The last meeting of the year for Sparks is a big event – last year we had a Teddy Bear’s Picnic – and tonight is our year end carnival. I decided to make the food instead of the usual chips, fruit and veggies. To stick with our theme of carnival i made Caramel Corn, its tasty only marginally bad for you and is easy to make in advance opposed to regular popcorn which quickly stales in a bag. Continue Reading…
When watching Unwrapped on TLC a while ago Dave saw a giant marshmallow cake covered in what appeared to be M&Ms. He suggested that a cake like this would make a great birthday cake. Making marshmallows is yummy and fun but not quite my cup of tea and not really good for serving at a birthday. Continue Reading…
Quinoa is a great ingredient – it’s a whole protein, cooks like rice and can be use in place of rice and couscous and tastes great hot or cold. After moving house this weekend the kitchen was in a bit of disarray and I needed lunches so to go with bbq chicken I made a cold Greek inspired quinoa salad. Continue Reading…
Spread, dip, swoop, dollop. No matter how you put it on a chip, cracker or crisp – dips and spreads are a great addition to any event and great for when you’re short on time as you can make them in advance.
For a recent potluck – St Pat’s Day to be precise Dave and I made Edamame dip, guacamole and pita chips. All three were a hit and are straight forward to make. They’re all now going to make returns to our recipe rota. Continue Reading…
Laura Calder is one of my favourite food network chef’s, she is funny, charismatic and her food is always delicious! The other day while I was supposed to be studying (I did get an A+ on the exam I was studying for so I don’t feel bad about procrastinating about it!), I watched French Food at Home and was very sceptical of this recipe. Other than in guacamole I don’t eat avocado after some bad sushi a few years ago.
Strawberry shortcake, huckleberry pie, whose gonna be your lucky guy? A..B..C..D… Ok. So..I’m older than 7 now, but whatever. Strawberries were on sale for the Kin’s Market opening near us – 4lbs for $5. I was stoked. Pair that with some leftover cream from a Sparks thing.. and you get Strawberry Shortcake!
I love pies, i love everything about them, the considerable filling to crust ratio, the way they look, and the fact that they are usually served with ice cream. That said, i rarely enjoy the crust, thankfully there isn’t that much of it, but still there needs to be a better way of dealing with it. So i decided to use one of the many great recipes from Lajos Mary ( a hungarian cook book author ) for Linzer dough, to improve (read: replace) on the pie crust. And here is the result.
I stumbled across this potato recipe not that long ago, and thought it sounded interesting. For Earth Hour, Robert and I had a very earth-friendly meal of steak, and these potatoes to go with it. They weren’t quite the right fit for steak, but I think with battered fish, it could be incredible! The original recipe is here.
I’ve recently re-discovered how easy it is to make pizza dough. And how delicious something like pesto, cheese and spinach can be.
Hi everyone,
It turned out that the hosting company we use decided to change data centers from Dallas to Chicago, this meant almost a week of downtime till our account got to Chicago (couldn’t they have fedex’d it faster 
). I didn’t know this move would be happening, so i couldn’t give you guys any warning. That said, I can’t really complain since we don’t pay anything for this ad-free site. So lets hope they like it in Chicago 
,
Happy blogging and cooking…
matt
