sörenberg bahnen

This is a very EASY recipe because most of it can be made ahead of time.  It is a FUN breakfast to serve company or a bunch of rowdy teenagers or a breakfast buffet crowd because it can be finished off last minute!! There are no real measurements for this recipe; just one circle of toast, a pinch of cheese, one egg and one slice of precooked bacon for each serving (use the regular thickness bacon  because thick bacon won't work for this recipe). These little beauties are quite filling and two of them make a hearty breakfast. The "do ahead part" is to spray the cupcake pan generously with vegetable spray, then put a "toast circle" (un-buttered) in the bottom of each cupcake well. Next, pre-fry the bacon. I do mine in the oven (the day ahead) because it comes out perfectly flat and easy to work with.  Click HERE for my post on cooking bacon in the oven. Bake the bacon at 375 (no need to preheat) for about 20 minutes, or if you are frying it, cook it about 2/3 don

Back on the west side with my friends Sacha and Scott, we decided to check out Guatelinda, another place that has been on my list forever (nothing makes me happier than checking things off my list). I’m forcing them to venture away from Spice Nation, at least every once in awhile. Guatelinda is in the little strip mall on Lafayette Road where Saigon was originally if you are a west side frequenter. Side note, whenever I drive around over there, I am a hazard on the roads, looking everywhere for potential places to eat. They bring you chips and salsa to start—can’t say there was anything really particularly interesting about these. I did like that they gave you a little carafe of salsa and your own little personal bowl, so you could double dip with impunity. But they were your basic chips (not warm or anything) and a very thin, slightly sweet, salsa. Of course I still ate some and even managed to spill some on my white sweater. For lunch, I found myself perusing the last page of the me

One of the things I love about my partnership with Allrecipes.com is that they actually make me take these things called, “vacations.” Apparently these periodic breaks are quite common in corporate America, and supposedly help the employee relax, rest, and recharge. Since I’m going to be golfing, that’s not going to happen, but still, I appreciate the time.   I’ll be off for a week, and by “off,” I really mean “off.” While comments will be published, I will not be monitoring the blog while out, so when it comes to cooking questions, you’ll be at the mercy of fellow foodwishers and Google. Good luck with that. Anyway, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving, and I look forward to getting back to work next week. Enjoy! .

Every year around holiday time, I see people posting recipes for low-fat and no-fat mashed potatoes, which I find as sad, as I do perplexing. There’s no sane doctor alive, or bartender for that matter, who will tell you eating a scoop of these mashed potatoes a few times a year will, in any way, negatively effect your health. So what’s up with the reduced-fat holiday potatoes? Isn’t that the reason we try to eat well all year, so on Thanksgiving we can bathe guilt-free in gravy? Sure, serving your loved ones potatoes with a pound of butter in them on a regular basis would be cause for alarm…or at least a glance at any recently purchased life insurance policies…but for truly special occasions, it’s crazy not to enjoy such a pleasure. By the way, this is no viral-video gimmick. Those star chefs you see Anthony Bourdain dry-humping every week (sorry, I was channeling my inner Anthony Bourdain) all use at least this much butter, and as legend has it, some even flirt with equal parts. Of co

In my family, if there’s an errand to run on the weekend, we usually end up planning a meal around it. The other day my son had saved his allowance and was desperate to go to Toys R Us to spend it, so we needed to be in Castleton. The age-old dilemma then comes about…where to eat in Castleton? There are so few options that aren’t chains and that we can agree on. So when he and hubby decided on Castleton Grill, I was fine with it because I had only been once and it was so long ago, and I knew they would have something on the menu to appease everyone. I was surprised to find that they offer breakfast on the weekends, which is always a good thing to know about. They also offer Smoking Goose bacon, which is even better. It was the day of the time change when we went, so I was really torn between breakfast and lunch since my body clock hadn’t fully adjusted. We decided to get a little biscuit they offered on the breakfast menu to split and try, and then just order lunch. The biscuit ($3) w

Thanksgiving is almost here, and we'll assume you already have a great turkey and gravy recipe, so today we are focusing on the side dishes (btw, if you are still sans bird recipe, don't panic, and just check out our critically acclaimed, two-part video series, How to Make Turkey and Gravy ).   Everyone knows, it's not a great turkey that makes the meal, it's what you pair it with. What good is a beautiful bird sitting next to a bunch of so-so sides? With that in mind, here's a little collection of thanksgiving appropriate dishes from days gone by. Don't let the poor producton value on the older videos fool you, these are some great sides, and would make a lovely addition to your holiday spread. Enjoy! Creamed Spinach Creamy Corn Custard Pecan and Apricot Sourdough Bread Stuffing Green Bean and Blue Cheese Gratin Lime and Chipotle Glazed Sweet Potatoes Celery Root and Potato Puree Cold Broccoli Salad Cheesy Broccoli Gratin Butter Roasted Cauliflower

