Don’t be alarmed, but Thanksgiving is a mere eight days away. Scary, right? It crept up on us so fast that I totally didn’t see it coming. Now, I am knee deep in grocery lists, recipes and meal plans for the big day. I’ll be sharing my 2011 menu here on Friday, along with a few last minute planning tips.

But today I want to share with you a little trick that I came up with to make absolutely foolproof, lump-free, easy, delicious turkey gravy. It’s ridiculously simple and makes the whole gravy making process a cinch.

See, for me, making gravy is a tricky and frustrating thing. I’ve tried using my grandfather’s method of mixing a water/flour mixture and whisking that in. I’ve tried using cornstarch. I’ve tried mixing a little flour into hot broth before adding it. But my gravy has seldom been perfect, instead ranging from lumpy (hint: strain lumps out of lumpy gravy to save the day) to jelly-ish (too much cornstarch). Sometimes it’s been under-seasoned and flavorless while other times it’s been too salty or peppery.

With this recipe, none of that happens. Basically I’ve taken my method for making homemade macaroni and cheese and applied it to gravy — and it worked like a charm. The smooth, velvety gravy has a rich herbalness with rosemary, thyme and sage cooked into it. It’s a beautiful thing.

To make this absolutely fool proof gravy recipe, you start with a roux (that’s a fancy way of saying a butter/flour mixture). Melt the butter and then add the flour, whisking it together until it’s good and bubbly. This is your thickening agent. By adding it first, you ensure that the flour doesn’t form those dreaded lumps when you go to thicken it.

Then, you add turkey stock and whisk it up like crazy to combine the stock and roux. Next, you add herbs for flavor. Just stir them in and let the gravy bubble away for five minutes. Fish out the herbs, season with salt and pepper, and you are there.

Really, it couldn’t be easier. Oh, and here’s one more little hack for you: if you don’t have a gravy boat, try using a plain coffee cup like this white mug. It works just as well (and I swear it keeps the gravy warmer for longer too.

How are your Thanksgiving plans coming?

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Growing up, I was always taught that when invited to someone’s house, you should never show up empty handed. It’s good manners, and a way to show gratitude. When I was a child, my grandmother and I would stop at a certain little family-owned bakery to pick up something to take when we visited my cousins. It was just something that I knew you had to do.

I can’t say that I’ve always been perfect at following this rule. I wish I could. What I can say is that the older I get, the harder I try to always arrive with something — small or big. It’s something that I am trying to teach my kids too.

When Will was invited over to his friend’s house this weekend while Paige and I went to a birthday party, I knew I wanted to bring something. But as much as I love a good batch of cookies, I just didn’t have it in me to whip up a batch. I needed a simple, fast and easy recipe that would be fun but not bad for you.

Suddenly it hit me: mini chocolate covered pretzels using leftover candy melts, old fashioned dipping stick pretzels and sprinkles.

This is a great way to use up leftover candy melts, if you have them in your cupboard. I had half a bag of these bright leafy green ones, which were perfect for making a funky snack for my son and his friend. I used coordinating dolphin sprinkles with them too to give the pretzels a little element of fun. If you don’t have candy melts, any chocolate will do.

First, you melt the candy melts or chocolate. This is a cinch to do in the microwave. You just nuke the chocolate for 30 second intervals, stirring after each one, until its totally melted and stirred smooth.

Then you dip the pretzels. If you want the chocolate to reach up higher on the pretzels, use a rubber spatula to nudge it up.

Finally, you sprinkle ‘em with sprinkles. Whatever you have will do — rainbow, chocolate shots, butterflies.

Let them cool on a tray (in the fridge for a faster cooling period) and they are ready to enjoy. All in all, this is a 40 minute snack — with just 10 minutes hands on (at most!). Not bad, right?

Do you make a point to show up with a little something when you are going to someone’s house?

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This dip, made in a mere 10 minutes or less, made me want to kiss Mark Bittman in gratitude. Not in a creepy way, but more in an oh-wow-you-just-saved-my-day way.

Let me back up.

