So how can one avoid creating chicken chew toys? By using a thermometer to measure the temperature of the chicken. You can get an instant read thermometer or one you leave in the bird as it cooks (both $10 - $20 at Target or similar). Or if like me you are easily distracted by more interesting things like a good friend's email or a tasty chocolate dessert, you can get one of my favorite cool tools:  a Rosle electronic thermometer. The way this helpful tool works is that you place the probe in the thickest, meatiest part of the chicken and then plug the other end into the digital unit. Put the chicken into the oven, snaking the cable out of the oven door, then set the unit for the desired temp (in this case pick "poultry"). Once your chicken reaches 165 degrees, the thermometer beeps and you take the chicken out. Voila! Moist, tender chicken. Every. Single. Time.​

I began experimenting with roast chicken breasts after visiting one of my favorite barbeque restaurants in Manchester, NH. If you're from the South, you probably don't believe good barbeque exists in New Hampshire but really, KC's is a great place with the packed parking lot, caddies of sauces and naughty t-shirts to prove it. Normally at such a restaurant, it's the ribs, brisket or pulled pork that win your heart, but my first love at KC's is the chicken. So much so that after several delicious visits - to a restaurant 45 minutes from my house! - I accosted the owner in the bar to find out where he buys his chicken breasts and why they are so good. He revealed that they are ordinary Purdue chicken breasts and his only secret is the barbecue mantra, low and slow. I have been cooking them that way - either to eat as is or to put into other recipes like pot pies, chicken salad or enchiladas - ever since. To make incredibly tender slow roasted chicken breasts, see my recipe here.

There are other variables that matter too: organic or conventional; bone or no bone; skin on or off; flipped during cooking or not flipped. But for a huge taste upgrade, get a thermometer and use it. You will be shocked at how much it helps.

Here is a link to a Rosle digital meat thermometer.

Here is a link to an instant read thermometer.

Here is a link to an old-school leave-in meat thermometer.

Finally, if you peer into your oven and find a dry, overcooked chicken drowning in a pool of it's own juices, call me to commiserate! And if you like, my dog Bentley will be happy to take any leftovers off your hands.

My Grandma Conn was a bundle of energy; my brothers and I nicknamed her "Hyper Harriet". She had a long and healthy life, living to age 94, married 67 years and always surrounded by friends. One of those friends, a German woman named Hulda, gave my grandma one of my favorite cookie recipes: Bruna Kakor. They are a deceptively simple sugar cookie, and since they are patted into large rectangles and sliced into strips after baking, simple to prepare as well. When I serve them at parties, people don't tend to immediately gravitate to them - they are not flashy, they have no frosting or sprinkles - but once tasted, the plate quickly empties. You can find the recipe for Bruna Kakor here.

There is no special story about another favorite cookie of mine: I found it on the back of a package of butterscotch chips. With all the nut allergies out there, nut cookies have fallen out of favor, but when I serve this recipe to my pecan-eating friends, they fall in love just like I did. I must credit Guittard with coming up with this delicious flavor combination! The recipe is here.

Brownies are one of the simplest treats to make, and one of the recipes we prepare in my beginner classes. A few years ago, I ran a brownie taste-test at my husband's office, baking three pans of brownies: Pillsbury, Ghirardelli and homemade (adding chips to the Pillsbury recipe so all would be the same). When I called my husband at work to see how the taste test was going, he sent me a photo. The Pillsbury pan was barely touched, the Ghirardelli pan was about half-eaten and only a couple of crumbs were left of the homemade. When the votes were counted later, over 75% voted the homemade best, with most of the remaining votes for the Ghiradelli and one lone vote for Pillisbury. It's worth noting that the homemade brownies can be prepared in one bowl (just like the box), have only three more ingredients than the box and might take 3-4 minutes longer. There are probably fancier homemade brownie recipes out there, but for simple chocolate fudge goodness, this one is wonderful, and the recipe is here. One note, because they have so much butter, they are not a good choice for outdoor summer gatherings. Chill before slicing.

Finally, I just recently came upon a recipe for "Compost Cookies". I'm not sure if the name comes from the large and strange list of ingredients, or from the ground coffee that gives them a compost-like look, but they are incredibly tasty. Developed by the Momofuku restaurant in New York and adapted from the blog Table for Two, you can try the recipe here.

