Greek Lemon Soup

Cookbook Club – The Silver Palate Cookbook Happy new year of Cookbook Club! Our first event of 2024 used the American classic Silver Palate cookbook series – The Silver Palate Cookbook, The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, and The New Basics. To see our full first feast of the year, check out my Cookbook Club site. For…

Zuppa Toscana

Zuppa Toscana is the best soup at Olive Garden. It’s actually the only reason I ever go to Olive Garden. So now that I figured out how to make it at home, I guess I don’t have any reason to go to Olive Garden anymore. The Instant Pot makes this extra quick and easy to…

Tuscan White Bean and Sausage Soup

Now that I’ve experienced what quick work the Instant Pot can make of cooking beans, I’ve been much more willing to experiment with bean dishes. I ate a white bean and sausage soup years ago that I still remember and think about from time to time, and now finally got around to re-creating. It was…

Mushroom-Scallion Soup

Cookbook Club – Joy of Cooking (2019 Edition) We have used Joy of Cooking for a Cookbook Club event before, but this time we focused specifically on the 2019 edition, which has hundreds of new recipes and modifications to some of the old ones. To get our tiny taste of what this extensive cookbook has…

Peanut Soup

Cookbook Club – Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking Our August Cookbook Club selection was Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking. To see our jubilee experience, go to my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish! I’d never heard of peanut soup before, but the recipe…

Veloute of Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Cookbook Club – Raji Cuisine: Indian Flavors, French Passion For our Cookbook Club in June, we used Raji Jallepalli’s Raji Cuisine: Indian Flavors, French Passion. To get a taste of all the Indian flavors with French influence, go to my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish! I enjoy eating butternut squash soup, but…

Sweet Pea Soup with Coconut and Ginger

Cookbook Club – In Bibi’s Kitchen In October we used Hawa Hassan’s cookbook In Bibi’s Kitchen for Cookbook Club. Hassan gathered the stories and recipes of bibis (grandmothers) from eight African nations: Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Comoros. To get a taste of the foods we tried from these bibis’ kitchens,…

Tom Kha Gai (Thai coconut soup)

This coconut soup is one of my favorite Thai foods. Tom Kha Gai is a great accompaniment to other Thai dishes, but its rich and warming broth makes it hearty enough to eat as a main dish as well, especially with a side of rice. Making Tom Kha Gai is a simple 3-step process –…

Spinach Soup

This spinach soup is probably not what first comes to mind when you hear “spinach soup”. It’s not creamed or blended – it’s broth-based. But it’s what I thought of as spinach soup when I was growing up. I loved it whenever my mom made it. So when I got old enough to start paying…

French Onion Soup

Onions, bread, and cheese are three of my boyfriend’s favorite foods, so French Onion Soup was pretty much a no-brainer dish to make for him. It’s traditionally made with dry white wine, but all I happened to have on hand was cream sherry when I made this. It came out great, so now it’s what…

Connie and Ted’s Restaurant Review

Gold Dig #63 Connie and Ted’s is the big place with the swooping ceiling on a main stretch of West Hollywood that on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list, he calls a “clam shack”. Inside is an open kitchen and a bar. Outside is a fantastic patio, which unfortunately looks out onto the parking lot…

Kobawoo House Restaurant Review

Gold Dig #59 Kobawoo House is one of the many Koreatown restaurants on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list. It is super helpful to refer to his list when deciding where to eat in this area… there are so many restaurants that it’s hard to know where to begin or imagine that you’d ever be…