Author: John Reardon

Hello  my Foodie Friends!   

Super Bowl Sunday is this weekend. It is never too early to begin your party prep. Over the years I have attended and hosted many Big Game house parties.  As I reflect on the number of Super Bowl’s I have watched, I have to admit there have been a lot that were over before half time. If the game is bad then the party better be great! The first Big Game party I hosted was with my best friend and roommate Fred in our first bachelor pad apartment. We invited at least 15 young ladies and informed all our male friends that we were going to have an epic party. Fred and I made a Big Game Feast fit for 100 people with the little wieners wrapped in a blanket, pulled pork, and baked ziti just to name a few and we used lots of spices and rubs to kick it up. As the guests started to arrive, we noticed that there were no males walking in, only female guests. The party was going well with all our great food and rocking music playing over the turned down TV. As I looked across the room at Fred, we both smiled a knowing smile that our male friends thought our party would be lame. Now we had to entertain a host of young ladies who stayed for the whole game and after. Who played in the game? I don’t remember. It was the gathering of company and great foods that I remember. Along with the festivities that surround the Big Game, I also love all the hype that accompanies this annual event.  We now have the time-honored tradition of commercials featuring croaking frogs slinging beer, singing cowboys slinging beer, battling beer bottles slinging beer and little kids magically starting a car by using the “force”. I won’t even mention half-time wardrobe malfunctions, lip-syncing superstars and reunions of some great ‘70’s rock bands.

At Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place, we have wonderful spices to kick up your Super Bowl creations a notch.  Consider spices such as Chili powder, BBQ Pulled Pork Seasoning, Bear Can Chicken Rub, Honey Mustard Rub, and other fun spices. Have fun and good luck with your Super Bowl parties. Give your food creations some spice and a kick!

As for my Big Game party with all women; to this day our male friends still do not believe anyone came to our party! Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. 

Take Care, 

John & Paula

Hello  my Foodie Friends!   

Exploring new foods in the New Year may be a way to expand your taste palette and introduce you to different cultures. We have all been there; it can be scary to try new dishes. However, it can be deliciously rewarding. You can learn more about different values and traditions, ingredients, spices, and staple dishes that are popular in different parts of the world. We can become bored in our kitchens cooking the same dishes we fall back on. Food is a universal necessity. The food we eat is intricately intertwined with our culture. 

My father-in-law came from a German background. In past holiday seasons, my mother-in-law would reminisce about some of the German cuisine dishes that he enjoyed. One of his favorite dishes included the side dish of spaetzle. 

Spaetzle is a unique, fun, and easy German dumpling that everybody should learn how to make. It is traditionally used as a base for both sweet and savory dishes, soups, and one dish meals. Done in just minutes, these are great on their own, as part of a traditional German meal, or perfect for any dish that might use a macaroni pasta. Spaetzle, or spätzle, is a simple dumpling or small noodle that is typically associated with German food heritage. If you have ever made a simple egg noodle, it is almost identical in ingredients and easier to make. Making homemade spaetzle is a mix of a simple batter of flour, eggs, milk, and sale and the use of a spaetzle utensil to drop the batter into boiling water. It can be boiled in water or broth. 

The spaetzle maker is a convenient device usually made of metal that’s sole purpose is for the making of small dumplings known as spaetzle. The metal plate has holes in it that you pour your spaetzle batter through directly into boiling water. The spaetzle maker nestles over a pot of water or broth. Once your batter is ready, you pour it into the sliding box onto the grater-like base. Slide it from side to side, and the little droplets slip through the holes and drip into the boiling water. Moments later, the noodles will be floating on top. The holes are specialized which enables the batter to cling and stretch into the right shape. The taste and texture of spaetzle is comforting and can be topped with a variety of ways to suite those around your table. 

Be adventurous this year and try something new. It is a great way to use the cooking experience to bond with those around us and stimulate some interesting conversations about geography, different cultures, customs, and ceremonies. Expand your horizons this year. Stop by Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery Store located at 33 Railroad Place to help you with the culinary tools you need to explore new foods. Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. 

Take Care, 

John & Paula

Hello  my Foodie Friends!   

How many of us foodies have cookware, baking products, or cooking gadgets that have been handed down over the generations? As our children have grown and moved out of the house, we have also moved much of our cookware and cooking gadgets with them. Some of the items have been handed down from prior generations.  Recently, my wife found a loaf pan that was her grandmothers. It brought back memories of various items that both her grandmother and mother made in that pan.  The loaf pan is a cool kitchen tool and often overlooked for its plain design. It is definitely an indispensable item in the kitchen.  Every kitchen should have a loaf pan to bake a variety of sweet or savory recipes – from meatloaf and lasagna, to ice-cream and baked delicacies. A loaf pan is in the shape of a narrow rectangle, a convenient form which enables uniform slicing. 

