Your favorite foods, what you cook on the Fourth of July or for Thanksgiving, and where you eat out are great predictors of your personality and background. The converse of your favorite foods telling a lot about you is true. Who you are predicts your favorite soup or whether you even like soup, your favorite restaurant, your favorite dessert. I grew up with traditional Romanian food, am infatuated with the French, I am somewhat daring, and have a serious sweet tooth. It shouldn’t surprise that I will love polenta in any form, my favorite soup will be French Onion, my favorite restaurant will be a Mexican hole-in-the-wall place, and my favorite dessert will always involve rich smooth sensual drooling-just-thinking-about-it chocolate . That is just me. But it is the Fourth of July and talking about my preferences seems out of place. So while the Romanian girl in me goes for the chocolate, Captain America will always go for the strawberry shortcake. You met him. He is tall, handsome, attentive, and charming. He runs, cooks, mentors children, and his best friend is his dog. His family background is humble yet he has built an illustrious and patriotic career working for the … Continue reading →

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  I have always frowned upon restaurants, chefs, friends who won’t share a recipe. My perspective was that it doesn’t matter if you give me the recipe for the Frico Caldo, I will still come into your restaurant and order it for a whole variety of reasons ranging from my technique never being as good as yours to just sheer laziness. I never really believed in “secret” ingredients or family recipes that cannot be shared. The confession…I am now one of those…. I cannot share my granola recipe. I can’t! At least not yet. I didn’t even know I couldn’t until I tried to write it and realized that, while I had the ingredients and quantities list ready, what I didn’t have was the willingness to share it! The whole “don’t do onto others…” doesn’t apply to this one time offense of not sharing… Here’s the granola story…About a year and a half ago I took a trip to D.C. with a good friend- just us two. I felt it would be appropriate to bring something home to the husband but, long story short, there wasn’t much time for shopping. We found ourselves sipping coffee and eating cupcakes at Baked … Continue reading →

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  My office is moving. The “last party in our building” consisted of a chili cook-off. I have never done a cook off of any kind before, but I was the designated chili cooker for my small office. There were six entries in this “competition” and mine tied for first place!The judges were serious about this and the scoring criteria fairly loose, consisting of one factor- do you like it? They did. In all fairness, my chili is, well, my husband’s chili. And it isn’t even his since he inspired himself for years from a recipe he found in the Wall Street Journal. I would happily credit the original source except I have no idea what that is since we manage to lose the recipe. The loss of the recipe occurred about a month ago when we made the chili for our annual Super Bowl party. So, I considered the cook off at work a great opportunity to make the chili while the recipe was still somewhat fresh in our minds and the blog a nice excuse to write it all out for next year! Ingredients: 5 lbs beef shoulder, 6 onions (peeled and chopped), 40 large cloves of garlic … Continue reading →

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