Vanilla simply makes everything taste better. Most of us use the imitation vanilla extract sold in grocery stores, because buying pure vanilla extract gets really expensive. A few years ago I was on a cooking spurt and decided I wanted to start making as many pantry...

Cinnamon is one of those spices that I use often. Cinnamon sticks, not so much. I'm not sure how I ended up with 2 packets of cinnamon sticks, but I did. I can't remember the last time I needed them, so when I was pulling out the ingredients I needed for a recipe...

If you do a lot of cooking, you have recipes that call for chicken stock. As most cooks know, taking a basic recipe and making substitutions is half the fun of cooking. When I learned how to make homemade vegetable stock, I started using it in all of my recipes that...