Blog Archives
Tea Time: Garlic Green Tea
One handy feature on the behind the scenes aspect of this blog is that we can see what kind of search terms people used to find our blog. Sometimes though, people find our blog through search terms for something that we don’t actually have directly on our site. It always makes me a little sad when this happens, thinking about someone coming here and then leaving disappointed. So whenever possible I want to try and remedy that. One search that’s come up a few times is “garlic green tea” or some variation on that. And while we have our regular garlic tea (and also garlic lemonade) recipe, I want to give the people what they’re looking for! So I came up with a garlic green tea recipe as well.
Food 101: How To Make Tomato Sauce (or “Red Sauce” if you will…)
Tomato sauce, it’s everywhere. For Italians, it’s on and in everything, to the point that there probably isn’t a single human being in Italy over the age of 7 who doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge on how to prepare a pot of sauce. The majority of my family’s heritage is Italian. I grew up in a household where it got tossed on everything from pork to pasta to pizza. Every Sunday was time for everyone to head on over to my aunt’s house for a big-ass Italian dinner with pasta and antipasti and bread and etc… You get the picture. And yet, I have a confession to make, I actually don’t really like tomato sauce all that much.
DUN-DUN!!
Yes I know, I know, blasphemy. But in all honesty I felt like the fact tomato sauce had to be thrown onto every edible item on planet Earth kind of made me sick of it by the time I hit my teen years. Now, I don’t necessarily hate it, but it just feels overused and homogenous to me. That may not be a popular opinion, but I feel like many in Italian-American families simply don’t have the guts to actually come forth and say that, for fear of ridicule and mafioso style ” ‘ey, come on.” half-slaps on the cheek.
That all being said, I ironically am a staunch opponent of jar sauces, both because I’m pro-from-scratch on the food front and also because despite my relative lack of enthusiasm for it, I know what a good tomato sauce tastes like. And jar sauce tastes like shit, frankly. Rather, I will admit objectively that having a good tomato sauce technique in the back of your head is a vital skill for most cooks, if for at very least making pizzas.
Because, well, pizza.
Cheat Codes: How to Make Homemade Chipotle Ranch
Chipotle ranch is a great condiment. It’s delicious as spread on sandwiches, in burritos, and even as a dipping sauce (especially for onion rings). Yet despite its rising popularity over the past few years, it can sometimes be annoyingly difficult to find chipotle ranch in stores. And then even when you find it, it can sometimes be stupidly expensive. So what are those of us on a budget supposed to do when we crave that smoky, tangy goodness? Make our own of course!
Mix these together…
…and you get magic.
Read the rest of this entry
Quick Recipe: Chipotle Butter
Every time I make a recipe that calls for chipotle peppers in adobo sauce I always have a bunch leftover, since I usually only use one or two at a time. This time instead of just immediately handing the rest to Erik to use in some flames-shooting-out-of-your-mouth dish for him to make for himself I decided to be thrifty and figure out some other things I could use them in.
One of the things I came up with was a chipotle compound butter. This butter will be good on anything you’d use regular butter on that you want to give a bit of kick to.
Chipotle butter is really good on a bagel.
We Can Do It Better: How To Make A Homemade Gordita
Fans of the blog know that we now have a long-running series of posts that explain how to make different Taco Bell menu items at home, for cheaper, and healthier, all of which taste the same or better. We’ve covered the quesarito, burritos, chicken flatbreads, and even the quesalupa which hasn’t been released outside of Ohio yet! Well, let’s continue that tradition with another favorite, the gordita.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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