Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas Cookbook Give Away

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Andrea botched up this post because that is definitely not grilled pizza.”

Guess what? It is grilled pizza enrobed in cinnamon sugar with French vanilla ice cream in the middle and chocolate sauce on top. How’s that for an insanely good dessert pizza? Yes, my hand slipped and I went a little overboard with the chocolate sauce, but it still tasted delicious!

This delicious creation comes from Chef Craig Priebe and his first cookbook, Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas, recently released by DK Publishing. I received an invitation to review the book and host a give away, and I only had to think about it for a nano second. Pizza is my favorite food and any chance to play around with my favorite food will make my day! As soon as I saw Priebe’s incredible dessert inspired by churros (photo above), I knew what we would have for our Cinco de Mayo celebration. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Read more

He Said Beer, She Said Wine and a Give Away

What do you get when you put together a highly regarded sommelier and a craft brewer? You get a very entertaining evening of good food and beverages as well as good-natured banter about the attributes of the wine and beer and how well each pairs with particular foods. Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, and Marnie Old, award-winning sommelier and wine educator, put their talents and impressive knowledge of wine and beer together to create an accessible and informative book about pairing beer and wine with food.

The book, recently released by DK Publishing, is a spin off from the “competitive dinners” that Old and Calagione started in 2003 at his brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Each evening offers a five course meal, and each course comes with both a beer and a wine pairing. Using anonymous ballots, the diners vote for the best pairing for each course, and though both Marnie and Sam thought there would be a clear winner, that has never been the case. The margins have been slim, and the number of wins for either side has been pretty even, strong evidence that beer and wine both pair well with a variety of foods. Read more

The Sweet Melissa Baking Book

How often do you find a cookbook that is so chock full of good recipes that you want to make every single one of them? That day? That’s how I felt when The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy arrived in my mailbox. I grabbed the package and took it along in the car when I went to pick up the boys for school, knowing I would have a few minutes to browse while waiting for them. A few minutes was not enough because I found myself pouring over the pages. Many of my cookbooks have sticky flags on the pages with recipes that I like or want to try, but for Murphy’s book I didn’t even bother because I will eventually make everything in it, and the things that I have made so far have been fantastic.

Murphy is the chef and owner of Sweet Melissa Patisserie in New York City, a popular bakery considered one of the best in the city. I spent some time on the bakery’s website, wishing I had a spot in my neighborhood with food that good so I could take the laptop and hang out there on my mommy days. The menu is so tempting and her wedding and specialty cakes are breathtaking. I plan to take a trip to New York City sometime, and one of my first stops will be Sweet Melissa, especially if it has WiFi. Murphy also has a few baking podcasts available on PodCastGo.com, which are now on my iPod.

Because my favorite meal is breakfast, I started in the “Dessert for Breakfast” chapter with her Sweet Muffins recipe. For both her sweet and savory muffins, Murphy encourages variation by not specifying particular fruits or cheeses and vegetables within the text of the recipes, but saves the suggestions for tasty combinations for the end. I made the sweet muffins while Michael’s parents were visiting a few weekends ago, and added apples, cinnamon, and dried cranberries. The muffins were a hit, and it’s a good thing I made a double batch that morning, otherwise there would have been none left for me to photograph. They were perfect right out of the pan, no butter or jam required, with a slightly crispy crust and moist crumb, and the vanilla sugar on top added a sweet, aromatic crunch. Read more

101 Easy Peasy Cookie Recipes

In January I received an email asking if I was interested in reviewing a cookbook called 101 Easy Peasy Cookie Recipes. Easy cookies? What busy mom would not be interested in easy cookie recipes? I gladly accepted and eagerly waited to receive the book.

The book, written by mother and daughter team Lucinda Wallace and Heather Wallace, focuses strictly on the recipes with no photos or lengthy introductions to the various cookies. The recipes are divided into sections for bar cookies, drop cookies, rolled cookies, shaped cookies, and no-bake cookies. The instructions are simple and many of the cookies can be mixed in one bowl. I skimmed the book as soon as it arrived, looking for what I call pantry recipes, or cookies that I can make on short notice because all of the ingredients are pantry staples. I was pleased to find many pantry cookie recipes, and I marked those for future reference. When I need cookies fast for a school function or some other occasion, it will be easy to find them.

