Miss Laura Hangs Up Apron at Paraclete Academy

Tonight, I hung up my apron in the kitchen at Paraclete Academy, the South Boston after-school program where I have cooked dinner for 25 kids and teachers every Tuesday night since Dec. 2. The Last Supper, as Linda, the secretary, called it, was bittersweet. Not literally though. The dinner program at Paraclete ends this week. And […]

American Chop Suey: A Love Story

I got a kick out of Thrillist.com’s “22 Things You’ve Definitely Eaten If You Grew Up In New England” post the other day. All the usual suspects were there – Fluffernutters, NECCO Wafers, Hoodsie Cups… But I learned something, too. Apparently, American Chop Suey is a New England thing. I was shocked. Just shocked, I […]

Getting My Just Desserts in Southie

It hit me when I walked in the door of the kitchen: the smell of eggs boiling on the stove. My stomach flipped. If this was how I was to begin my Tuesday cooking stint at Paraclete Academy, I was in for quite a ride. As readers of this blog are well aware, eggs are […]

Why Break with Routine? Just Cook Clean!

Like our two spoiled silly cats, my husband and I are creatures of habit. We each drink our coffee out of the same mugs every morning and he must have a snort of single malt every night. My standing Starbucks order is a “venti non-fat one Equal latte.” No shots, thangyouverymuch. At our local Asian […]

Need to Shovel (More) Snow? Whip Up a Little Garten!

It took me a pot of chicken soup, six large crab cakes and a pan of the Barefoot Contessa’s Salted Caramel Brownies to avoid shoveling the driveway today. I could have squeezed in an apple pie but I prefer to do back-breaking work in the daylight. “You haven’t shoveled yet,” asked my husband during an […]

‘Baking Bad’ on ‘Saturday Night Live’

When I decided to the pull the plug on my 30-year career in daily journalism last winter, my partner, Gayle Fee, suggested — with a straight face so I knew she was kidding — that I open a “kush bakery.” “It’s gold, Jerry, GOLD,” she joked, using one of our favorite and oft-quoted “Seinfeld” lines. […]

New Year’s Eve = Onion Dip!

This is an ode to onion dip that I wrote on Dec. 30, 2012 for the Boston Herald‘s food blog. I felt the need to re-post it here for two reasons: My grandmother, who died last April at 101, used to serve Lipton Onion Soup Dip to my little brother and me every New Year’s […]

Waste Not, Want Not: Repurpose Your Food!

I’m a child of the 70s, but you would think I grew up during the Depression because I refuse to waste food. People often tell me to just “get rid of it” after I complain about the leftover pie or cake that tempts me during the day. But I can’t. I just refuse. Eat week-old […]

Feast Your Eyes — and Appetite — on “Haute Cuisine”

The French film “Haute Cuisine” isn’t about haute cuisine at all. In fact, just the opposite. When I mentioned that little observation to the film’s real-life subject Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch — the farmhouse cook plucked from the Dordogne to serve as French President Francois Mitterrand’s personal chef — she roared with laughter. “It is certainly not,” […]

Cooking + Baking = Happy Me

Here’s a blog post I wrote this week for the gals at betterafter50.com. Enjoy! There are lots of things that make me happy–road trips, a purring cat on my lap, an enthusiastic hug from a child. But nothing, I mean nothing compares to the joy I feel cooking for my family and friends. It’s why […]