"My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood, to say as I said then!" ~Cleopatra, from Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 5, 67-75

“The difference between a bland tomato and great one is immense…” ~Yotam Ottolenghi Even in the short time this blog and its social media accounts have existed, I have written about my love for tomatoes, so it should come as no surprise that I agree with Chef Ottolenghi. A good tomato can be eaten with almost anything, I think, while a bland or bad tomato, makes me kinda sad. And a great tomato? Well, sometimes nothing beats a great tomato, and a great tomato recipe was what I was hoping for with my attempt at the next best-ever recipe from Food & Wine Magazine’s Cook the 40 Challenge list. Cook…

“One must lose a minnow to catch a salmon.” ~French Proverb “Je ne suis pas d’accord. All I had to do was follow a good recipe.” ~Elda Eats Give a girl a fish, and she’ll eat for a day. Teach a girl to make a good fish recipe at home, and well, she might just make that recipe, and then enjoy all the memories that may come with it, for the rest of her life. Lucky for me, a good fish recipe was what I chose to make on Sunday as my latest culinary attempt from the best-ever recipe list from Food & Wine Magazine’s Cook the 40 Challenge. Cook…

Or, what I discovered when making a recipe from 1997… “I can’t find our photos from 1997!!!” ~Me to Peter as I got ready to write this blog post “All sorrows are less with bread.” ~Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra I am not sure if Don Quixote would have agreed, but I definitely agree with his creator. Bread does indeed make everything better. I was very happy to see that one of my favorite Spanish foods made the Cook the 40 list! I love bread, I love garlic and I love tomatoes. I also love Spain, but more on that later. Cook the 40 Why take on Food & Wine’s best-ever…

“A splash of red wine vinegar can pull things together like a pinch of salt.” ~Alex Guarnaschelli “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” ~Charles M. Schulz I’ve always loved Snoopy. And while I’m not sure about the chocolate part, I do agree with Snoopy’s creator that love is all you need. I was raised on it. Well, maybe love and food. Chocolate is food, after all. Mr. Schulz wasn’t too far off. To Your Liking À Votre Goût. To your liking. It’s a French phrase that is important to understand if you’re ordering a nice steak in Paris, or perhaps if you’re…