Daily Loaf

We have a rule at my house: “She who cooks, does not clean”. Since I’m the only one who cooks around here, “she” is me! And, since my daughter is in the midst of that twilight zone that is teenagedom, she is indefinitely removed from the equation. (We’re just thankful that she resurfaces for meals once in a while!) Unfortunately for him, this means that my husband gets stuck with the dinner dishes most nights. He is a pretty good sport about it, though. (He takes out the garbage and irons his own shirts too!) I think he realizes that if I had to cook AND do all the dishes, the meals around here would be pretty sparse. In fact, you’d probably find a lot more empty take-out containers in our trash bins.

The only rub to this arrangement is that he only seems to manage to fit three things at a time in our dishwasher, which means that I have to constantly get in there and reorganize. He also splashes water everywhere and never wipes down the counters or dries up the floor afterward. (Hmmm. Maybe I don’t have such a good thing going after all!)

One evening not too long ago, I was crossing through the kitchen on my way to somewhere, when….. Read the rest of this entry »

When Hamburger Helper came out in 1971, it made ground beef a mainstay of the quick and easy dinner. Mom did make that boxed meal on occasion, but fortunately she never abandoned picadillo, a quick and easy ground beef dish that’s part of our family tradition.

I learned to make picadillo (pick-ah-dee-yo) from her, she learned it from her mother, and I can only assume that my grandmother learned it from her mother. I remember my grandfather mispronouncing it “piccadilly” as a playful poke at my grandmother when she prepared it for Thursday night dinner.

There are many versions of picadillo, but this recipe is true to what I grew up eating, although the cumin and cinnamon stick are my additions. It has wonderful, complex flavors: the beef and onions are savory, the raisins add sweetness, olives are salty and capers piquant. Picadillo has a big impact for a dish that only takes a few minutes to put together using pantry staples. Read the rest of this entry »