Yes, I know. There are cherry pitters designed for this task. But if you lose half the cherry with the pit, that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
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Rendered Fat (Tallow, Lard, and Schmaltz)
No, I don’t live on some isolated homestead. Yes, I could easily go to the store and buy some lard. No, I don’t want to because making your own is easy enough to do, and why not save money and reduce waste in the process?
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Basil Pesto
If the original creator of pesto was still alive, it would be on my bucket list to find them and give them a long, garlicky kiss of thanks. I owe the quality of my gastronomic life to that person.
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Harvesting Grape Leaves
I have come to realize that so many of the foods I was **ahem** “not fond of” were ones that started with less than fresh ingredients. Count dolmades, a Greek delicacy made with grape leaves, as one of them.
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Separating Eggs
Why oh why oh why do people insist on coming up with space (and money) sucking devices or weird techniques to do what is really a very simple task? We may never know!
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Peeling Peaches (Using Common Sense)
Ah, common sense. The ultimate tool in anyone’s arsenal, and yet the one that is the most under utilized. Let’s change that.
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Ultimate Summer Garden Spaghetti Sauce
I used to make a “simpler” (read: plain) version of this sauce and the boys loved it. Then I decided to get crazy and add other vegetables. My boys cried. Then they ate it. They forgave me.
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House Hunting, Part I
No, I am not moving. Ever. It’s not my thing. However, for someone who has no plans of moving, I’ve been doing an awful lot of looking for houses.
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Greek Summer Salad with Anchovies
There are few tasks when visiting family in Greece that I enjoy as much as going to the λαïκη (lye-ee-KEE), the farmer’s market. There you will find the ripest, most colorful produce, buckets of olives, slabs of feta, and the freshest seafood and meats. I drool walking past each display.
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Pitting Plums (and Keeping Fingers)
I have a few (okay, a fair amount, ummmm… maybe a lot) of kitchen gadgets. Some I use more often than others, but I really do use them all at some point in time.
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Mostly Greek 