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I always know when my husband calls me on my cell phone, for it suddenly will start playing “The Look of Love” as performed by Susanna Hoffs. (I uploaded it from my Austin Powers CD). That was our wedding dance song. Every time I hear it, my heart flutters.

Do you feel that way about your special someone? If you do, you might want to share a special meal for two tomorrow in celebration of Valentine’s Day. You could go out and enjoy dinner together at your favorite restaurant or the restaurant where you shared your first date (I met my husband and Applebee’s).

But then, there is something about a home-cooked meal that says “I love you” even more than an nice restaurant. The good thing is that cooking for two can be done and can be a lot of fun if you pour your heart and soul into the meal planning and preparations. (Of course, if you’re just thinking about this today, you might be a bit pressed for time.) That’s why I’m posting this today (besides it being a Wednesday, the day I usually post).
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Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Tomorrow The Year of the Rat begins, so I thought it would be a nice touch to talk a little about one of my favorite cuisines — Chinese!

There are few festivities that are felt around the world on quite the grand scale as that the Chinese New Year. In fact, I really feel for all those people in China who might not make it home for the holiday because of the dreadful weather.

This is an event that affects people all around the globe and the celebrations are quite exotic and a lot of fun for everyone involved. (Did you know that now is the time to put into place new feng shui remedies? If not, you might check out my dear friend Anna Maria Prezio at fengshuiharmony.net.)

One thing that many outsiders may not realize is that several of the aspects of the Chinese New Year celebration have a very specific purpose and meaning — including the food! Whether you are Chinese are not, I know very few people in the world that couldn’t use a small degree of good fortune to make things in their worlds run a little more smoothly.
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Christmas cookies are as much a part of the Christmas tradition for many as a visit from Old St. Nick himself. As I’ve probably mentioned before, Christmas is almost synonymous with cookies for me. My grandmother made all kinds — Spanish roscos, sugar cookies, Corn Flakes clusters, jam filled cookies, the list goes on and on.

Christmas cookies are often prepared in hopes of Santa’s pending arrival by children who are as excited as they can possibly be. Their little heads are filled with all sorts of visions of great things to come as they dance around house. Preparing cookies during the holidays can be a great time of bonding with your little ones, but can also be a trying time if you don’t follow a few of the tips and hints list below.

If you want to make baking Christmas cookies with your little ones the very best experience for you all, make sure you do it on a day when this is the only thing on your calendar. You do not want to rush through this time of bonding with your child locking in a few precious memories of great times spent together. This is one thing that you want your children to look back on at Christmas with fondness.
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Christmas is a time of year when families around the world gather together and observe traditions that are the same for them year after year and yet vastly different from those that other families share around the block. There are very few universal Christmas traditions any more and there is nothing wrong with that. In America however, there are some recipes that many people consider traditional holiday cooking and there is little that will be done to dissuade these opinions. The truth is that many of these traditional holiday foods are largely traditional in specific regions rather than the United States having one nation-wide traditional Christmas dinner.

For example, my family usually served turkey and ham. Appetizers always included black olives and a relish made with pepperoccini. Many families are like mine and serve both ham and turkey. While others answer quite quickly that it is neither. One of the best all-American Christmas cooking ideas I’ve ever seen was lasagna. There are no right or wrong traditions — only those traditions that work well for you and your family. If you feel the need to change a long-standing tradition for a large extended family, by all means discuss it with everyone involved. Otherwise it is your tradition and you should feel free to make it your own.
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Each year America has a holiday in November that has taken on almost a religious reverence. It happens tomorrow and we call it Thanksgiving. We give this holiday so much honor that it ranks with us along with Christmas and Easter as an important holiday in the hearts of family and as a nation. But this holiday, so rich with tradition, has it origins in the earliest days of the founding of this nation.

For me, I’ve always associated Thanksgiving with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, pumpkin pie and large gatherings of family and friends. It is a time of abundance and being thankful for the richness of life. But, the early years of the explorers who came to the American continent were difficult ones indeed. Those explorers, the Pilgrims, faced harsh weather, unpredictable relations with the natives, disease and other challenges as they carved out homes from the wilderness they found here. Because their earliest homesteads were in the northeast, the winters were harsh. Their ability to build houses that could keep them warm, as well as their ability to find sufficient food, was a constant worry to the men and women trying to raise families in America.
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I bet you’ve seen plenty of booklets and magazine articles extolling their brand of Halloween cooking ideas. But have you seen any that talk about what to prepare for the following day?

