Will's Irish soda bread: a recipe

Earlier this year, my family of friends lost one of its finest members.

Will was the husband of my oldest and dearest friend, but he was so much more: father, son, brother, friend, leader, coach, athlete, outdoorsman, wicked handy handyman, drinking buddy and all-around good guy. One of the best good guys I will ever have the pleasure to have known.

But he was also one more thing that was very, very important to him: Will was Irish.

So St. Patrick's Day was a big deal. And one of the ways he made it a big deal was to bake Irish soda bread with his sons every year.

I know his boys are continuing the tradition this year. I wish I lived closer to them so I could lend a hand. Since I don't, I'm making it my own annual tradition, too, to honor Will's memory and remember his all-around-good-guyness.

I can't tell you where his recipe (below) came from but it's easy and it's good.

So today, bake an Irish soda bread and wash it down with a beer (preferably a Fat Tire) ... for Will.

What we ate this week

Sometimes, dinner can't wait for a photo shoot.

While it may seem to some of you that I'm doing little else other than taking pictures of everything I eat, I can assure you that I cook (and eat) a lot more than I blog.

Which is why I periodically give you these "what we ate this week" posts. A lot of dishes we eat are really tasty and certainly blog-worthy, but sometimes life intervenes: I can't find the camera, it's getting late, we're hungry ... or I just plain forget to take the picture before we scarf the meal down.

So cheers! Here's to having a real life in which you eat, rather than style, your dinner -- most of the time.

• Baked pasta with spinach, lemon and cheese -- like sophisticated mac and cheese
• Artichoke and goat cheese strata -- a rockin' good meatless dish
• Celery celery soup -- another winner from Dorie Greenspan's Around my French Table
• Light caesar salad dressing -- greek yogurt makes it light and a tad tangy, from Jamie Oliver

Poutine: a recipe

Poutine!

Wow. So apparently poutine doesn't photograph all that well...

If you've never heard of it or eaten it, poutine is a comfort-food dish traditionally made with french fries, topped with cheese curds and brown gravy. It is native to Quebec, although it has trendily been popping up all over the place in the past few years.

It's diner food, Quebecois style.

I first tried it last summer during a vacation in Canada and immediately became obsessed. Its salty, gooey goodness is a little hard to describe, given how nasty it looks in photographs. (It's not just mine -- do a Google image search on poutine and you'll see what I mean. Also note that Vladimir Putin shows up right next to all those cheese curds -- hilarious.)

King cake: a recipe

It tastes better than it looks -- and yes, it's supposed to look like that

It's that time of year again: Mardi Gras.

Yes, although I'm a Yankee girl, I lived in New Orleans for a couple of years in the mid-1990s. Let's just say it was a nice place to visit.

But I did have the pleasure of eating my way around the city, enjoying some of the best meals I have ever had, in addition to partaking of many of the local customs, most of which involved food. Or booze. Or both.

Take, for example, Mardi Gras. I quickly learned that most of the people that you see in the crowds on Mardi Gras day are tourists; the locals get the hell out of Dodge to avoid all the drunken frat boys that descend on the city to behave badly and pee on the sidewalks.

But prior to Mardi Gras day, there weeks of parades to watch and parties to attend. And no Mardi Gras party is complete without the king cake.

[I wish this had something to do with Elvis, because he would have loved it, but it does not, dammit.]

Pumpkin cranberry breakfast cookies: a recipe

Pumpkin cranberry breakfast cookies

Yay! Cookies for breakfast! And it's not some kind of scam!

I've been fairly obsessed over the past few months with finding recipes for grab-and-go style breakfast foods. The mini quiches were good but I'm partial to stuff that is so portable you can take it in the car, if need be ... if one is "allowed" to eat in the car. Or keep a pen and some kleenex in the car without it being labeled as "clutter." (ahem)

Breakfast cookies certainly fit the bill. And I've got to admit, these are healthier for you than most muffins or breads that you could make. Each cookie, as prepared, is only 60 calories, with less than one gram of fat. Yowza! You can eat a whole bunch!

Seared scallops with cauliflower puree: a recipe

Not the best photo but, hey, we were hungry and eager to eat

This is a delicious, elegant dish yet ridiculously quick and easy. Seeming oxymoron, I know, but I swear it's true.

I used to fear the scallop. Not in a food poisoning way, but in a scared-to-cook-it way. I was always afraid they'd be too rubbery when cooked at home, so I reserved them as one of my dining-out-only options.

I no longer fear the home-cooked scallop. Neither should you.

The recipe guidance is to cook them about 3 minutes per side (this was pretty accurate for me and my stove) or until "desired degree of doneness" -- I prefer to call that the would-I-eat-this test. Just look at it and ask yourself (you knew it was coming), "Would I eat this?" If it looks right/done/edible, you're all set.

Thai coconut soup (tom kha gai): a recipe

Thai coconut soup (tom kha gai)

When I enjoy a really good dish at a restaurant, I'm always tempted to try to recreate it at home. With the exception of the buffalo chicken pizza that I copied from the Carolina Brewery in my former hometown of Chapel Hill, my home version usually just isn't quite the same.

That's not to say that my home version is bad, either -- just different.

Case in point, this Thai coconut soup.

I first had this soup at the Tiny Thai restaurant in my soon-to-be new hometown of Essex, Vermont. It's fantastic -- a flavorful, milky broth with just a hint of tangy lime.

So I searched the internet for some recipes -- and found that most of the necessary ingredients are not readily available to me. Dag.

Back to the drawing board.

Chocolate and cherry scones: a recipe

Chocolate & cherry scone

Observation: Posting about crack cookies yielded interesting comments and a follower that actually called herself "Team Ninja", while posting about collards yielded chirp-chirp crickety silence.

So let's talk chocolately tarty baked goods!

I love scones and was pleasantly surprised when I realized how easy they are to make. In fact, one of my favorite scone recipes came straight from the side of a Land-o-Lakes half-and-half carton (I am no recipe snob, my friends -- a good recipe is a good recipe).

I adapted this scone recipe (below) from one of my favorite blogs, Dinner with Julie. I will warn you that Julie's scone dough is very sticky and a bit tricky to manipulate, but please try to persevere, as the end result is really moist -- like a super-dense cake inside, with a crunchy scone outside!

Cheesy baked pasta with collards: a recipe

Cheesy baked pasta with collards

Don't stop reading at the word "collards" -- they are a very misunderstood vegetable.

Being a New Englandah, I had never had collards before I moved to the South. Even then, they generally appeared only at "country cooking" types of restaurants, sickly green and stewed beyond recognition -- um, no thanks.

When a big bunch of collards showed up in one of my first CSA shares in North Carolina, I was at a loss for what to do with them.

Thank god for Google. (What the hell did we do before the internet, I ask you? I don't really remember...)

Here's a list of what I have learned about collards over the past few years:

Mini breakfast quiche: a recipe

Mini sausage and spinach breakfast quiche

First of all, congratulations! You made it through Detox January!

See? That wasn't so bad, was it? And I bet you dropped five pounds, didn't you?

For about the past 10 years, I've been on a quest for delicious, healthy, filling and portable breakfast recipes. Frankly, it has been a little like tracking Big Foot or trying to capture a chupacabra on film.

But today, we have a winner!

I made these mini quiches from a recipe on the Eating Well magazine web site; technically they are an appetizer, but I thought they'd be ideal for breakfast. They are small enough to eat quickly before you run out the door or you can take them with you on the way to work. If, that is, you don't have a spouse that believes eating in the car is a crime second only to murder (ahem).