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May 4, 2016
At Home with Friends

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Baby Gem Lettuce with Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing

There was a time when an upscale steak house offered a salad that consisted of a wedge of iceberg lettuce liberally drenched with a thick creamy blue cheese dressing. The dressing was so thick, a spoon could stand up and the iceberg lettuce was ice cold and crisp. This is my updated version of that […]

April 27, 2016
At Home with Friends

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Chocolate Prune Croissant Bread Pudding

I figured dessert would be simple and easy and I headed out to the freezer to the cookie stash, but someone had gotten to it before me. It was then I vaguely remembered invading the cookie stash for several tea and cookie afternoons. I kept searching the freezer, looking for hidden treasure, and I found […]

April 20, 2016
At Home with Friends

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Oven Braised Barbecue Brisket

With apologies to my mom, Minerva, the only thing I remember about her brisket was that she used Lipton Onion Soup mix as the secret and only ingredient. I tried her recipe years ago and the brisket was kind of tough, flavorless, and didn’t have enough liquid for gravy. When I explored other recipes, the […]

April 13, 2016
At Home with Friends

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Dinner with the Guys

Last week, I was in my car, driving to my favorite big box store Costco with my radio tuned to KCRW, my local public radio station. I was listening to a conversation between Evan Kleinman and Jonathan Gold about a Texas barbecue crawl they did together. In case you didn’t know, Evan Kleinman had a […]

April 6, 2016
At Home with Friends

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What’s On My Table: New Year’s Day Brunch

I have a passion for collecting antique copper and love using it for a brunch buffet. The sun came streaming through the French doors, in my dining room, illuminating the copper with a radiant glow. The inherent warmth in copper was welcoming and inviting and made the food even more enticing. I mixed copper pieces […]

March 31, 2016
At Home with Friends

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Roasted Mushrooms

You might have read the prior posts for Spicy Potatoes, Indian Spinach or Garbanzo Beans and thought to yourself, “These sound great but I don’t have the spices, and I don’t want to buy them”. Well, here is a recipe you have no excuse not to try. All of the ingredients are readily available at […]

March 28, 2016
At Home with Friends

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Chana Masala

When I was growing up, my Mother never made beans. I only ever ate them when we went out for Mexican food (refried beans) or occasionally with hot dogs (canned baked beans loaded with brown sugar). I was used to seeing garbanzo beans and kidney beans at salad bars but I never chose them. There […]