A slightly different version of this originally ran in the Fort Worth Business Press. A good cookbook is like a good friend. It’s always there when you need it, and it gives you great recipes. Well, I hope you have friends who give you recipes. Everyone has favorites, but there...

My seven-year-old, Ellie, was lucky enough to be gifted Super Simple Baking For Kids by Charity Mathews for Christmas (thank you Aunt Ali!). Naturally, we had to try it out this week. First, we skimmed the recipes. She initially wanted to try the “big pretzel.” However, after looking at...

I’ve been a huge pho fan since I was a teenager and my dad took me to a little place in Oklahoma City. He told me “it’s this great chicken noodle soup. You’ll love it.” And I did… so much that pho was my go-to hospital takeout when I...

My kids love “helping” me cook. They love — even more— stealing my cooking utensils and “cooking” things in the back yard with mud and leaves. These cooking toys are good enough to keep them out of my stash and make them happy on Christmas morning! These are affiliate...

This Tuscan peasant soup is a version of a classic dish found in Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”. I received a copy from my sister-in-law for my birthday a couple of years ago and spent a week of reading it cover to cover. It’s an amazing cookbook,...

When my sister-in-law first gifted me a copy of Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” for my birthday, I spent a week of reading it cover to cover. It’s an amazing cookbook, especially if you are a cookbook fangirl like I am. One recipe stuck out to me...

This chicken recipe started with me flipping through one of Julia Child’s cookbooks and seeing something called “Pot-Au-Feu.” It looked good, if a little complicated. In Julia’s recipe, she trussed the chicken and stuffed it with homemade dressing before placing it in the boiling water. That sounded great, but...