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Our first holiday season in our new house, in 1999, I hosted Christmas Eve. My husband's family came over after the church service for hors d'oeuvres and desserts. I had planned extensively, but I was inexperienced. I can't remember the menu, just the toast points topped with cilantro mayonnaise and shrimp. I t needed to be assembled as soon as I got home from church before serving. I guess I took a little too long getting it out because David's grandma murmured "Next time I'm invited here, I'm bringing a peanut butter sand wich!" That was my first experience cooking with cilantro. I don't like cilantro. I won't tell you what I think cilantro tastes like because it's unappetizing, and you'll wo nder how I know what that tastes like . I can think of t hree t hings I will eat cilantro in : fresh-made salsa , the hummus on Pan era Bread's Mediterranean Veggie sandwich and this Potato and Shrimp Stew I just discovered.  Knowing t...

Having Italian heritage I'm proud that I can make sauce and gnocchi from scratch, but I learned it on my own from cookbooks, not from family. Gnocchi is an Italian potato dumpling. If you have made noodles, this is very similar. My daughter prefers these sprinkled with just grated parmesan cheese and she could eat almost a whole box of the storebought kind by herself. It's handy that I know this recipe. Mixing the dough is not hard but the slightly time-consuming part is forming the gnocchi into rounded shapes and marking them with the tines of a fork by pressing them against the fork with their cut ends out. I work ahead by cooking extra potatoes and mashing them without butter or milk or seasoning when I make mashed potatoes for one dinner. Then I have them for the next day when I start to make gnocchi. To cook them, you drop them in boiling water. They are done when they float to the top. POTATO GNOCCHI 4 cups mashed potatoes (without added milk and butter) 2 cups al...