Vacation Cooking – Improvised!

By Katie Barreira

All this week, Special Fork bloggers will be sharing recipes for vacation cooking. And to celebrate summer vacations, Special Fork is giving away a beautiful, English-style picnic basket fitted with service for four by Picnic Time. It’s easy to enter the sweepstakes.

Ever booked a hotel room that claimed to have a kitchenette or some such access to cooking equipment only to find yourself in a bedroom with a mini-fridge and a microwave? No need to give-up and go out for every meal. You can still save big and have a few meals in, even with barest-boned kitchen.

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Going Bananas

By Sandy Hu

Growing up in Hawaii, I know a thing or two about bananas. We ate enough of them as kids. Apple Bananas, Bluefields, Cavendish…so many varieties thrive in tropical climates. And mostly we got them for free, a gift from somebody’s backyard.

We ate bananas in many ways – fried in butter with brown sugar for dessert, suspended in glistening Jell-O for a snack or scattered over cornflakes for breakfast.

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The Siren of Banana Breads

By Katie Barreira

When you work in a test kitchen, it’s not only prudent, but also necessary to pace yourself when it comes to tasting. A sensible breakfast is key to staving off the hunger that can turn a modest bite or two into a plate-licking portion. Good sense went out the window on the morning when Carly, one of our budding interns, threw together this bread instead of throwing out a bunch of over-ripe bananas.

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