And Again, If You Can’t Take the Heat… “I do not live off canned soup.” ~Charles Best I do not live off canned soup, that’s for sure. Not because I’m against canned soup—because I’m not at all, but rather, I don’t eat much soup at all. I do really like some soups (my favorite being the minestrone from Connie’s in Chicago) and of course I love clam chowder from just about anywhere in Boston. But I kind of think of those as categories in their own right. Soup isn’t something I usually make, or order in restaurants. If I do, I’m probably counting calories… But I digress. I wasn’t really…

“I can teach a chimp how to make linguini and clams. I can’t teach a chimp to dream about how great it is.” ~Mario Batali While I can’t speak for the chimp, I dream all the time about how great linguini and clams are! Really? Really. Keep reading and you’ll see that this recipe—which was published in 2015, the hardest year of my life—left me as happy as a clam. Cook the 40 Why take on Food & Wine’s best-ever recipes from their forty years in publication? Because if you’ve been paying attention, you know that’s one of the things I’m doing this year! Besides, I’m hoping that taking on…

“Pizza and pie for breakfast? You betcha’!” ~eamII Finally some breakfast recipes in this Cook the 40 Challenge. Although I suppose any recipe can be a breakfast recipe if you make it to eat in the morning, right? Right. The Most Important Meal of the Day? I haven’t always been a big breakfast person. Even now, if I’m not intentionally making a recipe or wanting to pig out on tacos, I more than likely will just have some whole milk in the morning. One reason is that, if it were up to me, I would always sleep in, so eating in the morning usually ends up being late morning or…

“When we think of classic American desserts, we tend to imagine apple pie and ice cream. However, the most classic American dessert of all might be the chocolate chip cookie.” ~ Homaro Cantu I am going to have to agree with Mr. Cantu here. Not that I don’t like apple pie, but I love chocolate chip cookies. Plus, when it comes to apple pie, I’m picky. I don’t like those really thin slices of apples in some pies; I don’t like when there’s a crumble on top or too much cinnamon; oh, and my apple pie needs a top. Also, my pies in general need a top and a bottom.…

“Or, again, if you can’t take the taste, make the recipe anyway…” ~eam II Yes, that’s my quote. I made it up. Why? Because again, eventually I was going to get to those recipes that I just didn’t want to make. Or eat. This was one of those. Why did I not want to eat this recipe? Because I didn’t think I’d like the taste, or the ingredients, rather. I mean, come on, chickpeas. But again, I said I’d make all 40 recipes in this Cook the 40 Challenge I gave myself, and so here is one of the recipes that I kind of saved for the latter part of…