What do strawberries and pickles have in common? More than you’d think! In honor of spring shading (sunning?) into summer, I thought I’d try making a seasonal sweet-and-sour salad by tossing together strawberries and pickles. Roasted asparagus and Romaine lettuce provided the backdrop, and a creamy Dijon dressing tied it all together. It’s simple and [...]
Some recipes don’t take long to make; others will require a slot in your schedule. When it comes to the time-hungry recipes, though, there are those that require hands-on attention and those that can pretty much fend for themselves while you do something else nearby: relax with a book, check your email, get caught up [...]
Trees aren’t the only plants that acquire jewel tones in fall — cauliflower does, too. And the thick-skinned winter squashes certainly have their own quirky multi-colored and multi-shaped lumpy and bumpy appeal. In other words, this is prime time to find unusual produce at the farmer’s market! Especially since these cool-weather crops last longer than [...]
Continue reading about Fall: It’s Tastier (and Easier) Than You Think
For sheer ease of elegance, you can’t beat roasted veggies. Grilling is another great way to concentrate their flavor, but now that we’re moving into a less-sun-and-more-chill time of year, roasting veggies in the oven (or anything else, for that matter) is more appealing than standing outside in the rain tending to a grill. Unless [...]
Continue reading about Warming Up Your Fall with Roasted Greens
Yesterday, I raided my garden and pantry for what turned out to be one of the tastiest and easiest dishes I’ve made in a while. It was all the more stunningly easy because of its main flavor: bacon. Yep. Completely non-messy, completely crispy, completely delicious. If you start with bacon from pastured hogs (which has [...]
Continue reading about Bringing Home the Non-Messy Baked Bacon
The best part about roasted vegetables isn’t the fact that they’re ridiculously easy to make. It isn’t even the fact that they taste so good that avowed vegetable haters have just as much of a penchant for roasted vegetables as vegetarians do. No, the best thing about roasted vegetables is that leftover roasted veggies can [...]
Toasting and roasting. Both techniques are simple and add incredible depth to whatever ingredient you’re emphasizing or dish you’re serving. Recently, it occurred to me that toasted nuts have such a deep flavor that they could probably stand in for cheese. I’m a huge cheese fan, but for those who can’t have cheese, toasted nuts [...]
Americans eat oats for breakfast and in the occasional cookie. Scots eat them for breakfast, too…and for lunch and dinner and everything in between. They eat them in scones and stews and porridges and even with fish. And why not? Not only are oats one of the most nutrient-rich grains on the planet, they have [...]
As much as I adore fresh, raw ingredients in my salads, sometimes I think roasting veggies makes them taste even better. There’s something about that slow-cooked, vaguely-carmelized flavor that makes a roasted salad explode on my tongue in an ever-so-smooth kind of way. And such salads are ridiculously easy to make — the veggies themselves [...]
I used to have beetaphobia: the fear that working with beets would cause some sort of purple eruption in my kitchen that I’d never get clean. (Or that whatever outfit I wore while making them would turn a permanent purple-pink.) Ever since I lived in Costa Rica and saw people casually roast, chop, and serve [...]