A loaf pan is great to use when you’re looking to bake a smaller portion of a recipe or are cooking for one or two. This versatile pan is excellent for baking bread loaves, loaf cakes, and zucchini bread. You don’t have to make your own bread, or even bake, to love the loaf pan. Despite their specialized name, these rectangular pans are extremely adaptable to cooking, freezing, desserts, and more. And with all the creative ways you can use them, loaf pans are anything but idle in the kitchen.  

There a many uses for loaf pans. These pans are the ideal shape for the ultimate comfort food, meatloaf. Marinate meats. Keep more of each steak, chicken breast, tofu slice, or veggie skewer in contact with the marinade you made by placing the foods in a loaf pan, then pouring the marinade on top. Cover with plastic wrap, and slip the loaf pan into your fridge for the allotted time. If you have a bit of meat or a few sides of the skewers sticking out, use tongs to rotate them in the marinade for full coverage.

Rectangular pans are perfect for lasagna or baked ziti, especially if you’re only serving a few people. If you cut recipes in half, a square baking dish may be too big. Use a loaf pan instead. Savory pies like shepherd’s pie or chicken pot pie don’t have to be round just because that’s convention. You can bake them in a loaf pan and still have a hearty one-dish meal.

At Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place, we carry several different size loaf pans. Make some memories with the heirlooms that you have collected over the years. Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. 

Take Care,
John & Paula

Hello  my Foodie Friends! 

The new year is a great time to reflect on where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’d like to get to next. Reflection is the perfect way to close the old year and open the door to the new one. As I reminisce of accomplishments and changes in life, I am reminded of the time my wife and I began our adventure to Upstate New York as part of a corporate relocation. It is amazing to look back and see how quickly the many years have gone by. While Paula would travel weekly to the Rochester/ Buffalo area for work, I would often be taking our two children to dinner after work. One memory was while catching a quick dinner downtown. On the music speaker at the restaurant was a song that was very popular at the time.  Our daughter Aubrey, who was almost four at the time, recognized the song and with spontaneity, jumped on the table and started singing “If it makes you happy, then why the —- are you so sad!” by Sheryl Crow.  She sang with enthusiasm as if she understood what the words meant! I had to quickly cover her mouth.  Paula and I reflect on those times of when we were basically “two ships in the night” making life work while we were both working in the corporate environment.  The weekends were the only times we really had as a family to sit at the table and enjoy a good, home cooked meal.  We both would travel for our job and appreciated having something home cooked.  Paula often stated that cooking on the weekends made her happy. It was our true family time. How does cooking make you happy? Here are some reasons:

Once you start to look at cooking the same as driving your car, working at your career, or practicing your hobby, the things you do without thought every day, you will enjoy the same benefits of cooking that make you happy. #1) Freedom – You have the freedom to cook ANY ingredients that you can find, even if you don’t exactly know what they are. You can create fantastic meals from the items on-hand and don’t have to run to the grocery store for food that the recipe commands. Make recipes from what you already have.

2) Confidence – Have the confidence to know that meals will be a winner every single time because you can repeat a standard process on a wide variety of foods. Saute’ many different ingredients, or cook one ingredient in many different ways. Confidence makes you happy.

3) Health – You can be happy because you know you are improving your health with wholesome foods that you cook yourself.  Purchase nutrient rich fresh foods and you can experience more energy, more brain power, and better sleep patterns because of good food. Learn to cook fresh foods!

4) Family – Cooking is a social skill. My family is excited when we cook because they know it will be creative and interesting. We attend more parties because of our cooking skills, and can talk about food topics because we have been behind the stove and seen what happens when we apply heat. Being around friends and family with a good meal can make you very happy.

Life can be hectic. Planning our meals and being able to have the time to cook is not always an ideal situation. However, spending time at the dinner table discussing life events, plans, or simply savoring your own creation can make you happy. Let us help you with your culinary needs. One of Sheryl Crow’s favorite foods is sweet potato fries. At Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place, we stock a great French Fry cutter and other accoutrements to make your fries quickly and straight

I am not sure if the restaurant appreciated my daughter singing on their table. However, it is a story that we still laugh and talk about at the dinner table. That song is still one of our favorites! So, “If it makes you Happy” then make wonderful memories together. Remember my Foodie Friends, “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. 

Take Care,
John & Paula

Hello my foodie friends!

