Cooking at Home

Seattleites may not know it, but right in our backyard is one of the country's (actually, the world's) top purveyors of that darling of the kitchen: gourmet salts. SaltWorks up in Woodinville has been in this business since 2001. Its earliest inception is one of those classic entrepreneurial stories of a one-time hobby taking over someone's life to the point that there was little choice but to open a business given the hobby's growing demand for space. The entrepreneurs in this case are ...

Authors aren't supposed to have favorite book projects, or so I've heard, just as a mother's expected to not profess having a favorite kid. And of course I do have a special affection for all the books I've worked on over the years. But just between you and me, Salty Snacks was a particular favorite. Not ...

Right after the new year, I headed back to Denver, the home of Craftsy, to shoot another class for this fun, dynamic platform for those who love to get creative with anything from cake decorating to quilting. And cooking is certainly a most delicious way to get creative! This new class reflects my lifelong love of all things salty -- the focus of the lessons in Homemade Salty Snacks (this link ...

It doesn't matter where we were. It wasn't the restaurant or the server or the menu that was at fault. The calendar did it. February 14 to be exact. It was a decade or so ago and my husband and I had gone out to a restaurant we'd been to many times in the past, and have been back to since. Not a fancy place; a casual, popular spot with very good food. But there's something charged about that evening, ...

You may have heard this reflection before: that stocks are so integral to cooking, the French use the word fond, meaning "foundation," for most stocks used in the kitchen. Fond de veau (veal), fond de volaille (poultry), fond de boeuf (beef). They're the base for countless recipes, including soups, stews, sauces and that old-school showpiece, the aspic (or, more elegantly, gelée in French). Which explains why various stocks were among the first things we were taught to perfect in the ...

My new class has been up on Craftsy for just a couple of weeks, which you can check out here (bonus: that link includes a 25% discount for you if you opt to buy the class, though you can check out a preview there and may find some other things of creative interest on the site). It was so great to have a ...

It's funny those times when two otherwise disparate parts of our lives overlap a bit. Such is the case with Craftsy. I can't recall how I was very first introduced to the site, but got an email this past week that noted I'd been a member for a year. The context for me was knitting, this platform a very cool, dynamic, multi-layered place to learn about, and fuel your love of, a wide range of crafty endeavors. I never signed up ...

I realize Octoberfest isn't relegated strictly to the month of October, in its homeland of Bavaria in southern Germany, the beer-fueled festivities tend to start late September. But still, the act of flipping the calendar page this morning to October inspired this brief consideration of the fall festival that plays out globally this time of year. My contribution to the party is this recipe for soft pretzels from my most recent book. This was one of the last additions to the Salty Snacks...

So, I survived as a first-time webinar speaker earlier this month! I'd been an attendee on many in recent years, but this was my first time as presenter and I was a bit nervous about coming across polished and full of useful information. It helped, though, that the topic was something I've been engrossed in since the earliest days of my culinary career: recipe development. When I was tapped on the shoulder by the ...

I can't get this thought out of my head since a reader question last week got me pondering recipes and cooking times: clocks don't know how to cook. I heard from someone who'd seen one of my Salty Snacks recipes in a local newspaper and questioned the time that had been listed. For Deviled Bacon, it said to cook for 15 minutes per side, her result was ...