use real butter

Recipe: peach-raspberry galette

Peaches were on sale at the local Safeway when I passed through on Sunday. These aren’t the kind of peaches that are juicy and make a mess down your shirt when you bite into one, but they looked good enough for some fruity ideas.

Recipe: thin crust pizza

We like to make pizza at home because it’s delicious, fresh, and most of all – I hate disposing of that damned giant cardboard box when we order from our local (only) pizza takeout joint in town. The shameful truth is, Jeremy makes the pizza dough. I’m the cook, but I’ve never made the pizza dough before. He just tried it one evening and it was great, and ever since then he has been the goto pizza dough boy. Actually, he used the Crusty Pizza Dough recipe from the KitchenAid stand mixer recipe book that comes in the box and I have to (bashfully) admit that he did this because I was afraid to use my KitchenAid mixer. Ridiculous (me), I know!

I had always mixed my double batches of cookie dough by hand. I figured it helped maintain my hitting arm for volleyball. I didn’t trust the shiny white KitchenAid that my dear sweet in-laws had given to me for my birthday. It sat on the counter for well over a year before I ventured to test it out.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: citrus cordial

If you shop like me, you try to eat something before you hit the store(s) and you try to shop responsibly. That means picking up foods that are both delicious and good for you as well as economically unstupid (economically stupid = picking up two heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods and watching your partner’s eyes pop out of their head when they ring up to $8). I generally try to buy a lot of produce because it’s good for you. Those bags or flats of fruit from Costco are a great deal, except when you can’t consume them quickly enough before they spoil.

I hate to let good food rot for no good reason, but now my citrus doesn’t have to – ever. My dear friend, Kell, shared this brilliant idea with me several months back. It sucks that she’s all the way in Australia, but I love that we keep in touch electronically with all sorts of food ideas and other snarky observations about people, life, and politics. She’s amazing, and so is this cordial. I suppose cordial is a nice fancy British Commonwealth term for what we uncultured Yanks would call syrup *grins and exposes gap tooth*