We are in that time of year where we plan for meals that warm us up during the chilly days and plan for the upcoming snow days. I reflect on many winter days that include my fondest childhood memories playing in the snow. I enjoy sharing this story with you each winter. I grew up during a time when the average household included at least four children and you were literally thrown outdoors to play and told not to come back home until the street lights came on. Playing in the snow included making homemade sleds to slide down the golf course hills, making snowmen, and of course, building the best snow fort in the neighborhood.  In our house we divided up the tasks to ensure that our “fort” could withstand repeated attacks of snowball wielding elementary school kids. In the creation of our snow fort, my brother Danny was the engineer and he mapped out how high and thick the walls should be. My youngest brother Billy was the builder and shaped the inside of the fort for the chairs, refrigerator and snow TV. The baby of our family Patty was the support staff.  Since I was the oldest of the Reardon children clan, I was the recruiter and went door to door finding my soldiers and builders. We were not allowed to use the phone back then (adults only), so when I came to the door and knocked you could hear a stampede of children in the house trying to get to the door. To get them to work on the fort I would tell them that my mother was making meatball sandwiches!  My mother’s meatballs were the envy of the neighborhood and far exceeded the bologna and spam the other kids were getting. My first stops were Dave and Karl’s houses and they lived next door to each other.  They were my age but already almost as tall as most of our fathers at the age of six. Dave turned out to be 6’8” and Karl is 6’6”. If you want your walls to be the highest, I thought, get the tallest kids.  My mother would grimace when she saw them coming as she knew she would need a lot more meatballs. Our first forts were wrecked at night by teenagers until my brother Dan came up with the idea to put water on the outside walls and it would turn them to ice.  You could hear the howls of the mean teenagers when they kicked the walls and they didn’t give so easily.  

To this day, when I talk with some of my childhood friends, they join me in reminiscing about the fun snow forts, and the reward of my mother’s meatball sandwiches. To this day, her meatballs remained unparalleled. However, Paula’s meatballs are on target with them especially since my mother did share her “secret” method with Paula. 

At Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place, we carry skillets to make your meatballs in, saucepans to make your sauce, baking sheets to pop your meatball sandwiches into the oven with, and other really “Cool Tools for Cooks”. Meatball sandwiches are a great way to deal with these frosty winter days.  The neighborhood kids will love you!! Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. 

Take Care,
John & Paula

Hello  my Foodie Friends!   

We are in that week of after all of the holiday gatherings and bringing in the New Year. The office parties, holiday shopping, travel planning, family, friends, partners, and children have been grabbing your attention and can easily take its toll. We have started a New Year begins and back to our pre-holiday routines and habits. The start of a new year is time to reflect and look at our past year in terms of the relationships developed, the experiences we have had, and lessons learned. It’s that time again for us here at Compliments to the Chef to thank all the wonderful acquaintances that have helped us throughout the year. As Clarence said to George Bailey “No man is a failure who has friends.” We have foodie friends which is even better!  So many wonderful people have come through our door with questions and some with suggestions. We believe that we have a tremendous extended family who share in our joy of cooking and creating our own masterpiece meals. We have introduced many new tools into our store as a result of customer suggestions. Coming to work every day in one of the finest cities in America is a blessing. Now that we are at the end of another successful year, it’s time to gather in our kitchens and raise our glasses to our family, friends; past and present, and to the new friends to come. 

     While continuing to make toasts for our New Year, keep in mind some tools that can help to make your celebration run smoothly. Tools such as the foil cutter, wine openers, corkscrew, cocktail shaker and strainer, along with wine, whiskey, champagne, martini, and more types of glasses, can be very useful this time of year. Whatever your needs, we hope that our store can continue to be your first thought for your culinary and wine supplies. Stop by Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place. And when you come through our door, you will notice that a bell rings…and we all know what happens every time a bell rings!  Have a safe and happy New Year. Cheers to a happy 2025! 

 Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. 

Take Care,
John & Paula

Hello  my Foodie Friends!   

Christmas Eve is right around the corner. For many of us, the holidays generate some of our most vivid memories. It can be funny the interesting things that stick with us. It’s often not at all the presents or the eggnog. It could be a story of spying on “Santa” setting up the presents in the living room, or the first time you watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart and watching it with a group of family or friends crammed on a couch. 

