Is It Summer Already? Break Out the Coffee Ice Cream

In honor of the 77-degree high predicted for today (March 17! In Pittsburgh!), I figured it’s high time to break out the ice cream maker. And when I think of homemade ice cream, only one name comes to mind: David Lebovitz.

Pie Fail: When You Don’t Want to Use Bacon

That’s right. I tried putting maple candied bacon on a sweet potato pie. It’s proof that some ideas are better in theory than in practice.

P.S. When David Lebovitz says not to candy bacon with maple syrup, listen to him. Don’t think you know better and that mixing sugar with your maple syrup will make it the right consistency for candying. He is the expert. You are not. Trust me, your house will thank you for saving it from thick, dark smoke from burnt maple syrup on the bottom of your pan. Five days later, my house still smells like burnt syrup.

My Food Philosophy

You’ll probably get a sense of this from the recipes you’ll see me post to this blog, but I mostly like to cook simple foods using a few very fresh, seasonal, and high-quality ingredients. This definitely stems from my Sicilian heritage (Sicily is known for its simple home cooking); although my German mother did most of the cooking in my childhood home, my Sicilian grandmother, who lived with us for many of my formidable years, often pitched in and taught us family recipes. In other words, I grew up eating like an Italian American.