Are you making your chicken soup all wrong??? If you're like me, you've always believed chicken soup has to cook low and slow -- the lower and slower the better.  Who doesn't know that? But after I shared here about my recent experience using the pressure cooker to create a dish that I might ordinarily have used the crockpot for, I went back and read the article by food wizard Kenji Lopez-Alt about why pressure cookers totally knock slow cookers out of the water . And his main example is... chicken soup.  Well, stock, but hey, you say potato, I say po-taaaaa-toe.  Because what is our trusty Shabbos soup if not stock with some veggies and kneidlach tossed in? For about 20 years now, Wednesday has been Soup Day around here.  Bones go in, cooking low and slow.  In Toronto, we did the soup overnight on Wednesday and fridged it Thursday morning (or, in the winter, set it out on the porch to freeze!).  Here in Israel, we do it on Wednesday afternoon after ou...

Here it is:  The bean snob’s guide to delicious quick-cook, no-soak beans. Do you love beans?  Or do you just put up with them? For years, in Canada, we were hooked on canned beans.  We put up with them, even enjoyed them, if they were seasoned heavily enough. Blah.  Never again. Here in Israel, I’ve become a beany snob.  (nothing delicious can come out of here…) Canned beans may be easy, but they are also mushy and worse than flavourless – they’re tin -flavoured.  Here, canned beans practically don’t exist, so we don’t have any choice.  And the great news is that from-scratch beans are tastier, too.  By which I mean they taste like something .  As opposed to a tin can.

Came up with this concept on my way out the door with a bunch of piping-hot-from-the-oven Berry Smash Muffins this morning… This Cookie Crisp box was on top of the recycle bin, still nice and clean, and it turns out it’s exactly the right height to fit these muffins.  And fifteen muffins fit perfectly into the box.  I slid them in, taped it firmly shut, and we were on our way!  They arrived much happier than usual.  I also happened to have a pair of scissors, so I could cut it open in perfect “Kel-Bol-Pak” style.  As Jerry Seinfeld used to say, “what was the point of this?  Pretending your parents couldn’t afford a bowl?” Separated at birth???   I made the muffins without streusel, by the way, since it never seems to travel well anyway.  I also cut down the sugar a bit, to 3/4 or 1 cup instead of 1 1/3 cups. So there it is – my token post to my much-neglected Bread Blog. To see more of my currently overwhelming project, check out my ...