Beer Bread

My mom made this when I was little and I made it myself through college. It's super simple and tastes great fresh or toasted, and can be served as a side with dinner or topped with butter and jam for breakfast. Makes 1 loaf. Takes 2 hours with cooling. 3 C. flour 1 Tbsp. baking...

Parker House Dinner Rolls

These are from Alex Guarnascelli of Food Network. Renee showed me how to make these when we visited for Thanksgiving one time. They were so good I've made them every year since at our house. One thing I recently learned that made them even better is that instead of taking them out of the oven...

Yum Yum Sauce

Yum Yum sauce is a mayonnaise-based Japanese steakhouse sauce that you can put on anything-- shrimp, chicken, vegetables, or drizzled over fried rice. There are lots of recipes for it. Here are two: one uses Kewpie mayo, a Japanese mayo that reminds me a lot of Miracle Whip. The other uses regular mayo and is...

Fried Rice

Logan sent me a TikTok with a teriyaki chicken fried rice video. I never really thought of making fried rice myself but now we make it all the time. It's easy to throw in whatever you have on hand and it always turns out delicious and really satisfying. Below is a general guideline but feel...

Roasted Garlic Garlic Bread

I decided to try this different approach to garlic bread the other night and the 3 of us really liked it. It has a nice mellow almost sweet garlic flavor and it couldn't be easier. You toast unpeeled garlic cloves in a dry pan, which roasts the garlic in their skins. Then you peel them...

Land Ocean-Inspired Coleslaw

There's a restaurant in Folsom called Land Ocean. They serve a delicious appetizer of teriyaki chicken skewers atop a bed of coleslaw. When it first arrived at the table, I dismissed the coleslaw, assuming it was just a place to put the chicken. But then after a couple forkfuls I realized it was actually even...

Corn Pudding

I used to love that little scoop of sweet corn they'd give you at Chevy's. I think it's called "sweet corn tomalito". I tried a copycat recipe that called for a long list of ingredients like masa harina and cornmeal and required cooking the pan in a hot water bath. It was really good but...

Macaroni & Cheese

Serves 3 to 4, or 5 to 6 as a side. Can be doubled. Full disclosure: The cover photo is the mac & cheese from Marble Room in Cleveland, OH. I can't find a photo of mine at the moment. There are lots of ways to make mac & cheese and they're all pretty good,...

Cane’s Copycat Sauce

I don't eat Cane's enough to know how close this is to the real thing but regardless it is GOOD. Best after it sits a few hours. I like to make chicken wraps with this sauce, air-fried chicken tenders, and some chopped lettuce on a flour tortilla street taco. 2/3 cup real mayonnaise1/3 cup ketchup2...

Ding’s Coleslaw

This is a copycat recipe from a restaurant called Bandera in Fair Oaks which we loved. It was (is?) part of the Hillstone group of restaurants, so we could also get this at Rutherford Grille in Napa which we SUPER loved. Unfortunately the Banderas by us closed a few years ago though. In any case,...