Category Archives: food

blueberry oatmeal bars (a recipe)


I’ve been watching a lot of the Food Network shows lately — I think Ina and Giada are my new best friends.  I saw Giada make some apricot oat bars one morning and decided to try making a batch using things I had on hand, so here’s my rendition with blueberry jam instead of apricots.  It’s a really simple recipe and I think it would work well with any fruit jam you have in stock.  The key thing is to use old fashioned oats and not the instant stuff; she mentioned on the TV show that the instant stuff won’t hold it’s shape once it’s baked.

Continue reading

peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies (a recipe)

Apologies for the gap in blog posts lately but I guess you can say I’ve been a little busy lately with the arrival of a new family member.  :)

I needed to make some shortbread cookies to soothe my craving for something sweet (yes, I am still having occasional cravings post-delivery I suppose), so I decided to make something that my husband would enjoy too (he was, after all, holding baby to help free up my baking hands).  I started with an old-time favorite easy-peasy recipe I’ve used time and time again: a three ingredient peanut butter cookie that seriously only takes one egg, one cup of sugar, and one cup of peanut butter to make.  I had a box of unsweetened chocolate in the cupboard so I rough chopped 4 of the one ounce squares and added it to the batter, along with 1/2 a cup of flour and 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder.

Continue reading

lord hobo (cambridge)


After running around doing a bunch of errands on Saturday with my husband, we were famished and shared a craving for beef (particularly a good burger).  It was fun being able to actually “go out” with him after being cooped up at home for about a week, so we wanted to try some place we’ve never been to before.  I remembered hearing that Lord Hobo had good food, but I also remembered the one time we tried to go there a night a few months ago and not being able to get a seat because it was so crowded.  So since it was only about 5 pm we headed over (and after I found their menu on the Blackberry and started drooling over the choices) and luckily managed to find a parking spot nearby (that was another reason we never really were able to go there before this day – it’s mostly residential parking and the metered spots are like gold).

Continue reading

s’mores cookie bars (a recipe)

My sister did an evil thing.  She introduced me to Pinterest.  Was I on the slow boat before discovering this?  Probably.  But now, I have a new excuse to use as a time suck: pinning inspiring ideas and things onto boards that I can drool over later.  Now my goal is to actually do or make some of these inspiring things that I’ve found by other members’ pins.  One of which was to make these warm toasted marshmallow s’mores bars that someone pinned.

If you click on the link you’ll see that it’s a really simple recipe, no doubt.  But my one problem was the idea of using cookie mix because well, we all know that I’m a food snob, and I like to make things from scratch.  Call me crazy, I know – I’m nine months pregnant and shouldn’t be on my feet at all – but I couldn’t resist the challenge (put upon myself of course) of creating these bars from scratch.

So I decided to start on this challenge by creating a cookie base and turned to what I consider my personal bible for all things baked and cooked: Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” cookbook.  (Yes, you’ve heard me sing its praises before – I love this thing.)  I thought about the finished product and realized that it’s essentially like a deconstructed chocolate chip cookie but with toasted marshmallows on top, so I started with a chocolate chip cookie base.  I followed the Betty Crocker recipe about adding the graham cracker crumbs to stick with the s’mores concept.

Continue reading

pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (a recipe)

Wow, it’s been over 2 months since I last posted a recipe so here’s one appropriate for the fall.  I wanted to make these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for a couple of different reasons: 1) to package into a container as a thank you for a friend who was delivering a box that was sent to me at work; 2) to package into two little birthday gifts for two of my coworkers; and 3) to find good use for a can of Libby’s pumpkin that I meant to use for something else (but I had one too many cans for the other thing).

I started off by searching online for a recipe using the canned pumpkin and came across this one and decided to try it out since it seemed simple enough.  And while pulling out all of the ingredients from the cabinet, I realized I had a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips so I decided to dump them into the batter too.

Continue reading