This may be one of the closest restaurants to my house, but I haven’t been since I was in high school. Weird. Although one of the reasons is because of my son’s nut allergies, we rarely eat at Chinese places as a family (so many peanuts and cashews). My son was at a birthday party and my daughter was excited to go out without him, so we gave it a go. The first thing you notice about this place is how friendly everyone was. Our server and the manager/owner I’m guessing both asked if it was our first time and were excited to have us. They explained that everything is made from scratch and seemed quite proud of their product. We were excited to try it. I like that the menu is a little more paired down than many Chinese restaurants. It is still big, but not so big that it is overwhelming. They also had several dinner options based on the size of your party. We figured they must think these things are some of their better dishes, so we went with the “dinner for 3” option at $36. The only t

Every year, you dream about putting out fresh, homemade biscuits on the holiday table; but fear of failure, and the convenience of those popping fresh tubes, makes it nothing more than an annual fantasy. Then, you found out about these cream biscuits. Instead of cutting butter into the flour, we’re using butterfat-laced heavy cream, which not only makes the recipe fast and easy, but also produces a biscuit that’s light, moist, and flaky. To that end, try and get some self-rising flour. You can make your own (see below), but for whatever reason, the pre-mixed stuff seems to work better.  As far as cutting goes, I don’t like to roll the dough too thin just to get more cuts. I do it about 5/8-inch thick, cut six nice biscuits, and then use the trimmings to get 4 or 5 more. You can get 12, but that depends on the exact size of your cutter. The nice thing about this dough is that re-rolling doesn’t seem to damage the texture. If you do decide to raise your biscuit game this holiday season,

I finally have someone who lives west to meet up on west side with me on a regular basis. I met my friend @zigged at Tacos 46 the other day for lunch. Apparently, this place has recently located into a new space from a very small place it was in before.  The new digs are pretty spacious, if not overly orange. You order at the front counter and they bring your food out to you.  We kind of shared everything so we could get a taste of many things (all tacos), and I would say in general we ordered too much food (we ordered 6).  But I was really glad we tried a bunch of them. All the basic tacos are $2 each, with the exception of a couple of the “deluxe” ones we ordered, which were $2.50 each. Honestly, I could be finished after two of them, so it’s a pretty cheap place to eat lunch if you want it to be. My favorite taco was probably the al pastor (which seems to usually be my favorite). The pork had nice crisp edges-the tacos are simply topped with cilantro and onions unless you ask othe

Warning: this is not vichyssoise. I enjoy making fun of arbitrarily designated food holidays as much as the next food blogger, and like many, I use them as a convenient excuse to repost seasonally appropriate recipes, not really caring how the day came about, but National Vichyssoise Day is different. Seriously, someone needs to find out how it came to be that we’re celebrating a chilled potato and leek soup in the middle of November. I took a quick look, and while there are countless references to the day, as usual, no info on its genesis. As a B-list YouTube celebrity, I’m far too busy to do any further research, but if any of you food detectives crack the case, please let me know. Shockingly, I’ve not done a vichyssoise video yet, so you’ll have to settle for this incredibly comforting ham and potato soup. While not as seasonally inappropriate as Vichyssoise, it’s delicious nonetheless, and one of our most popular soup recipes ever. Enjoy! Click here for the ingredients, and to re

I don't want to get bogged down in the details, but sometime Friday we'll be posting our annual Thanksgiving cranberry sauce recipe. One hint, and possible spoiler, I really think you'll go nuts for this. Stay tuned! Photo courtesy of USDA

This is a place that I have been hearing a lot about. I was excited to try it, but as always, wanted to give it a couple of weeks before I ventured in. I met my friend @wibia there one day because he was wanted to try it as well, and then when another friend asked to go a week or so later, I went again.  The menu is actually pretty appealing to me—lots of things that sound interesting—I had a hard time making up my mind. On my first visit, the server recommended the walleye fish and chips (lunch portion is $11), so that’s what I went with. Wibia had the Cuban pretzel flatbread ($9) and we shared an appetizer of the Boursin mac and cheese ($7). I really liked the fish and chips. The walleye was very fresh and was done in a beer batter. It was a thick, very crisp, batter and you could distinctly taste the beer in it. It also came with plenty of housemade fries, which were tasty as well, although could have been maybe a tad crisper. My favorite part of my meal was the house tartar sauc