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As long as I can remember, I have been a fan of eggnog. I love homemade eggnog as well as store-bought eggnog. And my love of eggnog was the gateway to that New Orleans favorite, milk punch. I think it is the luxurious texture of the milk and the excuse to drink a cocktail spiced with nutmeg that makes me crave it.

December is a busy month. And, with cooler weather all over the country, it’s also a month where we crave comfort food.

So what do you do for dinner when you don’t feel like cooking, don’t feel like ordering-in and you don’t want to microwave a frozen dinner?

If you are like me, everyone I know is discussing their menu for the big T-day meal on Thursday. And, while most people serve the same main course and side dishes, the starter is often up for grabs.

I have never been all that excited about pumpkin-spice anything this time of year until someone recently sent me a recipe for pumpkin-spice candied bacon. That is a trend that I can stand firmly behind!

I am a fan of pumpkin baked goods and always have been. Pumpkin pie the day after Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday breakfast treat.

Before there was pumpkin spice obsession, fall was synonymous with apples. Apple picking, apple butter, apple cider, apple cider, donuts, apple pie, and caramel apples, and my favorite, apple cake.

I have always loved conservas or tinned fish. Spain and Portugal have a long tradition of conservas which are carefully preserved seafood and shellfish cooked and packed into tins in a method that conserves the seafood when they are at their peak freshness.

When was the last time you cleaned your grill? If you can’t remember, now is definitely the time to do it. Start with one good top-to-bottom cleaning at the start of summer. Then, assuming you do a little maintenance after each cooking session, you’ll be set for the rest of the season.

It’s summertime and that means lots of entertaining! Let’s assume that you already have a delicious main dish, like grilled steak or beer-can chicken… but you need something to make it a meal?

Are you looking for an easy and fast seafood dinner that looks and taste like the fancy fish entrées you get at a restaurant? If so, I’ve got the dish for you.

The first time that I experienced La Bandera, I was sitting outside a distillery in the tequila region of Mexico. The “Bandera” cocktail is inspired by the flag of Mexico. If you know your world flags, you know that the Mexican bandera/flag is green, white and red. The cocktail mimics those colors and is served in three separate glasses.

One glass is filled with fresh-squeezed lime juice—green—one is filled with un-aged or blanco tequila—white—and the “red” glass is filled with Sangrita. (If you don’t know what Sangrita is, more on that later!)

This time of year, everyone asks me how they can become a better griller. It all comes down to the following 10 tips, the most important of which is knowing the difference between direct and indirect cooking.

Once you understand when to use indirect heat, you’ll embrace it. I use indirect heat at least 80% of the time I use my grill.

It’s Memorial Day weekend and that means that Deviled Egg season is here.

The hardest thing about making deviled eggs is peeling the hardboiled eggs. If you make Deviled Eggs, chances are that you have been that person who brought pock-marked Deviled Eggs to the table.

I started going down the Bourbon Ball rabbit hole many years ago.

Bourbon Balls are a big deal in Kentucky. And since this weekend is the Kentucky Derby, I felt it was a good time to bring out the Bourbon Balls.

When I travel to Kentucky, and visit distilleries, I buy Bourbon Balls from the gift shops. They are generally very sweet, bourbon-soaked confections with chopped pecans covered with dark chocolate. Some of them are decorated with a pecan half, and some are unadorned.

Alison Roman is a force.

Much has been written about Alison Roman. Whether you like her or don’t like her—most people like her—you have to agree that she has a point of view.

This point of view gives her cookbooks an authoritative and confident tone. That’s a good thing IMO because when you set out to make a new recipe, you want the author to instill confidence in you (and the recipe) as you make it for the first time.

These days eggs are so expensive that I want to use every bit of every dozen I buy. That means that if I am making a recipe that only calls for egg yolks, I want a recipe that is more interesting than scrambled egg whites to make with the leftover whites.

That's exactly what happened to me a few days ago. I made a big batch of homemade mayo and I had three leftover egg whites. I was about to wrap them up for the refrigerator and suddenly I remembered “forgotten cookies.”