Everyone loves a sweet treat now and then; the next time you "need" a batch of cookies, why not try something new?

I've been hungry for fresh raspberries for weeks, but have been too frugal to actually put them in my cart. So imagine my surprise when I found a 9 ounce container of organic raspberries for $5.99 while shopping today! I haven't bought organic raspberries before, but there must have been a late-season crop or I stumbled on a really good sale, so I quickly snapped them up. I was even more surprised an hour later to find the same size carton of conventional (not organic) raspberries for sale at another store for a mere $3.99, and at this very moment, I have over 1-1/2 pounds of raspberries in my refrigerator. Given the short life of a raspberry, it's a good thing that my daughter and I are both crazy for them - but the bounty also presented the opportunity for a taste-test. When we ate them side-by-side, we found that the organic was sweeter, more tender and had a much more intense and complex flavor although of course both were very good. Note that organic raspberries, like many organics, have a shorter shelf-life than their conventional counterparts - usually only a day or two. Raspberries are best served without much preparation; two of my favorite ways to have them are with greek yogurt, homemade granola and jam (granola recipe here) or with my simple-to-prepare chocolate mousse (recipe here). My third favorite way to eat them is from the box on the way home from the farmstand or grocery store. 

About 5 years ago, a friend had a terrible accident (from which she has now thankfully recovered), and I took dinner over one night during her recovery. I knew that the family typically ate organic chicken, so I bought some and prepared the organic and conventional chicken with the same recipe and taste-tested both. I found that while the organic costs about twice as much, it is at least twice as flavorful and tender. Bell and Evans is a nationally-distributed brand of organic chicken and it comes tightly sealed with a shelf life of at least three weeks so you don't have to freeze it (which degrades the flavor). I love grilled chicken with peanut sauce both as an appetizer and for a family meal served over pasta. My recipe for grilled chicken is here, and the recipe for the peanut sauce - which is a little more involved than the typical You Can Cook recipe, but extremely delicious - is here.

Life is short and we are busy..but if you do find yourself near a farmstand or in the organic section of your local grocery, pick up some special raspberries, squash or chicken. No matter how you prepare them, you will not regret your purchase!

Every year, my college friends and I go away for a weekend, and this year, we decided to visit Vermont. Besides some great hiking, fabulous fall foliage and wonderful time together, we found some truly amazing food.

Farm to table restaurants...fall festivals...a distillery...cooking classes...who knew that second least-populated state in the US was such a tasty place?

Our first restaurant meal was at the Worthy Kitchen in Woodstock, VT. The food and drink is fresh, local, creative and worth the trip. My "caprese" salad above was definitely a re-interpretation (the orange pieces are butternut squash), but what flavor! The poutine, with chunks of crispy pork and shreds of Vermont cheddar, was hoovered down by our group. I've love to give you a recipe from the Worthy Kitchen, but a big part of what they do is create dishes based on locally available ingredients, so even if I did have recipes, I don't think they would taste the same. For those travelling near Woodstock, the Worthy Kitchen website is here.

Girls' weekends always require a little alcohol, so we stopped at the Vermont Spirits Distillery for some taste-testing. They offer a number of vodkas, although I've never understood how a grain neutral spirit like vodka can vary much in taste, these certainly do. My favorites however were the fruit liqueurs, blueberry and strawberry. Both smelled like a bowl of crushed ripe fruit in the summer sunshine, and made great cosmopolitans. For the Vermont Spirits Distillery website, click here, and for my cosmopolitan recipe, click here.

At the Woodstock Artisan Fair, there were several stalls with amazing food offerings. The Chubby Chicks had an array of jams and jellies which they make from produce that they often pick themselves. I tasted a few jams including blueberry and raspberry chocolate and bought a jar of strawberry-jalapeno called Blood Sweat and Tears. If you can get your hands on some good pepper jam (Chubby Chicks website here), you can make a simple throwback appetizer with it (recipe here) that your friends will love.

