Author: Ben Starr
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My DIY Plumbing Adventure
I am completely renovating the house that my partner and I just bought, and am 80% finished. Right now I’m working on the master bathroom. The big garden tub that came with the house is the only thing I left in the bathroom, I gutted everything else. But the tub had BRASS handles. Brass is…
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Havsupai Cometh
So I’m about to head to Havasupai for the third time. It’s an Indian reservation off the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The village of Supai, in the canyon bottom, has been continuously inhabited by the Havasupai tribe for more than 1,500 years. There are no roads there, and Supai is the last place…
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That’s the sound of the police!
I spent Memorial Day weekend in the Grapevine community jail because I stopped to help out with a brush fire late one night. Cops thought I started it and arrested me. Once they realized that I really had nothing to do with the fire and had genuinely stopped to help, they ran my driver’s license…
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Oatmeal Sweet Potato Pancakes
This morning Christian said he wanted some hearty pancakes for breakfast, so I decided I’d make oatmeal pancakes. But I had two ageing sweet potatoes sitting on the counter above my sink, and thought…why not make oatmeal sweet potato pancakes? They turned out superb. Sweet potatoes are so healthy for you. And as an added…
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Overnight Cinnamon Rolls
Who on Earth can resist a warm, yeasty, sticky, sweet cinnamon roll fresh from the oven? ESPECIALLY if there’s cream cheese frosting to smear on top? The problem is that it takes a solid 3 hours to get cinnamon rolls finished once they are started, and who wants to get up THAT early? The solution,…
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Colcannon (Irish recipe for St. Patrick’s Day)
An instructional video is at the bottom of this recipe. Colcannon is an Irish classic. They’ve been eating it for centuries. Normally it’s a mixture of mashed potatoes and kale that would commonly be eaten with pork. But in my version, the kale gets replaced with red cabbage, and I mix the pork right in. …
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Ma’o Farms Vegetarian Curry
On a recent trip to Hawaii, Adrien from MasterChef and I had the chance to visit an amazing farm called Ma’o on the west coast of Oahu near Waianae in the Hawaiian homelands, where only native Hawaiians are permitted to live. This farm is run entirely by youth (mostly under the age of 25) and…
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Pumpkin Carrot Pancakes with Candied Nuts
I adapted my now famous Pumpkin Carrot Cake recipe into a simple pancake recipe for my Christmas special at the Kenmore Live Studios, and this is a much simpler way to enjoy the same flavors you get from my very complex and time consuming MasterChef cake. In a bowl, combine: 2 cups all purpose flour…
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One-Hour Buttermilk English Muffins
I used to be grossed out by packaged English muffins. In fact, all packaged breads give me the creeps. I just can’t buy them. If they’re not sitting in the open air on the shelf of a bakery, and I’m confident they came out of the oven that day, I can’t bring myself to buy…
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Buttermilk Biscuits
A video tutorial is located at the bottom of this recipe. Biscuits are SO easy to make, it blows my mind why people by those disgusting cans of biscuit dough in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, or attempt to use Bisquick, which is filled with salt, hydrogenated fats, and preservatives. It generally takes…