I am a little obsessed with farro, an ancient form of wheat that is once again trendy. There is some confusion about what farro is exactly because it sometimes goes by other names, including spelt and einkorn. Grains of farro are about the size and shape of rice, but pale brown in color. With twice the fiber and protein of modern wheat, ...
Meyer Lemon Recipe Round-Up
It's specialty citrus season! Exotic varieties of citrus are one of the few culinary highlights in the otherwise bleak Chicago winter. Like an antidote to the winter doldrums, a new kind of citrus fruit arrives in the stores every week during the winter months. Pomelos, tangelos, blood oranges, Key limes and Meyer lemons are just some of the ...
A Visit to Lima’s Surquillo Market
My family just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Peru. We visited Machu Picchu and other Inca ruins, the Andean city of Cusco and Peru's capital, Lima. We were astonished by the complex buildings of the Incas, touched by the warmth of the Peruvian people and delighted by the delicious food we ate. It was one of the best trips of my ...
Gravlax for New Year’s Eve
Are you looking for the perfect appetizer to wow your guests this New Year's? I have just the thing: gravlax. This Scandinavian cured salmon is part of my family's holiday celebration every year and every year we ask ourselves: why don't we make this more often? Goodness knows it is not hard. The catch? You have to plan in advance -- three days in ...
Iced Gingersnaps
Every year at this time of year, my mother bakes dozens and dozens of Swedish gingersnaps, called pepparkakor, to give to family and friends. The recipe came from my grandmother, whose parents were Swedish, and it calls for chopped slivered almonds in the dense, spicy dough. I grew up eating these cookies by the pound as a child and they are a ...
Edible Gift Ideas
Christmas is in less than a week and you are out of ideas. Or money. Or both. But you still have a long list of people who need gifts, from the day care teacher who likes your kid the best to the UPS guy who never tells your husband about all the packages from Zappos. So, get in the kitchen and start making some edible gifts! Edible gifts have ...
Cookie Dough Truffles
This is a story about what it is like to be the child of a food blogger. The other day, at the grocery store, Zuzu spied a jar of edible cookie dough from The Cookie Dough Cafe in the dairy aisle. She begged me to buy it because she had heard about this company's products from some of her favorite You Tube stars. I, on the other hand, had never ...
Grilled Boneless Leg of Lamb
For the last night of Hanukkah this year, we celebrated with a special family dinner. I made potato latkes, of course, and the main course was a delicious, marinated leg of lamb. If you are looking for an impressive entrée for your upcoming holiday feast, you could not do much better than a boneless leg of lamb. Because it has been so ...
Christmas Mince Pies
Aren't these individual mince pies adorable? I'm pretty taken with them myself. Wouldn't they look so festive at a holiday party, cookie exchange or even as the end to a jolly Christmas dinner? I couldn't just give you a recipe for sweet, spicy apple mincemeat, tell you that it makes an absolutely smashing pie filling -- yes, I'm feeling rather ...
Apple Cranberry Mincemeat
Today’s recipe post is sponsored by Sun-Maid in conjunction with my work as part of Kitchen-PLAY‘s #TeamFreshSummit. As always, all opinions are entirely my own. Doesn't the word "mincemeat" make you think of Christmas in Victorian novels? I'm sure there was a mincemeat pie at Bob Cratchit's family Christmas or at least at the Christmas ...
Sweet Potato Latkes with Harissa Yogurt
This week, Jewish families around the world will gather together to celebrate Hanukkah, the festival of lights. Hanukkah commemorates the victory of a small group of Jews, the Maccabees, over the army of the Greek King Antiochus in the second century BCE. After the Jews drove the Greeks out of Judea, they attempted to restore their temple, which ...
Cookie Recipe Round-Up for National Cookie Day
Friday is National Cookie Day! And why not? It's the time of year when everyone is pulling out their favorite cookie recipes, creaming sugar and butter, chilling dough, cutting out shapes, piping icing, drizzling chocolate and filling tins. Even people who rarely bake have a favorite cookie without which their holidays would not be complete. If ...
Homemade Stuffed Shells to Feed a Crowd
Thanksgiving is barely over and Hanukkah is right around the corner. Many of us are still recovering from one holiday and another is upon us. And right in the midst of all the celebrations and obligations that this time of year brings, a friend of mine lost her mother. She came home from the funeral, looked up and it was Thanksgiving. I barely ...
