One of my inspirations when starting this blog was a way to save our family recipes and techniques. Saving family recipes sometimes meant that we needed to convert unique ways of measuring (a handful of flour in Grandma’s Pie Crust or what turned out to be a “tea”cup of sugar in Grandpa’s Christmas Fudge) or…
10 Year Anniversary: Top 10 Favorite Cookbooks
I may have a small cookbook obsession. I enjoy reading cookbooks from cover to cover like they are novels treating them like entertainment as much as a source of recipes. Fortunately for my wallet and my shelf space, I discovered about 5 years ago that you can check out cookbooks from the library – don’t…
10 Year Anniversary: Dana’s Sweet Favorites
The thing that got me started bringing food to hunting camp was bringing a couple pans of bars to the inaugural duck hunt after my Uncle bought his farm in North Dakota. The one that sticks in my mind was a pan of brownies with a mint frosting and a chocolate glaze on top, I…
10 Year Anniversary: Tory’s Last Meal
Whilst browsing our site for my favorite dessert posts, I began to think about all my favorite meals, and that brought me to thinking about what my last meal would be. I’ve always said it would contain Cool Ranch Doritos, and I maintain that, but you don’t need a blog post for that. Here I…
10 Year Anniversary: Top 10 Favorite Kitchen Gear
Earlier this year we were hosting a barbecue day with some good friends of ours and as we were prepping food in the kitchen and my friend is looking through drawers from some tool or another she proclaims “we need to just look through Dana’s kitchen to find all the tools we need.” Apparently, I…
10 Year Anniversary: Summer Potluck
Happy Fourth of July! I can’t think of a day that epitomizes summer eats more than the 4th of July. Many of us spend time outside on the 4th, some go to or host big parties, smoke meats, or grill. In Minnesota we like to congregate by the lake. So I wanted to share our…
10 Year Anniversary: Tory’s Sweet Favorites
Hello! After a long hiatus, I am back. And really only because Dana peer pressured me. I was browsing our dessert recipes on the blog for this post and a couple of things struck me: there are not enough ice cream recipes. I blame myself. Dana proclaimed me the ice cream queen of the family…
10 Year Anniversary: Dana’s Savory Favorites
Gravel and Dine is turning 10 on July 11. I cannot believe that a DECADE has gone by since Tory and started the blog. It seems like a lifetime ago. These 10 years have allowed me to preserve some of our favorite family recipes (although I have many more to go), try to recreate more…
Smoked Apple Slaw
Whenever we fire up our smoker – we try to find ways to fill it up. Whether we’re planning to smoke a pork butt overnight and decide to throw on a pan full of garlic cloves in oil, smoke a bunch of onions until they are caramelized while we are cooking brisket or just cooking…
Strawberry Salad with Goat Cheese Croutons and Strawberry Black Pepper and Poppyseed Vinaigrette
Strawberry season in Minnesota might be one of my favorite times for our garden. While we get lettuce and radish and even rhubarb earlier in the spring, strawberries with their succulent sweet flavor and bright red color seem to be the first bountiful thing that we get. While many nights we will pick a bowl…
