Cooking Mag Mommy

I admit I have a little obsession with cooking magazines. At one point, I was receiving 5 different cooking magazines in the mail each month. One, Taste of Home, was a gift subscription and I didn't renew it when it ran out. The other, Gourmet, has ceased publication so I no longer get that one. The other three, Bon Appetit , Food and Wine, and Cooking Light are all great magazines, but for different reasons. The following comparisons are mostly my opinion but you may find them helpful if you are looking to subscribe to just one. (Gasp!) Bon Appetit Bon Appetit would classify as my long-term favorite, though month by month I choose my favorite magazines based on personal preference for recipes and interest in the articles. Bon Appetit has lots of creative menus and I like menus to help put similar recipes together. There are often several articles with a cultural theme (either country or region) with accompanying recipes. Bon Appetit did change their design style in th...

For those of you not in the know, today was Ho Chi Minh's birthday. I wouldn't have known this either if I didn't need an excuse to make 3 different dumpling recipes for my family tonight without looking like a lunatic. Check that... maybe I am a lunatic. But at least I know more about Ho Chi Minh than the average bear. Ho Chi Minh , the namesake for the current capital of Vietnam, was the leader of the Viet Minh Independence movement and the leader and president of North Vietnam at the time of the Vietnam War. He was a follower of Communist ideals and is credited with unifying the Vietnamese people under his leadership. And his birthday was a dang good excuse to make some dumplings. Food and Wine this month has an article "A Lesson in Dumplings" and I made all three variations. The Lemongrass Chicken Dumplings were our favorite. The fresh lemongrass and crunch cabbage was a good combination. My new food processor made quick work of all the chopping and Eyrle...

This title is not exactly appropriate for a food blog but I have to get this off my chest. I know Eyrleigh is not perfect but I can't tell you how very upsetting it was to me to see that she bit her little friend, Joanie. Worse, I didn't see it happen and only noticed a bite mark when I was telling Joanie's mom about another booboo she gave herself. I felt terrible that I hadn't even noticed what Eyrleigh had done. Thanks for listening. Some days , cooking just takes a backseat to the dramas of parenthood. I made a meal from Food and Wine but I don't have the energy and creativity to come up with any other blog topic. It was just the kind of day that makes you cringe. I really love Indian food but tonight's variations from this month's Food and Wine were a bit bland for my taste. I baked the Grilled Tandoori-Style Chicken Drumsticks in the oven. The recipe even allowed for it but I think grilling would have really improved the flavor of this d...

The fatal flaw of cooking fish is the strong smell that goes along with it. I did laundry today and I'm afraid I'll sleep with a faint odor of lobster. I'm reminded of a restaurant we ate at on the water in Bar Harbor, Maine this summer. Three days later, my sweatshirt still smelled of fish. I love the fish while I'm eating it but smelling it in your clothes the next morning is not quite so nostalgic. I've always wanted to make bouillabaisse. It's one of those classic dishes that just sounds delicious. My friend, Mark, would reschedule anything to attend his parents Christmas Eve dinner of bouillabaisse with friends. Now that I've made Ted Allen's Lobster Bouillabaisse from this month's Food and Wine, the bloom is off the rose, shall we say. I liked it but may not move it into the weekday rotation or even plan an event around it. It's a lot of fish and I found the flavor a bit overwhelming. My mussels may be at fault though. You will ...

I love to to read. As a kid, I would disappear to my room for hours to read a book. Thankfully, I read quickly and can create vivid pictures of the setting and events of books in my mind. I grew up with books stacked in every room in our house and now I have done the same. Over a decade ago, I joined a book club created by my friend, Kim, and when I taught at Rock Springs Elementary, I led a book club of staff members. When I stopped teaching, I didn't want to stop having book club so a teacher friend and I still meet. We met today and I made two cookie recipes from this month's Food and Wine for our snacks. The cookies were good but I thought the book was better. It was titled "Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism" by Temple Grandin . This book was very non-traditional, as you would imagine a book by an author with autism would be. The story was rarely narrative, more often written as a factual article, expressing the resea...

