LoveTheJourney

Nary a year passes in which I don’t slow-roast at least a few tomatoes to stash away in the freezer. In the bleak month of February, their bright, concentrated flavors serve as a reminder of happier days past, and yet to come. Before I had a backyard garden, my standard operating procedure was to prowl [...]

The nice thing about dog biscuits is that you can improvise a great deal with them, incorporating just about any element that your dog either likes or that you want to add to his/her diet. That said, feel free to swap ingredients in or out of this basic formula. As long as you have enough [...]

You don’t have to own a dog to know how much they love peanut butter (I don’t, but my girls are working on me). This recipe should endear you to all your neighborhood canine buddies.
4 ounces water
4 ounces vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 ounces peanut butter
10 ounces flour
2 1/4 ounces [...]

I know this is the kind of stuff that makes people without children roll their eyes, or at least would have made me roll my eyes anytime prior to eight months ago, but seriously, nothing, nothing makes you a more productive person than having a baby. How else will you learn all of the things [...]

Call me skeptical that a mere cookie can solve our most intractable foreign policy problems, but heck, at this point I’d be willing to try just about anything. Chocolate-y, sweet and salty, they’re a guaranteed crowd pleaser at any international summit, piled in heaps next to the water pitchers on those long, shiny wood tables. [...]

Talk about something that brings me back to childhood. Taking a bite of these put me right back in Lillie’s kitchen, where my twin sister and I would watch her whip up meringue by hand on a flat egg board (she didn’t own a mixing machine of any kind). Lillie was an ample woman, and [...]

7-Layer bars (aside from “dirt” pudding) are my favorite guilty pleasure. You can throw these together in as little as a few minutes provided you have all the ingredients on-hand. I find a parchment-lined baking sheet is the easiest when it comes to de-panning 7-layer bars. You’ll want to trim two sheets so they’ll lay [...]

World, witness the way Americans prefer to consume cheese. I’m not sayin’ it’s right, I’m not sayin’ it’s wrong, it’s just the way we do it (and that’s before our main meal, not after). Crackers are a low-effort bit of savory bakery with a high payoff. (“Excellent crackers!” Thank you, you know I make them [...]

If I were to try to describe Joe Pastry heaven to you, it would go a little something like this: a warm spring afternoon, the kids and the missus are taking a nap. There’s a cold bottle of suds open, and a big ol’ pastry to build.
That was my Sunday, friends, and here’s what [...]