Many of Texas’ signature winter crops, including grapefruit and other citrus, were wiped out when the temperatures plummeted in the Rio Grande Valley. Closer to home, growers sustained damage to most of what they were growing.

One substitution, however, was baffling and challenging. The store didn’t have the requested brand of cottage cheese, and it instead sent a five-pound container of sour cream.

Matos has selected a topic for each month’s session, with spring selections centered around spices. Patrons can pick up a sample packet of the month’s spice at the library, where cookbooks are available to check out.

Smaller get-togethers call for smaller king cakes, so making several individual-sized desserts based on the flavor, shape and colors of the traditional sweet circle more appropriate than ever this year.

Local diners are waking up to more choices than ever, as breakfast-focused restaurants move into the area. Morning-friendly chains like First Watch, Snooze, The Toasted Yolk and Eggcellence are expanding the county’s notions of what breakfast can be.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, The Jesse Tree and Universalist Unitarian Fellowship will host their 2021 Empty Bowl fundraiser virtually.

Sheetz has an enthusiastic following, much like Buc-ee’s does in Texas, though the stores are smaller, more numerous and focused on gas, food and convenience.

As always, many people started the new year with a resolve to eat better. Cutting back on sugar seems like one easy strategy, but a surprising number of packaged or prepared foods from barbecue to oatmeal are enhanced with sugar.

After the challenges and tribulations of 2020, it’s a good bet that more people will be sure to eat their black-eyed peas for luck on New Year’s Day.

Christmas dinners are likely to be a little different this year, and with smaller gatherings advised, many cooks are having to adjust their usual bountiful menus to serve fewer people.

Sharp cheddar. Buttery Muenster. Gooey, velvety Brie. Nutty, brown Gjetost. Like people, cheese is even better when its diversity is recognized and celebrated, and cheeseboards have become known for their abundance of different tastes, textures and origins.

“Bombs away” isn’t a standard holiday greeting, but islander Debbie Borque is out to change that. Borque has perfected making cocoa bombs, the sweet treats that have captivated children and adults this year.

The Christmas season always brings a wave of nostalgia, and residents of the East End Historic District are experiencing two.

It’s a truism that cooking is as much art as it is science, but a recently released cookbook, “A Good Meal is Hard to Find,” tips the balance squarely toward art. The cookbook is a collaboration between cookbook writer Martha Hall Foose and painter Amy C. Evans, and it focuses on Southern fl…

Thanksgiving dinners set the stage for all kinds of drama, and perhaps the best is the appearance of a glistening brown turkey as the dinner’s focal point. Some families, especially in Louisiana and southeast Texas, up the drama further by carving into a turducken, a deboned chicken stuffed …

Thanksgiving 2020 is going to be a little different for many people. Fewer family members will fly in, large gatherings are being pared down to smaller guest lists and many dinners will be held outside. With fewer people around the table, cooks are looking for ways to scale down their Thanks…

When the world’s largest meatball seller decides it’s time to go vegan, it’s pretty clear that the idea of eating plant-based meals has reached a new level of acceptance.

It’s been a brutal election year, made a tiny bit tougher by the lack of one of the usual sources of levity and sweetness traditional to the presidential race. The cookie contest that pitted the spouses of the presidential candidates in a contest to determine the better cookie baker won’t be…

Fall has finally arrived, but it’s still (and always) grilling season. While cooler temperatures can’t cool Texans’ love of cooking outdoors, fall does bring new items to put on the grill.