World Cup of Yum

Cutting Corners with Lasagna

Sometimes an impromptu night of home-making lasagna is exactly what you need. The Lasagna The star of the show, naturally, was the lasagna. We started with homemade pasta sheets. Anthony made his secret tomato sauce recipe, which included ground beef, Italian sausage, tomatoes, wine, and a set of spices that shall never be revealed. It…

Bringing In the Year of the Rooster

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated Chinese New Year by closing out the Year of the Monkey. Now we get to celebrate by bringing in the Year of the Rooster! Many of the dishes are family traditions which will look familiar from the last feast, but I love to eat these foods so I don’t…

Coffee Cocoa Magic Cake

Magic Cake seems to be the internet food trend of the moment. If you follow food blogs, you’ve heard of it. Even my brother knows what it is. He told my mom about it, and she has been dying to try it. And who am I to deny my mother, who has so patiently put…

Banoffee Pie

Have I mentioned that I like pie? Sheana texted me to say that my incessant talk about the Pineapple Cream Pie (check out my Guessipe) and Long-Chee Pie (check out my Guessipe) that my cousin and I made for Chinese New Year had inspired her to buy pie crusts during her last trip to the…

Adana Restaurant Review

Gold Dig #28 Adana is a Middle Eastern restaurant in a strange spot kind of in the middle of nowhere in Glendale. It is one of the only places on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list that is out in that area. We were going to be nearby-ish to see a taping of Conan, so we took advantage…

Super (Rice) Bowl

I love the Super Bowl. It combines two of my favorite things – food and football. It’s especially great to celebrate with foodie friends. Sure, we had all the usual suspects like beer, chips, salsa, guac. But then we stepped it up a notch with things like homemade crab dip (find my Guessipe here) and homemade…

Crab Dip

It seems like the only time crab dip is served is at football parties. Don’t get me wrong – I love football and I love crab dip, so I’m not complaining. But crab dip is a wonderful thing. Perhaps I will try to start a movement – make crab dip your every day dip! Hmmm……

Pasta Party

For Christmas, Katy got pasta attachments for her KitchenAid mixer. She invited a bunch of us to come over and make our favorite sauce to go with the three different kinds of homemade pasta she whipped up. Definitely my kind of party. Capellini First, she had capellini. These were the thinnest noodles. Alyssa made Marcella…

Carrot Coconut Curry Pasta

We were doing a pasta party, and all of the standard sauce bases were covered – tomato, vodka, bolognese. So I wanted to experiment with something different. When I was recovering from knee surgery, my cousin had made me a big batch of carrot coconut curry soup, and I remembered thinking those flavors might be…

Gailan with Oyster Sauce

Cookbook Club – All Under Heaven; Land of Fish and Rice For January’s Cookbook Club, we celebrated Chinese New Year with two cookbooks – All Under Heaven by Carolyn Phillips and Land of Fish and Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop. I chose the Gailan with Oyster Sauce. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see the…

Vincenti Restaurant Review

Gold Dig #27 Vincenti in Brentwood is not only one of the “10 great Italian restaurants” Jonathan Gold has written about; it also makes Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list. A large bar runs the length of the restaurant. Many of the patrons are in business attire and look like they might be having a work meeting….

Closing Out the Year of the Monkey

Chinese New Year is one of my favorite holidays. It’s largely centered around food, and you go home with sweets and red envelopes full of money. Need I say more? I inherited my love of food from my family, so there is no shortage of good eats at our Chinese New Year feast. It typically…