What Ana Does

Last week, to liven things up from the boredom of making dinner every night, I declared it PASTA PALOOZA and challenged myself to prepare a brand-new pasta dish every night.  The girls and I love pasta, so I wanted to find a new dish to add to my monthly repertoire. The rules were the dish needed to be new to us, incorporate veggies and from a cookbook I don't often cook from.  It was a total success! We looked forward to the new meal every night and really liked each recipe, but one the most.  Sweet Leek Carbonara ( link to recipe )  This was our favorite! It's from Jamie Oliver's VEG cookbook and has very few ingredients but came together really quickly. It's really silky and super savory. Who knew we'd love leeks so much?!   Sunshine Fusilli Pasta  There's no link for this recipe online, but it's from the same Jamie Oliver VEG cookbook, on Amazon . The pasta sauce is made from yellow peppers blended up with cheese and pistachios! We all really liked...

What can you say about 2020 that hasn't already been said? It was NOT a normal year. With mandates to "shelter in place" that cancelled all our travel and weekend plans, you'd think I would have gotten a bit more reading time. But, it was a pretty normal book year. I did break some of my rules about ordering more physical books than usual, thanks to the libraries being closed and wanting to help out a black-owned independent bookstore in Chicago.  I'm starting this year's list with my four favorites. Books I would HIGHLY recommend, if you're looking for something to read. Than, I'll bold other good picks, too, that are in no particular order.  To Note: As usual there's probably 30 or so Kindle romances that I read too quickly and didn't make much of an impression on me or didn't finish all the way, so they're not listed.  Fable: A Novel by Adrienne Young - my favorite book of the year, hands down. Such good world-building, incredible s...

Thanks to some gift certificates for my birthday I was able to increase my growing cookbook library. This time, I've picked up some food blogger books and Gwyneth's latest. If ever I'm in need of a mini-vacation to the French countryside  Mimi Thorisson  and her Manger blog provide it. Her large (and growing) family, ancient home and thoughtful posts take me away. Her husband's textured images provide all I need to dive in to taste the food, feel the breeze and walk through her kitchen. This book has been on my wish list for months and I finally broke down. This is more of a good read than a recipe book, as I'm not sure I am adventurous enough to attempt the French dishes. Maybe. And speaking of French cooking, I got Clotilde's book from Chocolate & Zucchini food blog . She's in Paris and her recipes are all about simple dishes from The French Market. Lots of yummy-looking veggies. Deb Perelman is a food blogger from Brooklyn and the dishes s...

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and the holidays are not too far behind. So what's on my mind this month? Here's the list ... Boots for Leah - She needs something to keep her feet warm as the temps dip. Do I spring for the $100 Uggs? She's not old enough to feel the pressure of buying the "cool" label (right?!), so can I just get the cheaper off-brand? Is there a more water-proof option? These are my current thoughts around this not-as-significant-as-I'm-making-it purchase. The Dress From The Loft I'm LOVING Clothes from the Loft - These woman's apparel mall stores (Loft, Limited, Express, etc.) have a 10-year cycle for me. Most of the time I'll walk in and immediately walk out -- nothing in their collections says My Style. Then, once every 10 years, they create a line that is just for Me -- and that's what is going on at the Loft this month. I bought a bunch of outfits, got good deals on the sales, and now I probably won't...

And just because I posted about it last week ... it arrives on Tuesday!!!  The Homemade Kitchen - In MY Kitchen I've been finding little bits of time here and there this week to explore, but won't have any time to really dive into the little essays and recipes until this weekend. Oh the anticipation ....  ( Did I mention I loved her first book?  Oh yes, last year.) Related posts: More cookbook reviews All the book posts

This weekend I dipped into my collection of Everyday Foods  from Martha Stewart mini-magazines, which I've been hoarding since the early 2000s, looking for some simple veggie recipes. (I don't think we're eating enough veg lately.) Anyway, it got me thinking about how much I loved this now-defunct recipe magazine and how it's odd to have recipes that feel are in "my style." Do recipes or cookbooks go after a certain style? I'm not aware if they do. Sure, there's a theme and focus, but food doesn't traditionally follow a style, right? But I'm starting to think it does. Similar to how J.Crew is my clothing style and Express or Loft is not. Everyday Foods is my food style, as Ina Garten and Jaime Oliver (oh how I love them both) are not my style of food. I try to make their recipes, but I don't generally love the taste, or some of the ingredients or how they prepare things. Does that even make sense? My Treasure of Everyday Foods ...

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Nigella Lawson, but I do have one of her cookbooks ( this one ) and a few weeks ago I was flipping through it and noticed she had a Spanish omelet recipe. Yum Spanish Omelets!  Now, as a little Spanish girl, I've been making Spanish omelets since forever. I watched my Mom and Dad both make tons of them, several different ways. And when I was last visiting relatives in Spain, I watched my godmother Rosie make one, too. And I love making them for my family and pestering my kids to eat them. (At first, they didn't like them, but they're growing on them. How eggs and potatoes are an "acquired taste" is beyond me, but...) Back to Nigella. She had a few differences in her omelet recipe, such as adding cheese to the eggs, not separating the eggs out for fluffiness and finishing under the broiler instead of flipping it on a plate. She also prefers boiling the potatoes as opposed to frying them -- which has been my prefere...

