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United Nations of Food
What do you do when you love to eat American and Chinese and Greek and Italian and Indian and… If you’re me, you have a refrigerator and pantry filled with cuisine-specific spices, sauces and other ingredients for a United Nations of cooking. Also, if you’re like me (in another way), you come up with outlandish…
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Smitten With Smitten Kitchen
Deb Perelman is amazing! Deb is the genius behind the popular website, Smitten Kitchen. She’s such an inspiration, cooking and taking fabulous photos of her cooking creations in a “tiny NYC apartment.” Recently, I had an opportunity to cook a couple of recipes from her book “Smitten Kitchen Keepers” for our community cookbook club gathering.…
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Vegan Bean & Sauerkraut Bake
I have a Greek friend who loves pickled cabbage so much that he’s been known to use it when making stuffed cabbage rolls! Strange, right? Well, not so much. Greek people love pickled and fermented foods. Here’s a short list: Kalamata olives Feta cheese Anchovies (Actually, they’re marinated, but it’s close enough.) Sea fennel (Kritamo)…
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Creative Growth Community
Creativity in the Kitchen. Click this link to connect with Beer & Napkins, and to read my post relative to a Zoom talk I gave earlier this year. If you’d like to link directly to my informal and fun talk, you can follow this link to Zoom, and enter this passcode: Passcode &v5zF^e7 I’d love your…
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Fava Board for Entertaining
I say, Ban the butter boards! Yes, and let’s replace them with a tastier and more creative option. Let’s start the Greek-style fava board movement! My FAVA BOARD WITH GREEK SALAD in all its glory. Fava is a dip made by cooking yellow split peas and pureeing with lemon juice and olive oil. Famous on…
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Savoury Baked Beans
Are you tired of going to a barbeque and getting dessert served as a side? Me too! What am I talking about? I’m referring to all of the ultra-sweet baked bean casseroles served at a home barbeque and at many barbeque restaurants. There’s so much sugar or honey or maple syrup in there, that we…
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Grocery Store Bouillabaisse
Did you know that the classic Provencal fish soup, Bouillabaisse, is a Greek recipe? Seriously! Not seriously. Actually, ancient Greeks did set up housekeeping in France, in an area that we now know as Marseille. Because they were fishermen, whatever they caught that they couldn’t sell became dinner, hence a Greek soup recipe called Kakavia,…
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Savory Petit Fours & More, Afternoon Tea Part Two
It’s true, petit fours aren’t just cute bites of little layered cakes. They can be savory too! They don’t even have to be layered, but my mind always defaults to a delectable layered bite. Our recent Afternoon Tea was missing savory items. We had beautiful sandwiches, but nothing as dainty as a chocolate or cookie.…
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A Proper Afternoon Tea
Recently, I hosted an Afternoon Tea honoring two friends who have back-to-back birthdays. It was a lot of work to prepare everything (surprisingly), but I had the support of other friends who each brought a savory or sweet treat and flowers to the event. Thank you, Brenda, Martha, Angela, Donna, and Caroline! It takes a…
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Beautiful Endings. Beautiful Beginnings.
We hate to say goodbye, don’t we? Ending something usually hurts. We leave a job, we end a relationship, a loved one passes on to another realm, and children leave home to marry or to follow a career path in other parts of the country or the world. Of course, as we all know, there’s…
Despidoodle
the digital alias of Despina Panagakos Yeargin
