Get out the sprinkles, baby! Here's my long-time best recipe for rolled sugar cookies, made from scratch, sturdy enough for decorating, tender enough to eat. The all-butter dough is easy to handle, requires no refrigeration before rolling out and holds its shape during baking. Best of all, these homemade cookies smell and taste good, thanks to a heady blend of vanilla and almond extracts. Plus if you're in a rush, no problem, mix and bake an entire batch start to finish in just an hour, all ready for decorating , whether it's for Christmas, Valentines' Day, Easter, Halloween or my own claim to fame, family birthdays. Oh, the big smiles that happen whenever old-fashioned hand-decorated sugar cookies appear! And not just from kids! Just-Baked & Family-Tested. Fast & Flexible. Rolled in Powdered Sugar. Fun for Kids, Fun with Kids for Cookie Decorating Projects. Tender Enough to Eat, Sturdy Enough to Hold Kid-Heavy Frosting. Potluck & Party Friendly.

Who else knows that some times, often even, only a lemon cookie will do? I've been looking for "my" lemon cookie recipe for a few years now but finally, I've found it! Lemon Crinkle Cookies are so bright and lemony, really charged with lemon flavor. And they have that much-coveted chewy texture too. If you've got a couple of lemons on hand, in a few hours, you'll understand exactly why these just aren't your everyday homemade cookies. Join me in Lemon Heaven, anyone? Bright Lemony Cookies, Little Effort, Big Reward. Budget Friendly Calling for Common Pantry Ingredients (Plus Poppy Seeds). What're you waiting for?! So Good!!

Italian Fish & Seafood Stew A Lazy Man's Ciopinno, it's seafood stew packed with fresh fish and fresh shrimp, all hovering in a light tomato-y broth. For those of us who live far from saltwater and a waterside fish market, it's a seafood-lovers's dream. ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ COMPLIMENTS! "I made this ... with haddock and king prawns. It was fantastic!" ~ Craig Add yours, leave a comment, below! BEST RECIPES! Lazy Man's Ciopinno Made the List! Best Recipes of 2003 Communal Stew Pots to High-End Restaurants So we've seen pictures of those big bowls of seafood stew at restaurants, right, especially along the Pacific and Mediterranean coasts? Ciopinno is a sight to be seen, an outright seafood spectacle: broth-filled bowls overflowing with fresh mussels and fresh clams cracked open, crab legs hanging over the side. That's ciopinno [pronounced, at least to my American ear, tchee-uh-PEEN-yo] and the name j...

Hey, y'all. No recipe today but I'm so excited to dish on the one kitchen tool I use every single day, a a Rachael Ray-style "garbage bowl" and "compost bowl". With all my tips and tricks, you just might decide that you need one too! Practical, Inexpensive Kitchen Tools for Real Cooks in Real Kitchens. No Purchase Required. What're you waiting for?! So Helpful!!

Invest ten minutes and five pantry ingredients and you've got a sweet, chocolate-y, pourable, squeezable chocolate sauce! Real Food, Family-Tested & Fast, Mere Minutes to the Table Ice Cream Bowl. Budget Friendly. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Great for Meal Prep & Food Gifts. Easy DIY. Naturally Gluten Free.

Don't let extra tomato paste hang out in the fridge to turn into a fuzzy-green science experiment. Instead, freeze it now straight from the can and use it later straight from the freezer . It's super-easy, no skills required, no tools to buy. And I got you! I'll show you exactly how to wrap leftover tomato paste in plastic wrap to freeze in convenient portions. This is the first of an occasional series of posts I call "One Quick Tip" ... because, well, each one includes a single good idea: quick to absorb, easy to adopt, memorable to use.

We're an open-minded bunch, right? So we won't hold it against this recipe, will we, that it's called "curried"? A curry, after all, is just a spice mix and we all know what the right mix of spices does to foods, vegetables and meats alike, right? A vegetable stew strikes such the right note for January, for any month really, but especially a month when it feels so good to return to what's fresh and what's healthy and what's, you know, every-day delicious versus sugar-and-butter laden holiday-delicious. So please, if there's anyone in the kitchen who's prone to say, "I don't like curry" then please, just think of this as a "Spiced Vegetable Stew". I'm willing to bet, you'll love it. Real Food, Fresh & Flexible. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Great for Meal Prep. Low Cal. Weight Watchers Friendly. Naturally Gluten Free. Paleo. Primal. All that Good Stuff!

Favorite recipes from 2013, yours and mine both, just one "best" recipe per month. Looking back, does it strike you as it does me that my recipes are becoming simpler, more family-friendly – still real food and still healthy, flavor-forward and seasonal of course, those are the touchstones of my food sensibility, after all – but also more ready for preparation on a whim? Is your food sensibility evolving too? What was new in 2013, what do you look forward to in 2014? First, your favorite recipes! Each one is pictured in the collage above. Starting in the center , Kitchen Parade's top recipe for 2013, homey comfort food, a simple Hamburger Casserole . You couldn't get enough of this! Now, clockwise from the upper lefthand corner. First, Easy Skinny Turkey Roll-ups with Fresh Veggies , these are such an easy lunch, they keep and are great to carry along. Next, my own obsession for a few weeks, so easy to put together on a whim, just tortillas topped wit...