theculinarycanary

 Recipe Review: Hot Dog "Bacon" I don't know if the word recipe is truly apt here, but I saw this unique method of preparing hot dogs while scrolling Instagram recently. It was posted by @buzzfeedtasty and as soon as I saw it, I knew I'd have to give it a try. I'm not a huge fan of hot dogs, but my husband and sons are. So, I showed the video to my husband and, predictably, he got really (REALLY) excited.  I bought a large pack of hot dogs at Costco and turned him loose. The post didn't really have any instructions, but the video was pretty clear and the method seemed simple enough. The first problem he ran into was that he wasn't able to get the hot dog to peel into nice even strips like the video.  He tried both our traditional peeler and the y-peeler, to no avail. Eventually he got frustrated and started experimenting with every knife in the house to see how closely he could approximate those nice, thin pieces of hot dog.  When he'd butchered a whol...

 Recipe Review: Bow Tie Pasta with Baby Kale & Sun-Dried Tomatoes For today's recipe review we're looking at Joanna Gaines' Bowtie Pasta with Baby Kale and Sundried Tomatoes .  I stumbled upon this recipe when puttering around the internet and saw an article on Kitchn about it.  It sounded interesting, so I followed the link from their article to the Magnolia website and decided to give it a try. My family is pretty big on pasta, so I figured that we'd probably love this cheesy dish as well.   My husband was the architect of this particular meal, and he said it came together really quickly and with little effort.  According to him, the slowest part was waiting for the water to boil.  We had to make a small substitution because *someone*  (cough...cough...me) used all of our heavy cream to make ice cream this morning.  We had about a quart cup left, while the recipe calls for two cups.  We used whole milk, and...

  Recipe Review: Italian Marinated Green Beans My family eats a lot of vegetables, so I try to change it up sometimes so we don't get bored with the same ol' things.  Green beans in particular, we often just pan sear them until they're caramelized and slightly blackened. If we're feeling fancy, we might throw on some type of seasoning other than salt and pepper. So when I saw this recipe for a different way of prepping green beans that is also supposed to be really easy, I was excited to try it.  I agree that the preparation was fairly easy.  Admittedly, it was a little more involved than my usual "throw 'em in a pan" method. But I didn't find it to be very difficult, and it has the advantage of being something you can (must) do in advance. So, you can prepare the beans the night before and then let them do their thing overnight.   So, how were they? Opinions on that were mixed within my family. I actually enjoyed them quite a bit....

 Recipe Review: Pork and Peanut Dragon Noodles from Budget Bytes Welcome to another recipe review! Today we're reviewing Pork and Peanut Dragon Noodles from Budget Bytes. Both of my kids are really growing to love cooking, and now that they're off school for the summer I'm having them take turns planning and preparing meals.  My older son has really vibed with this particular recipe.  He's chosen it three times already when it's been his turn. The recipe is well written with directions that are easy enough for a novice teen cook to follow.  It turns out spicy and full of salty, umami flavors.   My son and I have a minor debate each time he cooks this, because I have to remind him that we need some veggies with the meal. He wants to keep his veg completely separate from the noodles, like a salad or a side of steamed broccoli.  I always suggest maybe adding something in to the stir fry itself to take advantage of the ...