Dulce de Leche Sundaes

By Marilyn Hunter

I’ll never forget my first taste of dulce de leche. I was about eight years old on a family vacation in San Antonio. As we walked through a mercado near the River Walk, my dad popped a cajeta candy into my mouth and said, “Here. Try this.” It tasted a lot like my favorite candy at the time, a caramel lollipop called Sugar Daddy, but with an even deeper flavor. Nevertheless, I immediately knew I loved all things caramel.

Dulce de leche is a sweet caramel that can be made with sweetened condensed milk that’s been boiled into a custard. It’s is the easiest dessert in the world to make and one of the most decadent.

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Cooking with Kids

By Lori Powell,

Recently, I had the privilege of teaching some children’s cooking classes at my job as Food Director of Prevention magazine. Rodale, the publisher, has a Take your Kids to Work Day, where the kids participate in craft, fitness and food activities for a day. My contribution was, of course, food and it was a home run!

It was a privilege since I felt like I was playing hooky because I was having so much fun teaching these amazing kids. I had four classes of 11 kids ages 6 to 13, back-to-back, teaching them about food styling, creating a better salad and making your own salad dressing with just three ingredients. It was such a joy to see how interested and enthusiastic they were and how smart regarding food and nutrition.

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Lobster Rolls on the Grill

By Katie Barreira

Everyone knows that the best thing to do with leftover lobster is make lobster salad. It’s so good, in fact, that when shopping for my annual Cape Cod lobster boil I always buy a couple extra crustaceans just to make sure there’ll be enough pickins for a lobster roll lunch the next day.

Served hot or cold, with creamy mayo or drawn butter, lobster rolls have captured New York foodies in their tasty clutches. Having partaken in a gut-busting lobster crawl across the island of Manhattan, I can tell you that I’m partial to Luke’s Lobster, which serves Maine style rolls – a butter-toasted bun piled with chunks of chilled claw and knuckle meat, topped with a light smear of mayo and a hit of their “secret” spice blend.

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Arroz con Pollo on the Grill

By Andrew Hunter

This past Sunday, we enjoyed a simple Father’s Day at home…Marilyn, Ben, Nick and I. My only responsibility for the day was manning the grill. But instead of my usual steaks, burgers or fish fillets, I grill-smoked chicken thighs, then put my paella pan directly on the hot charcoal and made rice for an outdoor Arroz con Pollo.

Almost every culture has a version of chicken and rice, which is simple comfort food. I usually think of it as a Caribbean and Latin American dish, but Spain’s signature paella can be chicken and rice and I recently had congee at a Chinese dim sum joint. Besides some ingredients I couldn’t identify, the chicken feet and glutinous rice made this savory porridge another version of chicken and rice. The common thread is that the chicken is at least partially cooked in the rice, and the rice is usually wet, like porridge.

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A Garden in a Box

By Andrew Hunter

Who would have thought a garden could come in a box? I was waiting for an early afternoon coffee at a grocery store Starbuck’s when I spotted this box. I was intrigued because it read, “great for kids,” so after I got my espresso I went back to check it out.

The box claims you can grow oyster mushrooms on your kitchen counter. So I bought it and brought it home. Together, the boys and I followed simple directions where we cut open a bag, soaked it in water for 12 hours, misted it occasionally and, voila…a few days later baby mushrooms sprouted. The very next day, mushrooms were ready for harvest. It even grew a second round of the precious crop.

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