4 Rochester

My new favorite vegetable to play with is Spaghetti Squash. Slice it open, cook it, shred it with a fork and poof! -- strands of squash that look like spaghetti. It's dead simple to prepare: just slice it in half length-wise, scoop out the seeds, loosely cover each open half with plastic wrap and...

I'm a leeeetle behind on posting this recipe. You see, Chris and Shelly, our next-door neighbors, invited Shane and I for a backyard celebration. Excellent cooks in their own right, they had a full menu planned for their event, so I needed to find something I could bring that wouldn't interfere...

I've decided that anything I make -- be it baked, sauteed, fried, roasted -- that doesn't come out looking like something out of a Williams-Sonoma cookbook will be dubbed "rustic." Hence, rustic Napoleons. (I should probably go back through the archives and rename 95-percent of the...

You can make baked chips with lots of kinds of potatoes , but aren't Adirondack blue potato chips fun? The chips taste best, whether blue or of a"regular" hue, when hot from the oven. But you'll still want to chow down on them when they cool down -- if they last that long. Baked Potato...

Our DB hosts this month, Shel of Musings from the Fishbowl and Natalie of Gluten A Go Go , challenged us to make lavash, a type of flatbread, and a vegan dip of our choosing. Although we were given the option of baking the lavash without gluten, I went for gluten. The recipe came together fairly easily...

There are a lot of steps in making the Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream -- the recipe is almost as long as the name -- but it wasn't an overly difficult cake to make. (Though getting a cake to look beautiful is difficult, and I need a lot more practice before one of my cakes could be mistaken...

Shane is a person who can eat salad for dinner. As in, that's all he eats as his main -- some greens tossed with red onions and a few tomatoes, dressed with oil and vinegar and perhaps a few hunks of goat cheese. I am not that kind of person. For me, a salad as an entree signifies someone who is...

Mmmm ... grilled beef, stuffed with melted blue cheese, nestled on a toasted bun loaded with tomato, lettuce, red onion, ketchup and a squirt of Dijon mustard. It's the most flavorful, satisfying burger I've had in a long, long time. Enjoy and happy Independence Day! Grilled Blue Cheese Burgers...

If only we had margarita glasses... Inspired by this lovely cocktail , the pomegranate margarita sorbet is an icy and sophisticated way to end a summer's meal. In addition to lime and pomegranate juice, there's a bit of tequila and Cointreau in here; not enough to get a buzz but maybe more than...

Two Sundays ago, Shane and I worked a shift on the Fellenz Family Farm as part of our obligation to the UUCC CSA . After nearly four hours of hoeing and transplanting, we'd worked up quite an appetite. Shane wanted a big breakfast -- eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, hash browns -- but I wanted a huge...