anninva's Profile

I love this spread! I am partial to the orange fig spread as well. Great addition to cheese plates. Also delicious stirred into steel-cut oats.

ask your landlord to replace the carpet - and the carpet padding.

I think anything by Alton Brown is great, esp I'm Just Here for the Food.

I agree that I use HTCE all the time, but I think it works better for a cook with at least a moderate base of knowledge to pull from. As a beginner I was pretty overwhelmed by the sheer volume.

I love black bean-mango burritos. Heat drained beans in a skillet with garlic and cumin. In a separate pan, saute diced mango in a tiny bit of butter and a half-spoonful of brown sugar. Add grated cheese when wrapping them up.

You could make them with low-carb tortillas to keep the carb count down. The leftovers are delicious and they also make a very filling breakfast.

I'm a fast eater, and it stems from childhood. My elementary school had 50 minutes for lunch/recess -- and as soon as you finished your lunch, you could have recess for the rest of the time. We usually tried to wolf down our food in 5-7 minutes so we could have lots of play time.

It's really hard for me to slow down and savor food, still. There's this sense of better things to do once the food is eaten.

I love the yellow ones in salad. The ones I get tend to be firmer and less watery than regular red tomatoes, so they hold their shape better. Ditto for on top of pizza.

I have an island that has a center cabinet with shelves on both ends. I have to say that if I were doing it again, I would look for one that had enclosed space. The shelves need to be dusted every few days (more often than the rest of the house) and it's really noticeable when they get dirty.

I made this a couple of weeks ago. I had good luck just piling all of the eggplant onto my microwave tray -- I stopped every few minutes to rotate/toss them as they shrunk down.

My cubes were closer to 1", and my eggplant was nearly 2.5 pounds.

This was my first time using anchovies, and I think they really helped bridge the canned tomatoes and the eggplant taste. But I still felt like the actual dish itself wasn't quite balanced. It's like there was too much pasta to the sauce. The ricotta salata, though? My first experience with it, and it won't be my last. Delicious!

freshly picked strawberries creme fraiche great balsamic = the taste of summer. really, just riffing on a theme here...

La Cuisine in Alexandria, Va., sharpens knives.