Cooking/Baking Black Bean Burgers & White Bean Strawberry Blondies

My roommate and I, both vegetarians, started a new Sunday night tradition: making veggilicious meals. This afternoon we experimented with beans and made black bean veggie burgers and Vegan white bean strawberry blondies.
The burgers were so much better than the frozen Garden Burgers I always eat, mainly because they were more filling and they tasted [...]

A Sunday Spent Eating Outside, Shopping at an Asian Market

Today I spent the afternoon with some friends who have a beautiful garden in their backyard. While making lunch — veggie burgers, fruit salad and crackers with hummus — we went out to the garden to get home-grown lettuce for our burgers, which we ate with fresh cilantro pesto. Yum.
As we munched on lunch outside, [...]

Grocery Shopping with Grandma

One of the first things my 86-year-old grandma did when she came to visit me last week was open my refrigerator. It was the first time that she, and my cousin who was on spring break, had been to my apartment, so my grandma was naturally curious to see what the place was like. She [...]

Having a Ball Making Cake Balls

I recently joined a craft group that some St. Petersburg Times folks started last fall. Joining the group has given me an excuse to rekindle my creativity by doing origami, making earrings and more.
I hosted the last craft party and spiced it up a bit. In place of a traditional craft, my friend and I [...]

In Search of Some Good, Easy-to-Make Recipes

The long weekend has prompted me to open some of the many cookbooks I’ve been given throughout the years. I gravitated toward Giada de Laurentiis’ cookbook because I learned a lot about the stories behind the recipes when
interviewing her this summer for a Dallas Morning News story. I bought ingredients for Giada’s fresh tomato and [...]

Baking Pies, In a Makeshift Kind of Way

I convinced myself that I was well-prepared.
Nutmeg? Check. Flour? Check. Six plump peaches? Check. I had everything I needed to bake two pear pies, or so I thought.
When my friend and I started baking pies at my apartment Wednesday night, we soon realized that I was missing measuring cups. I thought I had them in [...]