Category Archives: My Life

I mentioned yesterday that I baked a caramel pecan apple pie.  We had some surplus homemade pastry dough and granny smith apples from the two granny smith apple pies I made on Thanksgiving, using my favorite apple pie recipe.  I wanted to try something different, and needed to find another apple pie recipe that didn’t require a top crust as I had just enough to cover the bottom of a pie pan to use the leftovers.  I began the search, ultimately settling upon a perfectly rated derivation from a publisher called Taste of Home.  

Aaron asked me if I would make a couple of my apple pies for Thanksgiving with my family tomorrow.  It’s been awhile since I baked this particular pie recipe.  He brought it up three or four times, each entreaty accompanied by ever-escalating puppy dog eyes, so I knew he wanted me to do it even though I was planning on making some sort of specialty cake in the spirit of the honey lemon bee hive dessert I baked a few years ago; maybe a giant pumpkin or spice cake, in the (appropriately enough) shape of a pumpkin, with a cream cheese glaze drizzled over it; even better, perhaps a chocolate peanut butter bundt cake!  (Normally, I like vanilla cake with buttercream frosting but who doesn’t like chocolate and peanut butter?!)

We met up with friends at a new wood-fired Italian Neapolitan pizza restaurant that opened 45 minutes north of Kansas City called Il Lazzarone.  This is the same group with which we regularly try new restaurants, though I’ve been terrible about posting them all over the years.  We sat inside for hours talking about everything from economics, rental…

My earliest memories in life are in the early 1980’s.  At that time, the older generation who cooked the food at family gatherings, church dinners, and social events in small town America that made up the fabric of my childhood was born between the late 1800’s and the mid 1920’s.  There was a certain common thread that…

Slow-Roasted Vegetables, French Onion Soup, Fresh Bread, Aged White Cheddar, and Plum Cheesecake We spent the day at home working on a project we need to get done for the one of the businesses.  As usual, we’re big believers in concurrent time management so we used the opportunity to test slow cook recipes and soups because they…