When I was a young boy, I shared a small bedroom with my two other brothers Danny and Billy. We had made a pact to finally catch Santa in the act. I was age five, my brother Danny was four and my other brother Billy was almost three. It was a huge undertaking for young boys because we were told that if we didn’t go right to sleep then Santa would not come. However, I needed proof of Santa’s existence. If you know me then you know if I say I’m going to do something then by golly I going to give it my best shot. My father was very aware of his oldest son’s determination and made sure we were all tucked in as he read: “The night before Christmas” to his three conspirators. Now Billy being very young and not quite age three, was really not up to the task after my father’s story reading. He was out fast asleep and Danny was wavering with heavy eyelids. I was focused on my spy caper. I could not sleep and waited about 15 minutes before shaking Danny and saying “let’s go”! We checked on Mom and Dad’s room and made out two figures sleeping. We then turned to go downstairs to say “hello” to Santa. 

We were almost frozen with fear and Danny clung to me like we were attached. We took one squeaky step at a time and our eyes were as big as saucers so we could see in the dark.  We made out a figure from the back in a red coat and a big red hat putting presents under the tree. We took another brave squeaky step to see him better and that did it! We then heard a booming low voice saying” WHO’S THERE”? Danny looked at me and tried to scream but nothing came out. We turned and ran back to our beds with so much fear and excitement that we had our proof that Santa really did exist. We repeated this story to our little playground friends for many years. It could not have been Mom and Dad because we were sure they were in their beds. Our parents never commented on the story and always just smiled. When my father passed in 2010 at the age of 88, we were cleaning out his things and I found a box with a Santa hat and a red coat hidden in the back of his closet. I never told my brother’s because I wanted to keep the Christmas magic alive. 

What was your best gift ever? Or what were the “little things” that were done that made your holiday special and created that pure holiday magic for you? Make sure you have the must –have supplies you need to stir up your holiday feasts. Stop by Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place in Saratoga Springs.  Let us help you with the tools you need to make your food traditions and the gifts to help others create their own. Christmas time is a period of when our past, present and future come together in a magical experience. Our past blends together with our present as we hold dear the traditions set before while creating new memories and traditions in the present that will endure for the future. Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen”. Put a little holiday magic on your table.

Take Care,
John & Paula

Hello my Foodie Friends!   

It is officially the holiday season baking frenzy time. What better way to celebrate and get into the spirit than to share your baked treats with family and friends? Nothing gets you in the holiday spirit quite like making a mess in the kitchen with sugar, flour, and all of the sprinkles. 

As my wife and I exchanged childhood memories of making cookies, Paula shared that one year as a teenager, she made 72 dozen cookies. My stories were a bit more adventurous (due to five siblings trying to share a kitchen and help make cookies). Each year around this time, my mother would stock up on bags of flour and sugar to begin the process of making her treasured holiday cookies and goods. They were always a special treat in our family. Many of her recipes were handed down through generations before. Worn index cards have been handed down and shared with my siblings with recipes written in her perfect cursive; I am reminded of the winter days where we would watch her drop heavy balls of dough onto the floured counter in the kitchen and vigorously roll out the sticky batter until it was thin enough for cookie cutters. She would roll out the dough and try to give the five of us equal amounts that we could squeeze through our hands and attempt to help make shapes with. In an effort to keep each of us focused, my mother would give each of us a specific duty that ultimately created the end result of a cookie recipe. My sisters were given the task of gathering, measuring, and putting the ingredients into a bowl; my youngest brother would stand on a chair and help my mother mix the ingredients. I was the keeper of the rolling pin and had the responsibility of scooping the dough (based on what recipe we were making), while my other brother would select which cookie cutter we were going to use. The assignments did not always result in a well-oiled machine. Usually, heated words over who gets to stand closest to the mixing bowl would end with powdered sugar poofing all over the floor. Power struggles would occur between each of us on who would crack the egg, who got to hold the rolling pin, and who would do the dough-scooping (just try to pry that cookie scoop out of my hands). Santas, candy canes, Christmas trees, holiday bells, reindeer, snowmen, gingerbread men and women, and stars were our favorite shapes to create with cookie cutters. Decorating the cookies was always the most fun with sprinkles and icing. 

By the time the first batch came out of the oven, my brothers and I would wander off to play, while my excited sisters stayed around to help sprinkle sugar on warm cookies. How my Mom put up with us, I’ll never know. However, the cookies were so good that five children would be very quiet in order to receive a child’s handful of warm cookies. Our creations may not have been the most artistic, but they sure were delicious. 

This holiday season, use the secret weapon of cookies to win over your family. Stop in to see us at Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place, Saratoga Springs. We have a large assortment of baking supplies to help with making everyone happy. Remember my Foodie Friends, “Life Happens in the Kitchen.” 

Take Care, John & Paula

Have fun baking and sharing your delights with those you love.