When we were kids, snacks on-the-go or in our lunch box were often Kellogg's Nutri-Grain cereal bars. There were flavors like strawberry, blueberry, and our beloved apple-cinnamon.
Chris' Outrageous Cheesecake, a decedent combination of chocolate cake, brownies, cheesecake, and coconut-pecan frosting, is easily one of The Cheesecake Factory's most popular desserts. But, the price of fulfilling your cravings for this addictive treat can get up there (at about $8 a slice), and when you eat it at the restaurant you likely are limited to only one small piece.
Granola is an excellent anytime food. It's a healthy breakfast, an easy snack, and a delicious dessert. Unfortunately, it can be expensive to buy, and it can take a long time to make. If you're anything like me, you always run out of granola when you need it most.
When we think of pickling, we usually think of using veggies like cucumbers, carrots, and peppers. However, with summer upon us, we found ourselves thinking about fancy pickled berries as a novel way to use all those gorgeous gems that are popping up at the market.
Every once in a while, we stumble across something food-related that makes us stop and do a double take. Frozen lemonade pie definitely takes the cake—or shall we say, pie—for a dessert that intrigued us upon discovery and totally lived up to its hype. Its filling uses only three ingredients and is one of the most refreshing and seasonally-appropriate desserts on our current roster of must-eats.
Summer is a sensational time for barbecues of all sorts, and sausages always seem to be in the limelight. From backyards to ball parks and picnic tables, crafting the best barbecued sausage is an art well worth mastering.
When chocolate cravings strike, indulgent fudge makes everything in the world right again. And while plain fudge will do the job just fine, add-ins like walnuts and Oreos elevate this dessert to new levels.
Pickling isn't rocket science. In fact, anyone can make their own speciality pickles using just about any fruit or vegetable. For example, I've pickled everything from lemons, watermelon rinds, and apples to red onions, carrots, radishes, and cucumbers.
The spice selection at Trader Joe's is both inexpensive and truly top-notch. According to their site, they deal with some of the highest-quality spice manufacturers in the world and, in working with them directly, they eliminate hidden costs spent on promotions, brand-building, and advertising. This allows the customer to experiment with new flavors and build up their spice rack—without the usual limiting factor of high cost. If you don't have access to a Trader's in your culinary neck of the...
When a headache strikes, I reach for the nearest painkiller. Forget closing my eyes, laying down, or even applying an ice pack—I seek the quickest and most immediate relief possible, and normally that comes in the form of pills. However, fast relief can be found from another, more natural source: herbal beverages. So if you're tired of popping pills when you have aches and pains, try some of these herbal drinks out instead.
The produce section is full of fruits, both familiar and quite strange. Depending on the season, you may see giant, bright-green bananas on display next to the normal bananas that you know and love. No, those aren't super-unripened bananas—they're plantains, and they are definitely a different fruit altogether. However, once you get to know them a little better, you'll find that they're much more fun to cook with.
Most home bakers rely on vanilla extract as a flavor component to their cakes and cookies, but little do they know what they are missing until they trade in their extract for whole vanilla beans. The rich complexity and different notes of flavor of a true vanilla bean are often washed out and distilled into a one-note sweetness, especially if the extract is cheap or imitation. If you want to get more serious about baking, you need to get serious about using vanilla beans.
Three smart devices shown at CES 2016 are making it easier for you to make stupid decisions. PicoBrew, Somabar, and 10-Vins demonstrated their systems for beer, mixed cocktails, and wine, respectively, and each one is attempting to change the way we enjoy our favorite potent potables at home.
The first written account of "stock" as a culinary staple goes back to 1653, when La Varenne's Cookery described boiling mushroom stems and table scraps with other ingredients (such as herbs and basic vegetables) in water to use for sauces. But really, the concept of stock has probably been around for as long as people have been using water to boil food.
A few months ago, my friend Sarah appeared at a party bearing homemade liqueurs—amaretto, hazelnut (e.g. Frangelico), and vanilla liqueurs, to be exact. Her cool factor, which was already quite high, jumped up a few more notches—as did the overall energy of the party. (And that's why we call her 'Game Time.')
I held the orange packet in my hands and presented it to my friend, Seth, as though it were a plastic-wrapped jewel—rather than three ounces of dehydrated noodles.
There are few things more satisfying than fulfilling a craving with instant gratification. Companies like Pillsbury and have made this possible with the introduction of their famous Ready to Bake Cookies line: just rip open the package, break off the cookies along the creased lines, place on a cookie sheet, and bake.
Convenience in the kitchen can be a very, very good thing. As fun as it can be to spend hours toiling over Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon, there's a reason that we have canned soup, microwave dinners, bouillon cubes, and, of course, boxed mixes.
There are rules that cooking in general always follows: cakes should be fluffy. Steaks should be heavily seasoned, and nowhere near a bottle of steak sauce. Every stock should start with aromatics (onions, carrots, & celery). And, until very recently, meringues should always be made with egg whites.
Taking care of your car requires effort, whether you take it to the pros for washes, waxes, and detailing, or you spend time to make it shine yourself—and it often seems that, right after your car is sparkling again, rain or midnight moisture appears to cover its surface in water spots. With a small tweak to your typical car care routine, you may be able to keep your car's surface and windows shining longer and better: you just need to add a little hair conditioning liquid.