Mashed Potato (Boxty) Bread
Come Friday, you will have leftover mashed potatoes sitting in your fridge. Don't try to deny it. I am sure that those mashed potatoes will be absolutely delicious at your Thanksgiving dinner. I hope that your guests will smother them in gravy and mix them with turkey and stuffing to get all that deliciousness in one insanely good bite. But come ...
The Best (and Easiest) Thanksgiving Turkey Ever
In 2006, I arrived at my parents' house for Thanksgiving brandishing an article from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. The article claimed that the editors had tried every conceivable way to roast a Thanksgiving turkey: brined, basted, slow-cooked, high heat, low heat, everything. The conclusion? It turned out that the easiest way to roast a ...
Potato-Parsnip Puree with Brown Butter
Today's post is sponsored by Door to Door Organics, an organic grocery delivery service in Chicago. Keep reading to learn how you can get $10 off your first order and win a $50 gift certificate from Door to Door Organics. Along with stuffing, I am constantly tinkering with the recipe for my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. I've tried garlic ...
Chipotle, Pecan, and Cranberry Cornbread Stuffing
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #VivaLaMorena #CollectiveBias Some dishes on our Thanksgiving menu never change. Some are different every year. My mother and I have cooked our turkey the same way for a decade. We never tinker with the pumpkin pie or the Balsamic-glazed ...
Chocolate Bar Skillet Cookie
Let me take a break from our regularly scheduled recipe post to let you all know that my first cookbook, Food Swap, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Yes, it won't actually be released until May, which seems like ages from now, but will be here before we know it! The book is partly a guide for anyone interested in joining the national ...
Tilapia with Lemon, Pepper and Herbs over Roasted Leeks
With its quick cooking time and myriad health benefits, fish should be the solution for the recurring problem of what to cook for dinner on busy weeknights. Yet it often isn't. Why? Because we think that serving fish for dinner requires a special trip to the fishmonger. But what if you could find naturally-seasoned, restaurant-quality, prepared ...
Chocolate Bark with Dried Apricots, Golden Raisins and Pumpkin Seeds
Today's recipe post is sponsored by Sun-Maid in conjunction with my work as part of Kitchen-PLAY's #TeamFreshSummit. As always, all opinions are entirely my own. While at PMA Fresh Summit in Atlanta, I had the opportunity to visit the Sun-Maid booth and learn more about this 100-year-old, farmer-owned cooperative. Is there a more iconic ...
Sweet Potato Pie
When your CSA hands you sweet potatoes, make sweet potato pie. Believe it or not, I'm a CSA newbie. For years, I had wanted to join a CSA, which stands for community-supported agriculture. You know how it works: you pay upfront for a share of the fruit or vegetable (or meat or dairy) harvest from a local farm and every week, or every other week, ...
Pumpkin Seed Brittle
It's Halloween and that means that a lot of families will be carving their pumpkins into scary or funny or ironic jack-o-lanterns. This year, Zuzu insisted on a good, old-fashioned face with triangle eyes and nose and a large, gaping mouth and, for the first time, carved her own pumpkin. And JR has requested a homicidal garden gnome for his ...
Apple, Fennel and Cheddar Quiche
Recently, my friends at Cabot Creamery Cooperative and their Vermont neighbors King Arthur Flour challenged a group of bloggers to come up with their best quiche recipe. At stake is a package of goodies from these two iconic brands. They are calling this contest #QuicheFeast. Well, it just so happens that I love quiche and I make it quite ...
Top 10 Things I Saw at the Fresh Summit
Thanks to Kitchen-PLAY and PMA for including me in this year's #TeamFreshSummit. As part of Team Fresh Summit, I have received compensation from Sun-Maid, Valley Fig, Outrageously Fresh Produce, and Hurst's Berry Farm. All opinions expressed here are entirely my own. I just returned from Atlanta where I spent the weekend at the Fresh Summit, ...
The PMA Fresh Summit in Atlanta
Today's post is sponsored by PMA Fresh Summit, HBF International, Sun-Maid and Valley Fig & Outrageously Fresh! Join me tonight (10/20) at 8 pm CDT for a Twitter party to introduce the 2015 Fresh Summit sponsors and the #TeamFreshSummit bloggers. Grab your laptop for a fast-paced hour with these delicious brands and learn how they are ...