Along with the holidays come the house guests. We’re all happy to see them, but sometimes feeding them becomes a challenge.

For me, breakfast is the most difficult meal to pull off. I’m not really that hungry myself in the morning and there’s usually so much to do to prepare for the day’s celebrations. (Plus I hate facing a sink full of dishes first thing.)

One answer for the harried host is this eggy casserole that can be made the night before and slipped into the oven to bake while you attend to other tasks.  It contains all the basic breakfast food groups in one tasty dish that’s always popular with my family.  (more…)

The vegetable selection is rapidly shrinking at local farmers markets with the arrival of a wet and chilly fall here in the Northwest.  One of the compensations, though, is the arrival of beautiful squash in every imaginable shape, size and color.

One of my favorites is the aptly named delicata.  Like many of its cousins, this little squash boasts rich, sweet flesh that’s great in a soup, fabulous in a salad, and terrific in pasta.   Unlike the better known butternut, Hubbard and acorn squashes, though, the delicata has skin that is thin and tender.  For many dishes, you don’t even have to peel it.

This is one winter squash that I can prep for a recipe without worrying that I’m going to take a finger off in the process.  That alone would make it attractive in my book but I also love the way it cooks up quickly and takes to a wide range of flavor combinations. (more…)

Pour an extraordinary cocktail, set out some irresistible nibbles, and you’re ready for a celebration.

My search for the perfect New Year’s Eve libation this year led me to the “PDT Cocktail Book,”: by Jim Meehan (Sterling Epicure, 2011).  Illustrated with Chris Gall’s colorful woodcut engravings, the book is an engaging and often esoteric guide to the artisan cocktails created for the speakeasy-style Manhattan bar, Please Don’t Tell.  It’s such a hit that I couldn’t find a hardback version anywhere so I downloaded the e-book version. (more…)

As much as I’d love to, I’ve never been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  The memory of  the great food I ate on my one trip to the Big Easy still lingers, though.

About this time of year, I always start thinking about celebrating Mardi Gras at home with some of those unforgettable flavors. There’s no way I can hope to recreate the fabulous Gulf Coast seafood where I live, of course.  But it’s not that difficult to approximate  the savory satisfaction of the muffuletta sandwiches made legendary by Central Grocery in the French quarter near the turn of the last century. (more…)

2010 has been a pretty tough year given all the nasty political battles and continuing economic uncertainty.  I, for one, will be happy to bid it adieu Friday night.

To toast the arrival of 2011, I’ve come up with a new cocktail — one that brings together the old and the new with a dash of gin, a multitude of tiny bubbles and the lively spark of pomegranate.  It began as a French 75, the World War I favorite of the Lost Generation of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

My family is calling this variation the Ruby Bullet.  Paired with hot, puffy gougeres, it’s bound to enliven any New Year’s Eve celebration. (more…)