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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Ode to Crunchy

By Marilyn Hunter

People often ask me what my favorite food is. Truth is, I don’t have one. I have a thousand. I’ve known very few people who loved one food so much they couldn’t get enough of it. My uncle was one of those people. He loved crunchy peanut butter so much he ate it straight out of the jar with a spoon.

Uncle Gerald was a bit of a connoisseur of peanut butter. In just one bite, he could tell you the type of peanuts and where the crop came from. He was a man of true grit and true love…a pillar of strength and calm. He lived life passionately. And when I think of him, I remember a happy blur of celebrations, storytelling, guitar playing and good food.

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Homemade Peanut Butter Cups are Wickedly Good

By Katie Barreira

As a child, it was difficult to imagine anything more awesome than holding up adults for candy while in disguise. But I was lucky enough to have a pair of fairy god neighbors who sweetened the Halloween jackpot. More hair raising than the Pinsky’s haunted garage, more engrossing than Mrs. Feldman’s eyeball punch, the enchanted Victorian at 14 Ferncroft Road promised a special and, to my parents dismay, sizeable confection meant just for me.

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