This category covers groceries, restaurants, bars, alcohol, entertaining and recipes.

Grass Fed Cows iStock

Have You Tried Non-Medicated Meat?

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Beef, pork and chicken from “naturally” raised animals are purer than conventionally produced meats—and way less expensive than organic.

Grass Fed Cows iStockMONEY WELL SPENT | We’re fast coming up on barbecue season when everyone eats more beef burgers, lamb chops and chicken parts than usual. It’s no lie that meat is expensive and that organic meats, much as I would prefer to eat them, are even more so. So I was happy to learn about a less-expensive but solid alternative to the hormone-laden conventional meats in most grocery stores and many butcher shops. Read more

Weber Kettle

Get Your Grill On: Win A Weber Cookbook

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How one bad day with a gas-fired barbecue turned us into charcoal lovers for good—plus enter to win A Time To Grill, a hot, new BBQ cookbook.

Weber KettleBACK TO BASICS | My searing romance began a few summers ago after an unexpected breakdown. The collapse occurred on that first sunny weekend in May that signals the beginning of barbecue season. My husband, who claims zero finesse when it comes to cooking indoors, turns into K-Paul the instant he slips on an chef’s apron and grill mitts. On this particular Sunday, he was suited up and ready to go when he ran into problems with the barbie.

(Instructions on how to WIN YOUR OWN COPY of the book at the bottom.) Read more

Dirty Apron Cooking School: Brunch

Recipe For Happiness: Cooking At Dirty Apron

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Put your money where your mouth is—take a hands-on cooking class at the Dirty Apron Cooking School.

Dirty Apron Cooking School: BrunchMONEY WELL SPENT | According to psychological research reported on recently in The New York Times, “spending money for an experience—concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco—produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.” Findings further suggest that the happiness accrued by spending money on leisure activities is amplified when the experience is shared with someone else.

Which brings us to our new favourite experiential “happiness place,” the Dirty Apron Cooking School. Everyone we know who has taken one of their four-hour hands-on cooking classes raves about it. Read more

Tuna & Hummus Sandwiches - Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That?

Ina Garten Reinvents The Tuna Sandwich

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Barefoot Contessa’s Ina Garten takes a humdrum tuna sandwich and transforms it into something exotic in a matter of minutes.

Tuna & Hummus Sandwiches - Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That?EASY DOES IT | Celebrity chef and Food Network cooking show host Ina Garten’s latest cookbook, Barefoot Contessa, How Easy Is That? has been flying off the shelves since it first hit bookstores last October, and it’s easy to see why. Garten understands that few among us have the time or energy to prepare elaborate, complicated meals for our family and friends. She also knows that despite these impediments, we do want to have delicious, interesting things to eat, and to entertain too, if it isn’t going to derail us. Read more

Standing Rib Roast - iStock

Perfect Prime Rib: The Easiest Way To Cook It

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How to cook a standing rib roast to perfection without a meat thermometer or having to think about it even once.

Standing Rib Roast - iStockDEAD EASY | See the perfectly cooked standing rib roast in this picture, the one cooked to medium rare, the hunk of beef that looks like it belongs on the cutting board at a buffet carving station at the St. Regis in NYC? Well, I had one that looks exactly like it resting and ready to serve on my kitchen counter last week. I called it my beautiful no-brainer roast.

My road to roast perfection was pretty much bump-free thanks to a recipe I read in The New York Times a few weeks ago (see the link below). It originally appeared in the newspaper in 1966, and food writer Amanda Hesser reprinted it recently “so that rib roast can finally have its no-knead-bread moment.” Read more

Cocodot Invite

How To Throw A Last Minute Oscars Party

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How to throw a last-minute, stress-free Academy Awards party that everyone even the host will enjoy.

Cocodot InviteEASY DOES IT | Pamela Anderson, one of Frugalbits’ favourite food writers, says people should stop entertaining and “have people over” instead. “Having people over,” says Anderson, is about coming together casually with good pals and enthusiastic acquaintances. It’s about serving uncomplicated food and having no other expectation for an evening other than that it be fun. The Oscars this Sunday is the perfect “having people over” occasion. No worries that today’s Thursday and you’ve only got four days to get your event together. We started planning our Oscar party yesterday, and you’re welcome to follow our game plan and our menu.

Frugalbits Oscar Party Day-By-Day Game Plan Read more
Easy Vegan, Simple Recipes For Healthy Eating

The Vegans Are Coming: What To Serve

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How to better serve the new wave of vegans coming soon to your table.

Easy Vegan, Simple Recipes For Healthy EatingThis year you may find more vegans among your dinner guests. Last summer the United Nations advised that diets heavy in meat and dairy products are not sustainable, and animal-based agriculture harms ecosystems even more than the use of fossil fuels.

Yikes! A lacto-ovo vegetarian all my adult life, even I find the prospect of cutting eggs and dairy as well as meat from my menu daunting. Although some recipes in the cookbooks I use regularly are vegan, most call for some kind of eggs or dairy: cheese, egg noodles, yogurt, cream. Read more

Dollop Of Mayonnaise-iStock

We Rate Mayo, Peanut Butter And Mustard

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Want to know which is the best prepared mustard, PB and mayo? We have the answers here.

Dollop Of Mayonnaise-iStockBrand X is a Frugalbits column that pits supermarket house brands against an industry leader—how does Best Foods mayonnaise compare with 365 Everyday Value mayonnaise, Whole Food’s store brand, for example? Sometimes the industry leader has the best quality for the best price, sometimes not. Our judge in these matters is the seasoned and conscientious chef Glenys Morgan. Here she weighs in with her opinion on mayonnaise, peanut butter and mustard. Read more

Is Nespresso The Espresso To Die For?

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Once you’ve had Nespresso, there’s no drinking regular joe.

BEST FOR LESS  | A couple of years ago when the world fell apart and everyone began scrambling for ways to economize, personal finance journalists everywhere put No More $4 Lattes at the top of their Things to Axe list.

I don’t drink lattes, but I do love espresso and could drink professionally made Americanos all day long if it weren’t a stupid waste of money. Still, I didn’t need pundits to tell me to revert to home brew because I’d already found a less expensive, dead simple way to get a high-octane espresso fix. Read more

Truffle Puree Appetizer - C. Phaisalakani

Easy Appie #4: Gruyère With Truffle Purée

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Like nothing you’ve tasted before, this decadent truffle infused hors d’oeuvre is made under 10 minutes.

Truffle Puree Appetizer - C. PhaisalakaniENTERTAIN SMART | When she isn’t busy shooting portraits or working as Frugalbits’s photo editor and chief photographer, Casey Phaisalakani loves to eat and then blog about it on fingerlickineats.com. Phaisalakani grew up in Hong Kong, a city rich in culinary diversions, in a family jazzed about eating good food. Her mother, a keen amateur cook who enjoys entertaining, first whipped up this appetizer—a dead easy three-ingredient affair made of truffle purée and gruyère on toasty bread—as an amuse bouche to enjoy before a soup course at a formal diner she was hosting. It proved so popular her family now serves it as an hors d’oeuvre at cocktail parties or for tea time. Read more