When it starts to get cold and rainy outside, most people crave comfort foods like stews and casseroles. I crave Italian food; it’s just the way I was raised. The funny thing is, my wife now shares this craving. So yesterday I decided to make some stuffed shells. If you’re going [...]

Bruschetta is one of those recipes that many people really like to make, but few make really well. This past weekend, my wife and I had some great bruschetta at a restaurant in Hendersonville, NC. What made it great was the simplicity of the ingredients. It was just sliced baguette, crushed tomatoes, [...]

The wife and I are nuts for Insalata Caprese. We’ll make a large platter and munch on it for days. This time, we used the last of our green tomatoes to make an extra crispy version:

We served it with some sopressata. The fresh mozzarella will only get better as it soaks up [...]

This weekend, my wife and I dropped by the local Farmer’s Market to kill some time before the post office opened. I bought some ground beef and pork sausage, as well as the requisite peppers to make chili on Saturday. My wife noticed that they had some raw milk, so we bought a [...]

We figured the best way to use our homemade mozzarella cheese was to make Margherita pizza. My wife decided to make pizza dough to keep with the ‘fresh’ theme. We used this pizza dough recipe. Here she is manually dissolving the yeast:

Getting your hands dirty is the key to good dough.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I tried our hand at making mozzarella cheese. This kit from Leeners.com cost $25 and will make 6 pounds of cheese:

The kit cost over $30 after shipping and handling, and we'll have to buy six gallons of fresh milk. That might sound like a lot of effort [...]