Cooking

It may surprise some that pot pies have been around longer than Betty Crocker and Marie Callender. Pot pies have been feeding hungry humans since ancient times, nearly as far back as the Flintstones.

When I was starting out as a dietitian decades ago, I never could’ve predicted how much time I would ultimately devote to helping people escape an all-or-nothing mindset around food. It’s a trap we can easily fall into this time of year as the zeitgeist swings from holiday excess to new-year deprivation in the course of a month.

What’s your post-Thanksgiving Day plan? In years past, it might have included going to sleep early to wake up well before dawn to fight – sometimes literally – for the best Black Friday deals. Maybe it’s a trip to the theater to see the latest big movie release. I will be flying back to Washington from visiting my family. But if I were already at home, I would be taking it easy – and making a grilled cheese sandwich with leftover roast turkey and cranberry sauce.

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or first-timer when it comes to cooking for Thanksgiving, chances are you’ll encounter a little stress or confusion about at least one part of the holiday meal. We field many of the same questions year after year, so if you’re having the same concerns as Thanksgiving creeps closer, trust us, you’re not alone.

When it comes to our Thanksgiving menu, I stick to the basics.

Thanksgiving is a time for celebrating and sharing our blessings. Giving thanks and sharing with others are the cornerstones of our American Thanksgiving tradition.

Making something out of seemingly nothing is one of the best kitchen tricks imaginable. It’s a skill that can save you time, money and ingredients, helping you take care of yourself and the environment. Not all dishes lend themselves especially well to improvisation. Soup, however, does.

Here are two ways to make a maple bar, one using premade biscuit dough, the other making yeast dough from scratch. Both work well; the yeast dough is easy – it just takes a bit of extra effort. The cooking and glazing are mostly the same. We defer to Kevin Lee Jacob’s real maple syrup-based glaze.

What I want to eat at any given moment depends on the weather, my mood, how hungry I am, how much time I have or even a random craving. But with alcoholic drinks, most of the time my answer will be some sort of whiskey-based beverage. I love the notes of wood and spice that the spirit carries. Naturally, my go-to cocktail is an old-fashioned. It’s got a lovely mix of the spirit’s inherent flavors alongside sugar, fruit and a touch of bitterness for complexity.

Fall has arrived, and the temperatures are rapidly dropping. It’s time to dust off the large cooking pots, plug in the slow cooker, and heat the oven for some hefty, hearty, bone-warming dishes. When it comes to main-dish soups, stews, beans, and casseroles in wintertime, I lean toward the big-batch recipes. It’s a lazy guy’s “cook once and eat for several days” philosophy.

Ask Jamie Roberts what she does for a living and she’ll summarize her work as “I get to essentially draw and color all day.”

A friend once said there’s no such thing as soup season – it should be enjoyed year-round. As someone who just happily ordered a cup of chicken wild rice soup on a 90-degree day, I agree.

What happens when something you used to love is no longer good for you? Rachel Riggs found out the hard way. Her medical journey and its relation to her diet are what led to Riggs’s debut cookbook, “In Good Health.”

The pasta universe here on planet Earth is vast. Galaxies of pasta shapes and pasta dishes can be found around the world. It’s still unknown whether aliens on other planets share humankind’s passion for pasta; I’ll wager they do. Are pasta-seeking space aliens the cause of so many unexplained UAPs (UFOs)? Here’s a small selection of American and Italian pasta dishes that I’ve always enjoyed and invite you to enjoy as well.

There was a time when canned chow mein, three canned Asian vegetables, chow mein noodles, a box of fortune cookies, and basic soy sauce were the only Asian foods available in grocery stores. There were also a couple of frozen chow mein TV dinners, long since discontinued. Our Asian culinary experiences were mostly limited to these and an occasional outing to a Chinese American restaurant. We’ve since become more informed and sophisticated in our consumption of Asian foods.

When visiting her home country of Malaysia, Alice Koh and her husband Shane Sorey like to explore other areas during the trip.

The popularity of plant-based dishes, boosted by the internet, has been remarkable over the last several decades. Meatless dishes are often delicious and colorful, and many are developed with an eye on nutrition and healthfulness. Today’s column isn’t about meat versus vegetarian dishes, or even necessarily about nutrition and healthfulness.