Come Home to Cooking

Come Home to Cooking

For beginners and experienced cooks

• Inspire your cooking.
• Master essential culinary concepts.
• Conserve your time, energy and resources.
• Share the joy of living and eating well.

Personalized Cooking Consultations
with KayNEW

• Full Announcement   How to Book a Phone Consultation

Work with What You Have

Burgundy Beets

It was Sunday afternoon, and we were cooking an early dinner with our son at his house in Berkeley. On our way there, my husband and I had stopped at the Marin farmers' market for our week's produce plus a wild Alaskan king salmon, which he now tended on the deck grill. Max and I were inside throwing together a huge green salad and some farro with braised onions to round things out. Since we'd already spent most of our visit together steeped in photos from Panama and then walking down the block to pick out a new collar for our family dog, there wasn't much time left before Don and I had to leave for a concert. So we were all jamming around and watching the clock. But our son also had a slab of chateaubriand on hand and the very real need to create other meals for the rest of his busy week ahead...

Casual Recipe for Cream of Green Spring Soup

Waste Not, Want Not

You paid for it. That mound of empty pea pods, asparagus stubs, and leek tops that piles up as you shell the peas, lop off the spearheads, and trim back the greens. It could easily weigh as much or more than the tender parts you bought them all for. We have to accept that fact when it comes to artichokes. But this lot is just tough, not tasteless. So unless you're in greater need of compost fodder, why throw away your money when you can make something wonderful and immediately edible out of all this instead? We call it "Creama Green"...

Casual Recipe for Braised Spring Vegetables

Love Your Peas and Carrots...Leeks and Asparagus too! 

There's only one time of year when we get to eat true spring vegetables, and this is it. That might seem like an obvious statement, but year-round availability of so much fresh produce has robbed us of our innate sense of seasonal awareness. The anticipation, even desperate longing for the annual gift of specific fruits and vegetables. Each one in the complete delight of its individual prime. Juicy ripe peaches and tomatoes immediately come to mind. But right now I'm talking about all the sweet and tender baby vegetables that spring to life when the fruit trees are still blossoming...

Easter Egg Hunt Breakfast

Before the darting, diving, shrieking pandemonium of an early morning egg hunt, we like to ground our bellies with a preliminary warm-up breakfast of hot cross buns and steaming hot chocolate. Then after boasting baskets so quickly filled up with treasure, we kick off wet and grass-stained slippers to head back inside for something more peaceful and sustaining. It's time for the playful preparation and eating of our traditional Easter egg hunt breakfast. The one that grabs our attention to extend the pleasure (and keeps us from having sulfury old eggs to throw out later in the week). And whereas most full-on breakfasts are a mad scramble to get all the parts done and served hot together, this relaxed menu is more like countryside picnic fare. In fact, if it's a sunbonnet sort of day, you could always carry everything outside for a languorous sprawl. And more coffee (or champagne)...

Come Home To Cooking ...by Phone

Announcing Personalized Cooking Consultations with Kay NEW

This year I'm shifting the focus of Come Home to Cooking to provide personalized cooking consultations. To make it just about you and your particular situation—special menu planning, recipe problem solving, trying to cook, shop, or stock your pantry with the seasons. To offer the immediate support both beginning and experienced cooks regularly need to figure it all out...

Refresh Your Self and Your Leftovers

We all know that aftermath turkey sandwiches are one of the best parts of Thanksgiving. Both simple and delicious. But clearing out the refrigerator gridlock of side dishes is more of a challenge. Especially when our minds and bodies are just as overloaded. So here are three casual soup recipes to easily combine and revive all the odd bits before either you or they get lost in the muddle. One for right now, and two to save for when the cupboard is bare.