It is fall here in the northwest. Half the trees are on fire, and the mornings are foggy, but the afternoons have a sticky warmth.  Basically it is the time of year where you need a sweater in the morning, and by the end of the day, you are praying no one in the office can see just how sticky sweaty you are. Then there is the Pumpkin.  You can’t even say October without someone trying to shove a Pumpkin Spice something down your throat.  Normally, I am not into that basic life.  But after living in Arizona for the past five years, where you pretend there is a…

Going grocery shopping, I am always wooed by potatoes.  I don’t know if it is my Midwestern roots with my parents being from Iowa and Ohio, or the fact that eastern Europeans tend to LOVE meat and potatoes.  What kind of German/Lithuanian would I be if I didn’t love a good starch. But it is inevitable that I can’t use all the potatoes before they go bad.  And back in March, I was faced with the same dilemma. I had bought a bag of precious fingerling potatoes, intending to saute them in a bit of butter.  But by the time I got around to eating them, they had gone to…

So, full confession, I am a food-aholic. I love food. And my biggest downfall? Food tv So what happens when I binge watch The Great British Baking Show? I start craving baked goods. Guys, I am not a baker. I am a home cook for sure; throwing ingredients into a pan in a decidedly haphazard fashion works for me. No need to accurately measure when you are judging by taste. So the thought of slowing down, measuring (not to mention weighing?), and submitting to the science of baking, isn’t usually appealing. But watching @Paul.Hollywood for three hours talk about all the under proved and over worked bakes started to make…

Family visits. Usually a boring affair where you are stuck listening to time worn tales of walking uphill to school both ways. That is unless you have my dad visiting. Then, it is all about food.  Now you see will see where I get it from.  We have lived here in the NW for about the last 4 months, but honestly, we haven’t ventured out to very many restaurants.  We have found a few favorites but haven’t gone outside of our comfort zone much.  Enter Dad.  He is all about the enjoyment of good food and so when he decided to visit, we laid out a plan of all the…