Category: How To

  • Beef Gravy without Drippings When You Need Beef Gravy In a Hurry

    Beef Gravy without Drippings When You Need Beef Gravy In a Hurry

    This is from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook: Anniversary, still one of my all-time favorites. One of those “if you could only pick one cookbook…” types. Luckily I don’t have to, but still, when you’re stuck for ideas this is a great resource. So the dinner situation was eldest was having her final driving lesson (yikes!…

  • Roast Garlic with Homegrown Garlic

    Roast Garlic with Homegrown Garlic

    I grow my own garlic and had the best harvest this year, due in part, I believe, to the lasagna gardening method I tried. Just a few week ago I used up the last of last year’s garlic so am now starting to cut the heads off the new braid hanging in the kitchen. Last…

  • Burned on Food

    Every cook has probably had to deal with burning food in a pan at some point. My daughter did it the other day with some tomato soup, made with milk of course. Ugh. We soaked it overnight to no avail. So I went online and found this page on eHow.com about cleaning burned pans. Wow!…

  • Sausage, Potatoes, and Broccoli Dinner

    Sometimes, dinner is just a matter of putting things together. Tonight I had a package of beef sausage, already cooked. I had leftover baked potatoes from the other night. I had a jar of applesauce. And I had broccoli. The broccoli is about the only thing I would consider “cooked” (even if I just steamed…

  • Cooking and Planning Ahead

    On my CheapCooking discussion group, someone asked for help getting a reasonable dinner on the table when she didn’t get a home until 6pm. People chimed in with all kinds of great ideas, most of which boiled down to planning ahead and cooking ahead just a bit on weekends if you could. All the talk…