This post may contain affiliate sales links. Please see my Disclosures page for details. We just had our third baby and our whole family is totally over the moon but can I tell you a dirty little secret? I forgot how hard cooking with a newborn can be. Obviously I’ve done it before and apparently successfully since the rest of the family is still alive and well (knock on wood) but I literally have zero recollection of cooking when my older kids were babies. And I mean ZERO. I guess that’s what sleep deprivation does. Take more pictures of the newborn phase people because exhausted yo ..read more

This post may contain affiliate sales links. Please see our Disclosures page for details. I love butter. I love butter on toast. I love butter in baked goods. I love butter so much I used to eat it straight with a spoon as a child. (Yes I was a fat little kid and no I don’t eat butter straight with a spoon anymore but not because I don’t want to…) Butter is one of those magical cooking ingredients right up there with salt, olive oil, and bacon. It should be cherished and well cared for and for goodness gracious, it should be stored correctly. But what does that mean? Should butter be ..read more

Do you know how much time you spend in the kitchen every day? I thought I did until I actually tracked how long I spent cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping over the course of a week. The results were shocking. And nowhere near the national average of 68 minutes per day (78 minutes per day if you add in grocery shopping) as reported by the American Time Use Survey. Oh no sir, I clocked in at an average of 194 minutes per day. That’s 2.5 times the norm! And I wasn’t even doing any food blog work (quality food photography takes a lot of time) – just your normal, run of the mill Monday to Frid ..read more

In the not so distant past it was the sole responsibility of women to cook, clean and care for children while their husbands went off to work. Fast forward 100 years and the dynamics of the American family have changed significantly. Not only are spouses expected to equally share responsibility for household chores, but as of 2021 both spouses work in 62.3% of American married-couple families with children. While these changes may be good for society as a whole, they introduce new challenges for couples when it comes to putting food on the table. Cooking is a process that extends far beyond th ..read more

Halloween may be over but some of the biggest holiday meals of the year are fast approaching – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Is your wallet ready? If you’re like me and the rest of the country then you’ve been feeling the effects of inflation at the grocery store for a while now. I mean just take a look at this graph I whipped up from the USDA’s Economic Research Service Food CPI data published on 10/25/2022. (For my fellow nerds you can find the source data here.) Hot dang that’s a lot of double digit percent increases in food prices, especially on the poultry and eggs front. Beef ..read more

This post may contain affiliate sales links. Please see the Disclosures page for details. Dishwashers are not usually the things dreams are made of. That is until they crap out and start dripping on the floor in the middle of the night tell-tale heart style. Talk about a nightmare. I wish I could say I realized our dishwasher was on the fritz right away. In fact I would have preferred to wake up to a swamp of water in the kitchen and rectify the problem immediately but instead an insidious dripping went on unnoticed for several weeks. Since I load the dishwasher at night before going ..read more

This post may contain affiliate sales links. Please see the Disclosures page for details. There used to be a part of me that thought recipe cook times were just made up. Then I became a food blogger. Now I know recipe cook times aren’t made up but they may as well be thanks to the comically large number of assumptions that go into them. In a lot of ways, recipe times remind me of economic forecasts – interesting yet effectively useless in the real world. ScienceCartoonsPlus.com Unless you have the same experience, kitchen layout, appliances, tools, ingredients, etc. as the recipe aut ..read more

Recipe first, tidbits second. Enjoy! Print Greek Lemon Chicken Soup (Avgolemono Soup) ★★★★★ 5 from 1 review Excellent served hot or cold, this creamy yet citrusy soup is perfect any time of year. Tempered eggs lend the soup its rich texture while fresh squeezed lemon offers a delightful twist on this otherwise traditional chicken soup. Great as an appetizer or standalone meal when served with a hunk of fresh bread and one of the best “feel better” soups around thanks to the extra blast of vitamin C. Author: Carol the Cook Prep Time: 1/2 hour Cook Time: 1 hour Total Time: 1 1/2 hours Yie ..read more

Recipe first, tidbits second. Enjoy! Print The Only Chicken Stock Recipe You’ll Ever Need ★★★★★ 5 from 1 review Made from a collection of chicken and vegetable scraps, this chicken stock is as economical as it is wholesomely delicious. The rich, layered flavors make the perfect base for a wide variety of dishes ranging from rice to soups to chicken pot pie. Make it with leftover roast chicken carcasses or raw chicken bones (both work fabulously) but be warned, once you make your own homemade chicken stock you’ll wonder why you ever bothered to buy it from the store. Author: Carol the Co ..read more

Recipe first, tidbits second. Enjoy! Print Rosemary Tomato Focaccia Made With All-Purpose Flour ★★★★★ 5 from 1 review With a fluffy crumb, crunchy golden crust, and blast of flavor thanks to sun ripened cherry tomatoes and crushed rosemary, this focaccia bread is the perfect addition to any table. Great to serve as a standalone appetizer or alongside the main course. Travel and storage friendly, this bread also makes for a wonderful snack to take to parties or on road trips! Author: Carol the Cook Prep Time: 1/2 hour Rise Time: 4 1/2 hours Cook Time: 1/2 hour Total Time: 5 1/2 hours Yie ..read more