I have always enjoyed cooking, but I did not really start to take a keen interest into it until I became a single father of two young children who needed daily sustenance, preferably of a nutritious type. My repertoire and understanding of techniques started expanding as I consumed various cooking content in order to increase the variety of meals and ingredients used. Over time, my interest in cooking, the science behind it, the tools and techniques used, and the ingredients expanded and continues to grow. For more food content, please visit the Pictures / Videos link in the top menu and select the Food section.
That said, while I have consumed countless hours of cooking content over the years from professional chefs to home cooks, this section is not meant to be any sort of authoritative source on cooking. Instead, it is a collection of things that have made an impact to my cooking journey that I want to save for my own memory, or in case my kids or others want to understand how I prepared something. If something here sparks an interest in you to try or further research a recipe, technique, tool, or idea, then that is, as they say, just icing on the cake.
This meal comes together quickly and without too much effort, so is great for “weeknight” cooking. I have tried both straining the sauce as per the original recipe (see References below) and not. While I do think that straining the sauce makes the dish more “upscale”, I tend to skip that step when just making […]
While the total time to make this meal seems a bit long, the actual prepping and cooking process is fairly straight-forward. The chicken mixture can be made in advance as well which will cut 30 minutes of waiting off the time. Really, the wait time is probably not needed, but I like to give the
Chicken Salisbury Steak Read More »
Several of my first attempts at eggplant parmesan consisted of breading the eggplant before frying, and making it a “single layer” dish with thicker slices of eggplant. I liked that, but then I ran across the method described in this recipe where breading is not used and the dish is put together like a lasagna
Italian Style Eggplant Parmigiana Read More »
I used to keep a couple jars of store-bought marinara sauce in the pantry until I found that making my own version was pretty easy, cost effective, and most importantly allowed me to use a single batch of a “base” sauce then transform it in many different ways. Sure, I could always take the store-bought
Base Marinara Sauce Read More »
This dish has all the flavors and “comfort food feel” of stuffed bell peppers, but–in my view–is easier to make. As an added bonus, it only uses one pot making for less clean-up. I have made this with ground beef and ground bison, but my favorite meat to use is ground turkey. In either case,
Stuffed Bell Pepper Casserole Read More »
This is a quick and simple way to make a salad dressing. This recipe results in a fairly small batch that is enough for around four side salads. Different vinegars and herbs may also be used. For example, red wine vinegar along with 1t of dried oregano is a slightly more “potent” version of this
Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing Read More »
This is a quick tzatziki sauce that provides a nice, “crisp” taste to things. I mainly use it when making gyro meat, but also sometimes as a salad dressing. I like a bit of “bite” to the sauce, but if that is not your style, the lemon juice and vinegar may be omitted. The sauce
This dish has something of a Jekyll and Hyde component to it as if you taste it before adding the cream and butter at the end, it really transforms into a different animal after. It is also versatile as other things such as thawed frozen green beans–my pick–can also be added. In this picture, I
Using a slow cooker is currently my favorite way to make chicken stock. One of the challenges with making stock or chicken broth (technically, I think the “broth” recipe linked here is actually still stock since it uses bones) is keeping the liquid at the brink of a very slow boil (I aim for keeping
Slow Cooker Chicken Stock Read More »
This is currently my favorite way to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. While it takes a bit of preparation, it cooks much quicker. Plus, the white meat can be cooked in a different pan from the dark meat. Since the white meat and dark meat cook at different rates and to different temperatures, having the
Deboned Turkey / Chicken Read More »
