I love cupcakes-more than making a whole cake, truthfully. I think it's because a large cake just feels like too much, somedays. You feel obligated to eat the whole thing eventually. With a family as small as mine, it seems like too much commitment to make a cake.

Cupcakes, on the other hand, are just little bites here and there. You can have one or four. Recipes can be halved, some can be



Cheesecake is one of my most favourite desserts. Topped with fresh whipping cream and fruit or drizzled with chocolate sauce, if there is cheesecake in the house I'm eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's just too hard to resist it's siren call from the fridge, calling me to sample yet more of it's creamy goodness.

A whole cheesecake feels overly indulgent to make just for myself;



Sometimes you just need something easy that can be whipped up quickly and doesn't create a lot of dishes. Our Spring Break was that way-a bit on the lazy side but at the same time, we craved something more than cereal for dinner. I've made this a few times and we have really enjoyed the Earthy, buttery mushrooms, salty bacon, and fresh herbs. When spooned over thick pieces of good bread, it's
Sometimes on the weekends I may have no plans for what I'm going to make for dinner, and instead rummage through the fridge and come up with something from the bits of whatever happens to be hanging in the crisper. Often, I find leftover salad makes a great addition to wraps-not only does it help me use it up before things go bad, but it's healthy too!

I never really thought of putting feta and







I'm always on the lookout for recipes that are fast, require little clean up, and are inexpensive to make. Just because I CAN create some fantastic thing that takes hours doesn't mean I want to-usually I'm just not up for the amount of dishes it requires unless it's a weekend and I'm in the mood.

Chicken is a staple in our house more than any other meat, and a new way to eat it always




Over the years I've learned a lot about cooking with tomatoes and what to use when I'm making things from scratch. Believe it or not, it makes a difference in the outcome! Are you stumped over which kind of tomatoes to buy? Do you need tomato sauce or crushed when you make chili? And what's passata, anyway? What makes it so great?

I used to watch Food Network and could never understand why
I love short ribs. The problem is when I've looked around for ideas about how to cook them, the recipes are massive. Some call for entire bottles of wine, or 5-6 lbs of meat. I don't know about you, but for me, 6 lbs of short ribs would end up costing something like $30 and make so much food I wouldn't know what to do with it. When you have a husband who doesn't eat red meat and the teenager is
Sometimes, you want lasagna but you don't want a giant pan of it. Whether you're a student living by yourself, or maybe a couple and the kids will eat something different anyway, it takes a little skill to take something that's normally quite large and pare down the recipe to get a nice little lasagna all your own.

With Kevin away for the week, it's taken a bit of adjusting to pare things from