I love mysteries. I read the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books as a kid, Sherlock Holmes as a teenager, and Agatha Christie as an adult. But I don't like mysteries when it comes to my groceries. I know I picked up at least 3 things at Food Lion yesterday that never made it to my house. I distinctly remember picking up ham for the pea soup I made tonight, fillet for the Shaking Beef I'm making tomorrow, and bananas for Eyrleigh . None of these made it home. I checked the receipt . Thankfully, it looks like I didn't pay for these items either so some time between putting them in my cart and checking out, they disappeared. I have a few guesses what happened but no real clue. Eyrleigh could have taken them out... though I doubt that. I had one of those double carts with a smaller basket on top and a larger one on the bottom. I could have left these items in the bottom part, underneath the top basket. That seems really spacey of me to miss 3 items, one of them brig...

When I lived in Phoenix, I was only 5 hours away from San Diego and from there, it was only a quick drive into Mexico. One year a friend from Michigan, Eric Seelye , came to visit me and we hopped in the car and drove to the Baja . I laugh a bit now at how blase we were about the trip. So blase that Eric left his wallet on the top of a pay phone, we drove away, realized he left it and it was still there when we went back. That night we stopped for dinner in the town of Rosarito , below Tijuana. Our waiter, Ricky, was delightful and when we mentioned we had no idea where we were spending that night (I told you we were blase!), he offered to let us pitch our tent behind the restaurant. When we woke up to the ocean crashing below us and a beautiful view of Rosarito Beach, we felt like we'd spent the night in a five-star hotel. The next year, I took Richard back to Baja and just down the road from the restaurant we'd eaten at the year before was a little place called Ricky's....

When I started posting to my blog about tonight's meal, I noticed that several of the visits on the live traffic feed were from bonappetit .com. Curious, I jumped over to bonappetit .com to see how someone got to my blog from there. Sure enough, just one click off the homepage of Bon Appetit , my blog is quoted and linked to. Fifteen months after I start this blog and 5 posts after I decide to switch up my cooking magazine from Bon Appetit to another magazine for the month, Bon Appetit puts me on their blog list. Alanis Morissette would be proud. Ah well, hopefully Bon Appetit is not like our local grocery store competitors. A Publix employee literally whispered "Kroger" when I told her Eyrleigh could tell the difference between grocery stores because of free cookies. She looked around surreptitiously as if someone would fire her if they heard her even mention the name of the "other" grocery store. Tonight's meal was from Food and Wine and in all...

Look closely at the picture to your left. That is not pepper you see. That is burnt stuff. It wasn't enough to make the dish inedible but it did contribute to authenticity. The dish I made tonight was called Smoky Paella with Shrimp and Squid from this month's Food and Wine. Mine almost got a bit smokier than recommended . When the recipe says "...bring to a boil over high heat 10 minutes" and doesn't mention stirring, I suggest you stir. I didn't and had to do a bit of scraping resulting in the black stuff at left. I love paella and truth be told, consider myself a bit of an expert, for an American. When I stayed in Spain in 1996, I had the most amazing paella almost daily with whatever fish was bought that day. Tonight's version was a bit disappointing. Something was missing, perhaps a few more types of fish or shellfish. The rice was rather thick with the tomato paste and didn't absorb the flavors of the additional fish. It wasn't terrible but ...

I'll begin this post by apologizing. These four tacos look exactly the same but you must believe me, they are not! Last night, I invited several families from our church small group over for Cinco De Mayo. I guess I started the margarita part of the evening a little early (while cooking, of course). In all the rush of cooking, hosting, and ... uh... bar tending , I didn't take any pictures. This picture was taken by Richard at lunch the next day. Pretty good looking leftovers if I do say so myself. This month's Taco World article in Food and Wine magazine has seven taco recipes but I didn't think I could pull off all seven. Three of the tacos I made for the party involved premaking a marinade and simply grilling the meat before serving. That's a pretty easy way to do a party. I had very little to do once people arrived. I just lit the grill and let the charcoal do its thing. I did have a vegetarian friend coming so my fourth taco was the tofu variation. The Chili-...

