I found this recipe for Watergate Salad on the back of a bag of Kraft Jet-Puffed Miniature Marshmallows. I needed a dish for a potluck dinner I was attending, and initially I was planning on making a sweet potato casserole with the marshmallows. The recipe looked interesting, …

When I’m at the mall, the aroma of freshly baked cookies coming from the food court is usually almost irresistible. Every once in a while I’ll buy a couple of cookies, but they’re usually outrageously priced, so I always feel guilty about splurging later. Recently when I …

I usually try to serve vegetables with dinner, but I really don’t put a lot of thought into preparing them. I usually focus more on the main entree. So more often than not, the vegetables I serve are pretty much ignored. I wanted to find some …

I was searching the Internet for an easy cold salad recipe to make to take to a barbeque when I found this recipe for Twenty-Four Hour Salad. I found it on allrecipes.com, which seems to be a great resource for a variety of recipes. The salad looked …

I found this recipe for Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies in the Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook under the “Chock-Full of Chips” section. At the time, I wanted to make cookies, but I wanted to make something a little unusual. I usually make oatmeal cookies with raisins, and …

I bought a container of Vigo Italian Style Bread Crumbs with Imported Romano Cheese from my local grocery store, because I wanted to use them to make a meatloaf. The meatloaf turned out great, but I had a lot of extra bread crumbs, and I wasn’t sure what …

Recently, I bought 2 pounds of frozen cooked shrimp because there was a really good sale at my grocery store. I love shrimp, but I had a lot of it and I was getting tired of eating shrimp cocktail, so I wanted to find an easy shrimp recipe. …

I’ve always liked Chicken Florentine, but I’ve only had it in restaurants, or when someone else has cooked it for me. Until recently, I haven’t attempted to make it because it just seemed like a complicated dish that would take a lot of time to make. When …

I found this recipe for Cheesy Chicken-Broccoli and Macaroni One Dish Meal on the back of a box of Classic Kitchen’s Deluxe Mac and Cheese Dinner. The night I found it I was planning on making baked chicken breasts and macaroni and cheese for dinner. I was …

I found this recipe for Brownie Kiss Cups in the Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook. I found it under the “Best-Selling Brownies” section. At the time, I was looking for a simple chocolate dessert recipe that I could make for a picnic I was attending, and …

The Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish cookbook is one of my favorite cookbooks because the majority of the recipes really are simple, and one dish recipes make convenient meals. I also really like this cookbook because there are photographs of all the recipes. I often …

I found this recipe for Blueberry Cheesecake Bars in the Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook. I was perusing the cookbook for recipes I’ve never tried, and the combination of blueberries and cheesecake in a bar sounded really good. I was also drawn in by the photograph …

Any type of Mexican food is good in my book. I make Mexican food a lot, but sometimes I seem to get stuck on the same recipes. I decided I needed to add a little variety to Mexican night at my house, so I referred to the …

I’m not a huge fan of nuts in my desserts, but I make exceptions when it comes to pecans. I love eating pecans plain or in pies, so when I found a recipe for Praline Pie I decided to try it. I found the recipe in the …

I was first introduced to coconut shrimp when I lived in the Caribbean. A lot of restaurants in the islands offer it on their menus. I can’t remember the specific restaurant I first tried it at, but I know I was hooked on the taste the first …

When I moved recently, I temporarily stayed in a studio at a hotel. I had a stove top and a microwave, but I didn’t have an oven. I really started to miss baking cookies in the oven, so I had to get creative in my new little …

I make a lot of Mexican entrees, but I’m always unsure about what to serve on the side. I wanted to find a good side dish to serve with tacos and enchiladas, so I started looking for recipes. The Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish cookbook …

I’ve always wanted to learn how to make paella, because I love the flavors of chicken, shrimp and rice together. I’ve watched people make it on cooking shows, but the steps involved usually seemed too complicated and time-consuming. So until recently, I’ve only had paella in restaurants. …

I had never made stuffed peppers until I tried a recipe for Stuffed Green Peppers in the Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish cookbook. I thought it was a really good recipe, so when I found another recipe for stuffed peppers in the same cookbook I knew …

I’ve never made any type of muffins from scratch. I love homemade muffins, but I’ve always shied away from making them because I thought the process would be too complicated. Recently I decided to cook a homemade beef stew for dinner, and I thought that cornbread would …

I love meatloaf because I think it’s a classic affordable meal. Although I love making it and eating it, I don’t think there’s one perfect recipe for it. I think meatloaf is a dish that’s meant to be experimented with, so I’m always looking for different meatloaf …

I like organizing potluck dinners with my friends. Potlucks ease the burden of one person doing all of the work, and I think they’re a great opportunity to try different recipes. Recently, I signed up to bring the dessert for a potluck dinner I was attending. …

I really like stuffed peppers, but I was always afraid to make them, because I thought it would be too difficult. I’ve just always counted on my mother to make them for me, because she has a lot more patience than I do in the kitchen. I …

I like making boxed cake mixes, because they’re easy to prepare. However, I’m not a big fan of the tubs of prepared frosting that the grocery stores sell. So I’ve been experimenting with different frosting recipes that I can use on my cakes. I found this …

I found this recipe for Green Beans with Blue Cheese and Roasted Peppers in the Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish cookbook. I’ve never really liked green beans, but the picture of this dish in the cookbook looked so good that I decided to try it. …