This morning I roasted a whole cauliflower with garlic and rosemary. It filled the house with this wonderful aroma that left me drooling and contemplating if I really needed to continue with the recipe I was working on. But the roasted cauliflower wasn’t for a side dish — it was for a dip recipe that I am working on. A lovely, creamy, pureed cauliflower dip. Except it was awful – a total epic fail. I couldn’t get it into the garbage fast enough.

Of course, that left me totally bummed. So much for spreading it on bread for a sandwich today or enjoying it with crackers. So much for having a successful and ready to use recipe by the end of the day. It needs a complete revisiting and overhaul.

That’s when Bittman saved the day. (Ha! Sort of.) I started looking around for an easy, fast dip that I could make from what I had in my kitchen already (I am trying hard to break my daily grocery store trip habit). I stumbled onto this amazing white bean dip recipe that Mark Bittman wrote about on Diner’s Journal back in 2008. He said the secret to it is something he learned from Lidia Bastianich: lemon zest. It gives the dip the essence of lemon without the overpowering acidity.

The creamy dip is filled with a wonderful mix of earthy rosemary, pungent garlic (use less if you aren’t a fan) and citrus-y lemon zest. It’s perfect for dipping crackers into, or serving with your favorite chopped veggies. It would make a good sandwich spread too. And since it can be made ahead, it makes a great holiday appetizer too.

Speaking of holiday appetizers, I will be a guest tweeter at the Mediterranean Snacks Twitter Party this Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST. Follow hashtag #holidaysnax to join in the fun as we talk about holiday snacking, shopping and more. Get the full details on the Mediterranean Snacks blog. Scroll all the way down for details on a delicious Mediterranean Snacks giveaway too.

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When I look at this photo, all I can think is good morning. It’s so inviting. All the contrasting textures and flavors … Wait. Let me tell you about it. Looking is one thing, but hearing is a whole other.

The simple roasted potatoes — both russet and sweet varieties — seasoned only with a little salt and pepper have a slightly crispy outside and silky inside. They’re mixed with rounds of sweet-slightly savory chicken apple sausage, which has such a warm flavor. Then it’s all bound together by the perfect runny poached egg — the kind that has a velvety ooze of yolk that spills out when you dig your fork into it.

I love poached eggs. They are blissful, compact, perfect lumps of egg that spill over so willingly when you dig in. Oh, the joy.

And it was the thought of poached eggs and roasted potatoes – no two kinds of roasted potatoes – and chicken sausage that got me so excited to get to work. In fact, I was so busy mentally calculating the recipe that I nearly missed the exit I needed to take on the highway. Yes, really. But it was totally worth it. It’s the kind of dish that wraps its arms around you and makes everything okay again.

This dish seemed perfect for a blogging gig I was recently given. My friends at Betty Crocker asked me to create an eggy recipe using Land O’Lakes eggs, and I jumped at it. Eggs are huge in our house — a favorite of my breakfast-devoted daughter. We go through about two dozen eggs every week in my house.

Breakfast in our house is kind of a big deal. I mean it should be, being the most important meal of the day and all. But it is really something in our house. Epic, at times, which is surprising since I was a reluctant breakfast convert. Will started the breakfast change in our house — but it was Paige who brought a deep breakfast devotion to the house.

She loved this one, by the way.

Having breakfast has become so important, so crafting balanced meals like this is a must for me. This one is best for weekends (it takes about 40 minutes), and is worth every cooking second.

Do you love breakfast? How do you take your eggs?

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Today is a milestone for my blog: Six years since I started publishing it. I hoped it would help me redefine my journalism career, but I had no idea that it would propel me into this amazing niche where I write recipes professionally, take photographs and live and breathe food. I feel so blessed.

This year I would love to hear from you — my wonderful, kind readers who make me smile with every comment. Come out of the woodwork today and share a little or a lot about how long you’ve been reading, what your favorite posts are and who you are. I’d really love to hear from you all!

But what’s a blog birthday post without a little reminiscing? Let’s do it in food. It’s totally the best way, right?

