Cooking With The Whineaux

I made this almost a week ago and am just now able to sit down and write about it.  I only get around to making Chicken and Dumplings 2 – 3 times a year and I don’t know why, it’s easy and it tastes so good that writing about it is making me want to [...]

Have you ever had a dining experience so irritating that you immediately wanted to go to another restaurant to wipe it out of your mind?  No?  Try Columbia in Celebration.  Everyone should be this miserable once so that you’ll appreciate the good meals however humble or exceptional. We go to Columbia because we crave the [...]

As a whineaux, I have to be honest, I’m typically completely unimpressed by wine and food pairing classes and wine dinners. Yet somehow I’m also inexplicably drawn to them. No matter how much wine I taste (or guzzle) or how many “experts” I meet with I feel quite insecure about my palate which is perhaps [...]

:Sigh: I am writing tonight with a stunning lack of inspiration.  Had I not committed to cooking my way through the Paris  Bistro cookbook I wouldn’t even write this entry.  But I did commit — and if my first post was about a ruined dinner then I can certainly write about an uninspiring meal. This [...]

I just saw a blog post on Fridge Full of Food, “This may make you queasy” that reminded me that eating at home not only allows me to control seasoning and ingredient quality ensuring I eat what I want, but … it also means that I’m not consuming stupid calories. She has listed the calorie [...]

  Inspired by a post titled “10 Things a Chef won’t Tell you” I just read on Chef Gui’s blog; I thought I’d write an open letter to restaurant owners, there are things your customer isn’t telling you….  Do you care?  One caveat, all of this assumes that your kitchen is in order and your [...]

Paris Bistro Cooking – Mission #1 – Coq au Vin As I prepared dinner and plated it; I realized why I haven’t seen a lot of pictures of coq au vin in cookbooks; the entire dish turns the same shade of purple.  For what it’s worth, I promise it tasted much much better than it photographed.  [...]

I picked up a copy of Linda Dannenberg’s Paris Bistro Cooking at CDG airport on the way home from my most recent trip to Paris.  The book is a beautiful coffee table book with gorgeous photos and loving descriptions of Paris Bistros and their history.  It also includes their signature recipes. I’ve decided that I’m [...]

If you’ve been with me from the beginning (oh so long ago — February); then you’ve already read my first post about how I spent the entire day looking forward to a meal only to disappoint myself with a kitchen disaster.  While I’m happy to say this adventure turned out much better; it did not [...]

I always learn something when I read bon appetit magazine and the June 2009 issue was no exception.  There’s an article written by Daniel Duane on “The Terrific 10″ on foods and their health benefits. Next time you are at a cocktail party you can spirng this little bit of knowledge, buckwheat is actually not [...]