Northstar Café salad

23 January 2013 Food
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All restaurants have salads, but very few have good ones. Maybe it’s the low expectations: plenty of people would send back a disappointing appetizer, or main dish, or dessert, but no one sends back a salad for being limp, overdressed, or uninteresting. With so much creative talent in restaurant kitchens, too little of it makes [...]

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Healthy new year

14 January 2013 Brain food
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Good news for food lovers from 2012: starving yourself will not make you live longer. All those calorie-restrictive diets that increased life expectancy of lab rats by 30 to 40 percent? It turns out the concept doesn’t extend to primates. I’m sure some people (the intentionally-starving ones) might have found this news disappointing. But to [...]

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Vincenzo’s

4 January 2013 Columbus, OH
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Columbus, Ohio is a surprisingly great town for food. Ohio is one of the most diverse states in the Midwest, and the Ohio State University, third largest university in enrollment in the country, draws students and faculty from around the world. This is a city that appreciates and supports its food culture, from a lively [...]

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Mango Bellini

31 December 2012 Beverages
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It’s funny that I’ve featured several beverages here recently, when normally I’m a very boring water drinker. I love the idea of cocktails, but usually I’m so busy with food I can’t fuss with drinks. My friend Lisa – who is never boring – inspired me when she came over with ingredients not just for [...]

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Buttermilk scones with chocolate chips and citrus zest

20 December 2012 Breakfast
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I’m a cream scone evangelist (I’ve written about them twice!), but whenever I have extra buttermilk on hand I like to make these classic buttermilk scones. I love buttermilk for baking – it brings great moistness without the heaviness of butter or cream. The original scones from Scotland were made of unleavened oats and cooked [...]

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Banana nog

12 December 2012 Beverages
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Some of my kids can’t get over the idea of drinking raw egg in eggnog, even after I tell them that eggnog is like ice cream in liquid form. I would love to make fresh eggnog with them, as I did with my mom’s rotary metal eggbeater when I was a kid, but bacterial contamination [...]

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Nubian Heritage soaps (and other stocking stuffers for grownups)

6 December 2012 Gift ideas
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Gifts for adults are tricky. By the time we’ve been around for three decades or more, there isn’t much of anything that would fit in a wrapped present that most of us actually need. As for guessing what someone would want – so often those types of gifts tend to end up forgotten in the [...]

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EzyRoller (and a few stocking stuffer ideas)

4 December 2012 Gift ideas
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I miss my dream kitchen in Ohio, but what my kids miss are the two Ezy Rollers they got for Christmas last year. These ride-on toys are ingenious in their simplicity – four wheels, one seat, a couple of bars of sturdy metal and an effective hand break – and powered by an intuitive back-and-forth [...]

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Cranberry tea

29 November 2012 Beverages
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There was something familiar about the ruby, warming cranberry tea my little brother made for Thanksgiving. As I sipped it, I could picture it being made – fresh cranberries simmering in water with cinnamon sticks, cloves, orange and lemon juice. For an instant I imagined I’d developed magical culinary insight. My brother looked at me [...]

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Pecan pie, no corn syrup

19 November 2012 Food
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I love pies and pecans, but I was always wary of pecan pies. Why the gelatinous goo? Why the impenetrable layer of nuts that squishes the goo when you try to break through? Why pile such deliciously buttery nuts atop corn syrup jelly? But then I tasted my friend Jenny’s pecan pie. Jenny’s pie – [...]

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