Life in the key of E flat minor

I came back from a great holiday in San Francisco and Portland – full of dear family, wonderful friends and fantastic food – on Tuesday morning. I learned that Portland and Oregon is a healthy breadbasket for the PNW, which is why it's such a foodie town. My friend, Gerald, drove me around the farms of the Oregon High Desert and we drove past lavender farms and saw hazelnut trees is the distance. For tokens of the trip, I brought back chocolate-covered hazelnuts for my co-workers and LaDiDa Lavender Cheddar for me. I red-eyed into JFK and, while en route, I picked up two sausage, egg and cheese English muffins from Tom Horton’s in New York’s Penn Station since they were two for four dollars; had one on the train and saved the next one for breakfast the following day. It's all about taking advantage of my behavior but being better. I had cleared out the refrigerator of all the perishable items before I set off on my eleven-day trek, so I came home to limited items of

A vegan meal: kale salad and rice cooked in jalapeño and cilantro broth One of my favorite way to use up green vegetables is to add them to this great kale salad that I found on the LIVE STRONG site many years ago. This particular batch, in the photo below, was made with kale and celery I saved from the crudité platter that gave me the mirepoix for my ragù yesterday. I made it earlier in the week for my Lenten vegan challenge (see the note about brown sugar and water in the ingredients list) and knew that I should finish it up before it started to turn. Not only is this a great vegan dish, it is also a great base for a substantive meal salad, add a protein and another vegetable and it’s a filling lunch or dinner. The original recipe is far more Asian in influence, while mine is strictly based on what I usually have in my pantry. Plus, the original site says that the salad serves 6; it could, especially if the diners are not former ruggers. But for the real world, I think th

What we call Bolognese sauce is a meat-based sauce originating from Bologna. Per Wikipedia , the sauce is “customarily used to dress ‘ tagliatelle al ragù ’ and to prepare ‘ lasagne alla bolognese ’. In the absence of tagliatelle, it can also be used with other broad, flat pasta shapes, such as pappardelle or fettuccine.” The traditional version of this sauce is slow cooked, requiring to “simmer slowly for about two hours,” from Accademia Italiana della Cucina (in Italian and authentication required), not including prep time. Many recipes start with an Italian soffritto - a base of finely chopped parsley and onion sauteed in lard - but I went with a mirepoix and added bell peppers instead. Of course, there is beef and usually some fatty pork (which I didn’t include this time.) White wine, milk and a small amount of tomato paste or tomatoes are added to incorporate everything together before the long simmer to produce a thick sauce. I made this as part of my #stopfoodwaste New Yea

As I started this year out with my new New Year’s ritual of eating the Scottish traditional steak pie served up with the customary lucky collard greens and black eyed peas of the South and soul food, I’m ending 2016 with a rich recipe for pork and sauerkraut: Beer Braised Country Style Pork Ribs and Sauerkraut with Jägermeister Reduction. While most of my lineage is Irish, there is a part of me that is German. Philadelphia was the entry way for many a German immigrant and their mark has been left on the city – the German “s” for example* in the Philadelphia accent of English. If you don’t have any German heritage, you may still have some German traditions if you hail from this area of the country. The big one is having pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Eve.Eating sauerkraut on New Year's Eve is a long-standing tradition in Germany because Germans believed that eating sauerkraut will bring blessings and wealth for the New Year. Before the meal, those seated at the table wish eac

It's been a while since I wrote on my blog; I know. In that time, I’ve been to NYC, SFO, WAS, ARB (via DTW), MSP and back to CHI in the months since my last post. What I want to write about though is an upcoming trip to New York for a family event. In particular, I wanted to talk about the hotel room that I reserved for my overnight this Saturday into Sunday. I had just read the Points Guy’s post about the news that, as of September 23, status match, points transfer and more are now available between SPG and Marriott Rewards . So I linked my accounts and read on. From the blog, I was inspired to see what kind of free room I could get for Saturday into Sunday night – leveraging the benefits of the merger between Starwood and Marriott. I searched on points on both and found a $662 room available for 40,000 points on Marriott. I transferred 10,000 points from SPG at a 1:3 transfer rate to add to my already existing 10,944. (My 10,000 SPG points became 30,000 Marriott points.

It was National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day on April 12. I didn’t know about it until the morning, however I was fortunate enough to have bread and cheese in my house. I wasn’t even looking for any inspiration for my Grilled Cheese, because butter, bread and cheese are like getting three stars in Candy Crush Soda Saga. Anything is just extra. However I stumbled upon this video in my facebook feed, How to Make a New Jersey Grilled Cheese , from NJ.com . I was serendipitously inspired for I had scrapple at home. This isn’t going to be a recipe but just a story about making a wee labor of love. I came home from work and took down my iron skillet, turned on the burner to high and let it heat up. I returned to the refrigerator and took out butter, extra sharp cheddar, Colman's mustard and scrapple. After returning to the stove with my cold goodies, I lowered the heat to medium-high and added a pat of butter to the skillet to watch it melt. I snuck back to the pantry and grabb