Culinary Boot Camp at The Chopping Block – Chicago

Even before I started my food blog, I have always had a passion for food and cooking. In the beginning, I tried over and over to perfect old family recipes, but somehow they just never seemed to come out right. As I tried to teach myself to cook, I became obsessed with all things culinary; […]

Homemade Thin Crust Pizza Dough with Homemade Pizza Sauce

A few months ago I was having trouble sleeping and for some reason I kept waking up at 4:35am. I didn’t even need to look at the clock to know, I already knew before looking that it was 4:35. What does that mean? It went away for a while but recently it has started up […]

Oven Roasted Tomato Brushetta

A little over a year ago I made a new friend. Kara came from Chicago to stay in our village for 2 months while her boyfriend worked on a project with my husband.  As it always is in the beginning  you talk, ask questions, find out what you have in common.  On a whim we decided […]

Homemade Vanilla Extract

Today dear readers, you will thank me for this post. With the following home-made vanilla recipe, you will not only save money, but you will come to appreciate how valuable it is to know just what it is you are eating. Now, I’m sure many of you are thinking “I don’t have time for this”or […]

Chocolate Truffle Cookies with Sea Salt

As I raised the blinds this morning I was blinded by the glare of freshly fallen snow.  It looks pretty at first but after days of constant flurries it is enough to send me back under the blankets to continue my hibernation. I want to shut myself off from the dreary grey skies and colorless, […]

Southern Biscuits and Gravy

A little over a week ago we returned to Germany after spending three weeks in the States enjoying the holidays with our families, and as the plane touched down with a jolt I was shaken out of my holiday mood and the familiar homesick feelings crept back into my heart. At this time every year […]

Homemade sliders

I know, I know… apple galette’s, coq au vin, a decadent chocolate cake, casseroled artichokes and then I write a post about White Castle hamburgers. What is going on here? They’re called cravings people. We get cravings living overseas for food from home. Sometimes, lying in bed, we take turns naming things we miss most. If I […]

Love and barbecue

It all began on a cold February morning in 2000.  I had a severe cold and a term paper due in twenty minutes that I had been up all night writing… As I was sitting in the computer lab adding the finishing touches and printing it out, I noticed a guy looking at me from […]

Roasted Chicken and Vegetables

I don’t like Sundays. Who does? It’s the last day before a new week starts, before the hustle and bustle of a monday morning, a flood of emails, pointless meetings and never-ending projects. When I start to get the case of the “Sundays”, I think back to when it was the day when, like most […]

Éric Ripert’s Coq au Vin

Outside the window, the trees are turning shades of gold and crimson and the leaves are starting to fall. It seems like it happens overnight; one day it’s cool, the next its chilly and overcast, then for days on end its cold and raining, and finally there are days when the sun tries to shine […]

Giardiniera – A Chicago Specialty

Since we’ve moved overseas, we crave many things from home. Twizzlers, McCormicks celery salt, Sweet Baby Rays bbq sauce, dill pickles, the list goes on and on. One of our favorites is giardiniera and while we bring back with us bottles of this and that, let’s be honest, with the overweight-charge rates the airlines are […]