The Day of the Dead or La Dia de los Muertos is an important holiday in Mexican culture. It is actually a three-day celebration, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. It is an opportunity to honor those who have left us behind and a very healthy approach to death that many other cultures would do well to adopt. This is a family event and as such there is typically a good deal of great food involved.

If this is your first celebration of the Day of the Dead you are not alone. Most Americans never adopt this custom and those that are interested enough to try out some of the cuisine of this important day in Mexican society are very rarely versed in the tradition, which makes it difficult.
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Guest Writer: Mike Selvon

Cooking is something that ties people together around the world. It is something we are familiar with. Not everyone has to cook for themselves but they have seen it done.

It is universal and connects us in a way that goes beyond age, gender, creed, or race. Traditions are made through the use of food. Celebrations call for special dishes especially prepared for that occasion. A birthday cake, a stuffed turkey or even a ham can all be foods that bring people together.

It does not have to be complicated. There are free recipes everywhere from the grocery store to the internet. Most dishes are not hard to make nor do they require ingredients not found in most grocery stores.

It all begins with a few basic items that every kitchen should have. Cooking utensils make the top of the list. There is no cooking performed without some basic tools. Read more »

Abuela was the consummate cook, the perfect grandmother from a Norman Rockwell painting. My early holiday memories are filled with the smells and tastes that came from her kitchen. Pumpkin pies, homemade pizza, enchiladas and a score of Christmas cookies. I especially remember the delicate, flaky donut-shaped roscos — cookies made chiefly from three ingredients: white wine, melted butter and flour. A teaspoon of anise seeds cooked in the melting butter and then discarded, as well as a final dusting of cinnamon sugar after the cookies baked, were the only other flavorings.

One year, I ate so many, sneaking out of my bed at night to grab just a few more, that I earned the nickname “bottomless stomach.” I remember countless nights sitting at her kitchen table sharing holiday thoughts, a cup of tea with sugar and real cream and a couple of roscos before bed. Each flaky morsel, dunked into the tea and quickly removed, melted in my mouth like snowflakes in a California valley.

Today, whenever I take out the cookie sheets or baking pans and create my own warm smells of home, I can’t help but feel like I’m channeling Abuela’s spirit.

NOTE: This short essay was first published in the October 2004 edition of The Nature of Writing News, an online newsletter.

Movies and food: a topic I think everyone can expound on. For some, a movie just isn’t a movie without the popcorn. For others, it’s a box of Goobers and a large Coke. For me, it’s going to the ice cream parlor after the show.

For some reason I’ve always associated ice cream with the movies. After exiting a movie theater, I feel compelled to migrate to the nearest ice cream shop to indulge in a two-scoop sundae. Maybe it’s because there was an ice cream shop near every movie theater in my hometown.

I remember, every time my parents took my sister and me to the movies, we would go for ice cream afterwards. I was partial to Jamocha Almond Fudge and Chocolate ice cream, slavered in hot fudge and adorned with whipped cream, chopped almonds and a maraschino cherry. And, if we were lucky, a tasty, flaky cookie would jut out of the side of the whipped cream dollop on top, hinting at the cone we were missing out on.

When I was growing up, the after-movie jaunt to the ice cream parlor was as much a part of the movie-going experience as the family-sized bucket of hot buttered popcorn. It was such an unconscious, intertwined part of the whole affair that when I went to the movies for the first time with someone outside of my family, I was shocked to discover that other people did not feel the same way!

However, the lure of discussing the intricacies of film over a tall glass of ice cream made many a convert to my family’s tradition.

Nowadays I don’t go to the theater — I wait for movies to come out on DVD and watch them on my surround sound system. This way I don’t have to deal with gum at the bottom of my shoes, people discussing the movie while it’s playing or the rising costs of movie tickets.

But the tradition lives on. When my husband and I sit down to a movie, we pop a bag of popcorn in the microwave. And, after the movie is complete, we go to the freezer, take out a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s and dish about the intricacies of the film at our dining table.