Cooking magazines love to use fancy names for recipes to make them sound more authentic and delicious. Tonight I made Buccatini all" Amatriciana , basically Italian for tubular pasta with bacon and tomato sauce. It sounds much fancier in Italian. I think everything sounds fancier in Italian. I need to learn Italian or at least go to Italy to hear it spoken for awhile. How I missed the entire country when I backpacked through Europe is beyond me. I think Eyrleigh and Richard would really love to go there too. Though Buccatini all'Amatriciana sounds complicated, it wasn't and the use of store-bought tomato sauce made it downright simple. I replaced the pancetta with low-sodium bacon and realized I had no more Romano cheese so I used Manchego . It worked. The flavor added to the store-bought sauce was an improvement. I may not duplicate this recipe exactly again but this recipe reinforced that anything can be added to a commercial sauce to give it an extra dimension. ...

You may remember the story of Benedict Arnold, the general who betrayed the American Revolutionaries and joined the British forces. So I'll admit my traitorous act was not that great but I have decided to change magazines for the month of May. I sat down this week to look at my new cooking magazines and I got to be honest, the line-up in Food and Wine just looked better and more doable. It's not that I can't make Caramelized Pork Belly and Shrimp with Spicy Fish Sauce and Padron Peppers Stuffed with Tetilla Cheese. It's just that it's hard to find those ingredients and I would spend an inordinate amount of time hunting high and low to make my recipes authentic. I also was a bit over butter and flour. The six cake recipes last month did me in and I swear my stomach is still flabbier as a result. The Food and Wine recipe list had fewer desserts and several of those were lighter in nature (like Poached Pears with Prunes, not exactly a high fat treat!). There is a who...

April ended for our family with a fun little road trip to Galveston to attend Richard's Ironman 70.3 triathlon. On the way there, we stopped in New Orleans to sample the world-famous beignets at Cafe Du Monde and take in a New Orleans Zephyrs baseball game. As you can tell, Eyrleigh approved of the beignets , though we traded out the classic cafe au lait for chocolate milk. We enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of our friends, Deb and Butch, in Houston and ate several wonderful meals with them. Deb even made the cover recipe from May's Bon Appetit for us. It was really good, though we all agreed cheese may have helped jazz up the pasta a bit. Richard was very pleased with his race. He finished a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run in 5 hours and 54 minutes. We all enjoyed staying right at the race site, Moody Gardens Resort, with our friends, Jon and Laura. We visited another road food icon, Martin's in Montgomery, Alabama on the way home and had the bes...

Catfish is not a topic upon which I have a great wealth of knowledge. It was by complete accident that I walked into the Great Catfish Debate. I had intended to make the Slow-Roasted Halibut with Shaved Asparagus and Fennel on page 84 of this month's Bon Appetit . Super H Mart, my local Asian market, did not have halibut but I did remember that another recipe I planned to make later in the week called for bass. I saw a nice looking white fish labeled " basa ". Rather naively, I assumed this was Spanish for bass. Many of the employees speak Spanish so that was a plausible explanation. A quick Google search proved I was wrong. Basa is a type of catfish, native to the Mekong River in Vietnam. Realising I had purchased a completely different type of fish, I began to look up recipes to see how best to cook this fish. Almost immediately, I began to read warnings about the safety of basa . Several websites spoke of the filth in the Mekong River where these fish grow and the li...

I really can't imagine what a Moroccan mole with maple would taste like and to be honest, I doubt it would taste good. But tonight, I pulled off a combination of flavors that would put the fusion restaurant fad to shame. I combined 3 recipes from this month's Bon Appetit that in the logical world had no business being served together. But I think I pulled it off! My mom and dad have stopped back by on their way home from visiting friends in Florida. I had a doctor's appointment today and didn't get home until 4:00. I didn't feel like hiking back out to the grocery store so I looked through the fridge and matched stuff I had with recipes. Here it is; Carrots, Moroccan Carrot Soup. Steak, Steak Mole with Cilantro. Maple syrup, Maple Cake with Maple Syrup Frosting. Mom had mentioned when she was here last week that the recipe for Moroccan Carrot Soup on page 53 looked excellent. My mom loves healthy vegetarian or near vegetarian recipes and often makes meals for us i...