From Lisa Leake's 100 Days of Real Food cookbook, I found a recipe for tossing a whole chicken into a crockpot, no liquid necessary, and dinner is served in 6 hours or less. Yes, I had to try this out. Plenty of Cooking Liquid Out of the Onions and Juicy Chicken To say the meat was falling off the bone would be an understatement. I literally spooned out the meat and plopped it on plates with some roasted veggies. Easiest meal ever. Then, Ms. Lisa suggested I make chicken stock from the bones and skin left behind. Just add celery, carrots and some water and leave the crock pot on overnight. OK. Sure. Stock! Two More Jars Completed This Haul And the fruits of that "labor-intensive" project: About 8 cups of chicken stock cooling on the island. All for the $6.00 I spent at Trader Joe's for the bird.  That's a winner of a deal.  Plus, I'll be mixing bbq sauce with the leftover chicken for dinner tonight.  Meanwhile, the dog was my BE...

It's that time again! Let's review my favorite books of 2014:  1. Just One Night  --- This was a novella that finished out the Just One Day , Just One Year books that I so so so so so loved. That second book left out about an hour of information that I obsessed over for a year. This little novella finished it out in a very satisfying way. 2. Isla and the Happily Ever After --- Very few authors can do sappy, cutie YA better than Stephanie Perkins. While it's not a true series, this is a book in a the same world as Lola and the Boy Next Door and Anna and the French Kiss . And those characters are wrapped in this story, as well. Isla is quickly becoming my favorite girl in Stephanie's world. 3. Fangirl --- I checked this out of the library because I wasn't sure about this one. Rainbow Rowell, the darling of YA writers, wrote Eleanor and Park which was too dark for little me. I shouldn't have worried: This book was amazing and took me back to my fresh...

Nothing better than some cookbooks, coffee and pad of paper to list out my goals for the day. Though, I think Benny has a better plan for the day ... Sundays are just the best, amiright? Related posts: All the cookbook posts What I learned about menu planning

Tonight I went to a canning demonstration at my library by the author of Preserving by the Pint. It's small batch canning for folks like me with a CSA membership and just a bit too much fruit on my hands -- but not enough to put up a few dozen jars. Marisa, the author and writer on this blog , made a vanilla plum jam in the hour-long session. All that was left to do at the end was cool the two half-pint jars and eat them. That. Was. It. And I was so PUMPED after seeing how easy it is. I bought the book several months ago and still found the whole canning thing difficult to imagine. My Mom never canned/jarred, so I've never seen it done. Just reading about preserving food sounds exotic and risky. I don't want to give anyone food poisoning from a jar of my homemade jam, for pete's sake. But her step by step was so simple, and we got to interact and ping questions as she did each task. I'm a doer-learner, ya know? And watching a demo, I'm SO ready to ma...

The grocery rule of thumb is: if you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it. Or, put simply, stop eating over-processed, chemical-laden foods. For Pete's sake! But in reality, that's not totally possible. Especially with the kiddos. Their reliance on fruit bars and cheese crackers (albeit organic and mostly all-natural) is a convenience I can't deny. Working Moms don't have oodles of time to bake granola mini-muffins, weekly sandwich bread and stumble upon veggies picky kids will actually eat. (This mom did it and is now making a living off helping others do it ... 100 Days of Real Food .) Hey, I'm trying! So this weekend I decided to find a granola bar recipe the girls would like -- one less unprocessed snack food for them. Of course, I went right to the cereal bar recipe from Alana's The Homemade Pantry -- mostly because I'm in the middle of a passionate love affair with that cookbook. And her two daughters eat them. That's kid test...

I don't know about you, but I go through cookbook phases, in which I have a little love affair with a book's recipes and author. And I love buying cookbooks, so I have quite a collection. Here are the cookbooks in current rotation: The Homemade Pantry  is my go-to for all the from-scratch cooking I've been doing lately; from my foray into yogurt making to the fresh lasagna noodles I made for Christmas and last night's pizza dough. Alana's writes super-simple directions that are easy to follow -- you can tell she makes these often, and is not just perfecting them in a test kitchen and moving on. Plus, she includes little memoirs of the recipe origins or her experiences with them. I'm planning on trying the homemade ketchup and mayo someday, and Dave has been begging me to make the pastries (homemade "PopTarts") that are on the cover. Seriously, it's the best. Get a copy. It's All Good is Gwynnie's new cookbook that is all healthy meals....

Audiobook: Cleaving by Julie Powell Read by: Julie Powell Genre: Memoir I listen ed to Julie & Julia and utterly enjoyed Julie's journey and honesty (and, yes, her creative use of curse words). So I picked up Cleaving , preparing myself for sickening descriptions of butchering. I was NOT prepared (and this isn’t a spoiler) that she’s cheating on her husband. (!) That sweet man who got her blogging and changed her life. Honestly, it took me days to overcome feelings of betrayal. Julie! ! Julie!! Why!!  But once I did, the audiobook went like this:  Part 1: Where Julie learns the art of butchering, which conveniently lends itself to about 200 metaphors of heartbreak, breakups and separating from your husband and lover. “Sometimes separating meat from bone isn't clean, you leave a lot of meat destroyed” (I paraphrased). At first I was like, "Cleaving"! I get it! Then, she started to hit me over the head with it, like maybe we didn’t pick up on the a...

I was in the mood for some Frenchy soup last weekend -- despite the miserable heat (in September, really?) so I found a recipe for Leek and Potato soup, which sounded incredible Parisian to me. It was also super easy. I even made Crème fraîche for the topping. Because of Dave's lactose issues, I found a cream-less version (he passed on the topping), which is apparently even more Frenchy, on this adorable blog run by a gal living in Paris (Montmartre, to be exact). Just look at her picture! Adorable. (Her cookbook is now on my Holiday Wish List, family members take note.) Oh, and the soup was pretty good, too. A large amount of it went into the freezer for a rainy day. Potatoes Getting Peeled Leeks Sliced and Ready for a Boil Related posts: All the cookbook posts What I learned about menu planning