entertaining

Panna Cotta for a Crowd

April 10, 2013

I cooked for a bunch of people last weekend. And a bunch of people cooked for me. On Saturday afternoon I dropped off dinner for 12 at my friend Jill’s house. For the last few years, Jill and her husband, Rudy, and several other couples have been the winning bidders on a series of Big [...]

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Baked Pandoro French Toast

January 13, 2013

It’s not often I have leftover Pandoro. Everyone in my family loves it so it doesn’t last long. I still have a clear image in my mind of my son at age 1, toddling around in a blue and white striped one-piece thingie with a sailboat on it, clutching a giant piece of Pandoro in [...]

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Bar Nuts

November 21, 2011

I inherited my passion for cooking from my mom. But my dad is the one who got me hooked on cookbooks. For a few years in the 1990s, my dad gave me a cookbook every Christmas. I do not know what precipitated this tradition (my mom was always the holiday shopper in the house). And [...]

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Red Carpet Rant Chili

February 26, 2011

In general I disdain celebrity. I think celebrities and most movie stars are overrated, not to mention overpaid. I heard that the train wreck actor Charlie Sheen gets paid $1.8 million per episode of his show Two and a Half Men (at least until he got booted off the set). I have never seen Two [...]

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Pandoro: A Holiday Bread to Trifle With

December 29, 2010

Panettone, the sweet, yeasted domed Italian holiday bread studded with raisins and candied fruit, has legions of fans in Italy and around the globe. I, however, am partial to the other Italian holiday bread: Pandoro. Pandoro (the word means ‘golden bread’ in Italian) is a tall, star-shaped leavened sweet bread that is produced in Verona, [...]

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Sane Entertaining

December 10, 2010

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, on WAMU (88.5) radio in Washington, D.C. My fellow guests were Meagan Hegenbarth of RSVP Catering, and Chris Lowery, store captain at Trader Joe’s in Bailey’s Crossroads, VA. Among the topics covered: what to serve at a progressive holiday [...]

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