Since swapping food has become such a big part of my life, this year I decided to participate in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap is just what it sounds like: the food bloggers who participate receive the addresses of three other food bloggers. You send each of them one dozen of the same kind of cookie. You ...
Roasted Garlic Hummus for the Chicago Food Swap
Last Saturday was the second anniversary Chicago Food Swap. It's amazing how this community has grown in such a short time. From the dozen or so swappers at that first event in December 2011, the Chicago Food Swap has grown to a community of several hundred people with events that regularly draw eighty or ninety. Each swap, it seems, is a mix of ...
Low-Fat Holiday Treat: Chocolate Mint Meringues
This is a recipe and post from a few years back, but the story is so classically me and the cookies are so tasty and seasonal, I just had to bring it up from the archives. Enjoy! It all started with the Meyer lemons. I was doing my just-buy-the-necessities-because-we-are-leaving-town shopping trip last week when a display of vibrant yellow ...
From the Archives: Five-Spice Pumpkin Apple Cake
Have I ever mentioned that I am a sucker for pumpkin-flavored baked goods? The pumpkin pie is definitely my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner. But pumpkin-flavored treats are more versatile than we give them credit for: they work well not just for dessert but also as breakfast or brunch fare. I love how pumpkin adds sweetness but also earthiness ...
How to Make the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies (It’s the Chocolate, Stupid)
I recently visited The Chopping Block, Chicago's premier recreational cooking school, to scout the location for the November 10 Chicago Food Swap. Next to the cooking school's beautiful demonstration kitchens is a small retail shop that sells high-end cookware, hard-to-find ingredients and select cookbooks. So naturally I picked up a few odds and ...
Easiest Ever Fruit Crisp
Think you don't have time to make a delicious, old-fashioned dessert for your family tonight? Well, I think that you do. Forget about making an elaborate dough that needs to be chilled and rolled out. Forget about softening butter and getting out your stand mixer. The easiest dessert to make, by far, is a crisp: sliced, sweetened fruit dumped into ...
Coffee House Strawberry Scones
The coffee house in my town makes the best scones I have ever tasted. I am never one to waste calories on inferior pastry. For example, I make regular trips to Starbucks for a Chai Tea Latte, but I haven't eaten one of their baked goods in years. But the scones at Blue Max Coffee are worth the indulgence. Huge, flaky and studded with fruit, these ...
Healthy Snacking: Banana Yogurt Muffins
Yesterday I was working on an article about healthy snacks for the back-to-school issue of a local parenting publication. It's odd to be writing about back-to-school when my kids still have two more weeks to go in this school year, but that is how editorial calendars work. The article was a natural fit for me: I am committed to finding healthy, ...
Classic Strawberry Shortcake
This past weekend was Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer. It was a busier-than-usual weekend at my house. Saturday, my husband took our daughter to a NHL playoff game, which the Blackhawks won thankfully. My husband and I celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary on Sunday with a dinner out -- a review of that meal coming later ...
Chocolate Spice Cookies for Tasting Jerusalem
As some of you may remember, I am participating in a virtual cooking community called Tasting Jerusalem. Created by two food writers, Beth from the blog OMG! Yummy and Sarene Wallace from 805 Living magazine, Tasting Jerusalem is a community dedicated to exploring the cuisine of the Middle East using the cookbook Jerusalem as a guide. Each month, ...
Bread Machine Swedish Cinnamon Buns
One of my favorite items from May's Chicago Food Swap were Swedish Cinnamon Buns by veteran swapper Rachel. These yeasty sweet buns sprinkled with pearl sugar disappeared all too quickly the day after the swap, leaving me with nothing but crumbs and a burning desire to bake some more. If the mention of cinnamon buns conjures up images of over-sized ...
Maple-Glazed Breakfast Cookies with Dried Cranberries and Pepitas (Nut and Peanut Free)
After I spent all last week wanting to eat my Glazed Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies for breakfast, it occurred to me: why not eat cookies for breakfast? I brought up the idea of a breakfast cookie to my friend Chef Druck, who informed me that in France, where she grew up, the breakfast cookie is a veritable phenomenon. The French actually call it "un ...
Glazed Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies
Back in March when I attended the Good Food Festival, I met some folks from Hazzard Free Farm, a Certified Naturally Grown farm near Rockford, Illinois. Hazzard Free Farm grows heirloom grains, like blue and red cornmeal, barley, wheat and oats, and sells them to many of Chicago's best restaurants. Recently, with help from a grant from Rick ...
Eating our Curds and Whey
Many of my food and mom blogger friends are raving about the new cookbook Homemade with Love by Jennifer Perillo. Perillo is a professional food writer based in Brooklyn, author of the popular food blog In Jennie's Kitchen, and mom to two daughters. I don't know Jennie personally, and sadly, I missed my chance to meet her when she was in town ...
Farmers’ Market Find: Currants
I stood in front of the table of fruit deep in thought: three kinds of currants -- white, red and black -- plus gooseberries! Another vendor a few tables over had four or five small boxes of hard-to-find tayberries. What to get? It was an embarrassment of riches. So much fruit! So many unusual and old-fashioned crops that you never see at the ...