The Cooking Dish

The 50+ Best Kitchen Gifts for the Cook In Your Life

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Once again the Winter holidays are right around the corner, and my kitchen begs for some holiday food and cheer. I swear last winter just ended. With one blink I’ve aged an entire year, and my belt is one notch tighter. Too bad there’s no reversal for that whole age thing.

As the temperature drops and my kids start to bundle up in their cute little coats, I find myself drawn to the kitchen more than usual. It could be that I enjoy the warmth of the oven, or that the chilly months are filled to the brim with nostalgia. Only now do I fully understand and appreciate the time my mom spent in her kitchen canning cider, baking pies, frosting cookies, and heating chocolate for our frosted and red kid noses. I think I will have succeeded if my kids can remember their childhood the way I remember mine.

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How to Use flickr as a CDN in WordPress

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Howdy, this post is going to deviate a bit from the normal. Rather than talking about food, I want to share a few insights I’ve learned about hosting images on my website using flickr. It’s been helpful for me over the years, so perhaps it will help you too.
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Interview with The Chocolate Conspiracy

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Sometime near the end of Summer, beginning of Fall I had the delightful opportunity to meet with AJ Wentworth who is the owner, founder, chief chocolatier, and jefe of The Chocolate Conspiracy located in Salt Lake City, UT (900 S 265 E Salt Lake City, UT 84111, to be exact). I had a great time interviewing AJ and learned a lot about his business and what it takes to specialize in the raw chocolate business. Unfortunately because of website issues, I was unable to post the interview until now.

But the story begins before the interview. I met AJ at the 2013 Honey Bee Festival in Salt Lake City where two things brought my attention to his booth: 1) free chocolate samples (obvious attention grabber there), and 2) the really cool throwback art on the chocolate bars, and 3) it was RAW chocolate. My curiosity was peaked. Apparently I’m a sucker for raw gourmet chocolate wrapped in retro Asian-inspired art.
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A Visit to Slide Ridge Honey

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Just the other week my family and I drove down to Mendon, UT for an enlightening introduction and tour of the creation processes behind the delicious Slide Ridge honey products. If you haven’t had the opportunity to taste their honey products, you’re missing out: especially the honey wine vinegar.
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Question: How Do I Hard Boil an Egg?

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Before we jump in head first, here’s what you can expect out of this post: how to perfectly hard boil an egg every time, how to quickly boil an egg, how to peel a boiled egg, random egg facts, and some good old fashioned tom foolery. Fellow pinners, feel free to share any of these pictures, but I have created a Pinterest-friendly egg infographic-esque image that you might find handy. You can find that just below. Now on to the main eggvent!
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Summer’s Pepper Jams Review (Part 3)

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This is the third post in a 3-part series where I featured Summer from www.SummersSecret.com. Over the last while I’ve had the opportunity to talk with Summer and take some of her products for a spin. You can read the initial interview here, and the review of her seasoning mix, Summer’s Secret Seasoning, here.

In today’s post we’re going to take a look at two of her pepper jams, the Hot Mango Pepper Jam and the Spicy Green Pepper Jam. Before we start though, here’s the required disclaimer: These jams were provided free of charge by Summer for the purpose of this review; no other compensation is being received. All right, let’s dive in.
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Summer’s Secret Seasoning Review (Part 2)

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In my last post I had the great opportunity to talk to Summer, creator of Summer’s Secret Seasoning and also the creator of some great jams (which we’ll be talking about in the next post). If you haven’t yet read that interview and you’d like to, you can find it here.

During this portion, we’re going to take a look at Summer’s Secret Seasoning, which I have been taking for a test drive on many different foods over the past while. It’s been a lot of fun to do this and experiment.
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Summer’s Secret Seasoning and Jam Review (Part 1)

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Note that this is the first post of three in this series. You can read Part 2 (Summer’s Secret Seasoning review here.

One of the many reasons I love writing this food blog is meeting and chatting with new people. I’ve recently had the delightful opportunity to talk with Summer from Summer’s Secret Seasoning about her entrepreneurial endeavors within the food industry. It seems that a lot of us have numerous business ideas when it comes to food, but so many of us have never really done anything about it. Summer is an exception to that rule. Not only has she produced Summer’s Secret Seasoning, but she has gone on to create a few jam flavors (with more in the works).
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