Richard and I got our tax return in early February. I've never waited until April to do my tax return, never mind the 15 th . I wouldn't be completely honest if I said I never procrastinated on anything. A few college papers were slipped under a professor's door just a few minutes before 5:00. It's just that I've almost always gotten a tax return so I look forward getting a few extra dollars, the sooner, the better. So tonight's dinner had nothing to do with taxes or running to the mail. Thank goodness for that! Tonight, I made another recipe from Bon Appetit's " Spring's Big 3" article, a collection of recipes using asparagus, peas, and artichokes. The Lasagna with Asparagus, Leeks, and Morels was a vegetarian lasagna with a cream sauce base. I've not always been happy with cooking magazines non-traditional variations on lasagna but this recipe passed the test. The cream sauce was thick and the meaty mushrooms gave depth to the dish. ...

"Have you ever had just one pistachio?" If you recognize this line, you've watched the popular " NCIS " show a few times too. I'm not a big t.v. watcher. I watch sports and the "crime drama" shows and that's pretty much it. With the crime dramas, I have a pretty quick trigger. If things get too graphic or involve crimes against women or children, I turn them off. I don't want nightmares from my t.v. I didn't have a television growing up and I have trouble remembering that the events on a show are not real. I'm good enough at creeping myself out in a dark house at night, I don't need someone else to help me. You may be wondering what the television tangent has to do with tonight's meal but it does relate, sort of. I've been charging through this month's Bon Appetit article "The Great American Cake". We are not even to Tax Day and I have just one cake of the six left to make. Tonight I made the Lime Angel ...

I've mentioned before that one of my favorite things about doing a blog that attempts to make each month's recipes from a cooking magazine is sitting down at the beginning of each month and writing the "menu". I use the term "menu" loosely because I often change the menu as I go along to fit in with the day, what I have planned, and if I get to the grocery store. Today I had a rather ambitious plan that included half the recipes from the Passover menu I didn't get to during Passover. I didn't get to the Asian market to get lemongrass and I didn't make the soup ahead so I could chill it and skim the fat for the matzo balls. So needless to say, that menu wasn't happening. I also flat out didn't feel like racing around, spending several hours finding and making unfamiliar recipes. Today was the kind of day I needed something familiar. The last few months have taken a lot out of me emotionally and I notice some days I'm just sad. Not inco...

I find artichokes insanely frustrating. You start with this fist size vegetable and by the time you are done trimming them, you have barely a finger worth of edible food. Don't get me wrong, I like artichokes but I feel like I'm wasting something every time I prepare one. With three recipes this month calling for fresh artichokes, I'll be getting some practice trimming them and filling up my kitchen trash with lots of leaves. Tonight's artichoke dish, Sauteed Chicken Paillards with Artichoke Hearts on page 91 of this month's Bon Appetit , was a good recipe to start off. The artichokes were simply trimmed and sliced and used as a sauce for chicken breast. The sauce had a mixture of wine, chicken broth, and butter. These traditional flavors complimented the artichokes and blended nicely with the pan-fried chicken. I decide to make the Grilled Calamari with White Bean Stew as a side dish/salad for the chicken. The name of this dish was bit deceiving . ...

Google can tell you just about anything you want to know. No, I don't think anyones invented a cake level to help straighten crooked cakes. The links that connected to my Google query offered up a portable clothes washer and a chainsaw, neither of which would have helped the Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake I made today from this month's Bon Appetit . There were a few suggestions I will remember for next time to keep my cake from resembling the "Leaning Tower of Pisa". I left each of the three layers as they had baked in the cake pans, with a higher point in the center. The web suggested that flattening each layer in a uniform manner keeps your cake from leaning to the side. Another suggestion was to avoid touching the cake. I guess your hands make it more likely to crumble. I can proudly say that I didn't touch this cake. I actually made this cake for a couple in our church small group who just had a little boy on Easter Sunday. I thought making a com...