Just as I bestowed pom-pom topped club covers, golf ball retrievers, and rubber gardening shoes on my golf- and gardening-enthusiast father, I now am bombarded with egg poachers, cookbook weights, and whisks of all sizes and shapes.  If a new culinary contraption hits the markets, chances are I’ll receive it as a Christmas, birthday or hostess gift.  Yes, my lust for cooking has turned me into the goddess of kitchen gadgets.     Some sound too quirky to be useful.  Take, for instance, onion goggles.  Others, such as the silicon oven mitt, sound like a clumsy baker’s dream.  Yet, often the reverse is true.  Onion goggles are a godsend – no more tears! — while that hot, unwieldy oven mitt has been shoved to the back of a kitchen drawer, never to be used again.  With so many utensils at my disposal I have become somewhat of an authority on non-essential cooking tools.  Below are a few of my favorites.  I could live without them but why would I want to? Onion goggles – If I sloppily — and …

                Usually, when I’m at home in southeastern Pennsylvania, I prefer either to cook or grab a simple meal at a nearby brewery or coffee shop.  Driving 35 minutes into Philadelphia never sounds terribly appealing when I’m tired and hungry.  However, over the past two weeks I broke from my usual routine and had some exceptional dinners in Philadelphia as a result.  The restaurants? Amada and FARMiCiA in Old City, the Water Works in Fairmount Park and Vetri in Center City. Authentic, earthy Spanish tapas with flavor and flair was what I wanted, and got, at Jose Garces’ Amada.  www.amadarestaurant.com   Lychee mojitos, cranberry-studded sangria and a cheese plate of Manchego paired with lavender honey, Cana de Cabra with a side of fig marmalade and Queso de Cabra accompanied by balsamic strawberries started the evening.  Following this were small platters of bread slathered with tomato and garlic, patatas bravas or spicy potatoes topped with saffron aioli, salt cod croquettes, shrimp sauteed with chunks of garlic, and charred green onions as well as bowls of …

It all started with a request for a cookbook.  Not any old cookbook but one filled with recipes that had been created, modified or copied by me.  My deadline was Christmas Day 2007.  My publisher?  TasteBook.  With financial backing from Conde Nast and a partnership with the online recipe site Epicurious.com, TasteBook provides home cooks with a way to create their own illustrated, hardcover books.  For $34.95 they can select 100 recipes from existing TasteBooks or from the 25,000 listed on Epicurious or they can type in recipes from their own collections.  As my dishes originate with friends, from traditionally published cookbooks or me, I opted to write 99 and acquired only one – asparagus with tarragon sherry vinaigrette – from Epicurious.  The latter I had used for years, ever since tearing it out of the April 2002 issue of Gourmet magazine.  Had I copied recipes from Epicurious or other TasteBooks, I undoubtedly would have completed this project in a matter of days.  However, as I chose to type every title, ingredient list, set of steps, …