Savvy Eats

For Valentine’s Day a few years ago, I tried to make fresh pasta from scratch. Armed only with a floured kitchen island and a wooden rolling pin, I attempted to roll out the pasta. My arms and shoulders ached with the effort as I fought the dough, trying to force it into thin sheets suitable [...]

If there was every a time to try your hand at making your own candy, Halloween is it.  While you’re handing out store-bought candy, you can be sitting inside eating your own homemade candy corn and caramel, or putting out bowls of your own lollipops or gumdrops at your Halloween party.   This week, I’m [...]

I find my recipe inspiration everywhere.  A magazine mentions a hard cider sangria, which I spin off into a fall fruit sangria.  A friend raves about the creamy tomato soup she made last weekend, inspiring me to turn my leftovers into a soup. We have vegetables sautéed in brown butter with pecans and Romano cheese at a restaurant, [...]

Have I told you about our favorite vendor at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market? Her name is Sarah, and she represents Autumn’s Harvest nearly every week at the market. Apparently she is a lot of people’s favorite, as she often sells out of eggs and chicken and certain sausages early in the weekend.  So immediately upon [...]

These are my recent autumn obsessions: 1. Plum colored nails.  This summer I was all about the bright orange nails, but now I’m adoring dark purple.  I used recessionista by essie. 2. Anti-gravity Pilates, which is basically Pilates using a big, suspended-from-the-ceiling hammock.  It is so challenging and so fun…and the inversion always gets rid [...]

My favorite place to spend an afternoon is a U-Pick farm, gathering fruit and vegetables and enjoying the upstate New York views. I have a spreadsheet in my head of which farms have what and when and how much they charge. For strawberries, I split my time between the tidy organization of Brookside Berry Farm [...]

‘Tis the season for colds and flus.  The season for sniffly noses, coughs and fevers.  Dan stayed home sick with a fever yesterday, and I feel like I’m starting to come down with something.  In a desperate attempt to get (Dan)/stay (me) well for the holidays, we’ve both been downing orange juice, clementines and lots [...]

I don’t know what I was thinking, going months without making risotto. For the past few months, I’ve often thought about making our favorite creamy rice dish. I’ve gone so far as to tell Dan, “I’m making risotto tonight!” only to turn around a few hours later and say, “I don’t really feel like making risotto” or “I don’t have time to make it after all.”