Lifestyle

A simple pesto sauce adds body and flavor to this soup. Prepared reduced-fat pesto sauce shortens the preparation time.

Instead of licking Cheetos dust off your fingers, you could be sprinkling it on your food.

Here’s a festive dish for this time of year or anytime you want something special. The steak is flambeed with brandy. The alcohol is burned off, leaving the flavor behind. Brandy is a generic name for wine or fermented fruit juice that has been distilled and aged in oak barrels. Cognac and Armagnac, named for the region where the grapes are produced, are considered fine brandies. Use any type of brandy in this recipe. You don’t need to buy a large bottle. You can buy small bottles or splits (1.5 ounces) of different types of brandy in most liquor stores.

Q. My daughter’s father and I broke up about six months ago. I’ve always wanted to be able to both be at all our daughter’s activities, but there is still a lot of tension. I asked him if he couldn’t put all the bad feelings aside and both spend Christmas with our daughter, but he said he wasn’t ready. It made me angry that he was being so selfish, and I told him so, which caused a huge fight on Christmas Day. Everyone was upset. What’s good ex-etiquette?

Enjoying the national parks may be the highlight of summer vacations, but visiting in the winter has its own perks. The crowds are long gone and depending on when you go, you might just feel you have the whole park to yourself.

Dear Answer Angel Ellen: I just lost a gold bracelet that I loved because the clasp somehow came undone. I wear a lot of “good” gold bracelets and I definitely want to avoid these kinds of losses in the future so could you offer some suggestions on how to secure them better to keep this from happening again?

Last week The Garden Guy attempted to take your mind off the impending doom from the arctic blast with a little “Mele Kalikimaka” from Hawaii. I know I failed — if you are a gardener, you are suffering. I too was leaning toward a mood of dark hysteria brought on by five days of 11-17 degrees Fahrenheit. Then a lifeline came in the mail: I received the new Spring 2023 Preview catalog from Proven Winners. There on page 14 were the new 2023 Proven Accent Plants, one of which, Waikiki Sunset, took me back to Hawaii.

Ray Bradbury once wrote that books are dangerous because reading them can lead you to change your mind. That danger is also what makes a good book such a delight to read. In compiling this year’s list of the best nonfiction, I’ve borne Bradbury’s admonition in mind. The volumes I’ve chosen all made me stop and rethink something I thought I understood.

Five generations of the Gallagher family recently posed for a picture together. From left are Juanita Gallagher, Dennis Gallagher, Dennis Gallagher II, Alexa Gallagher and Astella Stewart. Share your photos at http://j.mp/limaphotos.

A recent column on the value of bone broth brought two questions.