I am a member of the Everywhere Society and Everywhere has provided me with compensation for this post about Macy’s Culinary Council. As always, all thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own. Are you a Grilling Guru? I definitely am not. While I reign supreme in the kitchen, my husband is the Grill Master in our house. And he does ...
Father’s Day Dinner: Lighter Chicken Parm
Is it a bad sign that when I made my husband's favorite dish for dinner this week, he was terrified? Had I bought something expensive? Was the car totaled? There had to be some bad news. Why else would I make chicken parmigiana on a random weeknight? (The truth is, I was just in the mood for it myself. Also, I bought a handbag.) Yes, my ...
How to Make A Watermelon Basket
Turning whole watermelons into adorably shaped bowls for serving fruit salad is a Pinterest staple. Having once carved a round baby watermelon into a bloody brain for a second grade Halloween party, I felt like I needed to redeem myself by making one of these less macabre watermelon shapes. JR's first grade class Author's Tea was on the agenda for ...
Rhubarb Jam Bars with Ginger Crumb
It absolutely kills me that my husband doesn't like rhubarb. WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE? Rhubarb is tart -- not cloyingly sweet like strawberries can be. (Oh please, don't send me hate mail because I dared to say that strawberries are too sweet. I like strawberries just fine, but I think we've all had a few overly sweet strawberry desserts in our time. ...
Farmers Market Find: Green Garlic
If you have visited your local farmers market this spring, chances are you have seen a lot of spring onions. But are you sure it was green onions that you saw? Could it possibly have been green garlic? The two crops look very similar. And, of course, they are related as onions and garlic are both members of the allium family. (Other cousins include ...
Restaurant Review: Sepia
Today, May 26, is my twelfth wedding anniversary. My husband and I got married on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend in a beautiful outdoor ceremony. I wrote more about my wedding, and how we served corn pudding at dinner, in this post. For today, I only bring up the fact that it is my anniversary because I am reviewing the restaurant we went to ...
Cookbook Review: Hoosier Mama Book of Pie
Some say that pie-making is a lost art. I have found, however, that there are countless men and women toiling away anonymously in their kitchen, keeping this quintessentially American art alive. I was at a party the other night and got to talking with one of my neighbors. The party was a dessert party so the subject naturally turned to our favorite ...
How to Get the Most out of Shopping at the Farmers Market
This Saturday, my beloved Oak Park Farmers Market reopens for the season. It can't even tell you how excited I am. Zuzu has swim practice across the street from the farmers market from 9-10:30 am and my plan is to spend that entire hour-and-a-half browsing at the market. Ninety minutes at the farmers market is not too much for me. As a home ...
May Chicago Food Swap Recap
The Chicago Food Swap had its May event this past Sunday, May 18, at Green Home Experts, a "green" lifestyle boutique in Oak Park. This was the third time that owner Maria Moran opened her store's doors to the Chicago Food Swap and, just as before, it was a perfect location for a swap. On a sunny spring afternoon, Maria's garden center was a ...
National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day
Today, May 15, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. I don't usually pay attention to these made-up food holidays but I will take any excuse to write about, or make, chocolate chip cookies. I think homemade chocolate chip cookies are just about the best dessert in the world. Willpower and restraint go out the window when I am presented with a ...
Ramps Two Ways
It's spring and that means that foodies everywhere are losing their minds over ramps. For the uninitiated, ramps are a variety of wild leek with a mild garlic flavor. They have a small bulb at the bottom and a leafy green top. A staple of farmers' markets, ramps are apparently hard to cultivate and tend to be available only for a few weeks in the ...
Smoked Turkey Banh Mi
Zuzu came home from school dejected the other day because she had not gotten her first or even second choice for her class project on French-speaking countries. Instead of Canada or Belgium, Vietmam was the country Zuzu had been assigned. My first thought was: you dodged a bullet there, kid! I would absolutely love to do a school project on ...
Mother’s Day Brunch Ideas
I am of the firm belief that you should not go out to eat on big restaurant holidays, like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. The restaurants are extra crowded, the prices inflated and the wait staff harried. You are much more likely to have a great meal on any random Saturday night or Sunday morning when the dining room has a normal number of ...
