Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from Cooks Illustrated This is what happens when I take a break from cooking — Bryan steps in and knocks out a winner. Maybe I should take a break more often . . . I warily approached the preparation of Sunday’s dinner. I had offered to cook in [...]

Lest you think we are only about sugar and cream and flour around here, take a look at that picture. Black. Bean. Soup. Served over chewy brown rice with a dollop of sour cream, this stuff is heaven. I got the original recipe here. When I first saw it, I was smitten. I immediately ran [...]

Here’s another recipe that I got from Cooking Light magazine. We tend to eat a lot of soups around here, and I’m always looking for new recipes. This one caught my eye because it looked more like a stew than a soup. This is a pretty basic beef barley soup, made with chuck roast, carrots, [...]

Currently baking out of Macrina Bakery & Cafe Cookbook by Leslie Mackie When I was a child, my mom used to freeze corn every summer. She’d buy 10 dozen ears and us kids would spend the day husking corn while she boiled it and cut the kernels off the cobs. My favorite job was taking [...]

Currently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers. This soup may not look like much, but it is one of the best recipes I’ve made out of The Carefree Cook. The soup starts by browning some sausage and then adding onion, carrots, celery and garlic to the pot. Normally, I don’t like sausage very [...]

My new favorite bean soup that isn’t from the grains cookbook . . . I love bean soups, especially when the beans don’t come from a can. But I usually don’t have enough patience to soak my own beans, so I don’t cook bean soup very often. This recipe has me whistling a different tune, [...]

Currently cooking out of Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way by Lorna Sass. Every quinoa recipe I’ve made out of this book seems to include corn. Maybe it’s like Sass said – these two new world ingredients just seem made for each other. Whatever the case may be, they do taste wonderful together. And this [...]

Currently cooking from Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way by Lorna Sass. I like chicken. I like peppers. I like corn of all kinds, including hominy. I liked this dish. I’m not sure whether or not one would consider this a soup. There was a bit of broth, sure, but it was mostly chunks of [...]