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Hello everyone. Welcome to my kitchen.
I am an award winning cookbook author, prolific food writer and popular cooking school teacher, but mostly I am a passionate and dedicated cook. Most days you will find me in my sunny Mexican tiled kitchen cooking for friends and family and coming up with great tasting recipes for my blog, magazine features and cookbooks.
You might be familiar with my recipes through the Cooking for Health column I wrote for Bon Appetit magazine for many years. Or, perhaps you have one of my cookbooks in your collection. Some of my most popular books are the award winning The Good Egg and Lighter Quicker Better (written with Richard Sax), Fresh & Fast, Fig Heaven, Sur La Table’s Things Cooks Love, The Amazing World of Rice and the best selling 365 Ways to Cook Pasta. My latest, just released book is Fresh & Fast Vegetarian: Recipes that Make a Meal.
The hours I spend in my kitchen bring me back to childhood play dates cooking beside my mother and grandmother. These two excellent family cooks taught me how important it is to make sure everyone has something good to eat. Every day, I hear their words, and I do the same.
I submitted the manuscript for A Taste of Honey on June 1, 2012. It was a luscious project. I managed to amass over 70 different jars of honey from around the world and I tasted everyone. In addition to honey facts and lore and about 60 different recipes the book contains a guide to over 40 different honeys describing the blossom source, color, texture, taste and best uses and food matches for each honey. Not only did I discover the complex and fascinating world of honey, I came away from this project with a sense of wonder at the world of the bee. I was most impressed by the fascinating complexity of honey and how the different flavor notes. Most fascinating was the complexity of pairing honey with savory foods like tomatoes, cheese, bacon and eggplant. Look for recipes for Honey Almond Ice Cream, Flat Bread with Manchego, Rosemary and Honey Drizzle, Honey Glazed Bacon, Crispy Shrimp with Tangy Honey Dipping Sauce, Baby Back Pork Ribs with Chipotle Honey Barbecue Sauce, Honey Glazed Beets with Cinnamon, Orange and Mint, Salted Honey Peanut Brittle and Honey Panna Cotta with Honey Lemon Sauce.
Whole World Vegetarian is my winter project. (The manuscript is due June 2013.) I can’t wait to begin researching, cooking and tasting the recipes. Right now I am fixated on the Africa continent exploring the grain and vegetable dishes of the continent. Thinking about Peanut Soup, Mashed Yams, Millet Pilaf and Green Vegetables with Spicy Chiles. But this is only a small part of this project. I will be touching on every continent and hopefully in the process won’t miss any of the wide world of ingredients and flavors that are out there.
We’ve moved to Eugene, Oregon and we are amazingly happy with the decision. The food community here is dynamic and fun. We are enamored of the fabulous Saturday market and the fun pop-up trucks with all sorts of creative food choices. The town is just big enough to have a great cultural mix and just small enough to be able to get from A to B in a matter of minutes.
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