Today's product review: A look at what I thought was a promising development in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store, sweet potato fries. How do they taste? Are they worth the money? I suppose I shouldn't be shocked -- shocked! -- but I am. It turns out that frozen sweet potatoes: - do taste okay, not great, but okay . - are three to four times more expensive than fresh sweet potatoes! - have 50% to 68% more calories than fresh sweet potatoes roasted at home! - are made with a whole long list of "other" ingredients. THE BACKGROUND Last summer, my favorite busy mom brought sweet potato fries to a pool party. I was a late arrival so only a few scraps were left but even cold, the sticks of baked sweet potato were pretty tasty! Fast Forward Three Months, as I set out to try frozen sweet potato fries for myself. I gotta tell you, I was fully prepared to "love" these products. I expected to extol the virtues of "convenient whole food" from the...

Today's fun fall recipe: Stuff a pumpkin with apples and cranberries and nuts and spices and what do you get? Great flavor, whether for a side dish or a dessert. Gorgeous presentation, even though easy-easy to make. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". Two years ago, four of us celebrated one of those 'significant' birthdays ending in zero within a couple of months. One of the husbands cooked dinner for us, a present in itself. Last year, we decided to make a joint birthday celebration an annual event and all of a sudden, we were assigning courses for a potluck supper. Georg? Appetizer. Kathy? Dessert. (I'm still drooling over that dessert, homemade vanilla ice cream with homemade dulce le leche and hot fudge and three, count 'em, three beautiful little butter cookies.) Ann was less settled but soon knew she wanted to do something, not sure what exactly, with a pumpkin from her CSA. And this is what she brought -- a pumpkin stuffed with apples and cranber...

Today's soup recipe: A garlic soup, deepened with roasted garlic and made creamy with potato plus a splash of cream. Low carb and for Weight Watchers, 2 or 3 points. Plus, my annual reminder that we plant garlic in the fall some time in the middle of October. Did my home-ec teacher mother even know about garlic? Surely, she must have. But if she did, garlic awareness didn't translate into garlic cooking, perhaps, I suspect in her defense, because fresh garlic wasn't available in our small-town grocery? So I was 13 or 14 when garlic entered my life, not with a bang but a full-nasal blast. My Auntie Karen's house reeked of garlic when she made Chicken Cacciatore for my annual birthday supper. What WAS that smell? She laughed and held out a head of garlic for inspection. How could something so small pack such a punch? How far our food world has come! Few kitchens are now without garlic, it's a staple. And for awhile now, in my kitchen, not only is garlic a stapl...