The only thing that rivals “Oprah’s Favorite things,” the TV segment that spawned the famous “You get a car! And you get a car!” is Byrne’s Favorite Things, a New …
My most memorable article, judging by how much readers bring it up, is last December’s article on my mom’s cookie hotel. Lisa Byrne makes more than 1,400 Christmas …
Columnist and wit Calvin Trillian once said nobody ever buys a fruitcake for oneself. Comedian Johnny Carson once remarked that there’s only one fruitcake in the world, and each Christmas, …
I had a few friends visit for Halloween, and there’s two things that hungover people with glitter still lurking on their faces don’t want to do the morning after a bar crawl: Go outside; …
One Thanksgiving, the smallest turkey I could get from my favorite meat supplier in Preble was 28 pounds. We called him Goliath. Now, Goliath was meant to feed three people and even if one was a …
You wake up Thanksgiving morning and realize you forgot to thaw the turkey. Don’t panic. The goal is to get the rock-hard bird above 32 degrees quickly, without it exceeding 40 degrees, …
My grandmother made great gravy: velvety smooth, tasty. It never broke and was never greasy. One Thanksgiving I asked her: “Gram, how do you make such good gravy?” The response …
Once upon a time, I was enthralled at cranberry sauce that looked just like the can it came in. I was 4. But for years, decades really, I’d have no more than a spoonful next to the …
My aunt had a side hustle for years: She’d make pies, freeze them, and sell them to restaurants and gourmet food stores. I don’t particularly recall if the filling was great — …
The challenge with cooking for Thanksgiving ahead of time isn’t the cooking part, it’s the storage. Just ask the spouse. The refrigerator (She still grumbles that …
The spousal unit likes to remind me that Thanksgiving is my Super Bowl. Training begins about March. Menu planning. What to plant in the garden. How to source the turkey. Options, backup plans, …
It’s been called America’s bechamel sauce. It’s been called a gift to the busy housewife (and how sexist is that?) It’s found in recipes from beef stroganoff to …
I’m almost afraid to say I like cooking Italian. The neighborhood has such a large Italian community that I fear anything I tell people I make will be dismissed by Italian-Americans as not …
My eggplant recipes don’t scale well. And this year, that’s a problem. Eggplant parmesan requires a certain amount of eggplant. So does ratatoullie. But this year, the spousal unit …
Before I became a reporter, I did an equally important job in town. I was the quesadilla chef at SUNY Cortland’s fan-favorite dining establishment, Hilltop. When you make so much of the …
I tell gardeners this all the time: Grow what you can’t get enough of. Beans suitable for drying, baking, soups and whatnot? Lots of them, because farmers at the farmers markets sell them …
Much about attending a Renaissance festival is actually pretty bogus. Fun, but bogus. Those giant turkey legs, slow-smoked over something and dipped in a tomato-based sauce? Turkey and tomatoes …
We were, in a way, partners in crime. Tia was a trained chef-turned-program administrator for the New York State Senate. I was a stay-at-home dad, recovering journalist and a low-level nobody in …
My mother made the worst corn chowder. There. I said it. I know I’m supposed to wax nostalgic for Mama’s home cookin’, and in fairness, my mother did have several good recipes. …
I had friends stay with me over the weekend, and there’s only so many things I can cook, especially as a vegetarian. I had already cooked my signature pasta, so I thought I’d add …
I never really had a good peach as a child, not that I knew the difference. I grew up in central New Hampshire in an area about 75 miles north of Cortland and a couple hundred miles east. My …
A couple I know likes to indulge from time to time: Dessert for supper. When they do that, the family heads out and typically gets ice cream sundaes. Rich, decadent, sweet — I get it. …
I met the Rev. Jessie Jackson for the first time when I was 18. This is about food. Trust me. The year was 1983; Jackson had visited a neighboring high school in New Hampshire on his way to …
I came across a box of tri-colored pasta while rummaging through the cupboard a couple of weeks ago. Now, something that looks like that shouldn’t be buried under a thick red sauce, not even an …
I will confess that the sum total of what I know about Italian cuisine can be summed up in an exchange I once had with an Italian grandmother, whose parents had come over on the boat. …
