Deanna Hoak

Cooking tip: Save the water in which your potatoes boiled for the turkey gravy. Yum!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I thought I’d post a Thanksgiving recipe favorite in case folks haven’t done all their shopping yet. (Last year’s recipe was Brandied Cranberries–you should check that out too. :-))
This is a pie crust that works fantastically for sweet potato or pumpkin pies–the pecans add a wonderful hint of flavor. You can actually work it with [...]

The kiddos and I made candy today. The recipe was easy for them and came out pretty tasty.
1 8-oz. pkg cream cheese, softened
1 pkg Oreos
2 pkg semisweet baking chocolate
Take out nine Oreos and crush the rest into very fine crumbs (for which I recommend a Ziploc bag and a rolling pin). Mix them into the [...]

I love Florida more than anywhere we’ve lived so far, but September is my least-favorite month here, just because it’s the worst for hurricanes.
I never cared much about weather before I lived here; but if you’re even the slightest bit a fretful type, you start watching the storms when they’re way, way out, because we’re [...]

Apparently it’s carambola season here on the island, because the kids and I were lured by a hand-painted STARFRUIT sign to a cardboard box (honor system) alongside someone’s driveway: three star fruit for a buck. I’ve never had tree-ripe star fruit before, and it’s (unsurprisingly) much sweeter than what I’ve had from the store. Really [...]

Sorry, I know you guys like copyediting stuff, but I’m too busy copyediting to come up with interesting copyediting stuff at the moment.
I’m too busy to cook much for my poor kiddos, either; thus I have this…recipe, kind of. :-) (My daughter insists that it’s a recipe and that everyone in the world would want [...]

This is the only dish I make almost every Fourth. I’ve had it so many years that Independence Day doesn’t seem quite right without it. There’s nothing fancy to the recipe at all; but it’s nicely tangy, feeds loads of people, and is always a big hit at parties.
Cole Slaw
Chop the following in the amounts [...]

I made chocolate-chip banana pancakes this morning. Breakfast was a hit. :-)
I also came across a really cool word while looking up something else: ventifact. Web 11 has it as “a stone worn, polished, or faceted by windblown sand.” I love it!

Blaine had a friend sleep over last night, so I made the kids a special treat for breakfast. I whipped some eggs together with turbinado sugar (for crunch), cinnamon, half-and-half, and vanilla, then took same stale French bread, sliced on a long diagonal, and soaked the pieces in the mixture until they were soft. Fried [...]

Since I’ve been eating frosting with a spoon for the last several minutes (Blaine iced her own cake, and there was some left over, and it’s so tempting, sitting there in the bowl), I thought I’d share my favorite frosting recipe.
Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
1 8 oz. package of cream cheese, softened
1 stick of butter, softened
1 [...]