Here are some of the recipe highlights of the last six years:

Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries -For years, these have been a runaway favorite here — and with good reason. The seasoning combination of cinnamon and paprika give these fries incredible flavor that compliments the natural sweetness of the sweet potatoes. Read the rest of this entry…

When my GPS system successfully directs me to a destination, it says, “You have arrived.” I love it. Beyond the words,  the way it says it is so special — as if I am a debutant being presented to society. It never fails to make me smile.

When I went away to college, I thought having arrived meant hosting awesome dinner parties and entertaining with charm and pizazz. I was so excited to have friends over and cook for them — although my cooking range was really limited. Among my go-to dishes? Sundried Tomato Pasta … from the Cooking with Friends Cookbook. Actually, it was my one and only specialty. Too bad not everyone loves sundried tomatoes like I do.

I don’t know that having great dinner parties mean you’ve truly arrived, but I have learned a thing or two since then — like how to plan a menu people love and that pasta cooking water is a genius addition to sauces.

Making this pasta is super simple. You start with a six quick and easy ingredients — most of which you probably already have. First thing, you start the water for the pasta. Once it’s boiling, toss in the pasta and let it cook while you prepare the sauce.

Sundried tomatoes — the dried kind, not the ones packed in oil — are sliced thinly. You’ll need a good, sharp knife and a bit of patience (don’t worry, it’s really not that bad). Once that’s done, you mince a clove of garlic and mix it all up with crushed red pepper and a little oil in a bowl. Once the pasta is done, you stir in a 1/2 cup of pasta water too before tossing with the drained pasta.

Finally, you chop up some prosciutto and stir it into the pasta. That’s it. You are totally ready to eat.

Now I want to invite over all the friends from my college days of making an old version of this pasta (which had no prosciutto, more oil, no pasta water and more garlic) so they can see how far I’ve come. In the meantime, I am just going to have a little more pasta for myself.

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This post was underwritten by BMO Harris Bank, which offers a matching $25 on a new savings account opened for your child through their Helpful Steps for Parents program. Learn more at bmoharris.com/parents.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Always has been. It’s not just about the candy though. It’s about being able to assume another personality and dress in wacky, crazy ways that would otherwise be totally frowned upon. Oh yes, I have a deep infatuation with dressing up (yes, I was a drama kid in high school … or, as we called it, a thespian). Despite that, I don’t believe in spending a lot of money on costumes — especially not the cheaply made ones that are so prevalent these days.

In the past, I’ve steered Will and Paige towards inexpensive options and simply vetoed the ones that were beyond what I wanted to spend. But this year I took a different approach and set a costume budget for all: $15. Then I empowered them to decide for themselves.

It was a good teaching moment. Read the rest of this entry…

This morning, all I could think of was homemade cookies. All that time without power has sent me head first back into the kitchen — a good thing, no doubt. But I’ve also been busy with work, making sure that all my proverbial balls remained in the air throughout. So it was late afternoon before I finally cleaned out  my stand mixer bowl (banana pancakes were this morning’s breakfast for our extended family who arrived bright and early for a shower) and set out to bake a batch of cookies.

The flavor combination – Dark Chocolate Coconut Shortbread – is something my friend Rhian and I came up with this afternoon while chatting on Google Talk. She loves food as much as I do and is awesome about dreaming up flavors with me. I may just have to send her some now … or bribe her to make a visit with promises of homemade baked goods (I like the second idea better, personally). All it took was a mention that I really wanted to make cookies, and she was shooting out ideas and mere minutes later, I had a recipe in mind.

Oh, Dark Chocolate Coconut Shortbread Cookies … they are mouthwatering. The cookies have a buttery shortbread base that’s best eaten cooled. The texture is crumbly, but the cookies don’t break apart into bits (in other words, they don’t make a mess). Dotted with sweet bits of dark chocolate and coconut, every bite is a little different … a happy surprise. And since they aren’t overly sweet, Paige loved them as much as Will and I did. That’s a feat in itself.

