From the category archives:

Chicken & Turkey

Look, Ma! I Made A Chicken Pot Pie

Larry and I are boomers. Frozen chicken pot pies were awesome eats in our formative years. They were cheap, salty, fatty, easy, high-cal pots o’ tasty stuff a kid, teen, babysitter, college student happily ate. Now, as conscientious grownups (buzz kill), we’d probably STILL eat those bombshells of bad nutrition if not for the consequences. [...]

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Greek Lemon Orzo Soup

A Greek encounter this week: exchanged a quick pleasantry with actress Rita Wilson, but I won’t tell you where (hey, this is LA, celebs are everywhere). I love Greeks and I love Greek food, thanks to college pals, brothers John and George (who were my high school pals, too). Their Yayas cooked yummy stuff for [...]

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How Firefighters Cook and Eat

This is not Larry. Michael James is a Westwood, CA firefighter, and I cornered him at the grocery store. Firehouse 37 is OUR neighborhood fire department. They were right there when Francoise’ vintage gravity heater blew a fireball, when Margie’s wall was mysteriously smoking, when senior neighbors fall ill and UCLA students do what they [...]

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Chicken Pumpkin Lemongrass Soup

Things to cook with pumpkin were getting boring here, so I thought an Asian flavored soup would be different. I took this ‘n that from about five recipes and came up with a pot of flavorful, thick Chicken Pumpkin Lemongrass Soup. What gave it Asian oomph was fresh-cut lemongrass from our patio. And juice from [...]

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Plain, Simple, Versatile Cooked Shredded Chicken

“This is a recipe?” you may ask. Well, no, but it’s a favorite technique of mine to tackle a few things simultaneously on a leisurely Sunday, my happy cooking day. Chicken parts were a very good price this week, frugal friends. Sunday morning, I threw two pounds of them into the crockpot with two bay [...]

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Light Tortilla Soup

Larry takes me on some pretty interesting dates, like last week’s Laserium Beatles Show (remember the LA Griffith Observatory? Now it’s in Hollywood). As we left the theater, Larry noticed that Beso, Eva Longoria’s uber hip restaurant was across the street, so we stopped in for a wildly expensive glass of wine and some Beautiful [...]

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Thai Pasta with Chicken or Turkey

In anticipation of turkey leftovers, friends… Larry and I both work from home offices so we share a good number of meals together. For my lunch today, I dibbed leftovers of this Thai Pasta with Chicken while we were still eating it for dinner last night. We were in Thailand a few years ago and [...]

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Green Turkey Chili

Even in summer, the Crockpot works overtime here. In fact, we get all the little appliances together and set the rice cooker to finish simultaneously. Yesterday, Larry and I hit a 5 PM movie and when we walked in the door, dinner practically served itself. We ate this Green Turkey Chili with a scoop of [...]

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Tuscan Chicken Pallard over Fettuccine

There was this handsome, bald guy on TV making dinner with ingredients I already had (minus arugula). I’d never seen him before (and I love TV). His show was A Lyon In The Kitchen on the Discovery Health Channel and now I know his name is Nathan Lyon. A recipe like this is one of [...]

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Homemade Chicken Stock

I’m not a slave to homemade stock, but I make it when I have the “stuff” that goes into it. Once you do a batch, you will LOVE it. Today’s is earmarked for Vietnamese Pho Soup which requires a special (but totally worthwhile) trip to the local Asian market for “sticks and leaves,” as Larry [...]

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Crockpot Chicken Noodle Soup

This recipe post is being updated for our current almost-winter season. The weather here in LA only got cold this week, so last night’s dinner was steaming homemade chicken noodle soup in the attempt to warm us from the inside-out. If you own a crockpot, print this frugal, filling recipe.

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Green Salsa Chicken

It is hard to photograph chicken when the meat is falling off the bone. And excessively juicy. And bubbly hot, but it is sooooo easy to eat this good stuff. Two ingredients only – chicken and green salsa. A few months ago, we threw a huge bash for a significant Larry birthday. My goal was [...]

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Turkey Meatloaf with Spicy Ketchup

Friday afternoons, I volunteer at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center as the Info Desk Lady. My co-volunteer Marty is the Info Desk Guy. Between screening visitors and handling queries like where are the bathrooms, the ER, the gift shop, the cafeteria, and “I’m in labor,” Marty and I discuss things. One afternoon, we discussed [...]

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Best-Ever Roast Chicken Claim is True

If there is one food I cook well, it is Roast Chicken. Mine always come out juicy and tender; I use the nifty tool, a Spanek verticle roaster. You don’t need anything beyond the wire gizmo that makes your bird sit upright in the oven. So why try a new recipe? The headline. I tore [...]

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