holiday entertaining

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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Drumroll Please…{A Domenica Cooks Recipe Kit}

March 7, 2012

Photo by Postmark Chef UPDATE: The winner of the Postmark Chef recipe kit is…WENDY from Healthier Kitchen. Congratulations Wendy! * * * * * * I’ve never yearned to see my name in lights. Yet, I still remember the first byline I ever had as a newspaper reporter (it was atop a short article about [...]

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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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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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