Tidbits

• I'm new to the world of blogging, but I'm going to start using tags to make it easier to look up old posts. Nightly dinners with recipes/how to's will be tagged with their main ingredient, such as 'chicken' or 'broccoli.' Other tags should be self-explanatory.
  

• Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake Cookies Special Edition Cinnibon - forget boring old chocolate chip, this cinnamon-sugar variety is easily the best ready-to-bake cookie I've ever had. Even the non-cookie-lover in my family ate 3 in one sitting. Harris Teeter has them on sale for $2.89 right now and there are online coupons, too: Pillsbury.com (WalMart's every day price is even cheaper, but I don't know if they carry this variety.)

• I've gone from, "When are my tomatoes coming in?" in June to, "What am I going to do with all these damn tomatoes?" in August. So today I'm attempting to make homemade salsa. Will let you know how that turns out.

• My favorite "foodie" magazines are Saveur and Food Network Magazine. Saveur is a wonderful hybrid of travel mag and cooking publication. They take you all over the world to show you the origins of foods and the stories behind them. I've never made a single recipe out of Saveur because almost all of them call for exotic, expensive, hard-to-find ingredients. But golly I love reading and dreaming. Food Network Magazine is the rare cooking magazine in which I almost never find a "bad" recipe - that is, a recipe I wouldn't consider making at home. This is real-life food for real-life people with a minimum of exotic ingredients and complicated techniques. Runners up for good foodie magazines include Martha Stewart's Everyday Food (it gets a little too Martha-ish), and Real Simple (great recipes, but not a foodie mag).

• Finally, let me know you're out there! I'd love to know if you've made one of my dishes and how it turned out, etc. This little project of mine has made a real improvement to my life. I've always loved cooking and saving money, but writing this nightly has brought it into a much tighter focus - and the "accountability" factor has brought new life and new creativity to our meals. So thanks for following me from Craigslist, and thanks for sticking with me so far. I'm really enjoying myself and I hope you are, too.