Pear and blue cheese salad, a seasonal and elegant salad for entertaining and the holidays. Pears, blue cheese, an easy honey mustard vinaigrette and toasted pine nuts, the perfect fall and winter salad.

Baked pork chops and apples in mustard cream sauce, simple and elegant French comfort food. This dish is a total splurge, just throw caution to the wind.  I mean, really, how often can you make a dish with heavy cream and pork and wine?  Pork chops and apples is a favorite in this house.  I have …

A little odd for me to write about my coffee preference.  But stay with me, it will make sense. I love a good latte, and for several years I had an espresso machine.  Every morning I made myself two lattes and often made one or two for my husband.  Then the darn machine up and …

  My really good friends, Beth and Steve, live in Minnesota just west of Minneapolis.  They have a gorgeous house and property on several acres.  Their gardens are beautiful and they have worked hard on them over the years.  I visited them earlier this summer and their gardens were so pretty and inviting.  And they …

An easy canning recipe for tasty homemade garlic dill pickles, a summertime favorite to enjoy year round.

I love Greek-style anything…lemon, olive oil, garlic, oregano.  Lately I have been craving chicken and potatoes, Greek-style.  This stems from my single life in Chicago.  I lived a couple of blocks from the Athenian Room on Halsted, and I will tell you they make the best Kalamata Chicken.  The chicken is great, but the potatoes …

I keep mentioning in my recipes to use homemade stock if you have it.  So I thought I’d let you know how to make really good chicken stock.  I usually get a whole chicken, throw it in a pot with some aromatics, cover with water and simmer a few hours.  I’ve seen recipes for stock …

I am not a very good baker.  My friend Beth is though.  I already shared her coffee cake recipe in an earlier post.  I was up in the Twin Cities recently and stayed with her a few days.  For breakfast each morning, I had one of her muffins.  Pumpkin muffins with chocolate chips and walnuts. …

Greek baked white fish, simple rendition of the Greek church’s baked white fish served every Friday for lunch, with frozen swai, lemon, butter, Greek seasonings and an unexpected topping of crushed canned fried crispy onions.

We had a great Fourth of July this year.  Just my husband and me, Picky Eater had to work.  Since she doesn’t like salmon, what a great time to fire up the grill for Maple Mustard Cedar-Planked Salmon.  We’ve been eating more salmon this year and this was the first time on the grill.  I …