I came across this recipe for Mexican Lasagna in the Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish Cookbook when I was looking for different ways to cook ground beef. The recipe met my main requirement, which is that it has to be easy to make. I’m also …

This recipe for Mushroom-Beef Stew came from the Favorite Name Brand Simple 1-2-3 One Dish cookbook. I decided to make it simply because the recipe looked like it would be extremely easy to make, plus I like beef and I love mushrooms. The directions call for this …

I really like lemon bars and lemon pies, so when I found a recipe for lemon cookies I decided to try it. I found the recipe in the Favorite Name Brand Bake Sale Cookbook. I’ve made several recipes from this cookbook, and most of them were excellent, …

I found this recipe for Polish Reuben Casserole in the Favorite Brand Name Simple 1-2-3 One Dish cookbook. I decided to try it because I love Reuben sandwiches, and this recipe seemed like a creative way to combine the basic flavors and ingredients of a Reuben sandwich. …

I love anything that has pumpkin in it, so I knew I had to make this recipe for Pumpkin Crunch Cake when I found it. I found it in the Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook. I thought the recipe looked interesting, because I haven’t seen a …

I was introduced to banana boats at summer camp. Making banana boats is one of only a few fond memories I have of attending summer camp as a kid. I didn’t have to go to summer camp to learn that I appreciated having a solid roof over …

One of my favorite appetizers is the spinach dip that my aunt usually brings to family events. It’s a cold dip served in a hollowed out round loaf of bread. Collectively, I think my family has a lot of great recipes, but I like my aunt’s spinach …

I really like imitation crab meat, because I think it’s like having the pleasure of eating seafood minus the burden of preparing it. So I’m always searching for new recipes to make it with. During one of my recent online quests for easy crock pot recipes I …

Baking was fun for me when I was a teenager and I had a lot of time on my hands. Now my schedule is a lot more hectic, and unfortunately baking seems more like a chore to me than a fun project. I still prefer homemade desserts …

I think egg salad is one of those recipes that people just either love or hate. I love egg salad, but I don’t like buying it from the grocery store, because I never know how long it may have been sitting out unrefrigerated after it was made. …

I like making pigs in a blanket because I think it’s a fun way to cook hot dogs, and they’re easy and affordable to make. The Dollar Tree in my neighborhood has a refrigerated section, and I can get everything I need to make them there. I …

Most of my friends and family members think I’m a little strange because I’m not a huge fan of ice cream. I don’t dislike ice cream, but it’s definitely not the first thing I would order if I were presented with a list of dessert options. However, …

I’ve had all kinds of variations of Rice Krispie Treat recipes, but the original recipe I’ve been making since I was a child is by far my favorite. I’m a firm believer that sometimes less really is more, and I think the recipe I grew up with is …

I had my first Reuben sandwich at a restaurant in the Caribbean that was owned by a couple from New York. Although a Reuben is usually made with corned beef, they served theirs with a choice of either pastrami or turkey. I had a turkey Reuben the …

I remember having fondue on special occasions when I was growing up in the seventies. I loved it because it was fun to dip all kinds of different food into the fondue. Apparently fondue was a passing fad with my family, because I only remember having it …

I ate tuna salad sandwiches all of the time when I was a kid. I used to like them pretty plain with only tuna fish and mayonnaise on white bread. I still enjoy eating tuna salad sandwiches, but now my tastes are a little more sophisticated. …

A lot of the pizza places and the majority of sub shops I’ve been to serve their own versions of an Italian sub. I like ordering Italian subs, because even though I never know exactly what’s going to be in them, they’re usually filled with a lot of …

No matter what the family event is that I’m attending, deviled eggs are usually on the appetizer table. They’re usually also one of the first appetizers to disappear from the table. Even though they’re a crowd pleaser I didn’t try making them until recently, because I also …

I had been enjoying aioli sauce for about a year before I even knew what it was. When I was living in the Caribbean I used to get what I thought were some of the best burgers and fries I’ve ever eaten from a small island restaurant and …

I make tortilla pizzas at least twice a week, because they’re easy to make, affordable, and the ingredient combination options are endless. The first time I made a tortilla pizza I was trying to avoid going to the grocery store, so I scraped leftovers together from my refrigerator …

It turns out that French toast is a lot easier than I thought it would be to make. I loved having it for breakfast, even dinner sometimes, but I would only eat it if someone else was making it, or if I was at a restaurant. My …

I enjoy cooking with potatoes, and I’ve tried lots of potato recipes over the years, but I had never tried to make my own potato salad until recently. I used to just buy containers of it from my grocery store’s deli. I finally decided to try making …

I created my own recipe for chicken pot pie one night when I was trying to make a meal out of leftovers. I had two large cooked chicken breasts from the previous night, and I was trying to figure out how to make them stretch so I could …

I think one of my biggest challenges in the kitchen is finding recipes for appetizers and snacks that are filling and generally pleasing to a wide range of tastes. Most of my family and the majority of my friends enjoy Mexican food, so I often resort to making …

This easy chocolate pie is one of my favorite comfort foods, because it combines my love of chocolate pudding and my love of pie. Making it doesn’t require any cooking or baking, and I can make it in less than five minutes, so I think it’s a great …