For average folks who just love cooking but aren’t master chefs, cooking something that is doable but still looks impressive can be a challenging task. It’s difficult to find a meal or even a side dish that brings the “wow factor” to the table but that is also manageable for moderately experienced cooks.

This is especially true for cooks, like myself, who don’t necessarily have exotic sauces and herbs lying around or the culinary skills to make vegetables look like flowers, soufflés rise with grace, or an artistic eye for plating a sauce with an elegant flourish. It’s the reason why the Food Network’s top 10 recipes are all comfort food with ingredients that we all recognize and cooking methods we know.

We’re willing to be adventurous, but who wants to buy a whole bottle of fish sauce for just one recipe or risk making a meal way beyond our skill level that will only end in disaster and disappointment?

So, for my remaining garden carrots, I wanted to find a simple way to make them look gorgeous, as in Stephen Fry sort of style of “gorgeous” but without the British accent. I truly wanted them to be “moist and sticky and lovely.” I decided on glazed carrots, which are certainly moist and sticky, and by the amount of butter involved, lovely by default.

I tried out two different Glazed Carrot recipes, one from the amazing food Network host Alton Brown and the other from the recipe web site cdkitchen. Do both taste delicious? Yes. Are both almost ridiculously easy to make? Oh yes. But, the best part is: They look like they took a lot of work and cooking skill.

They look as beautiful alongside a steak as they do simply on their own. Garnish with a dash of parsley if you’d like, although these carrots shine by themselves.

[Now let’s head into the kitchen…]

While perusing my mother’s cookbook collection and back issues of Gourmet magazine (R.I.P.), I found this amazing magazine-sized paperback book called Quick and Delicious Breads by Johna Blinn. The book is only 56 pages long, and according to the red price sticker, a steal at 60 cents in 1989 (but even more of a steal now at 95 cents on Amazon, when you consider inflation).

Seriously, how wildly attractive is this cover?

Thumbing through this delightful book, I found the simplest yet tastiest sounding recipes for breads of all styles, from Blueberry Applesauce Bread to Cracked Wheat Long Johns (whatever those are). But I knew I had struck gold when I found a recipe for Carrot-Raisin Bread. I decided to substitute pecans for the raisins and top the loaf with coconut for extra flavor. The result: a bread both delicious but also healthy since the recipe calls for very little oil.

A few things to consider before diving in: You, as the baker, have the freedom to substitute like items for like items. For example, you can choose do use dried cranberries instead of raisins or walnuts instead of pecans.

Do not, however, exchange out ingredients necessary to the chemical processes needed for making bread. For example, baking soda cannot be substituted for baking powder. Also, reducing amounts of ingredients like salt, baking powder, baking soda, and eggs can significantly alter the consistency of the final product and possibly ruin it.

To cut calories in recipes calling for a lot of oil, you can substitute unsweetened applesauce at a 1:1 ratio for the oil. If you choose to use sweetened applesauce, you might want to reduce the amount of sugar you use to avoid having an overly sweet item. Do not, however, substitute applesauce for butter as this will often ruin your baked good.

[Now let’s head into the kitchen…]

There is something almost spiritual about growing your own garden and eating the fruits of your labor. The satisfaction of creating something from dirt and seeds and hard work is indescribable.

After all your careful planting, watering and weeding, praying for more rain, praying for less rain, coaxing of small sprouts to stay strong despite windy gusts, and fighting off bugs without using toxic chemicals, you walk out to your garden one day with a basket to harvest the bright, plump fruits and tender, fresh vegetables. And you know this is the crowning achievement of all your work. You, the gardener, have done what few others ever do − grow your own food.

Although I strongly believe that homegrown food need not be tinkered with to make it a delicious meal, I’m not the biggest fan of eating raw carrots, although the ones I harvested did look mighty tasty on their own.

So, for those of you who are in agreement with my views on raw carrots, I offer you the three (technically, four) recipes I found and used for making the best use of my homegrown carrots.

To begin…

When I pulled those bright orange root vegetables out of the soil and contemplated their futures, it should come as no surprise that I instantly thought: Carrot Muffins. (Oh, how I do love muffins!) But, these are not just any carrot muffins. These wonderful bundles of goodness have walnuts and perhaps some magic (aka coconut).

I found this recipe on a cute, little blog titled For the Love of Cooking, which also had photos (Yay!). Well, the photos won me over, and I ended up making three batches of these muffins on three separate occasions because they were such a smashing success with the people I shared them with (the most voracious fan, not surprisingly, being a pregnant friend of mine).

However, even if your carrots are store-bought and not pulled from the earth by your own hands, you can make these tasty muffins, perfect for tucking into your lunch sack or nibbling on as a post-dinner snack.

[Now let’s head into the kitchen…]

Growing up, the Joy of Cooking was the holy text of baking and cooking in my house. As far as I could tell, its stained pages held the secrets to cooking success, even if it lacked photos or clarity on what “cook until done” actually meant for the trickier recipes.

I recently returned to it for the pleasure of making once more its Quick Banana Bread recipe.  There are two reasons why it’s the most dog-eared page in the book and why a bookmark sticks out from its spot among the stained and well-read pages.

First, my family almost intentionally lets bananas ripen past their time every time we bring a bunch home from the supermarket. And second, it’s perhaps the easiest (yet, still tasty) recipe for bread in existence.

With a respectful nod to authors Irma Rombauer and Marion Becker, I present to you the clarified and photographed step-by-step Quick and Easy Banana Bread recipe from their famous 1931 cookbook.

[Now let’s head into the kitchen…]

In New England, there’s an old proverb that stands true, year after year: “In New England we have nine months of winter and three months of darned poor sledding.” Now that snow has fallen twice and another storm is scheduled for tomorrow, I have donned my oven mittens and proverbial apron and set about on making some warm comfort food.

If you’ve been following my cooking at all, you know my love for muffins. And today’s oven adventure is yet another step into making those tasty, single-serving bundles of goodness. This time, the star ingredient is bananas, mostly because I have a bunch that, hidden under a loaf of bread on the counter, had gone unseen and ripened just past their prime.

All the ingredients, with the exception of the bananas, are pantry staples, making this an easy recipes to whip up in three simple steps. If you fetch some bananas today, they ought to be ready in time for some therapeutic post-Christmas/bring-on-the-New-Year baking.

Just as a reminder: Don’t let the hubbub and noise of the holidays keep you from taking some time for yourself to just relax and reminisce over the blessings of the year. You have survived another year of high gas prices, high unemployment rates, and high demands on your time.

Find a quiet corner, pour yourself a glass of wine, and let yourself get lost in a book for a few hours. You’ll find it to be absolutely refreshing. [Now let’s head into the kitchen…]

Growing up, my parents took my sister and me to church every Sunday. But before we left, all nicely clothed and coiffed, my parents would throw a bunch of vegetables and some kind of meat (usually beef) into the slow cooker. By the time we returned home hours later, the hearty, rich smell of roasted meat would tease our noses and make our mouths water in anticipation of Sunday lunch.

My parents also used the slow cooker to cook meats to tender perfection overnight. In the morning, our mouths tasted bowls of cereal but our noses smelled seasoned carrots, potatoes, onion, celery, and chuck roast. Sometimes, it was steak tips, and on St. Pat’s Day, it was corned beef and cabbage.

That slow cooker eventually wore out from heavy use and was replaced by a new one, and still, we let the slow cooker cook for us. This Tangy BBQ sandwich recipe relies on the tried-and-true reliability of the slow cooker to enhance the BBQ flavors and make the meat tender enough to fork split.
[Now let’s head into the kitchen…]