Risotto scared me at first. My son Franklin brought a box home from a trip to Italy and it sat in the pantry for years. I had the same fear of risotto I had about cooking a duck. Both seemed to require a skill set that was beyond me.
After much hesitation, I finally took the plunge and you know what I discovered, making risotto is easy, requiring only a little more skill than making pasta.
In fact, think of risotto and pasta as two sisters. The key to both is what goes on top.
Just about everything you like with pasta will work with risotto. Most vegetables, meat, poultry, seafood, and fresh herbs if sauteed first can be added to risotto just the way you'd add them to cooked pasta. And both like a bit of freshly grated cheese on top.
Jeff meets a lot of interesting people in his dermatology practice, like Mr. Petroni (not his real name). They hit it off instantly – they're both native New Englanders with Italian names and a fondness for meatball 
I woke up the other morning craving roasted red pepper soup. Not for breakfast -- that would be weird -- but for dinner.
As far back as I can remember, every June my family would make our
annual pilgrimage to Jones' Farm to pick bright red juicy strawberries.
If we didn't leave with a heaping boxful then we didn't do our jobs.
But as a kid I would always end up picking more for myself than for the
box, eating every other berry and leaving with the tell-tale signs on
my hands and face. I was just as guilty as the next kid, so actually I
didn't feel that bad. Now as an adult I typically taste only one and
try to keep myself from eating any more. I'm really just saving up for
gorging on them in the privacy of my own home.
Summer time means grilling time. And I have been doing a lot of it lately.