Remember those ranch-flavored oyster crackers? Well they’ve been reborn as Fire Crackers or Alabama Fire Crackers.

Sheri Castle wrote about them in a Southern Living article last fall that was entitled “The South’s Most Beloved Appetizer Starts with a Sleeve of Saltines,” and that “In some hometowns, baby and bridal showers feel incomplete without a tray of these crackers on the buffet.”

My journey with “shrimp and grits” all started with the shrimp and grits that I ate growing up in North Carolina. It is well known in food circles that the legacy of Bill Neal, the chef founder of Crooks Corner (restaurant) in Chapel Hill, NC, was far and wide.

Chef Bill Smith took over for Neal in 1993 and kept Neal’s classic dish on the menu until 2019 when he retired. Young cooks who worked for Neal also took his version of shrimp and grits to their next restaurant jobs and many eventually opened their own restaurants where it was also served.

In the south, strawberry season comes early. The first local strawberries that I tasted this year showed up in a small beachside market in mid-March, and this week is prime strawberry season in my neighborhood.

Every time I eat a farm-stand strawberry, I think, “oh, that’s what a strawberry tastes like.”

When I am sick of cooking and sick of answering the question, what’s for dinner? I turn to breakfast for dinner.

It never fails to satisfy and it gives me an excuse to make fresh hot biscuits. There is nothing like splitting open a just-baked biscuit, slathering it with butter and watching as the steam melts the butter and it’s absorbed by the soft pillowy interior...except eating it—hits the spot, every time!

I had long wanted to go to Mexico City, but it never seem to be the right time until a few weeks ago.

Like everyone, I’ve heard what a great food and cocktail city it is, and it did not disappoint! I ate and drank at a higher level here than I have in any city that I’ve visited in the past five years.

Craving a big bowl of pasta but not eating carbs? Spaghetti squash is the answer and it is almost as popular a choice as pasta these days.

The go-to dish is spaghetti squash topped with meat sauce but more and more the pasta-like strands of squash are being topped with the viral Baked Tomato Feta. I know that I’ve made both many times.

This summer I was lucky enough to travel to Slovenia for a barbecue contest. As it turns out, both barbecue and line dancing are big hobbies in Slovenia. I was invited by the US State Department and The Culinary Diplomacy Projectto be a culinary ambassador for the barbecue part of the Slovenian Country and BBQ Festival, a.k.a. Wild West Fest On Fire.

When I am sick of cooking and sick of answering the question, what’s for dinner? I turn to breakfast for dinner.

It never fails to satisfy and it gives me an excuse to make fresh hot biscuits. There is nothing like splitting open a just-baked biscuit, slathering it with butter and watching as the steam melts the butter and it’s absorbed by the soft pillowy interior...except eating it—hits the spot, every time!

Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to bake heart-shaped desserts and indulge your sweet tooth. And, I can’t think of a better thing to make than a decadent bread pudding studded with strawberries and chocolate.

I am a big Ina Garten fan. Her food is simple to prepare and delicious. I love her approach to entertaining and how she incorporates international flair into her cozy comfort food.

Most crinkle cookie recipes are chocolate but these buttery cream-cheese crinkle cookies just might have you think twice about making chocolate crinkles.

If you love sweet buttery chewy cookies with a little spice, you will love these chai crinkle cookies.

There’s nothing sweeter this time of year, than an edible gift. Food gifts are the perfect choice for friends and family who already have everything they want or need. And, this selection of food gifts is so good that you may decide to give them to yourself.

I am a diehard whiskey drinker, but I have always wanted to be a martini drinker.

That is one of the reasons why I have always been partial to an Espresso Martini. As a coffee lover, it’s a drink that I can embrace. It feels as celebratory as a Martini but is flavored with espresso.

Once you have the essentials in your kitchen, then the fun really begins. That’s when you can start adding special equipment that makes cooking and baking easier and more stylish.

The following is my eclectic list of next-level kitchen tools. Some of the items on this list are things that I never thought that I would buy, and now that I have them, I cannot live without them.