THE LATEST FROM FRAN BERGER
Kitchen Hacks
Coffee Station Ideas: How to Create a Chic and Functional Coffee Corner
A stylish and functional coffee station can transform the experience of brewing a cup of coffee from a routine task into a luxurious treat. With a chic coffee corner, you can elevate the experience and joy of whipping up a...
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Fran’s Ultimate Guide to a Delicious Virgin Espresso Martini
It’s no wonder espresso martinis are so popular. The caffeine-infused cocktail is sophisticated, elegant, and bold. It’s both stylish and delicious to drink during a special night out or while hosting a luxurious night in. And the best part is,...
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Fran’s Guide to Crafting the Perfect Cranberry Gin Cocktail
As the holiday season approaches, it's time to step up your hosting game and impress your guests with a drink that's as delightful as it is elegant. With its bright, tart flavors and sophisticated style, the Cranberry Gin Cocktail will...
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Best White Wine For Cooking
Cooking with white wine, or as the Italians call it, “blending with wine,” can turn a simple meal into a flavorful and complex dish! Each property can enhance your meal - the acidity of white wine will perfectly tenderize a...
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Build the Ultimate Cheese Board - An Epic Plate Of Perfection
A cheese board is a great way to entertain guests and provide them with an array of delicious flavors and textures. Since they only require a few ingredients, cheese boards are relatively easy to assemble and can be customized to...
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Wine and Dine: Elevate Your Meals with These Simple Wine Pairing Tips
A glass of wine has the potential to heighten flavors, textures and qualities in the foods that you prepare. With so many different wines to choose from, you might be wondering what makes the best match for your dish. Fran...
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It’s Summer So It Must Be Corn Season!
Corn etiquette: how to pick it, store it, and fix a bad choice. I look forward to summer every year for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fantastic produce that’s perfect and in season for...
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Tips on How to Ripen that Rock-Hard Avocado
Can’t find a ripe avocado and you need one (or more) to make guacamole tomorrow? You invited friends over tomorrow night for a viewing party of the finale of your favorite TV show and you want to make your famous...
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Kitchen tip: How to use raw asparagus.
It’s Summer and that means Asparagus in all its glory! Who knew? Some of my most favorite fruits and vegetables are in season right now – beans of all types, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, stone fruit, berries, grapes, pears – the...
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Recipe Cooking Times Can Be Deceiving!
Often, they’re just a suggestion. Recipe writers can’t always be quite as precise as they’d prefer when they list cooking times in a recipe. So many variables enter into the equation. This Spring, a friend’s daughter was making her first...
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8 Fruits and Vegetables that Don’t belong in your Refrigerator
How to keep your fruits and vegetables tasting as they should. In a perfect world we’d shop daily and prepare what we purchased for that evening’s meal. But, we all know it’s just not that easy to get to the...
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Peel, Don't Snap! A New Approach to Preparing Asparagus
You’ll enjoy more of your asparagus stems by peeling them. I’ve always loved asparagus and artichokes. They remind me that spring is coming. But they also bring back so many great food memories because there are so many ways...
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Everything you need to know about your cast iron skillet.
The iron skillet is one of the most valuable tools in your kitchen and probably the one you take most for granted. After a lovely dinner at the home of a friend, a few of us walked into his kitchen...
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Kitchen Hints: The Three Most Common Onions you need daily.
White, Red, and Yellow Onions are the three that you need in your kitchen, indeed! A friend of mine told me about this 7-onion soup that she had the other day. She said it was so good and so tasty...
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Beyond the Shell: Insights for Buying the Best Eggs
Let’s decode the myths and labels around this favorite dairy product. Eggs are the most complete food – nutritious, affordable and can be served in more ways than you can imagine. Personally, I could eat them for any meal –...
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Kitchen Tool Upgrades to Take You to The Next Level
My list of handy ‘next level’ kitchen tools so you’re not caught without “the right tool for the right job.” There’s an old saying about using “the right tool for the right job.” It isn’t just about odd jobs around...
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How to Slow Roast Any Veggie for the Perfect Side Dish
Delicious ‘basic recipe’ for vegetables that NEEDS to be in your bag of tricks. Nobody has all the ‘basic recipes’ down. We all have our favorites that we return to again and again but I’ve found that there’s always room...
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Master Your Kitchen: Top 10 Must-Have Tools for Beginners
What you need to know about the top 10 essential tools for your kitchen. A client of mine just bought a second home near a lake. She faced the same problem all cooks face when stocking a new kitchen...
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Baking Bacon: Perfect Crispiness Without the Hassle
You’ll be blown away how much easier it is to BAKE your bacon. I may be stating the obvious but frying bacon is a real hassle. Everyone loves the taste, hardly anyone complains about the smell of bacon cooking...
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How to dress your salad AND make sure it doesn’t wilt
A little “insider” trick that keeps your salad from wilting. The fact is, a slightly wilted salad isn’t bad for you. But, it looks terrible on the table and it certainly isn’t very appealing either. There’s nothing worse than a...
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