Mango Salsa for Cinco de Mayo
Okay, so we don't actually celebrate Cinco de Mayo at my house. We're not twenty-something city dwellers with the alcohol tolerance befitting a recent college grad. Instead, we are a suburban family of four who will spend Monday night going to piano lessons, doing homework and eating dinner without Daddy, who has a work function. But we did have ...
Brownies with Dried Cherries and Mango Puree
Brownies happen to be my daughter Zuzu's all-time favorite dessert and she is incapable of passing one up. Two summers ago, on a family trip to Nantucket, she repeatedly shocked my mother by ordering a brownie over any one of the amazing homemade ice cream flavors on our nightly trips to The Juice Bar -- Nantucket's beloved, hole-in-the-wall ice ...
Diner Classic for Dinner: Red Flannel Hash
Truman Capote is rumored to have said that his favorite food was chicken hash. Indeed, chicken hash was the centerpiece of the midnight buffet at Capote's legendary 1966 Black and White Ball at Plaza Hotel. I love all kinds of hash myself and would happily eat some version of it every week even if I wouldn't serve it at a society ball. I have ...
April is Grilled Cheese Month
I'm not usually so last-minute about things, but did you know that April is Grilled Cheese Month? If you are a regular reader of food blogs, my guess is that you already knew about Grilled Cheese Month because everyone has been chiming in with their versions of this lunchtime classic. I am so late to the game, in part, because of Passover. I spent ...
How to Make a Chopped Vegetable Salad
Last week, sometime after the third night of repurposed leftover brisket, multiple bowls of matzo ball soup and the umpteenth plate of scrambled eggs, I longed to sink my teeth into some food that would resist. Give me something -- anything! -- with some crunch to it. I went to my fridge and pulled out all the raw vegetables I could find: ...
Meringue Bites with Lemon Curd and Berries
This is the dessert that I wish I had made for my Seder: bite-sized meringues shells filled with luscious lemon curd and topped with a juicy strawberry. The dessert that I actually made was kind of a flop. The idea was similar but my proportions were way off. For the Seder dessert last week, I made saucer-sized meringues filled with sliced, ...
Matza-quiles or Mexican Matzo Brei
I think for many people observing Passover, breakfast is the hardest meal of the day. Oatmeal is out. Cereal seriously not okay. Toast verboten. Granola a no-go. So, what is left to eat in the morning? On weekdays, when he is in a rush, my husband downs some yogurt and an apple, which is a very healthy, but maybe not the most satisfying, ...
The Only Brisket Recipe You Will Ever Need
I was all set to make chicken for Passover this year. I had a terrific recipe worked out and given that I was hosting a Seder on the second night of the holiday, I figured that my guests would appreciate a lighter entree. And then my husband asked me if I would please make brisket. "Your brisket is special," he cajoled. Well, how could I resist ...
Passover Menu: Chocolate-Covered Matzo Toffee
So much of cooking for Passover seems to be about making up for what we can't have during the eight-day festival. Many Passover recipes, especially those for Passover desserts, claim to be "as good as" a regular dessert made with flour and leavened. The author cheerfully declares that he or she would eat this Pesadich dessert all year round - it's ...
Chicken with Dried Fruit and Almonds for Passover
The Jewish festival of Passover begins next Monday at sundown. Mondays are busy nights around here so I am planning to host a Seder on the second night of Passover, which thankfully is somewhat traditional. It's still hectic to host what amounts to a large dinner party on a weeknight, so I am already starting to prepare some of the dishes ahead of ...
Recap of the April Chicago Food Swap
This past weekend the Chicago Food Swap returned to The Chopping Block, the spacious and beautiful cooking school located in the iconic Merchandise Mart, for its April swap. And it was an outstanding afternoon of sampling, swapping and shopping. As I said in my opening remarks to the group, when we are at The Chopping Block, it is like the ...
Spring Cooking: Asparagus, Ricotta and Lemon Flatbread
When people ask me what my blog is about, I say that it is about fitting ambitious food into family life. This recipe is exemplifies what that tagline means to me. This flatbread can either be a quick weeknight meal or a cool, all-from-scratch, DIY project depending on how you approach it. You can make this seasonal, vegetarian flatbread in no time ...