Masa Biscuits with Ham & Chipotle Jam

Half Price Books has been an amazing source for cookbooks. Somehow there are always good finds, whether semi-recent releases or books of a certain vintage. I always want to leave bookmarks or post-its sticking out of some books saying, "BUY THIS ONE!!" And while sometimes you know why books end up on the clearance shelf -- 80s microwave cooking, anyone? -- others are a mystery. The El Paso Chile Company's Texas Border Cookbook -- was one of those mysteries, but the recipe for masa biscuits alone made it a bargain at twice the price.

ByMichelleApril 10, 20121Comment

Baking Recipes

One a Penny, Two a Penny – Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns are usually eaten on Good Friday, but whether you observe Easter as a religious holiday or a Hallmark holiday, or a little of both, they are a fantastic breakfast bread. A lightly sweetened yeast bun, they're really at their best when they're redolent with spices and fruit, with orange and lemon peel…

ByMichelleApril 2, 20120Comments

Baking Book Reviews

Banana Date Cake (Vegan)

This week, I've been in overdrive catching up on Mad Men so that I'm up to speed for season 5. And now I've got '60s-era food on the brain. But rather than torture myself with some kind of terrible aspic with vegetables in it, I decided on a date cake. Flipping through some of my vintage cookbooks I discovered we used to eat a lot more date cake and date bread than I realized. It's even in an episode of Mad Men, one where Don Draper is having a tete-a-tete with Sally's teacher in season 3. She's made three loaves of date nut bread for a school bake sale.

ByMichelleMarch 29, 20121Comment

Breafkast Recipes

Sunday Brunch: Corned Beef Hash

Around St. Paddy's Day, my grandma always bought an extra corned beef and threw it in the freezer, so at some random time of the year, in June or maybe October, you knew corned beef and cabbage would turn up on the dinner table. Last year with the best of intentions, I bought an extra…

ByMichelleMarch 17, 20121Comment

Baking Recipes

Banana Maple Date Scones

If you grew up in Southern California, you're probably no stranger to Hadley's. It's an institution out in the desert, and it's synonymous with 1 thing -- dates. When I was a kid, we'd drive out to Palm Springs, passing the dinosaurs off the 10 freeway, and stop off for a date shake. Medjool dates are wonderfully sweet and sticky and they're amazing when whirled up with milk and vanilla ice cream in a blender. But my dates were headed to breakfast, in these banana maple date scones.

ByMichelleJanuary 25, 20122Comments

Recipes

Rainbow Chard & Red Potato Hash…or Home Fries?

I popped out of bed at 5 a.m., an ungodly hour for a Sunday. Knowing we wouldn't have a hankering for breakfast for at least 3 hours, I put some black beans on for a speed soak with a mind to make this Southwestern Hash for breakfast. I'd actually thought ahead for once and boiled the potatoes the day before. So while the beans were doing their thing, I went and did my yoga and came back, only to discover I didn't have any bell peppers in the house - not red, not green, not anything. It was a snowy/icy/slushy/no-driving-if-you-can-avoid-it week in Seattle, so the cupboard was a little more bare than usual. Time for Plan B.

ByMichelleJanuary 22, 20121Comment

Restaurants Travel

Oh Tasty n Sons, How I Love Thee…

This weekend, we headed down to Portland to check out the Portland Bazaar that DesignSponge organized with a bunch of different local vendors from the PDX area. I'd hoped to get a little Xmas shopping done, but saw more things that would have been for me, like these excellent iPhone cases from Grove. So I held back. Before we hit the Bazaar, we went for brunch at Tasty n Sons.

ByMichelleDecember 12, 20110Comments

Restaurants Travel

On the Road: Dining in Denver

The last couple of weeks, I've hardly been home, what with work taking me to the Bay Area for several days and then I was in Denver for my friend Lara's baby shower. So there's been a lot of eating and tweeting, but not much new posting! There is a ton of good food happening in Denver, here's a quick look at a few of the spots we hit over the weekend. I brought Seattle weather to Denver on Saturday, but as we all know, neither clouds, nor rain, nor chilly temps will stop a Seattleite from enjoying ice cream. Little Man Ice Cream serves up ice cream, gelato and sorbet and over the weekend flavors included chocolate malt, caramel popcorn, strawberry, and whopper malt (ice cream); chocolate-hazelnut, pistachio (gelato) and brandied peach (sorbet). One of their best inventions is the little dip, a mini scoop on a cone for 99c, for those times when you just want a couple of bites of ice cream. Unfortunately, I have no photos of the little dips, because both hands were full, one with chocolate malt, the other with brandied peach sorbet. :-)

ByMichelleOctober 10, 20110Comments

Restaurants Travel

Blue Scorcher Bakery & Cafe – Astoria, OR

Astoria, Oregon is about half an hour up the coast from Cannon Beach and may be best known as the city where the Goonies was filmed. While it's not as cute or quaint as Cannon Beach, home of Haystack Rock, Astoria's got a great cafe and bakery -- Blue Scorcher.

ByMichelleSeptember 12, 20111Comment

Restaurants

Skillet Diner – Capitol Hill

Summer is high time for road construction in the Pacific Northwest. Almost every weekend it seems there's at least one major closure in Seattle-- the bridges, key exits downtown, something. But one of the good things about Labor Day weekend is no planned road closures! And it was a long weekend, so I thought it was about time we got down to the bricks and mortar outpost of Skillet in Capitol Hill for a little brekky.

ByMichelleSeptember 8, 20110Comments