Mom's Kitchen Handbook

It’s been a month or so since Mr. Mom’s Kitchen and I (tearfully) delivered our oldest daughter to her first day of high school. She tolerated us walking her almost to the front door…generous when you consider that it’s nearly scandalous for a girl of 14 to be witnessed with her parents. She’s adjusted happily [...]

Something plum crazy happened last weekend. It was in the back seat of the car while we were driving. My kids got into a big argument, which wasn’t the crazy part. The crazy part was the subject of the argument. I nearly had to pull over to verify that I was hearing correctly. They were [...]

I’ve been snapping loads of pictures of what I’m up to in the kitchen with my iphone lately. Thought I’d send you into Saturday with a few images from this past week. I had a Martha Stewart moment one day making after school snack: A whole banana rolled into a peanut butter-smeared slice of whole [...]

A six-month stint cooking in a restaurant during grad school was all the time I needed to know that I wasn’t cut out the job. But I’m ever so glad for the experience because I picked up some pointers that continue to make cooking easier today. When I worked the brunch shift it meant cutting [...]

My aunt Nina makes a killer meatball…so good, it could make you cry. Having married into a big Italian family, it was practically a moral imperative for her to make a proper pasta sauce. My aunt AJ does an excellent meatball all her own, generous in size, and usually in batches big enough to feed [...]

Although we aren’t a gluten-free household, I’ve been experimenting with non-wheat pastas — brown rice, quinoa, soba — some of which happen to be gluten free. Much as I like the taste of these nouveau noodles, not to the mention the health benefits of adding variety to my family’s diet, I’ve found cooking gluten-free pasta [...]

I’m a neglectful mother, at least to the fruits and vegetables in my garden of late. My poor zucchini were abandoned for a month in a tangle of tomato plants and grew into something better suited to hitting baseballs than being cooked into a tender saute. Just last week, I harvested three of them, determined [...]

I promised a loyal reader I would tackle the topic of GMOs, but then another loyal reader asked me to weigh in on the findings of a new study from Stanford about organics. Both issues are complicated, with experts on both sides playing fast and loose with the facts…kind of like politicians on different ends [...]

Here’s what I found on the label of Quaker Oats Peaches and Cream instant oatmeal, the kind that comes in little packets and heats up in the microwave in the time it takes to retrieve a spoon to go with it: –partially hydrogenated soybean oil –artificial color –artificial flavor –corn syrup solids They do this. [...]