World Cup of Yum

Yam Beef Biscuit Pot Pie

I had purchased some canned biscuits on sale for really cheap, but maybe they were on sale for a reason! They weren’t at all flaky and they were a bit bland. But I hate letting food go to waste, so I thought maybe I could make them work as a pot pie topping. Judging by…

Passion Fruit Ice Cream

I’m thrilled it’s passion fruit season again, and thanks to this year’s heavy rains the vines in the neighborhood are heavy with fruit! So of course I had to tinker with an ice cream flavored with one of my favorite fruits. Many of the passion fruit ice creams I’ve tasted hardly had any passion fruit…

Peach Cheesecake Chunk Ice Cream

When my cheese guy gifted me two huge containers of ricotta, I immediately made 3 Ricotta Cheesecakes. They were pretty rapidly devoured, but that’s a lot of cheesecake, so luckily there were a couple leftover pieces. I’m always on the lookout for ice cream mix-ins, so I secreted the leftovers into the freezer for my…

Peanut Butter Chocolate Pretzel Ice Cream

I loved the idea of peanut butter-filled pretzels as an ice cream mix-in, but worried about the pretzels getting soggy. So I gave them a chocolate coating, which sealed out the moisture and gave them another layer of flavor. An additional swirl of peanut butter (because there’s no such thing as too much PB) and…

Taco Salad

With the warm weather, I was craving a salad that was hearty enough to be a meal all on its own. I had some tortilla chips and salsa I wanted to use up, and that inspired the idea to make a Taco Salad. After tasting the salad, my boyfriend – who previously swore he hated…

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream

As a kid, Cookies and Cream Ice Cream was my go-to flavor. As I’m still a kid at heart, I don’t know why it took me this long into my ice cream-making journey to get around to trying my hand at Cookies and Cream Ice Cream… especially since all I did was mix Oreo pieces…

Chocolate Almond Ice Cream with Peanut Swirl

I’ve been successful at mixing fun stuff into a vanilla ice cream base, so why not try a chocolate base? And what would I mix in? Chocolate-coated almonds and peanut butter! It is as good as it sounds. Guessipe Whisk the cream, milk, sugar, and cocoa powder together in a pot. Heat until the mixture…

Cheesy Garlic Jalapeno Frittata

In preparation for going out of town, I was using up everything I could from my fridge. That led to this Cheesy Garlic Jalapeno Frittata, which my boyfriend could not stop talking about. I usually have these ingredients (you can use any mix of cheeses you want, but I’ve noted one of my fav combos…

Horchata

An ice cold horchata on a hot day is so refreshing! But it’s not available everywhere, so why not make it myself? I started asking my Mexican friends (thank goodness I live in California!), and found that there are many variations in ratios, types of milk, sugar vs sweetened condensed milk, etc. and every family…

Berry Cobbler Ice Cream

I’ve been trying to come up with shortcut mix-ins for the fun ice cream flavors I crave, because it’s a lot of work to have to make mix-ins in advance of making the actual ice cream. I thought plain old saltine pieces might work as a cobbler mix-in, and I was right. Combine that with…

Kids Menu Katsudon

Katsudon is one of my favorite Japanese dishes – rice topped with deep-fried pork cutlet, egg, and onion simmered in a savory sweet sauce. It’s super simple to make, except for the deep-fried pork cutlet. One weeknight I was super craving katsudon, but had neither the ingredients nor the energy to deep-fry a pork cutlet….

Jelly Meatballs

A friend of mine introduced me to grape jelly meatballs, which are meatballs slow-cooked in equal parts grape jelly and bbq sauce. They were good, but a touch sweet for my tastes. It inspired me to make a version equally as easy but more to my liking. I air-fried the meatballs to give them a…