Cooking & Entertaining

We are having a super rainy day here in the Monterey, CA area.  In fact, I was supposed to work at Talbots this afternoon, but got a call from my boss that the Plaza where the shop is located had lost power, and so there would be no work today as all businesses were closed. …

I picked up this magazine at the grocery store the other day.  I love Cook's publications since the recipes are super well tested and come out great more often than not.  A collection of their All Time Best Recipes was too good sounding to pass up.  I have been browsing through it and decided to…

My current schedule of working two jobs has caused our social life to take a big hit.  My poor husband, tiring of the same old routine of me coming home and flopping on the couch every evening, decided to take matters into his own hands and invite some friends over for a little dinner party.…

  Remember me telling you about my birthday celebration, when my sister Andrea made Fruit Pizza for dessert?  This is my favorite dessert.  Andrea made the recipe again on the 4th of July, when we got together to celebrate my nephew Eric's birthday.  The picture above is Andrea's, and the Fruit Pizza is the one…

Aren't these coral roses just the prettiest color?  I wanted to do something a little different this weekend when we had company.  Coral isn't a color I wear or decorate with, but I think I may have been missing something.  It all started with our kitchen table, which we have had for over 30 years. …

  My favorite girls came over last night for a Christmas Jammie Party.  My daughter Sara, three of my sisters and our cousin.  Our sister Mary lives in Wisconsin and is buried in snow right now, or she would have been with us as well. The boys all had to clear out.  My husband took…

  I am a huge Ina Garten fan.  Not so much of her TV show on Food Network, but of her cookbooks.  On TV, she seems  a bit smug and pretty sure that her friends must be a heck of a lot cooler than mine.  However, her recipes never fail and her cookbooks are total…

  Hmm, I kinda forgot about the electrical sockets in the background when I took this photo.  My daughter Sara would scold me for being so negligent.  Anyway, what you see on my pretty autumnal dish towel are all the ingredients for my speedy but elegant Chicken Piccata Penne Pasta.  (I added Fines Herbes and…

What a lovely weekend I had.  I invited my entire family over for a Sunday barbeque in my back yard.  Most of them turned up and we had around 20 people.  Is there anything better than having your loved ones over?  I live about 70 miles away from most of the family, so it is…

    I have completed my first two weeks at my new job today.  And it was Pay Day!  Big Whoop.  My check was half what I was figuring it was going to be.  I was thinking I was getting paid for two weeks, but nope, that wasn't the case.  I started my job on…