March is a very special month in Lawrence, and I'm not just talking about basketball. The venerable Free State Brewing Co. also hosts its annual March Mustard Madness event wherein hundreds of different kinds of mustard are trucked in and trotted out to your table to sample in myriad ways. It ...

I make rice bowls regularly because they come together quickly and can really utilize whatever ingredients are waiting in your refrigerator or pantry. Chicken, steak, shrimp, pork — all work in a rice bowl. Or you can forgo the meat altogether and make a really tasty vegetarian dish with ...

We all love Girl Scout cookies, right? So this is a wonderful time of year when sweet shining faces appear at our doors with boxes of goodness wrapped in community love. I have some friends who work for the Girl Scouts, and they had the great idea to use some cookies in a recipe, rather than ...

A roasted chicken is a thing of beauty. It is so simple to prepare and can provide several meals for a small family with minimal fuss. Also, there is the added bonus of a carcass for later stock-making. I roast a chicken several times a month and usually serve it as-is the first night, and ...

Cooking weeknight dinners can be tricky when time is an issue. Often, meals get plugged in between sports practices, baths, homework and chores. In order to handle the "no time for dinner prep" evenings, it's good to have a few stand-by ingredients on hand. In my house, bacon and shrimp are ...

Recently, a friend suggested I write about arepas, and I realized I'd completely forgotten about the easiest way to pull together a complete meal in minutes. I hadn't made arepas since college, when they were a standard way to quickly and inexpensively serve dinner to a guest or four. Arepas ...