elizabeth marley's Profile

I find the onions sold in 3 or 5 lb bags are much smaller than the onions sold per pound. One of those onions is perfect for single serving cooking.

I used to always insist my friends sit down and relax and let me do the work. These days? If someone offers to help, I can always find something I need done.

I find that if I only have a couple people over, it's a great way for us to continue our conversation. At larger parties, it's a moment for my closest friends and I to catch up. And in the end, the cleaning is finished twice as fast and I can't complain about that.

Where I live, I'm lucky to have a few quality butchers, but none are on my usual route to or from work (and the public transit here leaves something to be desired).

Instead, I've developed a relationship with the butchers in my supermarket and I love them. My store will cut, bread, and marinate for free, which I really appreciate. I just put my order in when I walk into the store and pick it up before I pay.

I love this, and it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately. A couple weeks ago I put half of my pots, pans, and bakeware in the basement. I did this partially because my roommates weren't too keen on memorizing my organizational strategy (understandably) but mostly because I just don't use them. I'd do away with them forever but most of them belonged to my grandmother and I can't give them up.

I've also been doing a lot of cooking in foreign kitchens lately. It's so interesting to see the choices people make. Why one spoon over another? Why does one person have great knives and another gets by with cheap ones? It's helped me clarify what I feel is necessary in my kitchen.

Sometimes! I'm a little tired of seeing it in EVERYTHING at restaurants, but I still like to experiment with it at home. A strip of bacon crumbled on ice cream is delicious!

The one thing I can't stand is bacon infused vodka. It just feels greasy and doesn't taste good at all.

I like to bake from scratch, but if I'm doing something crazy (eg: cupcakes with something inside, a huge batch of cookies to decorate) I'll go for a box mix just to save time and a little stress.

And brownies, for some reason, always work out better when they're from a box mix.

I find using a bowl of water is the easiest route. Fish defrosts in what seems like minutes and everything else takes about an hour per pound/pound and a half.

To all the people hating on toaster ovens: Toaster ovens are amazing. Please learn to love them.

Right now I love my toaster oven because I have a small apartment and using the oven really heats the place up. Since I'm usually only cooking for my boyfriend and I, it's easier to roast veggies in the toaster oven which doesn't heat up the apartment and it gets to the proper temperature faster.

I also keep cookie dough in the freezer and the toaster oven is great for popping in a couple balls and having fresh baked cookies.

And that toaster oven saved my life when we moved into our new apartment and couldn't get the gas turned on for over a month.

At this point, you'd have to pry my toaster oven from my cold dead hands. Seriously.

I really don't understand why people can't handle the idea of cooking for one. It's not that hard!

Most recipes are easily cut down--in my two-person household I usually cut every recipe in half to begin with unless I want leftovers. If you're making your basic meat + some veggies dish, it's even easier.

Lately it's not recipes, but recipe descriptions that really get to me. For example, when entire paragraphs are written about how the author just can't stand the idea of using that much red food coloring in red velvet cake. Because unless you're consuming red velvet cake 365 days a year, it's really not a big deal.