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When The Mister and I were courting, we weren't well off enough to afford restaurant dates. So, we would have "Fancy Dinner" which is where we cooked something we would otherwise purchase at a restaurant, but for below-restaurant prices at home. This macaroni and cheese recipe qualifies. It is more expensive to make than a sub-$1 box of store brand, however every extra penny is worth it in the taste department.

I love a good make-ahead spice mix. It helps in terms of economizing if you can make it in a large enough batch and/or have multiple people to part it out between. Much as we did with the makhani spice mix, here's the recipe to replicate a packet of taco seasoning.

If you have been hanging out, snooping my recipe book for a while, you know that I am all about that capsule kitchen, which means that certain items which are pantry staples for others, are just an additional bit of recipe for me. Such as brown sugar.

Today is Pi Day! While I much prefer to buy my pies and let some food processing robotic line somewhere handle pie crust and keeping the edges unburnt while getting the middle cooked through, when someone has dietary restrictions that don't allow for robot pie baking lines to labor for me, it means I have to cook it myself. Ughhhhhhh.

Here's a recipe that never lets me down. Crumble topping so I don't have to deal with that most finicky of pie crust edge burning annoyances.

See the notes section at the end of this recipe for the simple substitutions one needs to make this vegan.

Have you had Golden Curry? It is the tongue-satisfying corporeal embodiment of the flavor: umami. It is stew, cooked in a fraction of the time it takes to cook stew. And it can be cooked entirely in the Instant Pot.

I know there are other Instant Pot Japanese Golden Curry recipes, but they all contain meat and use pressure. This one is just the sauté feature and is vegetarian, making it a dish that can be cooked anywhere there is a power outlet.

Golden curry is WORK though. Nothing minimal effort here. Lots of stirring and cutting on the front end. On the back end is a lot of waiting. This is probably why people in Japan only have this dish a few times a month.