Beginner's Box: Healthy omelet

In these days of the salmonella egg scare, you can still safely enjoy scrambled eggs in this recipe.

Kitchen Call: Twists on French toast

I once worked for woman who couldn’t bear the mention of French toast. Having grown up on a farm during the Great Depression, she explained, bread, milk and eggs were always available. So when the cupboard was bare, French toast might be on the menu for breakfast, lunch or dinner — sometimes all of the above.

Take a load off your feet with a cool one — slush, that is

Mrs. Marty Kline had this habit. Anybody coming to her door on a hot summer afternoon was invited for a “cool one” on her porch. Those expecting a beer or cocktail were disappointed — at first. Mrs. Marty invented her own Summer Slush, or perfected it from a magazine recipe. Anyway, her filling but cooling  concoction gained her fame in her neighborhood in the 1930s.

Boiling Point: Pepper power — the stuff of good suppers

Your mother’s stuffed-pepper recipe can be the groundwork for a tour of cuisines.

Wise to the Word: Fuzzy melon

This is not part of the fuzzy series of cocktails. It’s the winter melon, almost as popular as watermelon in Asian cuisines. Its medium green skin is covered with a hairlike fuzz, which must be peeled. Underneath is a mildly flavored flesh that takes on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked with. You’ll find them in Chinese soups and stir fries.

Beginner's Box: Summer cooler cake

Looking for an easy, cool dessert? Dress up a store-bought pound cake.

The Illinois State Fair's best chocolate recipes

We present the top three winning recipes in the Calling All Chocolates contest from the 2010 Illinois State Fair.

Winning recipes from the 2010 Illinois State Fair

The culinary competitions at the Illinois State Fair yield a treasure-trove of recipes. This year's fair was no exception. Here are a number of winning frecipes from the 2010 fair.

Works Well: Gourmet favorites

Food fans lamented the demise of Gourmet magazine, the first food periodical. It died Oct. 5, 2009, but the cookbook, “The Best of Gourmet: The World at Your Table,” preserves some of the magazine’s favorite recipes.

Taste of travel: New Mexico offers more than beautiful scenery

Driving 1,000 miles through parts of New Mexico gave me a taste of travel that began — and ended with chili. Green or red? That’s the question asked by many restaurant servers. I opted to taste them both.

An apple a day: Simple fruit makes breakfast sweet

Want to add an elegant touch to your family’s breakfast? Try apples. Full-flavored and plentiful, they’re the perfect solution.

Kitchen Call: Serious summer guy grilling

Ever wonder why restaurant steaks taste so good? Besides getting first pick of the most beautifully marbled, thickest, juiciest steaks, restaurants enhance the outside with seasonings.

Chef Fehmi: Incredibly edible eggs

Since the great culinary era of the French chef Auguste Escoffier, eggs have occupied a very special corner in international gastronomy. Most home cooks view them as the easiest of foods to prepare.

Trading Post: State Fair recipes from past years

Dotti Milner of Springfield, Ill., shares two of her blue-ribbon winning recipes from past Illinois State Fair culinary contests.

Beets can't be beat, especially when oven-roasted

I grew beets for the first time this year, and just harvested a crop of the lovely fuchsia-hued veggie. As a kid, my mother prepared them in a sticky hot glaze made with sugar and vinegar. I’m still not a fan of that particular recipe, preferring to oven-roast them instead.

Boiling Point: No common ground when it comes to corn

Forget the expert advice. Jim reports an easy way to cook sweet corn perfectly, plus a recipe to separate your teeth from the ears.

The underrated eggplant is more than just faintly delicious

Most of us never encounter an eggplant this side of parmesan. We’re missing a noble vegetable unlike any other.

Kitchen Call: Shhh! Some summery secret ingredients

Whether professional or homemade, every cook develops a personal bag of tricks. The big decision is whether to hold onto or share. Some culinary secrets fall in to the category of techniques; others might be the ingredients themselves.

How to make a meal from farmers-market foods

To see how well farmers markets can meet the needs of shoppers, it was decided to conduct a little experiment. Create a meal for a fundraising get-together for about 25 people prepared as close to 100 percent as possible with meat, produce, pasta and other items found at local markets.

Going plum wild: What to do with all that fruit

Have too many plums? Here is what to do.


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