I picked up a new bamboo stacked steamer at the Asian market. I have an antique set, but I keep that for decoration.So I was off and running looking for things to make in the new steamer baskets. Steaming fresh vegetables helps to retain the texture, color and flavor of the vegetable while keeping its nutritional value intact. It is considered one of the way healthy ways to prepare veggies.

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When Chez Panisse restaurant opened a café upstairs from the main dining room, it quickly became one of my watering holes whenever I went to shop or visit friends in Berkeley. Since it was always so jammed, it was best to show up for lunch just after the doors opened at 11 a.m.

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Quinoa translates to “mother” in Quechua, one of the main languages of native Andean peoples and Incan descendants. It was a staple highland grain of equal importance as maize, and considered a premium food source of strength and endurance for working in the thin mountain air.

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Sauerkraut and its relative kimchi have become popular again with the back-to-the-kitchen movement of fermented homemade foods that are so healthy. Kimchi is a Korean dish of marinated vegetables, most commonly thought of as a pickle condiment, but it is far more versatile a food.

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Madeleines are small oval cakes with a pretty shell-shape rib molded on one side. These are made from a savory muffin batter baked in the traditional rectangular French madeleine plaque pan that bakes eight cakes at one time.

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Dont have time to make a pie dough? Phyllo to the rescue. Keep a package in your freezer and you are ready to fill with any number of delicious savory fillings, such as goat cheese and herbs, spinach and ricotta,…

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I went to a buffet at a friends’ right after she returned from her first visit to Rancho La Puerta spa, right over the border from San Diego in Tecate, Baja, Mexico. She served quesadillas, a recipe she brought back.…

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Granola certainly has become one of the most touted of healthy breakfast cereals and what we are experiencing now commercially has grown straight out of its roots in the hippie whole grain oat-nut-and-seed kitchen of the 1960s. The name granola is a take on granula, a toasted wheat cereal touted by whole grain movement of Sylvester Graham in the 1900s. Since it is tremendously versatile, it takes to all sorts of additions and variations on the basic recipe.

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People love to read about weddings as much as they like being invited to them. Of course when a wedding is called the wedding of the century for its size, location, elements of decoration, and notoriety of the participants, it gets even more fun.

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The wedding dinner was held after the sunset ceremony. The vegetarian option was a vegetable risotto. Now you are wondering how to make risotto for over a hundred people.

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