Leela of She Simmers and  Mel of Bouchon for Two  are hosting a very cool food fight. This month is is the battle of the beets. Entries are due November 6 with winners being announced on November 9th.  I love beets so this was a no brainer for me. I decided to to a Roasted Beet and Ginger Risotto with Fontina. Yum!

You have to love the color! I deep fried some of the whole beet leaves to garnish with. They get glossy, bright green, and have a wonderful, delicate crunch.

Good flavor in food is achieved by balancing sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It is these combinations in a variety of percentages that make foods turn into feasts. So many cooks are afraid to experiment, to play with their food that they resign themselves to a lifetime of predictable eating, of foods that are filling and nutritious to the body without sparking life in the soul. The trick for all of us is to create something at each meal that  satisfies our deep need to create excellence.

Pork is a delicate and sweet meat that has a robust texture. It can …read more

You know how you sometimes get behind and have to catch up? Well that is where I am now. I put in a bit of time on Erin’s cake, the stuff for the dinner at Evil Shennanigans, and the church fund raiser today so when I got home this afternoon I got straight into pajamas, grabbed my laptop and told the family they were eating leftovers for dinner. It’s not as bad as you may think, the leftovers are grain fed beef brisket from the dinner last night.
Erin, my daughter, is addicted to mango. It has been one …read more

I obviously have been on an ice cream kick lately.  In fact, one day last week Erin and I fired ice cream flavor ideas back and forth.  There were flavors like:

chocolate chip mocha Irish cream
caramel apple with chopped peanuts
white chocolate blueberry pecan
vanilla apple pie

Eventually you will probably see all the flavors end up here.  One of the cool things about Erin and my relationship is that we can bounce those flavor ideas off each other..Lots of fun, and if you add the rest of the kids..well we can sit around and toss flavors back and forth the way some …read more

I have always loved good molasses cookies. The key word is, of course, good. They are hard to find. These are from epicurious with a few of my own tweaks…you will know them when you see them..
There is something about one of these with a cup of coffee that has me sitting in my aunt’s kitchen watching her get a meal for her farming family. Just about the time these would come out of the oven the milk truck would pull up to get the milk and the driver always had to get a couple of these …read more

The original for this can be found at Epicurious. I changed it up a little bit because the first time I made it I wanted a little more intensity in the flavor. I really love this but it is a bit more dense even than a normal carrot cake..the buttercream… What can I say about that?…oh my.
I made this for my husband Marc’s birthday which we are celebrating today. He loves spice cake and I expect that this carrot cake will disappear in an enthusiastic burst of activity….similar to the termites in the old Looneytunes cartoons. …read more

When I got married back in the dark ages it was a well kept secret (by me) that I could not cook. I could make bread, brownies, and spagetti. My mom was of the school that felt the less time I spent in the kitchen the less mess she had to deal with. My 6′6″ husband came with no operating instructions but a HUGE appetite. I was amazed at the amount of food he could put down…He ate more in a meal than I ate in several days and I am not exaggerating. As you can see this was not …read more

I really like scones. You don’t find them here in Texas that often, and when you do they are not always alot different from a biscuit. This is one of my favorite recipes for ease, taste, texture, and the flexibility to morph into numerous variations. If someone could create an outfit like that the could make a fortune!
I most often serve these with key lime curd. The spicy …read more