So far I have made three different cookies from the book and we enjoyed them all. The first cookie was the Colossal Double Chocolate White Chip Cookies, which this time happened to be a pantry cookie because I still had some milk chocolate and white chips left over from Christmas baking. They were very easy to make and the neighbors loved them! They are big, gourmet size cookies with a slightly chewy texture, great for gift-giving in a cookie basket or sending in a care package. Read more

My Cooking Lesson with Chef Todd Gray

This is a story of chance meets opportunity, of how I went to a cooking demonstration thinking that I would just be a number in the crowd but in an amazing bit of luck got a three hour private cooking lesson with a famous DC chef! And it all happened this past Saturday in my own neighborhood.

Around the end of September, we received an advertising flier in the mail from Van Metre Homes announcing a big open house day on October 20 to promote their new home designs in several communities around Northern Virginia. What caught my eye was the announcement that the pros of DC’s famous Equinox Restaurant would be doing cooking demonstrations at the various sites, and Executive Chef/Co-Owner Todd Gray would be in my neighborhood only a few blocks away! Immediately I wrote the date on my calendar and made plans to attend.

I must confess that Michael and I have never been to Equinox, but it’s because DC is a little far away for us to go for an evening out, and well…there’s the boys. We take them everywhere we go because we think it’s important, and even though we have taken them to restaurants since they were only days old, the kids are still too young for a place as quietly elegant and genteel as Equinox. I can see it all in my mind…the baby dropping food on the floor, because gravity experiments are his favorite thing to do now; the 3-year-old standing up in his chair so that he can see something interesting across the room, or diving under the table to retrieve his spoon or fork for the fiftieth time; and my oldest, who is almost 5, loudly and proudly announcing that he pooped on the potty as he comes back to the table. Yeah, I’m sure the other diners would be thrilled with us! So for now we have to stick with restaurants that have a minimal noise level of around 90 decibels (equal to the noise produced by a lawn mower), but someday Michael and I are going to get a sitter and have ourselves a lovely, quiet time at Equinox.

Since I had not been to the restaurant but wanted to be prepared for the demonstration, I spent time on their website trying to learn about the Grays, the menu, cooking philosophy, history of the restaurant, and anything else I could pick up on. I read about all of their awards and Chef Gray’s five James Beard nominations, as well as their focus on fresh, local, organic produce, sustainably fished seafood, and certified humane meats. Read more

Cooking with Shelburne Farms: Food and Stories from Vermont

The focus is on fresh, local food, and Shelburne Farms does it beautifully. The working farm, which started out as a model agricultural estate built by Dr. William Seward Webb and Eliza Vanderbilt Webb in 1886, is a National Historic Landmark and environmental education center. They raise a herd of Brown Swiss dairy cows for making award-winning cheeses, a flock of English sheep for sheering and eating, and they have a sugarhouse for making their own maple syrup for use at the Inn. In keeping with their educational goals, they offer programs for children and adults designed to teach about the workings of the natural world and sustainable agriculture.

Recently Shelburne Farms released a new cookbook, Cooking with Shelburne Farms: Food and Stories from Vermont, and in an interesting twist, co-authors Melissa Pasanen and Rick Gencarelli structured the cookbook in a way that highlights the local agriculture of Vermont rather than focusing on meal courses. Chapters focus on Savory Milk and Cheese, Savory Maple, Early Spring and Summer Greens, Lamb, Wild Mushrooms, Game and Fish, Pork, Root-Cellar Vegetables, Apples, Sweet Milk, and Sweet Maple, and all of these ingredients are available either on the farm or locally. Each chapter has a story or two about local food production that gives the reader a sense of Vermont agriculture. For example, in “Listening to the Land,” the reader learns about wildcrafters Les Hook and Nova Kim, who seek out wild mushrooms and edible and medicinal plants and have done so for 27 years.

The very first recipe is for churned butter, Read more

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