Avocado is great in guacamole or as slices on a sandwich, but there's so much more you can do with this wonderful fruit (call it a vegetable, that's fine—but it's technically a fruit). While I could eat guac every single day, these are some of my favorite recipes to spice up avocados a bit, from making a guilty snack to a condiment and even dessert!
Although pasta is a remarkably simple dish, I find it to be one of the most aesthetically appealing foods. The noodles—especially thicker iterations, like linguine and fettuccine—are graceful and luxurious. Add in some sauce coating the noodles, and a sprinkle of Parmesan or a drizzle of olive oil, and pasta single-handedly reminds us of a basic tenet of cooking: sometimes keeping it simple is the perfect way to go.
Oatmeal isn't the most glamorous breakfast, but it's definitely one of the best. It's healthy, filling, delicious, and easy to personalize. And, if you have instant packets, oatmeal is also a very quick and easy breakfast.
I love it when peaches are in season! It means it is cobbler time. This simple peach cobbler recipe will sure to impress your friends and family, it is super easy to make, and it is pretty darn cheap as well. Let's get baking!
In my family, if a food could be made instead of bought, it was made. It wasn't until I went to college and started eating dorm food that I tasted the store-bought versions of many kitchen staples. I quickly learned that there is an enormous quality difference between homemade dressing and the kind that comes in a bottle at the supermarket.
Mother Nature is one creative entity, especially when it comes to fruit. Let's face it: most major supermarkets stock only the most common fruits like apples, pears, and grapes, but they're so basic. Why not explore other options, from the stinky-yet delicious durian to the captivating citrus caviar that is finger limes?
While honey is one of the most popular ingredients on kitchen shelves the world over, honeybee pollen is still a relatively rare find in most households. It's not hard to guess why: eating pollen just sounds weird... it would probably sell a lot better if it had a more appetizing name, like honey. Furthermore, it looks unlike any other common ingredient, and the smell can be off-putting to some. But it's good, it's healthy, and it's altogether pretty awesome!
One of the best things about talking to other people who love food is that they point you to weirdly beautiful ingredients, like this: No, that's not an escapee from Middle Earth you're seeing. It's one of Mother Nature's best attempts at making fractals come alive into a golden spiral: the Romanesco (sometimes called fractal broccoli, broccoflower, or Romanesque cauliflower). Here's another view: So Just What Is It & What Does It Taste Like?
I grew up eating Korean, Japanese, and Chinese food, but it wasn't until college that I experienced Thai and Vietnamese cooking. Once I started, I couldn't get enough of these cuisines. The dishes had an incredible richness and savor that I couldn't identify, but whatever it was, it made me want to keep eating.
Unlike wine, you can't re-cork or stopper leftover bubbly after you've opened it, but all is not lost even if you haven't managed to finish every last drop. You can use your leftover champagne to make light-as-air crêpes or pancakes, to create a detox face mask, to cook seafood and rice, or to make dips and salad dressings.
Cookies for breakfast seem like a clear dietary no-no, but these three-ingredient breakfast cookies are easy, healthy, portable, and can be made in advance. They're also dairy-free, egg-free, and have no added processed sugar, so they can also be called allergy-friendly cookies. If you use gluten-free quick oats in this recipe, they are also gluten-free breakfast cookies! Besides all of those reasons, these cookies are only about 50 calories each when they're made with just the original three...
Herbs, both fresh and dried, can be intimidating and mysterious to cooks. Just how much is too much? How do you prepare them?
Most of us know how to make a sandwich, but how many of us know how to make a sandwich correctly—i.e., so that the slippery ingredients like tomatoes and cucumber don't come gushing out the other end when we take a bite?
When it comes to give away or sell your iPhone, you can't just power it down, take out the SIM card, and hope everything will be okay. There's valuable data on your iPhone, and you need to get rid of it. Plus, if you don't perform all the necessary steps, chances are whoever ends up with the device won't even be able to use it. If you're selling it, that could ding your seller reputation.
Apple's new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus go on sale Sept. 19th, but pre-orders begin on Sept. 12th. If you're ready to trade in your iPhone 5 for one of these bigger and more iOS 8-friendly devices, you're probably going to pre-order.
Over the weekend—just days before Apple's big event—an actual iPhone 6 leaked on Chinese site cnBeta. Again, nothing here that we already didn't know about—Sapphire screen, round(er) corners, larger display, and new button stylings. Below are images of the new iPhone 6 next to the current iPhone 5S. We can clearly see the protruding camera module as well as sections on the top and bottom of the back where the antennas will be housed. A second source was able to put together some videos, as yo...
It looks like Snapchat, it feels like Snapchat, but after using it for a few minutes, you realize there is a huge difference between Facebook's new Slingshot app and the Snapchat we've all grown so accustomed to.
Many of the beauty products you buy at drug and department stores are loaded with potentially toxic ingredients like parabens, while their active ingredients are made of things like glycolic, lactic, malic, and alpha hydroxy acids and retinoids, which are all derived from foods.
E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is the 20th annual trade show for video games and gaming tech. The event takes place on Tuesday, June 10th at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and you can watch a live stream of the event on Twitch.
The best sangria I ever had in my life was made by a Spanish friend for my birthday party. The ingredients included a giant box of Franzia red, one bottle of Bombay Sapphire Blue, one cup of sugar, a liter of 7-Up, and some cinnamon sticks. She put everything but the 7-Up in a giant zinc bucket from Home Depot and insisted that it had to sit overnight so the flavors could blend (and so the Franzia wouldn't taste so, well, Franzia-ish).