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How to Roast a Chicken
First of all, why should you roast a chicken when a rotisserie chicken costs $6.00 and there’s considerably less (as in none) work? Because it’s delicious is why, and your house will smell amazing, and you will impress your husband, and you will magically transform into Betty-Freaking-Crocker if you do. Promise. Don’t check out when I tell you there’s 10 steps, because 8 of these steps are insanely easy. I’ll tell you which steps are hard when we get there. Here we go: 1. Salt the chicken Rinse the chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Rub your raw, skin-on (and completely thawed!) chicken down with salt, inside and out. …
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5 Tips for Smarter Not Harder Cooking
A couple of years ago I was at my friend Amanda’s house helping make Friendsgiving dinner. (In this scenario, “helping” means standing near her and drinking Malbec.) We’re chatting while she’s dicing veggies, shredding cheese, stuffing mushrooms, and browning elk sausage. And it dawns on me- she’s not running to the trash can every 30 seconds to toss scraps as she cooks, yet there are no piles. Where is everything going? I know I saw her crack some eggs. Answer: the scrap bowl. Amanda tosses butter wrappers, empty cans, veggie ends and eggshells into a bowl as she cooks, greatly reducing the number of steps she has to take per meal…
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Cookie Quest 2.0
Well guys, I bought flour, butter, white and brown sugar at Sam’s Club. I guess it’s time to admit: I bake now. This wasn’t always true about me. I preferred cooking to baking because baking seems so final. Like once that batter is in the oven, there’s no turning back. If it sucks, it’s too late. You’ve failed, might as well go live in a box because who can love you after a cake with crunchy edges and a completely uncooked middle? Answer: no one. Go sleep in the alley with the cats. With cooking, you can taste and tweak as you go, it’s a little more forgiving. Being failure-averse,…
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Leftovers: 10 Ways to Make Them Awesome
Leftovers- boring, bland, beige, reheated. Roast beef for three days because that’s what you made in the Crockpot on Wednesday. For years, I slopped them on a plate like a 90s sitcom lunch lady, nuked them, and spiced them up by adding Ranch. Bleh. Now I make a plan for leftovers. Fun fact: they don’t have to suck. Not only do they not have to suck, but you can plan for them to be awesome.
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Meal Planning: Taking the Angst Out of Dinner
You stare hopelessly into the refrigerator’s abyss. Mustard, pizza from last week, milk of questionable character. Close the door. Look around. Open the door again- nothing’s changed. No miraculous discovery to answer tonight’s question: What’s for dinner? Fifteen minutes of rummaging through cupboards and the freezer…and the winner is…takeout. Again. Sound familiar?
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Cookie Quest 1.0
“Chocolate chip cookies should be the worst cookie you make,” says my husband. To my face. While I’m awake and can hear him. And he says this unapologetically as if it were a perfectly natural statement to make to the woman who just baked 2.5 dozen cookies for him (and me, let’s be real). Granted, I had also just whipped up a batch of Breakfast Cookies, a healthy concoction held together with banana and almond meal whose only resemblance to actual cookies is the shape, so he was feeling a bit deceived at the time. My initial reaction was of the “What on earth is the matter with you my…
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Why Salt?
Salt on the Table is the brainchild born of my need to create, and my desire to share what I’m learning, particularly in the areas of faith, food and finance. At first glance it may seem that these three topics are unrelated. But in my mind, theirs is a natural connection centered around salt.
