Pasta, Cabbage, Potato and Bean Soup

  I love soup, and often check them out at restaurants seeing if they resemble something  that appears tasty to me, or if they bring back fond childhood memories or fresh recent ones. Soup comforts and satisfies, especially on cold, snow days, like we often have in Denver, even as the sun shines! I like…

Saucy Asian Pork and Shrimp meatballs

I’m a big meatball fan using beef; I especially love meatball  recipes which use small pieces of slightly moisten bread cubes folded into the meatball. (That’s how our maid, when I was growing up, cooked her meatballs.) But cooking pork meatballs never occurred to me until I saw  recipes in various Chinese  cookbooks.  Recipes with…

Chinese Char Sui – an American approach

As a  young lady, beginning  in my  20s  in New Jersey,  I sometimes ate  at Chinese restaurants with friends.  These restaurants dotted the landscape at strip malls in  small  towns across southwestern New Jersey.  My best friend Helene and I went to one such place in Irvington, a 20 minute drive from my Maplewood home. …

Sweet Potato-blueberry-walnut bread-lemon iced

After cooking sweet potato soup, which was delicious, I’ve dug around the extensive sweet potato website based in North Carolina, and learned historical facts and viewed many recipes. Most of the historical information can be found on my recipe for the soup.  But personally, I’ve discovered my own small tidbits about  sweet potatoes.  One, I…

Creamy Sweet potato soup with its skin, plus shallots

For nearly 50 years, I never cooked sweet potato soup or even heard of a recipe for it.  But I ate the soup a few weeks ago at a restaurant; and  decided to prepare it at home, since I loved its creamy texture with hints of tang and sweetness.  The taste of sweet potatoes  registers…

Glazed Lemon Pound Cake – a sweet dessert with pucker power

At  the beginning of my fora into cooking and baking, which started  fifty years ago, I never thought of using real lemons. Unknowingly I bought those  plastic bright-yellow lemon containers. Naturally there was lemon juice in them, but who knows what else? It took me many years to discover fresh lemons, and their many benefits…

American Goulash: My Version of a Hamburger Classic

I’m a fan of ground beef.  I like it simply prepared as a hamburger, or added in stir fries, mixed in casseroles, and added to  so many main dishes. Hamburger meat often comes to the table with assorted ingredients  like tomatoes, onion, celery, beans, cheese, plus many vegetable choices. Sauces too are a popular ingredient…

No Question, an Easy (and Quick) Pork Shoulder Recipe

I’ve always liked Chinese food, possibility because of its saltiness, with ingredients such as Hoisin, soy and oyster-flavored sauce. When my husband and I go out for Chinese food we often, as an appetizer, share an order of barbecue spare ribs. Some restaurants offer meaty ones, other times their selection  seems “painted” with red food…