My Family Blog

The sheer variety of fresh produce that’s available in July and August makes it easy to mix things up when you make salads, and experiment with flavors, textures, and heartiness. From a light mixed green salad with the sweetness of a little fruit to a filling, savory Nicoise salad, you never need to eat the [...]

I am not going to get into politics here, I am sticking strictly to the topic of cookies. I am not sure if you read it, but recently there was a cookie bake-off between Michelle Obama and Ann Romney. This is not the first time candidates wives have faced off in the name of sweets. [...]

We’ve belonged to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for several years now and it’s been wonderful for us because we often receive produce that we wouldn’t normally buy, and as a result we’ve expanded our repertoire of summer recipes. And while it’s great having a lot of fresh produce, once summer gets into ...

What’s in a name? I guess it depends who you ask. Here in Los Angeles, a lot depends on your name… or your nickname. Chef Kerry Simon was named the Rock n’ Roll Chef by Rolling Stone Magazine and has been living the dream of culinary rock star ever since. I had the opportunity to [...]

Now you can make pancakes anywhere with this cool new trick, make the batter in a Hefty Slider bag. In fact I think you could make all kinds of batter in one of these Hefty bags. The bonus, kids LOVE helping and there’s little to no clean-up. I’m just so excited about this new discovery, [...]

Have you ever wondered what all the fuss was about a lobster roll? Once you have one bite you’ll quickly understand why people are obsessed with them. And obsessed they are. People are passionate about which happens to be the BEST lobster roll. There are two distinctive lobster rolls. Camp New England (Mayonnaise) or Camp [...]

No matter where you live in the country, it is officially tomato time. This is one of the highlights of the culinary year for us and we like to stock up and use tomatoes every way we can before the juicy, tasty tomatoes of summer are gone. One of our favorite tomato dishes is tabbouleh, [...]

We like our cupcakes around these parts and chocolate is our go to flavor. Yum! I’ve got this nifty little batter dispenser, but it doesn’t hold the all the cake batter, or even close to all of it. I wind up ladling some into the dispenser, making a few cupcakes, re-ladle, etc, etc. It takes [...]

Just in case the easy no-cook strawberry syrup wasn’t easy enough for you, I’ve gone and made it almost clean-up free too. All I had to do was use a Hefty slider bag to make life that much easier and with an already over-flowing fridge I was able to find a spot that would have [...]

Last March my family became addicted to swiss oatmeal and we’ve been eating all summer as it’s a great cool breakfast that we can add all the summer fruits too. I also passed along the recipe to my friend Sonya over at Parlor and she took the swiss oatmeal to a whole new level of [...]