Last Suppers

Enjoy music while you cook. You can win a Logitech z515 wireless speaker for smartphones and tablets. Just tell us how long you take to cook dinner and you’ll be entered in our sweepstakes. Good luck!

By Katie Barreira

Are you home, hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy? Find yourself doing a whole lot of eating?

You’re not alone.

After a late breakfast of braised lamb, a second cup of coffee with cider donuts for dunking and a couple pieces of the forlorn Halloween candy, we broke out the Ben & Jerry’s (in case of power failure, freezer items would be first to go, so really, it was a precautionary measure.)

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A Cook-it-Yourself Dinner Party

By Sandy Hu

My friend from Alaska, Mary Deming Barber, was coming to San Francisco for a conference and I was looking forward to inviting her to dinner. Problem was, I myself was returning from another conference in St. Louis the night before our get-together. So, rather than cook for Mary, I invited her and four of her friends attending the conference to cook dinner with me.

I’d never done this before, but having such a large, open kitchen, it had always been my dream to host a cook-together party. I thought it would be really fun, a great icebreaker among new friends and less work. (Two of the three turned out to be true – guess which?)

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Another Spooky Halloween Treat

By Sandy Hu

I love Halloween but I often don’t have time to bake something special. Rather than ignoring the holiday, this year, I cheated with a baking mix and canned frosting, just so I could have fun making some ghoulish treats. If you have time to bake from scratch, so much the better, of course.

I baked up a batch of chocolate cupcakes from the mix, spread the cupcakes with canned frosting, then sprinkled them with chocolate cooking crumbs for “dirt.” Then I had two ideas for decorating: one uses Milano cookies for headstones to make mini graveyards. The other, featured here, turns cupcakes into pumpkin patches planted with marzipan pumpkins.

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Trick-or-Treating Pasta Party

By Marilyn Hunter

On a night like Halloween, the last thing you’re thinking about is dinner. Luckily, my boys love pasta … all shapes and sizes. It’s one of their favorite dinners as long as there’s plenty of Parmesan cheese. Andrew calls them “Parm junkies!”

I figure things could be worse. I care more that they’ll eat lots of goodies that are good for them, especially on this night of goblins.

Before setting out for a marathon night of trick or treating, fuel your little ones with a pasta party fit for an athlete (Ben is James Harden on the Thunder) or a hungry gangster (Nick is Al Capone). Setting up a carb-loading pasta bar pleases everyone, gives them the energy they need and cuts your workload in half.

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Long Day, Short Night

By Lori Powell

Lately I have been working into the evening Monday through Friday and then at least one day on the weekend. So I’m trying to get better at meal planning.

I love leftovers so that’s not the problem. I just don’t love the same dish for three nights in a row.

So I am trying to make things that I can transform easily into something else. One of my tricks is roasting a ton of vegetables -- roasted vegetables are one of fall and winter’s delights. All you need is a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and any fresh or dried herbs that you have kicking around, and you have a meal starter for a week’s worth of dinners.

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