I also met Tom, who spent a year perfecting his tomatillo salsa. The brilliant thing about Tom's salsa is that the flavors hit you in waves as you eat it - sweet, smokey, spicy and then the afterburn. There are three heat levels including a truly mild "mild" and a semi-blistering "hot". Instead of opening a jar of Tostitos salsa for a party, why not an upgrade? Tom's website is here, and he has a couple of good-looking recipes as well. If you grill some fresh swordfish, a bit of salsa verde on the side is fabulous.

At my last stop, I ran into a laconic grandpa selling pure maple butter. He offered popsicle sticks for generous tastes, and after clearing my stick of every sugary drop, I asked him what you could do with it besides eating it from the jar. His five word reply conveyed that you could put it on ice cream, but really why dilute the experience? Grandpa doesn't have a website, but it you've like to beg him to sell you some maple butter, his phone number is 802-457-2762.

For our final day, we headed to the King Arthur Flour Cooking school in Norwich, Vermont to take a empanada class. I've been making pie crust AND eating empanadas for years, and never noticed that empanadas are basically tiny little pies. The King Arthur Flour campus is a destination, with cooking classes, a cafe and a really good kitchen store. For their piecrust recipe, click here (fyi, you don't need the buttermilk powder). I'm going to play around with empanada fillings and will do a future post - the possibilities are literally endless. If you want to take a cooking class, they do fill up so plan ahead; the class list is here.

There's a saying among architects and builders: "Good, Fast, Cheap - pick two" and there's some truth to that in cooking as well. Every food magazine on the newstand trumpets the need to use the "finest" ingredients at all times! Like all of us, I am constantly making tradeoffs.

However, all three of my favorite weekday breakfasts allow you to skirt the edges of this dictum. It's true that "fast" is in the eye of the beholder, but know that the more you cook, the faster you will be.

At this point, it's worth noting that I prefer a high-protein breakfast because - for me - eating more protein means that crazy famished hunger and foot-dragging mid-morning exhaustion are much less likely to occur. I'd also note that while I want to eat "healthy" food, I refuse to eat food I don't like. While a bowl of bran flakes and a banana would I guess be nutritious, I'm unwilling to choke them down - and fortunately, I don't have to.

My go-to choice these days is a smoothie. Now, I am not a small eater (nor am I a small person), so this is not a few slices of fruit and some kale spun with skim milk and ice. No, my favorite smoothie is a delicious peanut butter milkshake with a solid 30+ grams of protein plus potassium, fiber, calcium and a bit of honey that will stave off hunger for the entire morning. You can make it in under three minutes and consume it during your morning commute. The ingredients, except the banana and milk, keep for quite a while and can be stored in the cabinet closest to your blender. The recipe for my delicious banana-peanut butter-honey smoothie is here.

Next up: a veggie omelet that takes about 5 minutes to make and clean up, but it's so delicious! The ingredients are simple: eggs, feta (or if you prefer, cheddar), onion, red pepper and a bit of olive oil. Heat the oil while chopping the veggies; saute the veggies while beating your eggs. Scoop the sautéed filling onto your plate, pour the eggs into the pan, add cheese and your filling and cook until done. A good non-stick pan makes this easy, and you can practice tossing your ingredients like a chef! For kids, a 1-egg omelet (made in an 8" skillet) is a great way to start the day. Here's a photo of each step in the recipe.

Finally, homemade granola with yogurt. To be fair, this is more about "good" and "cheap" than fast - but one recipe will keep you in delicious, healthy granola for a long time. I started my love affair with homemade granola at Whole Foods, where a carton containing just over a cup of granola retails for around $6 and was usually 1/2 gone by the time I got home from the grocery store. Even for a really tasty snack, this was unexpectedly expensive, so I decided to try to make my own. The recipe I've created is adaptable and allows you to use the nuts, fruit and other add-ins that you like best. If you prefer "good" and "fast", try the homemade granola at Whole Foods instead - it's the bomb.  But making your own is shockingly simple and you will be nibbling it right out of the pan. The recipe is here, and makes a solid three quarts for you to enjoy.

There are some amazing waffle, muffin and crepe recipes I can't wait to share with you, and for a truly special breakfast, try my apple pancake recipe here. But we live most of our lives during the week, and there's no reason that we can't eat well on those days too.