Celebrating life’s milestones with family and friends is one of my greatest pleasures. Last Thursday, I was thrilled to host a dinner party for my remarkable mother’s 90th birthday. Ida Menage Olah (known as Eda to her Cleveland family and friends) doesn’t like to be the center of ...
Easy Weekday Recipes
Spiderbite Pasta
One of my favorite Easy Weeknight Meals is Marcella Hazan's Bell Pepper and Goat Cheese Sauce for Pasta from her wonderful book Marcella Cucina. In fact, I've made this dish so many times that my hard cover book has cracked in that very spot. I've tried many variations over the 18 years that I've ...
Panko Crusted Fried Chick’n
There are a ton of blogs and recipes on the internet about how to make vegan fried chicken using Gardein Chick’n Scallopini. Almost all of the recipes use cashews, soaked overnight, and then pureed and strained to create a cashew cream. Sounds intriguing – but with organic cashews running $ ...
8-year-old NC Chef Attending Kids’ State Dinner
Congratulations to Alex Tschegg of Matthews! He's the 8-year-old chef-in-the-making from Matthews, North Carolina who was the winner from North Carolina of the 2015 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge. Alex is one of 55 talented young people who will be dining with First Lady Michelle Obama at the Kids' ...
Life happens between blogs . . .
Wow - it's been a month since my last post. Life sure has gotten in the way of my blog! Let's see - our son graduated from college, we celebrated his 22nd birthday, fulfilled business and family obligations, and took our annual scuba diving trip to Pirates Point at Little Cayman - that will take ...
Oyster Mushrooms Berkeley over Tagliatelle
Back in the 1970s-1980s, every vegetarian owned a copy of The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. One of my all-time favorite recipes from that cookbook was Mushrooms Berkeley. Over the years, I have made a lot of different variations, including my Beef and Mushrooms Berkeley included in ...
Brussels Meets Italy
Brussels Sprouts are among the most polarizing of veggies - people either love 'em or hate 'em. I'm a self-confessed Brussels Sprouts lover, but have often resorted to cheese and dairy enhancements to get my carnivores to enjoy them. This week, I stumbled on an interesting idea by Kay Chun in ...
April Fools’ Day – Fool Your Family Carnivores with Chorizo Seitan Pasta
Since tomorrow is April Fools' Day, what better time to fool the carnivores in your family? My recipe for Chorizo Seitan Pasta uses Upton's Naturals Seitan and is a dead ringer for a spicy Spanish sausage. Since our son Nick claims Seitan has the most "meat-like" texture of any of my favorite ...
