Creme Caramel Dessert

We celebrated Christmas 2011 at four different family gatherings. Luckily, each one was a different day, especially considering the spread-out locations—Grayslake, Marengo, Bolingbrook, and Hoffman Estates. The day after Christmas, Mike, Mike's cousin Karyn, and I put together a few different Thai-influenced dishes for dinner with Mike's and Karyn's families. (Earlier this month, I posted the Thai spring roll recipe we used for appetizers that day.) We rounded out the meal with this Thai-style creme caramel dessert. It was very simple to put together, but it was yummy, and it looked all fancy.

Mushroom and Squash Risotto

I remember when I came home from college having taught myself to cook risotto. My mom was interested, but worried about the difficulty. There seems to be a lot of misinformation running around peoples' minds about how hard risotto is to cook. It's easy. It does take a little while, and you can't rush it, but it's the kind of background task you can easily socialize while doing. And the results, yum!

Seafood Pockets

Here's a simple, quick-to-prepare, tasty dish: seafood tucked in flaky rolls. Dinner doesn't get much easier than this.

Fast Pasta Dinner

This quick dish was a staple around my house when my mom was too busy with school. It's great when you need to throw together something warm in almost no time at all, and it works with ingredients you can keep around forever. It even works in the summer, so long as it's not too hot to use the stove.

Love Soup and Bean in Love Mix

Since Mike and I love cooking so much, we found various ways to cooking-related ideas into our wedding. One example is the wedding favors we created.

We had originally considered giving out spice rubs; it seemed appropriate to give something that our guests could use several times in various different ways. However as the weather grew colder, we found ourselves drawn to a new idea: soup mixes. So we decided to make two different soups. One was a pasta soup, and one was a bean soup.

Stove-top Chili

When I was moving into my own apartment at college, my mom gave me a few of her recipes to not only ensure I didn't starve, but also that I could have a bit of home with me. I'm glad she did. This chili recipe was a wonderfully easy recipe to start with, and one I've modified over the years to suit my changing tastes. Everyone who makes chili has their own favorite recipe for their own favorite reasons. Here's the one I grew up with.

Throw-Everything-In Slow-Cooker Veggies

Sometimes we get so many different veggies in our farmers' market produce box and we're busy with so many other weekend activities that we don't have time to prepare special dishes with each type of produce. That's where this dish comes in. It's the perfect summer entrée, and it doesn't require any messing with the oven or the stove—an important attribute of any dish on a hot day.