Archive for December 2011

Christmas Cookies! With just a few short weeks to go, it’s time to start baking…or at least time to start thinking about baking.

Just the mention of cookies smiles to our faces. Between holiday parties and cookie swaps, we’ll be eating our fill. The question is, what to bake? There is the classic: a sugar cookie, artfully decorated. There’s the historical: a mandelbread recipe, passed down from Cara’s grandma. And there’s the seasonal: a spiced snickerdoodle, or a super-gingery gingersnap.

The best Christmas cookies look pretty and taste great, and they also keep well. That last quality means they…

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We pooled our tips and tricks for keeping your holiday parties on budget for our friends over at Culinate. Check them out here!

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Joan Nathan is truly the mother of Jewish cooking. She’s written 10 cookbooks on the subject, including the venerable tome Jewish Cooking in America, and her latest Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France. So when I started thinking about the food and guides we wanted to feature on BGSK for Hanukkah, her name naturally came to mind.

I was lucky to be able to chat with Joan and ask her all our Hanukkah cooking, entertaining, and gifting queries. We talked about her favorite edible presents and how to get your home to not…

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #8—Gifts in a Jar: Poached Pears.

In our world, the edible gift is an obvious choice in the roster of kitchen-y gifts. But you can’t gift the mundane; no soups, stews, or salads here. You can give a jar of hot fudge,…

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See all our favorite Christmas cookies here!

There was a time when Phoebe and I had this little, you know, cookie conflict. As you’ll know if you read every word of our book’s introduction or have ever glanced at our about page, back in the day, just a couple of years after we met in the seventh grade, we were engaged in an oatmeal cookie competition. I stood by one recipe, Phoebe another, and like any good world political conflict, there appeared to be no middle ground. We used to make our friends taste…

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #7-Cookbooks for Everyone on Your List.

We love cookbooks. Cookbooks represent constant inspiration, beautiful food pictures, and new and inviting ways of re-envisioning your favorite foods. Not to mention, they look great crammed onto your shelves-who needs interior design when you have books?

When…

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #6-The 7 Best Giftable Food Activities.

There are food gifts like boxes of chocolate bark that can fit inside a stocking, and then there are those that are simply explained in a card. Who says the best presents have to be material things? For…

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We all keep a growing list—written or mental—of all the great restaurants and food finds that we’ve tried or are dying to track down in the future. Some people have detailed spreadsheets, columns dedicated to cuisine, price, and notes to catalog what dishes they ended up ordering and loving. Others keep it simple, jotting down names and places on their smartphone, tablet, or Moleskine every time they get a good suggestion.

No matter what your method is, there comes a time when you’re stuck standing on a street corner…

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Caramelized Onion Pizzettes with Smoked Mozzarella and Arugula • Seared Radicchio Salad with Thyme-Honey Drizzle • Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Fennel and Cider Jus (from our book) • Chocolate Mousse with Gingerbread Cream • Elderflower Fizz

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #3-all about foodie stuff you can wear.

Now that we’ve been food blogging for three years and change, we’ve come to have almost as many frilly aprons hanging in our closet as we do party dresses. And who are we to complain? You really…

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