The shortbread recipe is the same one that I use for my Shortbread Candy Cookies. It’s a tried and true that adapted easily for this recipe. If you make these, they are awesome with coffee – and don’t be shy about dipping. It’s totally worth it. Read the rest of this entry…

There was a point yesterday when I discovered what the power company’s estimate for returning power was: Sunday at 11 p.m. When I read that, I felt my heart sink and all hope dissipate. Even as I watched the number of power outages in my town go down a few percentage points at a time, I wasn’t hopeful that we’d be among the lucky ones.

But we were.

Just before 9 p.m. last night, something — not really a sound or anything, but something — made me look up. I glanced at our thermostat and saw that it read 63 degrees. It was the first time the display had worked since about 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. After about 5 days, 6 hours and 15 minutes (who’s counting?), we had power again. Shawn and I sprang into action, turning up the heat, starting the dishwasher and unplugging things from the generator. A mere 15 minutes later, I was standing in a hot shower, washing away all the stress and worry of the past few days.

It was blissful. And it was even better when I stepped out of the shower into warm, fresh pajamas to watch Revenge, my new favorite show (have you seen it? Love it). Still, I feel for the more than half of my town still without power — including some of our family. I hope theirs returns soon too.

Today brought a new round of to-dos and plans. I continued cleaning up from our days without power. It’s amazing how messy things can get when you don’t have running water and have to keep things like bottled water and flashlights at your fingertips.

We invited family over to shower and have a hot breakfast. And I cooked. First eggs and toast for everyone and then for some assignments that had been patiently waiting. Finally, as evening neared, I found a big, lovely cauliflower in the fridge and roasted it with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasted vegetables are one of my favorite things ever … and roasted cauliflower? It’s just divine.

This version is tossed with blue cheese and topped with pomegranate arils for a sweet-savory combination that was perfect for ending our dark days without power, water or heat. The kids were practically salivating waiting for a bite. Me too.

Oh, and in case you were wondering … we went for ultimate decadence with dinner tonight. I made my favorite easy creamy macaroni and cheese recipe. It popped into my head earlier and I just had to have it.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy cauliflower?

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We’ve just entered day five (5!!) without electricity, running water or heat at our house here in Fairfield County, Connecticut. As of yesterday morning, all of our family that lives nearby had also lost power, so there is no refuge. So, let’s be real about this: having no power or running water sucks. It’s hard on everyone, the kids, the dogs, the adults. But we are making do. We’re even eating hot homemade meals again.

Honestly, had I known on Sunday that we wouldn’t have school for a week (it’s set to resume Monday) and that we’d be without power almost the entire time (current projection is for our power to be restored by Sunday at 11 p.m.), I would have packed the kids and the dogs up and headed south to visit family in Florida or west to Michigan. But at this point, those drives just seem too far for a short trip.

In the meantime, we have to eat, right? So I figured I would show you how we’ve been coping with our prolonged power outage. Mind you, this is what we’re doing. Someone else is likely doing something entirely different.

First, I should say that we are extremely lucky to have a small generator that my husband bought on Sunday. It’s powering my fridge, a small space heater, my computer and the internet. It also is running one small kitchen appliance at a time. I know just how blessed we are to have this, and know how much harder it is without this.

This is our small space heater — the only source of heat in the house at present. We move it between the rooms to keep things at a not-freezing temperature. The wires criss-crossing around it go from the main generator hook up to the few things we have powered up. You can imagine how having this in the center of our house makes it hard on the kids and dogs since they can’t run or really play much with this there.

We don’t have a fireplace, so this space heater is a must. It blows hot air out of the top opening.

In the kitchen, we have one line that runs directly from the generator to the fridge and a second one from the secondary generator hook up for running small appliances. We move it between the coffee maker (thank goodness my Keurig is working again!) and this double burner hot plate. While we were okay for a couple days without hot food, we really needed this to get back some sense of normalcy in the house. Thankfully, this is something we’ll be able to use after the outage as well (perhaps I can even make some cooking videos with it? what do you think?). Read the rest of this entry…