Savvy Eats

Your Time, Your Money, Your Meals. Cook It Forward. Start cooking ahead of time in order to minimize your time in the kitchen and maximize your time with your guests on the day of your dinner party. Italian Dinner Party The Menu: Three kinds of crostini Tomato and parsley pasta Red wine steak Roasted carrots [...]

  Photo: Oregano and rosemary in the Savvy Garden! There have been some great posts catching my eye in the blogosphere as of late. Time to share the link love! 1.  Six ways to give your food a flavor-boost. 2.  This is a cute little cocktail “swatch book.” 3.  Mmmm, bacon, egg and asparagus personal [...]

We started with crostini and roasted almonds, finger-friendly foods that invited mingling and chatting as we waited for everyone to arrive.  As the last two guests hurried through the door, I put on the water for the pasta. Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting down for the first course: parsley and tomato pasta. When plates [...]

I’ve always been a reader. In second grade, I got in trouble for reading books hidden under my desk.  There is always a book in my purse for whenever I have a few free minutes. And when I travel, my carry-on luggage is usually half-filled with books. I never thought I’d be an e-reader fan.  How [...]

I hosted my first dinner party last week.  In planning the menu, I tried to choose dishes that I could prepare at least partially in advance so I could spend more time with our friends and less at the stove. I also wanted to plan ahead and start cooking little components of each dish throughout [...]

It was a busy weekend, one in which Dan and I spent very little time together. He was busy with baseball, and I was preoccupied with getting the garden cleaned up and planted.  So we took the time to make dinner together on Sunday.   While Dan grilled the ribs from the Piggery, I made [...]

I’ll admit it: I’m afraid of baking layer cakes.  My decorating skills are lacking, and though I am a trained scientist, in the science of layer cakes I seem doomed to uneven layers and fillings that weep and ooze.  I hate the feeling of failure, so I typically just avoid baking layer cakes at all [...]