barbecue shrimp, but something different than just shrimp cooked on the grill. So I did a little internet search, and I found a wonderful recipe on Food Network, from Emeril. I bought a couple of pounds of jumbo sized shrimp, and cooked up a batch. I followed the recipe exactly, except that I used purchased Cajun seasoning rather than Emeril’s homemade Creole seasoning, and I didn’t make the biscuits. Instead I bought some delicious bread to sop up the yummy sauce. Between using the shells to make the…

My good friend Janet came to visit a few weeks ago.  Janet lives in DC, though she used to live in Texas, and before that, she lived in New York, and before that, DC.  It’s been a long time since we lived close by each other in San Francisco and Berkeley, or Stockton and Lodi.  She had several hours to spend before heading back to DC, and wanted to know if I wanted to have lunch or dinner and a visit.  Often when she comes to visit, she spends a bunch of money taking me to a fancy lunch, and we have a nice visit, but she doesn’t get to…

Last week I was watching Nigella Lawson cook on TV, and she made a delicious looking chicken curry, muttar paneer, and something else that I don’t remember. I was mostly sucked in by the muttar paneer, because I love peas. So I wanted to build a dinner around it. I had made a chicken curry just a week or so ago, so I wanted something different. I decided that I’d rather make a shrimp curry, sort of like the seafood tikka masala we had a few weeks ago at a local restaurant. This was truly delicious. I might try a fish tikka masala next time, but this was really, really…

Last week, I saw Ina Garten make Crab Cakes on an old episode of Barefoot Contessa.  What especially intrigued me was the bell peppers.  I know that crab cake purists say the fewer additives, the better, but if I want pure crab, I don’t bother with crab cakes, I get whole crab and crack it with  my teeth.  That’s how I roll.  I thought the veggies might be a really welcome addition.   I mentioned the crab cakes to my sister-in-law, who said that she uses canned crab for crab cakes.  “CANNED????” I thought….“THE HORROR!” But what she said made some sense, which is that with all of the other flavors,…

Back when I worked at a certain big hotel in San Francisco, one of my coworkers was a big fan of a local pizza place, Vicolo.  She raved about it, and I’m sorry to say we never got around to trying it, because we were big fans of North Beach Pizza and Mozzarella Di Bufala, and rarely ventured elsewhere.  I think what they were famous for was their cornmeal crusts.  I assume that because last week at my local grocery store, I saw these Vicolo pre-made cornmeal crusts in the refrigerated section.  It made me think of a recipe from The Greens Cookbook that we like.  We usually eat it…